“In real life, the tortoise loses.”

                                         Helen  Alexander, President of the CBI 

                                                                                  

The tortoise was depressed. His bony carapace, embossed tawny and black was dust dull, his snake head hung limp between the stumpy squamous legs and his lipless mouth drooped in a thin arc of unhappiness. Sadly he told his troubles to the black-capped Capuchin monkeys. “There’s this clever lady,” he said, “who claims that in the real world the proud opinionated hare always wins the race. All my long life I have taken comfort and confidence from Aesop’s wonderful story, but now my silly little ambition one day to achieve the same is quite destroyed.” He sniffed and a great bronze tear ran down his wrinkled cheek. “And the hare has challenged me to a race and I don’t know what to do, except to creep away and hide my shame until Death releases me from my vale of tears.”

The Capuchins, who had moved away into a chattering huddle, whooped excitedly and turned back to the tortoise. “We have a plan.” they said. “The race track slopes down the forest path towards the wild flower meadow. We shall make you a velocipede and launch you into an honourable triumph.” The tortoise frowned. “Would that not be cheating?” he asked. “No, of course not.” the capuchins replied. “The challenge is to be first across the line. There’s nothing about the method of propulsion.” The tortoise sighed. “Alright then, I shall accept the hare’s invitation to make a fool of myself.”

For days the capuchins ran here and there gathering together bits of string, old elastic bands, a pair of discarded roller skates,and the oval top of an abandoned coffee table. A cohort of mice found a purple leather harness tossed out of a passing pram and with whiskers quivering and tails lashing dragged it to the Capuchins’ bosky workshop. From dawn to dusk there was a hammering of smooth stone on rock anda sawing of beaver teeth on old table top. The whole population of the Safari Park seemed to be in attendance - even the two toed sloth made a day’s expedition from his branch to the foot of his tree to admire the ingenuity of the engineers. Only the hare and his sycophantic band of rabbits kept themselves apart, smirking and lazing in the morning sun.

Race Day came and the hare sprawled under a tree beside the track, his eyelids drooping against the dappled light. “Competitors! One minute please.” The fussy meerkat sniffed the air and peered back up the path where he thought he heard a growing commotion. The hare strolled to the line, leaned against a boulder and closed his eyes again. The distant noise grew louder and, as the meerkat fired his starting pistol, down the hill came the tortoise. Strapped by the purple harness onto the tray mounted on the roller skate wheels and propelled by a dozen Capuchins, he shot across the line past the incredulous hare and shed his zoological combustion engine in a shower of small pebbles. Enveloped now in a great cloud of dust, he disappeared towards the finishing post. The shocked hare gave up the unequal struggle and lolloped off into the meadow - and oblivion. 

“In real life,” said a wise Capuchin, “with intelligent combination and fraternal cooperation, the tortoise may always win.”

    Naomi                                                  

Orchidě and Aiolos

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together 

Shakespeare

The Nymph Orchidě was weaving herself a crown of olive leaves and pink meadow flowers. At her feet in the soft grass near the foot of Mount Olympos, his eyes deeply ablaze with lust and love, a young goat-herd sat and worshipped his new goddess. He put out his hand to touch the crown, but Orchidě snatched it from him. ‘Not for you, Aiolos. This is a crown fit only for an Immmortal, and all the silver and gold in these mountains could not buy it.’

She placed the last pink spike carefully in the centre of the wreath. ‘Not for you, Aiolos.’ she said again and holding the crown high above her dark gold curls danced around the love-sick boy,  the bright mockery of her laughter boring jaggedly into his brain. ‘Poor little earthling doomed to die, what would you give me for Orchidě’s Crown?’ The boy sighed. ‘That crown is a part of you, and I want so much to have a part of you to keep as my own. There is my new kid, with a fleece as white and soft as swansdown; there is my grandfather’s pipe on which he played the tunes the Muse Aiodě taught him. Those could be yours. Great Zeus knows how much I want that crown, but alas I have nothing else to give you.’

Orchidě came close to him and stroked his cheek. ‘If you were to give me your soul, I would place my crown on your head and take you to where the Islands of the Blessed are cradled by the waters of Oceanos. In this Paradise we would walk together across the bright sand, dine on grapes and honey cake, drink sweet Khios wine  and you would be mine for eternity. Will you pledge me your soul?’ she asked softly. He hesitated, and then: ‘Oh yes. Yes. Yes.’ She smiled, radiant, jubilant in her dark triumph.

Finger tip to finger tip they stood motionless beneath the sultry sky while dense leaden clouds swirled around the top of the mountain and plunged down into the darkening meadow. The one eyed Cyclopes struck their anvil. A monstrous thunder growled and angry fingers of blinding light ripped apart the enveloping cloud as the thunder bolt cast by Zeus flew like a double headed arrow into the hearts of the impious Nymph and the sacrilegious boy.

