Saturday 7th November Day 3 of lockdown

Cannot believe how warm today has been for a Novemeber Saturday and so I have sat outside since breakfast amazed at the amount of human traffic and cannine friends trotting along. Lots of cheery hallo’s and a few chats to while away the time. One of our friends has a friend living in Berkhamstead who we went on a lovely walk with down the towpath towards Apsley which gave us our daily exercise! I then was very amused to see a boat trying to turn around in part of the canal that was just not wide enough so I went to see what was going on close up and got inviegled in helping him turn the boat, which he eventually did after a lot of advice from other boaters. R and I had been having a running discourse about being able to turn out boat around here, which R has now won as the boat today was at least 10ft shorter than ours. No way can we turn on a sixpence!

Reminds me that it is not always easy to turn our lives around when we think or know that we are going in the wrong direction, or if we see someone we love struggling in the same way. It takes patience and perseverance and sometimes some false starts. The peace of mind that comes with knowing we are doing what we were put on the planet to do is worth the effort. Many years ago I asked R what the point of life was (I was at a particularly low ebb at the time) and his answer was to find out what God has put you on the planet to do and then do it. I have never forgotten the answer and so I think part of life’s journey is to do just that. It is so easy to compare oneself unfavourably to others but I believe God gives us all individual gifts to utilize and then to help one another in any way that we can. Rather than think we have to compete with one another!

Finished the day watching a swedish film with subtitles called ‘A man called Ove’ and I would really recommend it (Amazon Prime). A study really in grief and how one person found meaning in life again because of the love and perseverance of new neighbours and old friends. There was a lot of humour mixed in so it was touching and heart warming. We have enough to contend with in the real world to lower our spirits so feelgood films can really benefit us at a time such as this.