It's a wonderful life

 

I've just seen "It's A Wonderful Life" on TV. 

Can you imagine what your life would have been like if it was not this life you are living now?

You are all probably married, or not. With children and grand-children. Or not. Doing this job, or that. Or not. 

You are living your lives now. But how would it have been if it was a different life? Have you ever thought about that?

In a different life I would probably have been working in a zoo rather than in management in a multi-national organisation.

I've always loved animals, although they have not always loved me. 

I like horses. I spent a fortune on sick horses. Mind you, I did not know they were sick when I bet on them to win the race.

I lost a girl-friend because of animals. I told her I worked with animals. She found out I was a butcher and left me. 

I once helped a hedgehog which was trapped in amongst some thorns in the garden. In helping him I got injured with his needles and had to go to hospital where a nurse injected me with medicines in case of infection. 

This not only proves that I like animals, but it is also a reminder that you should always wear clean underwear, because you never know when you'll show your backside to a complete stranger!  

Why is it that our dog poops in the garden and I am the one who has to clear it up, and not him? Is this more proof of my love for animals?

But let's go back to where I started. "It's A Wonderful Life". 

How would your life have been different if it was not as it is today?

Mary's Boy Child

 

BONEY M - 1978 

MAY GOD BLESS ALL VISITORS TO THIS BLOG

 

Thank you dear friends

 

Vic M

A Christmas Message

 

Dear friends,

Let us first of all thank the Lord for yet another year together. I am truly grateful to all of you who have visited me here whether you left a comment or not. Over the past year, and before that even, we have exchanged news, shared jokes and have come together in prayers and friendship. For this I thank you.

I pray that you all have a very blessed Christmas with family and friends or even if you are alone; and may our Lord be always by your side giving you comfort, protection and love at all times.

God bless you all.

 

 

I watch the sunrise

 

.

 

FATHER FRANCIS MAPLE

 

His website link 

I watch the sunrise lighting the sky,
Casting its shadows near.
And on this morning bright though it be,
I feel those shadows near me.

 

But you are always close to me
Following all my ways.
May I be always close to you
Following all your ways, Lord.

 

I watch the sunlight shine through the clouds,
Warming the earth below.
And at the mid-day, life seems to say:
I feel your brightness near me.

 

For you are always close to me
Following all my ways.
May I be always close to you
Following all your ways, Lord.

 

I watch the sunset fading away,
Lighting the clouds with sleep.
And as the evening closes its eyes,
I feel your presence near me.

 

For you are always close to me
Following all my ways.
May I be always close to you
Following all your ways, Lord.

 

I watch the moonlight guarding the night,
Waiting till morning comes.
The air is silent, earth is at rest
Only your peace is near me.

 

Yes, you are always close to me
Following all my ways.
May I be always close to you
Following all your ways, Lord.

 

 May I be always close to you
Following all your ways, Lord.

Poker Faced Dog

 

I have taught our dog to play poker. I'll give him that; he can keep a straight face. 

We don't play for money. Just dog biscuits.

To be honest, he is a useless player. Whenever he has a good hand of cards he wags his tail enthusiastically.

 For the past week I've been eating dog biscuits.

It's Christmas Time

As we approach Christmas we tend to visit family and friends and have gatherings usually at weekends. There's about four or five such gatherings leading on to Christmas day itself.

It was our turn last weekend and we had about a dozen people around.

As everyone was cheerful and merry I remembered an old lady who lives alone a few houses down the road.

No one ever seems to visit her. No family. No friends. No neighbours. No one.

Can you imagine that? Being all alone in her home at Christmas with no one with her. I felt sorry for her.

So I put on my coat and walked down to her house and asked her if we could borrow some of her chairs.

She refused.

What a selfish person. No wonder she is all alone at Christmas!

OK ... I AM JOKING

YOU LOT SHOULD STOP TAKING ME SERIOUSLY!

The Wedding Experience

 

 We attended a wedding recently.

 At the usual point in the ceremony the priest asked if anyone had anything to say concerning the union of the bride and groom, as it was their time to stand up and talk, or forever hold their peace.

 

He waited for a few seconds and then said, "All right ... All right ... One at a time. Don't all speak at once!"

 

Sorry folks ... this is my sense of humour coming to the fore. It didn't happen that way.

 

I really should take ceremonies like this seriously. Which incidentally was exactly what I was told at my grandfather's funeral when I complained I could not get WiFi Internet connection in church to see the football results.

 

I really liked my grandfather. He told me once, "Never ever take advice from anyone!" So I ignored him.

 

I remember visiting him on his death bed in hospital. He said he was glad he was dying peacefully without a lot of people shouting and screaming and wailing around him as happened to his dad when he drove a bus over a cliff.

 

I had brought him a bunch of grapes. As he laid there reminiscing about his life I picked one grape at a time and ate it. Eventually I finished the whole bunch. 