When the dark clouds lifted and the Cyclopes put aside their anvil and their hammers,  Ophělos the hermit, roaming the slopes of the Mountain heard the echo of a  herdsman’s pipe in the song of the stream and  the laughter of a girl in the wind rustling through the olive trees.  At last he came to the meadow where the grass was soft, and saw that from it had sprung a tall exotic stem bearing waxen petalled, delicate striated pink flowers. Close by he found a curiously coloured small marble statue of a young man who wore a wreath of olive leaves decorated with spikes of pink flowers which looked, he thought, just like a cloud of hovering butterflies.

Naomi

WELCOME

Bitter snow falling

Waiting the King’s arrival

Born in a cave

The afternoon was dark and chill with the promise of a bitterly cold late December evening to follow. The hail siling down upon the roof of my little house sounded for all the world like a stream of ball bearings thrown from a great height into a bucket. I let myself into the inky blackness of my unlit hall,  threw my briefcase onto the sofa in the living room and went into the kitchen. I had had a tiring and a tiresome day in the university and all I wanted now was my supper.

As I stood in the middle of the kitchen contemplating the meagre contents of my fridge, I was distracted by a small high-pitched cry from the back porch. “Open this door. Let me in please.” it ordered. With only the slightest hesitation I obeyed, and a tiny creature made apparently from half a foot of oiled ebony string rushed past me like some demented bat fish out of a marine hell. It hesitated for not one nano second, but  ran through the kitchen into the coal dark hall, plunged up the uncarpeted stairs, and disappeared.

I followed the trail of raindrops into my bedroom but no  alien being was to be seen. I stood very still and heard a faint rasping noise under my bed. Lifting the valance I found a black kitten sitting on its right hind leg, its left hind leg high in the air motionless behind its left ear, tiny pink tongue protruding, staring at me with eyes unwinking and huge in its tiny face.  “I am rather busy at the moment,” it seemed to say, “however a little supper in about twenty minutes would not go amiss.  Thank you.”

In my fridge there were two tomatoes, a sweet potato, an old oyster mushroom, a rather small steak and a pint of milk. I cooked it all and precisely twenty minutes later the kitten, now dry and immaculately coated, strolled into the kitchen. It ate half the steak finely chopped with a spoonful of sweet potato and delicately lapped two bowls of warmed milk, while I dined on what was left over. Having washed its paws and whiskers, it made its way back upstairs and took up residence again under my bed.

The next morning after our modest breakfast of milk and cereal, I turned it out into the garden, grabbed my unopened briefcase, shouted “Bye, Cat.” and scurried off to the Cathedral. I could almost feel the eyes of the furry sentinel now sitting atop my wall boring reproachfully into my rapidly disappearing back.

When I arrived home that evening, I was well prepared with cod fillet, Munchies, and a large frozen pizza in my reticule. Mewing quietly the kitten ran along beside me, darted ahead of me into the hall and ran straight into the kitchen. We dined; we sat beside the fire; the kitten replete with fresh cod slept. “You can sleep here tonight, small Cat,” I said, “but … ” The kitten opened one eye and stretched languorously. “ … tomorrow I must try and find out where you belong.” I was speaking to an empty space - the lodger had made a sudden dash for the stairs and my bedroom.

I  tried to find Cat’s owners, but no-one knew him or wanted him or cared at all about him. So I made him a bed in an old bicycle basket and left him in the warm while I went out to do the Christmas Eve shopping. By the time I returned the air was dry and cold and a pale sun was setting over the Cathedral towers behind the old city wall. I was greeted by the warmth of my living room fire and a small black torpedo who shot into my outstretched arms.

“Hello, small Cat.” I murmured. “You know, I can’t go on calling you Cat; it’s not respectful. Who then shall you be?” I paused. “I could call you Baruch, the blessed one. Would you like that?” The kitten stirred, climbed up onto my shoulder, rested its small face against mine, and with a tongue like the finest sandpaper gently licked my cheek. I switched on the radio and we sat in the old armchair while the familiar music of the carols and the words of the Nine Lessons floated around us.

“I have no Christmas present for you,” I confessed, “but I don’t expect  you will mind.” From the radio the voices of the fair choristers of King’s gradually rose to a poignant crescendo:

 

"What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.”

The kitten’s quiet purr suddenly exploded into the heavy rattle of a miniature Kango hammer. God was in his heaven, Baruch had been welcomed into his new home, and all was very right with our world.

AT THE TURNING OF THE YEAR

Heavy clouds shone darkly above the hillside,
as I stood disappointed beside an empty manger.
No great star hung motionless and brilliant in the sullen sky,
no angels sang, no wise men rode through the night, nothing stirred
but the wind that blew dust into my eyes.

