These Lively Oracles

I remember once when I was a teenager that I had been away on an activity training weekend. This involved camping, outdoor activity exercises, early mornings and late nights. It was quite a busy weekend. I got home from the event sometime around late Sunday afternoon and went to bed for a quick sleep. At some point my Dad came to waken me and told to that I should get up as it was seven o’clock. I said “Thanks Dad. I’ll go out and see my friends for a couple of hours”. He said, “No. It’s seven o’clock in the morning. It’s time to get up for work. You’ve been in a deep sleep all night”. I was astonished. I was still wearing the clothes that I had lay down in the previous afternoon. I didn’t realise that I was so tired that nothing could disturb my sleep. In later years I have come to realise that there is a lesson to be learned from that. Sometimes we just need to decided to rest. To take a total break from everything. To just sit and do nothing, nothing at all. I used t...

We recently had the great pleasure of attending one of the oldest and, until relatively recently, one of the most private military ceremonies in the world. The ceremony has been carried out every single night for approxiamtely 700 years and was previously only ever seen by the residents and private guests of The Tower Of London. I’m talking about the nightly lockdown ceremony of the complex and is known as the Ceremony Of The Keys. And what a magnificent and austere ceremony it is. From watching the Warders lock the gates to the keys being handed over to the Night Guard. From the challenge by the Night Guardsman to acknowledgement that the nightguard has been appointed. From the cheer for the King of the United Kingdom and her Dominions to The Last Post being played. It truly was a magnificent ceremony to witness and I will freely admit to feeling a little emotional at the historical aspect of it all. And now, allegorically speaking, the Crown Jewels have been locked up, ar...