 

He looked at the empty plate and mumbled "Selfish!" and died. And that's how I became a fishmonger.

 

Anyway, back to my wedding story. The priest asked if anyone had anything to say about the couple due to be married and waited.

 

The moment of utter silence was broken by a young beautiful woman carrying a child. She started walking toward the priest slowly. Everything quickly turned to chaos. 

 

People turned round and murmured to each other.  

 

The bride turned round and felt a little wobbly. A bridesmaid led her to a nearby pew to sit down.

 

The groom's mother fainted. 

 

The groom and the best-man started giving each other looks and wondering how best to help save the situation. 

 

The priest asked the woman, "Can you tell us why you came forward?"

 

The woman replied, "We can't hear at the back." 

 

 *******

 

 Incidentally, at our own wedding some people thought it would be fun to spray our car with shaving foam. You know the one ... ready-made foam that comes out of a spray can. I pretended it was fun and we drove off.

 

The next day the foam had damaged the car's paintwork.

 

Can you imagine what this foam does to one's face. I have not shaved since. 

 

Yesterday I tripped on my beard and fell down the stairs.

Remembering childhood's Christmas

 

Years ago, as a child, I had my heart set on a train set for Christmas. You know the one I mean? A beautiful steam locomotive all shining in black, pulling an open container full of coal, and this pulling a carriage with people clearly visible through the windows. The set included a number of rails which when linked together would make a large circle; and you could also buy various accessories like a railway station, ticket office, more rails, carriages and so on.

I'd imagined buying all the additional accessories with my pocket money and building a rail network that would be the envy of any transport system you could think of.

I wrote several letters to Father Christmas explaining precisely which train set I was after, and pointing out that I had been a good boy all year round; just in case he didn't know.

On Christmas day I did not get that train set at all. Instead, my auntie had knitted me a pullover and a little train locomotive. I mean ... is she mad or what? 

A knitted train locomotive? I ask you ... how can you get a train locomotive made of wool and stuffed with pieces of cotton to go round and round? She didn't even knit me a set of rails!

I always wondered about the sanity of that woman. 

She must have been light-brained and a few tomatoes short of a salad, as they say. She was always knitting something. Tea cosies to keep the teapot warm, hats or bonnets to keep our heads warm, scarves to keep our neck warm, gloves and mittens, socks and booties to keep our hands and feet warm.

On another Christmas she knitted us all pencils and pens pullovers. Let me explain. She knitted long thin tubes the length of a pencil with different colour wool. A bit like the sleeve of your jumper or jersey but much smaller. The idea is that you push your pencil or pen through the tubes to keep them warm.

Is she mental or what? Do pencils feel the cold perchance?

Another year I asked my Father for a computer for my Birthday. He gave me a packet of crayons instead. He said he couldn't buy me a computer because it hadn't been invented yet!

To be fair, he was right. Computers hadn't been invented until years later. But a packet of crayons is hardly a substitute is it? He could have bought me a laptop or a tablet!

I asked my Mom for a helmet or hard hat for when I go out on my bicycle. I didn't have a bicycle at the time, but I was always forward thinking ... you know, just in case one day I got a bike. Instead she bought me a set of non-stick frying pans.

I always seem to get the wrong gifts. When I got married, my wife and I decided that we did not want any gifts or presents at all. We wrote in the invitation letters that we'd like everyone to come along and enjoy a nice toast to "Love and Happy Life" ever after. 

On the day in question everyone turned up with a toaster as a gift. We had at least 150 of the kitchen appliances.

I suppose the most useful present I was ever given was from my uncle when he gifted me a roll of double-sided sticky tape. I asked him why and he explained I could use the tape to pull back my sticking out ears. I had terrible sticking out ears as a child. I looked like a car with its doors open.

Eventually my parents sold our dog and the lawnmower to pay for my ears to be operated on. I had the operation on one ear. Unfortunately the doctor died shortly afterwards.

So now I have an ear looking normal and the other still sticking out. At the slightest breeze I spin round like a hotel revolving door.

Have you ever had a well-meaning gift which did not quite fit with what you had in mind?

Santa Brawl

 

I was in a large Department Store, just looking around wondering what to buy my wife as a Christmas present which looks expensive, but it isn't, and yet it is edible; so that if she doesn't like it I can always eat it. 

I think presents should be edible, don't you agree? If it is not edible it is not worth having.

I remember I had a girl-friend who liked shoes, and she liked chocolates too. I could not decide what to get her for her birthday. So I got her a pair of shoes made of chocolates! 

Anyway; back to my story. 

I was in this Department Store and there was a grotto with Father Christmas handing out presents to young customers. I stood there for a while.

Suddenly, he looked at me and shouted, "I know you ... you're going out with my wife!"

