Matthew's Question

So, if you've read the last post, you'll know that this one concerns an internet conversation I had in 2007 with a young man called (here, at least) Matthew. He did not take part in the debates and arguments I referred to, but was obviously following along closely.




The first I knew of him was a private Facebook message he sent me. Here is that message in its entirety, except for some personal info (removed or changed for privacy's sake) and some minor grammatical editing.




From: Matthew Young. August 8th. 2007 at 11:33am.

Hi Dave, I happen to be a Christian and have been following the posts about atheism. I was very impressed by what you have been saying. While I have been studying many religions and beliefs/non-beliefs, I am still in the dark about some things.


Am I reading it right? You are, for sure, an atheist? If so, then I have a question for you. As such, you are claiming that you know everything. To say that there is no God is to say that you know everything there is to know. So, my question is how many grains of sand are there on the beach nearest your home?


My point is that, as far as I know so far, there is no such thing as an atheist because it is impossible for a man to know everything there is to know. It is in those things that we don't know or accept that I believe we find God. Not just a God who sits up in the sky, looking down and judging us but a very real, present and intimate God who cares for the lives of every last person on Earth.


Deep inside, we all have the desire to know God. How else can you explain how and why the very IDEA of God exists? Everyone, at some time, wants to know just where they came from and how all this got started. I'm sure there is still more proof but without God; without a sense of knowing that what you do here on Earth matters eternally, then what's the point of life? Why do we have things that we consider wrong? Without God there can be no absolute truth when, in fact, absolute truth is all around us (2+2+4!). Absolute!


How is a watch made? A man assembles all these little parts. So what does a watch do then? It glorifies its creator by doing what it was created to do. So then, how do we glorify OUR creator? By living in the center of his will for our lives. That will is specific to each and every individual and you can find that will y studying God's Holy Word.


All that is just to say this; I believe that people choose (there we are again, Ed.) not to believe in God because they never get to know God. If you're up for a challenge, then, I want to challenge you to see if God is actually real. Read some Bible. If you like, I'd be happy to suggest some places to start. Just ask God to show himself to you.

I hope I haven't taken up too much of your time or caused you any grief but you seemed like one of the few who actually believed what they were saying as far as atheism is concerned. I appreciate you reading this if you get this far.

END QUOTE.



Much of this was the standard circular reasoning one gets used to on this subject; what boils down to "the Bible must be true because it says so in the Bible" and its close cousins, but there was one point - the futility argument - that I can never let pass and one other that I'd never heard before; the contention that an atheist, by definition it seems, claims knowledge of everything. Where did this come from?



Dyve: August 8th. 2008 at 2:18pm.

Thanks for that Matthew. I DID make it all the way to the end although the point, as far as I'm concerned, is right at the top.

The assumption that if I don't believe in God, I must know (or think I know) everything there is to know is completely unfounded.

There are knowable things, (Where is the beach nearest my home?) THEORETICALLY knowable things (like how many grains of sand are on the beach. That real number exists, it is a large positive integer, but it is not practical to count them and KNOW that number) and there are completely unknowable things (how many grains will there be in March 2012) but this says nothing whatsoever about God or whether or not "he" is a real being or a man-made concept.

Here's how I would use your analogy to express how I think about such things.

I do NOT know everything. Among the literally infinite number of things I do not know is the exact number of grains of sand on the beach. That does not mean I know NOTHING about the sand on the beach, though. I may not know the exact number of grains but I DO know that it's not 27. There are many other numbers I know it's not. This kind of thinking is (I presume) why atheists are often accused of being negative - because of all the things they know are NOT, without necessarily knowing what IS. There is no conflict in this, we all do it all the time. You do not know how much oranges cost in my local supermarket, but you know it's not $5,000 each. God or no God, these "knowables" are the same.

I could, if I cared enough, do some measuring of the beach, measure individual grains of sand, take depth samples and the like and come up with an estimate. It would not be the "right" number but, if I was careful and detailed, I should get the order of magnitude right. I'd be able to say something like "it's in the tens of billions, probably around 40 billion" or whatever. I do not need to do any of that to know the the answer is not 27.

So, by extension, I do not know the entire history of the universe. I cannot speak with any authority on the likelihood that, out there somewhere, there might be beings more knowledgeable than us, more advanced (whatever that might mean to them). Some of these hypothetical beings may have created life somewhere. They may be regarded, with some justification, as gods by the beings they created. But I CAN know (in the way that I KNOW 27 is the wrong answer to the beach question) that they did NOT create heaven and earth in a week, do NOT take an active role in the lives of humans, do not demand that we live a certain way with regards to birth control, Sundays, etc. They do not care who wins the World's Series or Superbowl, have no opinion about pork or head coverings and had nothing whatever to do with writing the Bible, Koran, Torah or anything else we've heard of because THOSE things (like 27 grains making a beach) are not possible.

