These Lively Oracles

Shortly after I finished my apprenticeship I got an opportunity to go and work in London. While there I went to a building site looking for a job. The boss came out and asked all the relevant questions etc. Asked where I had worked, asked what sort of work I had done, asked for my qualifications and registration card, etc. Then he asked if he could look inside my toolbox. Puzzled, I opened it up for him to see and he just nodded his head and said, “Start work on Monday”. Although the incident intrigued me I never paid it much thought at the time since I was only too glad to get a job. Several years later I was relating this story to a different group of workmates and one older, wiser guy said, “You know that he wasn’t actually looking at the tools in your toolbox?” I looked at him in puzzlement. “He was actually looking at the dirt and rubbish that was lying in the bottom of your toolbox”. “What do you mean?” I asked him. “Well”, he said. “Anyone can walk onto a job...

There was a vehicle driving along a narrow country road. It was a tight wee road with grassy banks rising up from either side. The vehicle was a single decker bus, wider than a normal vehicle, but comfortably fitted on the road. While heading up toward the brow of a hill, all of a sudden there appeared another vehicle approaching from the opposite direction. It was a large agricultural lorry, a wide vehicle also. Both vehicles were approximately 8ft (2.5M) wide. The road was only 14ft (4.2M) wide. And the suddenness of the event meant that there was very little time to react. The first vehicle managed to stop quite quickly hard up against the grassy bank. But the oncoming vehicle didn’t manage to stop. The driver of the first vehicle braced and waited for the impending impact…….. And waited. There was no time to pray. There was no time to even think about “fight or flight”. There was just no time to do anything. The driver opened his eyes and looked in his side view mirror and wa...

It was a cold December day in 2017 when my wife and I were in London with family. We went into the Tate Modern on the Southbank just purely to get out of the cold. It was bitterly cold with a biting breeze coming in from the Thames and we were all starting to shiver. Unless you’re and artistic type with an eye for the eclectic and surreal you don’t need to ever waste your time visiting this building. We were only driven in there because of our desire to get out of the cold. Nothing more. However... …As things transpired, amidst my wanderings and wonderings at how anyone could even call some of this stuff “Art”, I turned a corner and was stopped in my tracks by the exhibit shown in the photograph. It stands about 20ft (6.5m) high and is built purely from electronic media devices. The base of it has some radios built by famous manufacturers who have disappeared into the history books – Grundig, Marconi, Pye – and as the exhibition rose up through its height the manufacturers become mo...

                                         You’re Getting Your Shadows Mixed Up ….. I remember once I was working as a leader at a children’s Bible Camp. A couple of times during the week the leaders were given a few hours rest period. On one such period I was sitting with a few other leaders when one young lady lifted a tennis racket. There was a tennis court just in front of where we were sitting so I lifted a racket too and went to the other side of the court. I assumed the position that all of the top players do and we proceeded to play a game. I returned her shot and she missed the ball. “Oh, Praise the Lord,” she shouted out. I looked at her and thought to myself, “Ok. She likes to shout it out”. After another couple of shots she missed another one. She did a little dancing type spi...