Immediately he got up from his seat and rushed at me, almost jumping, as those wrestlers do on TV when they bounce off the rope on the ring, and he hit me hard in the chest as he grabbed my neck.

I fell backwards, knocking down a Christmas tree and a lot of other suspended decorations. We tumbled and rolled round on the floor. 

The people were all shocked and started gathering their little ones in a panic. Santa held tight at my throat as we rolled backwards and forwards on the floor knocking down more ornaments and shelves with various items on display.

I raised my knee and must have hit him somewhere tender because he let out a shriekey type of cry. But he still help tight at my throat swearing and spitting like a drunken sailor rather than the gentle Santa which he purported to be. 

Eventually, two elves tried to pull us apart but were unsuccessful. They were joined by two burly Security Guards who managed to separate us.

I gasped for breath. I must have hit him hard because he was bleeding from his nose and holding his manhood. 

He shouted, "This ***** is going out with my wife!"

"I don't even know who you are," I said as I recovered my composure a little, albeit my heart was beating a million beats a minute, "take off your beard so I know whose wife I've been going out with!"

I know ... this could have been phrased a little better. 

As it is, it does sound as if I've been going out with multiple wives. Which I haven't! One wife is enough for me, I tell you. And so is one mother-in-law I hasten to add. 

Santa took off his beard and I still did not recognise him. 

So I said, "I still don't know who you are! More to the point, tell me who is your wife so we can narrow down the possibility of me going out with her!"

I know ... I know ... that came out wrong as well. My mind was all confused and all I was doing is incriminate myself even more.

At this point Fate intervened. This very big and very large and very rotund woman came on the scene.

Turns out she was his wife. Despite her size I had never seen her before.

Santa tuned round and said to her, "I love you bijou!"

"Bijou?" I thought, "she looks more like a boulder to me!" But I said nothing.

Apparently, she had been meeting the store manager in secret in order to get her husband, (Santa), a particularly expensive present to be given to him at a presentation at the store Christmas Party to celebrate his long service as Santa Claus. 

His suspicious mind had thought differently, and having seen me standing there, he somehow mistook me for her boy-friend.

He apologised and I helped him and the elves put up the up-turned Christmas decorations again.

The store manager did the presentation as planned. I wonder why he had a glint in his eye!!!

Good Christian Reading

 CHRISTIAN BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS

 

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A Christmas Tale

It was a very cold week in early December. Some parishioners asked Father Ignatius if it was all right to build a Christmas crib in the car park as well as the one usually set up in church by the Altar.

The intention was to build a small wooden hut made of old wood they could pick up cheaply from the local saw mill; and then decorate it, and use the Nativity scene statues which they discovered in the store room deep in the basement under the church whilst they were cleaning it in summer.

Father Ignatius agreed, “as long as you don’t ask me to lift those heavy statues from the basement … they’re quite heavy you know. So be careful!” he said.

A few youngsters helped by the leaders of the Youth Club got together and built the wooden hut. At first it looked quite bare and unwelcoming, a little like the original manger in Bethlehem I suppose. But eventually, with loving tender care, mostly by the women involved whilst the men gave instructions or went to the pub for a drink, it looked really magnificent.

The statues were then brought up, with great difficulty, from the basement and placed in position. A local electrician volunteered his services and placed hidden lights at strategic places to make the crib glow warmly at night.

As it snowed and got bitterly cold, even for Northern England, the little wooden hut glowing in the church’s car park made a beautiful heart-warming sight for all passers-by and gave them a little hope for the New Year ahead.

Just beside St Vincent church, by the car park gate, there’s a little narrow lane leading deep into fields at the back of the church. From the street you cannot see the fields. There’s the church’s car park entrance, then the narrow lane entrance, then the entrance to the Convent nearby.

This long lane leads to a small field used by a local farmer to store his farm machinery. He leaves his tractors there, as well as several harvesting equipment and ploughs in a large shed. The field is well enclosed by a high fence and, for extra security; the farmer keeps a dog loose in the field with a small opening in the shed for it to shelter in his doghouse when it is cold and raining.

The dog is not always there; only on rare occasions when the farmer needs additional security on the site.

One morning, a few days before Christmas, the farmer called on Father Ignatius.

“You haven’t seen my dog by any chance Father?” he asked, “it’s a large shepherd dog. I keep him in the yard behind you every now and then, in his dog house in the shed.

“The area is well fenced-off so he shouldn’t have got away. But maybe he found a hole in the fence somewhere and ran off!”

The priest hadn’t seen the dog, but it could be possible that he found a way through the fence and got into the church’s gardens and car park. So he put on his coat and went out with the farmer to search the church’s back gardens first.

It had snowed all night and the snow was very thick and even everywhere since no one had been out to walk on it.