The foregoing doesn't "prove" that, any more than I have "proved" that there are more than 27 grains on the beach (I haven't even BEEN to the beach today), but it's just as certain.

The "proof" is all around us - on Earth and off it.We can SEE how life developed, how stars were (and still are) formed, how the Earth came to be and even how gods were created. There are mysteries in the detail. Every time we learn something, new questions are raised. That's life in a huge universe. We don't know everything and we never will. That doesn't mean (or even suggest) that God does. I don't even see how you make that connection.

As for needing God to give us purpose, I read your reasoning as "I cannot believe that life has no ultimate purpose, that would be unbearable, so God must know what the purpose is". See the problem? Why are we so arrogant as to assume that, because we WANT a purpose, there must BE one? We have limited purposes made from our own intellects which are, in turn, the product of our long evolutionary history but ULTIMATE purpose is a nonce concept. Such a thing just cannot be. If we think God provides it, we are intellectually obliged to go on to ask what the purpose of God is? US? Surely not? If that's the answer, it's circular logic again, leads nowhere; certainly nothing "ultimate" about it. His own glorification? Seems a little shallow doesn't it? No, get used to the idea, no matter how unpalatable it may seem at first glance, ultimately, if you stretch the mind and the concept far enough, there is NO ultimate purpose. Wishing that there was does not make God spring spontaneously into existence, and it would not help if he did.


I've read some Bible, as you put it. Sorry, lots of history (and very bloody and "unchristian" much of it is too if I may say so - though that's not my point), a lot of fable, a lot of blatant historic and scientific inaccuracy, a lot of superstition, a few bits of wonderful mistranslation and some downright fabrications. In short, just what we would expect from a huge assortment of ancients from different cultures and centuries with different backgrounds, beliefs, agendas, perspectives and loyalties but NOT what we would expect from an omniscient creator. That's it, that's all, and YES there are atheists and I AM one. If I haven't convinced you of that, I don't know how to and I would have to refer you to an expert - Richard Dawkins would be my choice - try "The God Delusion".
Thanks for your interest, I hope at least some of this makes sense.
END QUOTE
Well, that's quite long - hope you're still with me. There's more. Matthew's reply next time. Stay tuned.

Matthew's Question - The preamble.

As I start to type this, it's been germinating for a long time - at least three years - but a few recent events, minor of themselves, have given me the drive to try and write it. It comes in two parts, just for convenience; this preamble or prologue, then "Matthew's Question".



Way back when Facebook was but a pup and I had just signed up, I got involved in a "questions" board (I can't find it anymore, but it's probably there somewhere) where people could post any question they liked and others who thought they knew the answer could post it. Discussions ensued, debates, outright rows sometimes. It was interesting.




The first time I "played" was when someone asked "What is an atheist?".


I toyed with various tired, flippant answers like "Someone who believes in one less god than you do" but, before I had decided just how to reply, others had beaten me to it.




My first surprise was that whenever anyone gave a "straight" answer (like "it's someone who doesn't believe in God"), an argument broke out as to whether such a thing was possible. The theists in the mix argued along the lines that one could not "not believe" in the ultimate creator - it just was not an option, there's no box for that. What had happened, they claimed, was that the self-proclaimed atheists had (and this IS a quote from one, there were other ways expressing the same idea) "chosen to deny God". One theist answering even defined an atheist as one who "claims" not to believe in God.




This made my jaw drop. I weighed into the discussion and learned something interesting. Bear in mind, please, that many (though not all) of the most vocal theists in this forum were, by now, some stripe of Southern US fundamentalists. The something that I learned was this:-


"These people believe that one can choose what to believe."


Conversely, all the atheists on the board, me included, just accepted that belief is not a choice. They didn't even raise the issue - it just WAS that way. It's actually, I would say, a "linguistic fact"; that is, it's what the word MEANS. "Choosing to believe" is a nonce concept, by definition.




I was familiar, from previous reading, with "Pascal's Wager"; a philosophical argument that says it's a "good idea" to believe in God because you have nothing to lose by being wrong and everything to gain by being right. I had never taken this "reasoning" seriously - and hadn't really thought anyone else did (I gather even Pascal had his tongue firmly in his cheek) - for two reasons.




Firstly, and less relevantly here, surely, any deity worth praying to would KNOW if we were only "believing" so as to hedge our bets and wouldn't grant the benefits we were looking for (or our "Get Out Of Hell Free" card). Secondly, and more pertinently, the idea of a god - any god - either makes sense to an individual or it doesn't. Whether through indoctrination, cultural background, divine revelation or pure thought and reasoning, each of us, surely, believes what we do because, on some level, it makes sense to us, not because we somehow CHOOSE to?




Is Santa Claus real because a child believes he is? In some fiction maybe, but surely not in the real world?




Then another logical penny dropped in my head. What do they mean by "believe IN"?




I "believe IN" free education, no-pay health care, etc. But that means I SUPPORT these things, I think they are right and necessary. It has nothing to do with their existence or otherwise.




