There’s a song from a musical that goes something like “And another hundred passengers got off of the train” or is it “bus”? Can’t remember what it’s from but could be Sondheim. Sounds like one of his. Could it be from “Company”? Anyway, what brought it to mind the other day was that it could apply to our courtyard with – “And another hundred oranges fell out of the tree.” And I am not exaggerating. twice in the last three or four days I have been out there and picked up a hundred oranges and now, looking out of my study window there are another hundred on the ground and more than likely another hundred still in the tree. Nature has been truly bountiful. It’s jolly nice as I think I have said before to be able to walk out the door and pick your fresh fruit but, if you can’t keep up with it, it just lies rotting on the ground. I’m not surprised at what is lying out there now as we had the winds of Crete blowing with a vengeance all yesterday and, before that, Gadaffi’s rain so the car looks as though it has been parked in the middle of the Sahara.
Strange things have been happening in the UK. It’s all very well boasting of being a multi-cultural society but it seems to be leading to some rather awkward questions, or non solutions maybe. A 71 year old religious Hindu has won the right to be cremated on a pyre rather than in a crematorium and tells us he is now a very happy man. What the good folk of Durham (I think that‘s where he is) think of it is something else. He has said he isn’t asking for a traditional open air burning but it will take place within four walls and a roof in which case I ask, what’s the difference?
The second rather bizarre incident I read about is that a London bus driver, a devout Muslim, stopped his bus and, leaving the engine running, left his cab to lay out his prayer mat in the bus’s aisle to indulge in five minutes of prayer much to the consternation of passengers who were blocked in and were not sure that this wasn’t a terrorist about to blow them all to smithereens as they had read about them saying their prayers first. But no, he wasn’t a terrorist, and all London Transport could do was apologise and tell their Muslim drivers that there is a time and a place for prayers and to kindly do it in their breaks!
I bet the trendy old Archbishop of Canterbury can’t wait for the arrival of Sharia law.