“I hope he’s OK …” said the farmer despondently, “it was very cold last night … well below zero Father. He should have stayed in his dog-house for any chance of warmth. I keep an electric fire on the wall nearby to heat the place … he would have been as warm as toast in the shed. It’s like a sauna in there even in winter!”

“Well … he’s not in the back gardens,” said the priest, “we’d better look in the church car park. Although if he went there he would have escaped in the street by now …”

The two men searched the car park and, eventually, there in the crib, sleeping in the manger just beside the statue of baby Jesus was the large shepherd dog.

As soon as he heard the men approaching he jumped in delight welcoming his master.

“At least he had the sense to find some warmth in the lap of Jesus,” said Father Ignatius, “pity some people do not have as much sense!”

OTHER FATHER IGNATIUS STORIES HERE

Stars and Celery

 

It was a beautiful warm summer evening. The youngsters from the Youth Club had gathered in the gardens behind St Vincent Church and enjoyed a lovely prayer service led by Father Ignatius and Father Donald, followed by a barbecue and singing by the fire.

As night drew in they had left one by one as their parents came to collect them and take them home. Even the Youth Club Leaders had gone. Only the two priests and Mrs Davenport, their housekeeper, remained in the gardens. She got up from her chair and started collecting the plates and cutlery to take them in the house.

“Oh … do sit down Theresa …” said Father Ignatius, “you’ve been working all evening. Just sit down and relax.”

“But there’s all this washing up to do Father …” she replied, “it won’t get done by itself …”

“Don’t worry about the washing up …” said Father Donald picking up his guitar and playing a tune, “Ignatius and I will do all the washing up later … I promise. Now sit down and let’s enjoy a few moments by the fire as it dies down …”

After a few moments of silence, listening to Father Donald playing his guitar, she could keep quiet no longer.

“What are you looking at up in the sky?” she asked Father Ignatius.

“All those stars … shining brightly in a clear dark sky. There must be hundreds and thousands of them. And they’re so far away …” said Father Ignatius pensively.

She looked up and said nothing for a moment or two.

“How are they held up there in the sky?” she asked.

Father Donald stopped playing the guitar.

“They are not held … they are just there …” he mumbled in his broad Glaswegian accent.

“But why don’t they fall?” she continued, “something must be holding them in the sky …”

“There’s no thing as a sky as such …” Father Donald began to explain, “there are stars, and planets and solar systems which make up the universe and …”

“Of course there’s a sky,” she interrupted, “it’s up there and I can see it. It is black at night and it changes color in the morning to blue and sometimes it is red in the evenings …”

“Dear Lord …” mumbled the priest as he picked up his guitar once again.

“What do you think Father Ignatius?” she asked, “isn’t God wonderful to have made all these stars … and in seven days too! He must have been working real fast.”

“I suppose so …” replied Father Ignatius gently.

“And then He made us humans and He put us on this earth …” she interrupted yet again.

“That’s right … He created the universe and all that is in it … including us,” continued Father Ignatius.

She gazed at the stars silently for a few moments. You could almost see the cogs turning in her head as she thought her next question.

“Do you think He created other living beings on those stars Father?” she asked.

Father Donald stopped playing the guitar and waited in anticipation for his fellow priest to reply.

“That’s a difficult question to answer …” said Father Ignatius eventually.

“Why should we be His only creations?” she enquired again.

“We really don’t know if this is the case,” said Father Donald, “there’s nothing in Scripture to suggest that God created other beings apart from us …”

“What do they look like? I wonder …” she interrupted again, “do they look like us? Or are they green with antennas on their heads like you see in the films …

“It says in the Bible that God made us in His image … so He must look human. Or does He look green with antennas so the people up there can recognize Him?

“And did He send them Jesus like He did to us … only He looked green too?”

“I think you’re running ahead of yourself Theresa …” said Father Ignatius gently, “we really have no way of knowing whether God created other living beings on other planets or other solar systems. Nor indeed what they look like.

“But in reality … that is not important.

“What is important is to focus on Him here and now. To accept Him as our God and Creator; and to love Him just as He loves us.

“There are enough mysteries in our Faith which we are asked to believe without us inventing new ones such as green creatures living in outer space …”

“One day as I was in the kitchen,” she said, “Father Donald waved a few sticks of celery through the open window and shouted the ‘Triffids have landed … the Triffids have landed …’ he has a wicked sense of humour, Father, don’t you think?”

“Sometimes humour helps to lighten the mood …” replied Father Ignatius defending his fellow priest.

“He also told me that there are no animals or pets in Heaven … what do you think Father Ignatius? Are there animals in Heaven?”

“I hope not …” replied Father Ignatius, “I would hate to come face to face with the Sunday roast reprimanding me for what I had done to it!”

“Aye indeed …” said Father Donald, “humour does help to lighten the mood … I hope it helps lighten the washing up which we’ve promised to do. Let’s get started!”

MORE FATHER IGNATIUS STORIES HERE