A stream nearby chivying the lazy reeds
murmured  “Look within yourself and your heart’s eye
will find the shepherds and the angels,
the Magi and Mary’s baby in his star-lit cradle.”
“Go” whispered the breeze lingering in the icy grass,
“follow the unchanging way which leads every weary soul to that light.”

Suddenly, in the cold still night on that empty hillside silent
beneath its leaden canopy, there were shepherds
fallen to their knees beside their midnight fire.
The dazzled sky was full of angels, whose mighty Hallelujahs
shook the branches of the olive tree
and warmed the night with the radiance of their song.

A train of grunting camels swayed over the rim of the world,
carrying tall men from the East in robes of scarlet and purple and gold,
dignified silhouettes against the coming of a new golden dawn.
Out of the shadows, from over the hills, across the rivers, down the valleys,
surged a thousand generations of pilgrims
come to honour the child, eternal paradigm of faith and hope and love.

A wide-eyed shepherd boy, his young lamb held close, walked beside me
along that crowded joyful road to Bethlehem, to witness
and to celebrate the old year’s dying, the new year’s resurrection 
and the promise made before the world began.
Which is now again to be fulfilled.

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Esther

 Patience is the companion of wisdom

                                                                                    St Augustine

Esther, her purring kitten Tighearnan on her shoulder, sat on a small rise overlooking Wexford Harbour and and waited patiently for her Papa to come home. But Papa’s bones, picked clean by small fishes, lay deep in the ocean four thousand miles away. Eight months later with a bitterly complaining kitten in a small rush basket, Esther, Mina and Mama waited in the autumn cold of a Dublin evening for the steamer which would take them across the wild waved Irish Sea to a new life in Liverpool.

The was no more money in Liverpool than there was a welcome for a nearly destitute family. Both the sisters had to go out to work, Mina aged 13 to look after a rich merchant’s backward daughter, and Esther aged 10 to mind the alcoholic wife of an absent sea captain. Fifteen years later, Mina was travelling the world keeping a succession of backward daughters safely away from the disdain and condescension of upper class Liverpool society while Esther, at last, was engaged to be married.

Charles was the youngest son of a wealthy business man; Esther although poor was the daughter of an officer and a gentleman, and the niece of two generals. As such, she was made grudgingly welcome by her new family and her three children were born at the big family house in the rue des Ormeaux where Grandmama held court. Although she did not care much for her husband’s relations, her highly critical and ironic wit was mercifully well moderated by a great natural courtesy, and Esther was content.

Esther loved her children with a love as fierce as it was undemonstrative and her patience was severely tested by the war in France. Towards the end of 1917 Frederick, her regular army  son, returned home an invalid. Over the fields of Arras where the land was made blackly sticky with allied blood, her youngest son Bryan flew during the dreadful Spring of 1917, and then lay impatiently in an English hospital waiting for his eyes to heal and his sight to return. He rejoined his squadron, but Frederick died. Esther mourned silently for one and quietly rejoiced for the other, accepting whatever in his wisdom the Good Lord chose to throw at her.

Charles, who played the international stock markets, died in 1930 most of his money lost to the Wall Street Crash. Sixty years after Papa’s death in the Red Sea, Esther yet again found herself almost penniless. Encroaching arthritis gradually crippled her, the sheer weight of her years began to destroy her body until at last in 1950 she was taken into a geriatric ward. There with flashes of bright humour and great patience she waited three years for death to come gently for her.

In worldly terms Esther was a totally undistinguished woman; she was not beautiful, she was not famous, she had no brilliant  accomplishments.  The World failed to notice her brisk kindness, her undemandingly respectful friendship with children, her unquestioning acceptance of the madman, the vicious stray cat and the slings and arrows of an outrageous Fortune. She inspired great love in those around her and a wonderful sense of security and self worth. This was her distinction and her wisdom was indeed more precious than rubies.

Naomi                                             Illustration by Liz

THE INVITATION
 

Across the green of the sea kissed downs, flies my bird,
Cushioned on winds first warmed by desert sun
Where camel and Beduin for ever walk
Into a shimmering horizon, mysterious and bright.
Up and up he rises, my bird, a speck of dark light
In a sky of cerulean blue, a day star in the stillness
Of a summer afternoon. He hovers now, my bird,
Oh so gently, like an idle leaf in the soft June air.
Then, tumbling from the sky, stalling and whirling,
An acrobat exuberant, my bird beckons,
A pinioned king wonderful in his dignity and power.
And I can only marvel at this Malachi pointing me to heaven.

Naomi

My friend Joan's prayer:

Praise be to the great Weaver of Words and Wonder; for the threads of inspiration and hope, lovingly woven in the weft and warp of our lives.