Mea Culpa

Tuesday 26th January, 2021

I am feeling very guilty. I forgot to celebrate Robert Burns yesterday. I have had a series of emails asking me how did I celebrate, did I eat haggis having stabbed it with my dirk and did I drink whisky all night and do a highland fling or two? Well, that sounds stereotypical but I simply forgot and feel guilt at lack of appreciation of the poet, the man and the land. Then an old wag sent me an email this morning with a Burns joke! Prince Charles visits a ward in the Edinburgh Hospital and as he walks the ward talking to various patients he is puzzled as he does not understand a word and the converse seems peculiar and incomprehensible. He turns to his guide and asks if it is a psychiatric ward but the reply is no, it is the serious burns ward! Looking closely you realise the patients have been quoting Burns's poetry. Now WOKE would see that as offensive. Do I? Do you?

The last few days have been glorious but today was cloudy and dull and rain was forecast. After breakfast I read some of T.S.Eliot's Wasteland as it had been the subject of a podcast I listened to yesterday. It set a mood. I then turned to Caretto on Life and Prayer. He says they cannot be separated and I loved his phrase ' a gesture of optimism' referring to acceptance of life's travails. It encouraged me to write to an old school chum now in a psychiatric hospital and to a dear old friend housebound and infirm and lonely.

I agreed with Carretto's comment:" We know nothing, or virtually nothing, yet we presume to pass judgement on everything". Mea culpa, I muttered. But then he went on to say we must accept the teachings and doctrines of the Church ( he was a Roman Catholic religious ). Here I diverge for there are some pronouncements with which I cannot agree and there are actions and pronouncements of the past which have been removed, even apologised over. Surely I must accept yet not accept what I think wrong or misguided. Yet he seems to remind me that I do not know. A dilemma which I took with me on my walk with my grabber. Drizzle threatened but never came and on my return I went for a short drive to feed my car's battery. I noticed on my drive so much litter and rubbish down the sides of the roads I travelled. I felt like screaming!! And in fact I did.

When back home I was thrilled to receive an email from an old pupil giving me a reference to a BBC World Service interview and documentary on one of the great National Parks of the Republic of the Congo. The Director of the Park was another ex pupil. It was fascinating. He has been shot twice, faced hellish attacks from local militia and rebels, from oil companies and a whole series of other concerns trying to find riches from the many minerals in the Park. I simply was overwhelmed to recall him and realise what a sterling job he is doing, what an inspiration and what a fearless and remarkable man he had grown in to. It is worth hearing...World Service of the BBC. Business Daily. Gorillas, guns and oil.

A gesture of, an interview of, a statement of and a documentary of optimism.