That's not what someone is saying when they say they "believe in" some deity, though, is it? They're not just saying "I think God is a good thing" are they?. It had never really bothered me before because the simple fact is that, whatever they mean, I think they're wrong. In just the same way that it doesn't matter to me which god, which religion, which denomination is under discussion. They are all, fundamentally (pun intended) and (almost) equally, wrong.




Now, it is not my purpose here to go into all the reasons why I "believe" what I do. I will do that on request but suffice it to say, for now, in case it's not already obvious, that I am an atheist. That word itself is problematic.

It comes firmly from the other camp. Completing a form that asks my religion, I can easily put "none", since this is, while perhaps unhelpful, undoubtedly true. But "atheist" does not work. A friend recently put this quote on his Facebook page - I don't know where he got it, but I've stolen, and paraphrased it:-


"Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby"


Perfect! I wish I'd thought of it. Thinking about it again, it has Douglas Adams's feel to it, perhaps it's his.


So, I am only an atheist in the context of a discussion on the existence or otherwise of deities. I am no more an atheist the rest of the time than a non-stamp collector is an "aphilatelist" while he's washing his car - though, were he to attend a stamp auction, he might well describe himself that way. This is, incidentally, the beginning of my standard response to comments like "But that's so negative", or "Then what DO you believe in?". I only "have" to be an atheist because "you" are superstitious, t'ain't negative, just real.


See where I'm going with this? LANGUAGE. The languages of the world have all evolved (yes, they did! Just like us) in an environment dominated by religious thinking. It is only necessary for the word "atheist" to exist because subscribing to ancient organized superstitions is still considered normal - it's even still expected, even demanded in many places.

So before any discourse can lead to real understanding between these two camps, we have to get very picky about words and what we mean by them.

About 25 years ago, for about 6 weeks, I had a "pet Jehovah's Witness". He came to my door one Saturday morning and when, some three hours later, he left, he promised to come back the next week to continue our conversation because, he said, I was a seeker after truth. He came, week after week, until I told him that one reason I talked to him was that while he was with me, he was not finding more gullible people. He vanished. I enjoyed the mental exercise but only now do I realise how far apart we actually were. When he says "truth", he doesn't mean the same thing as me. I was looking (seeking, if you insist) for insight into the human mind, the social issues surrounding "belief", the rights and wrongs of indoctrination, and so on. He thinks he can open a book and long dead writers will save him from having to think at all. (That's unfair, I know, and deliberately provocative, but I think my point is made).

During the Facebook discussion I was referring to earlier, a young man (I'm calling him Matthew) sent me a private message. Our subsequent discussion was fascinating, enlightening and, in the end, to me anyway, quite sad. I plan to quote from that discussion at length in the next update (which I will start right after I post this one). For reasons that will become clear, I cannot ask Matthew's permission to do this. He may be watching. If so, he will recognise himself and hopefully tell me if he objects. I'm sure he won't/wouldn't and I will not reveal any personal details, but I want to give him what chance I can to comment.

That'll do for this chapter. Next: Matthew's question.

Happy New Year - and delayed posting.

A very Happy 2010 to all who pass through here. Once again, sorry about the lack of updates. I have had one buzzing in my head for a while now and will get it done early in the new year.
I don't seem to be able to paste text into a posting - and that's something of a problem because a large part of my planned update is a series of quotes from a discussion I had in another forum. It's a lot of typing if I can't find a way to do it so, if anyone has any ideas, please whistle.
Meanwhile, it's off to the NSLC!

The Story Of Mum

The story of my mother, now over 85 years long, has had some major plot turns recently and I thought it was time I shared some of them here.
First, a potted early history of, say, the first 80 of those years.
She was born in Clapham, London SW8, in 1924, second and last child in her family. Leaving school at 14, she took a job in the office of a local company that made precision optical lenses for cameras, telescopes and the like.
My father, recently returned with his mother from Italy, where he grew up, also worked there and they struck up some sort of friendship. This was 1938. War broke out in 1939. My father turned 18 in 1940, was called up for military service and was consequently absent for most of the next 5 years, ending up as one of a small group of a sort of informal POWs being marched around Greece by a lost platoon of german infantry.
On his return, he must have resumed his friendship with my mother because, in 1951, they married.
The following year, they bought a small house in Mitcham (then Surrey, now the London Borough Of Merton) and I popped out.
I grew up in that small house, my father died there in 1992 and my mother continued to live there until the events of 2004 overtook her.
Her parents were both dead by the early 1980s; her brother pre-deceased my father by a few months and his wife followed shortly thereafter. Her only relatives by this time were, therefore, me - by then 3000 miles away in Ontario and visiting once a year at best, and a recently married nephew with a small son. He lived a few miles away and visited from time to time but her most frequent visitor was my first wife who lived not far away and called in when able.
On one such occasiion, early in '04, she found my mother's state quite severely worsened. There were milk bottles, mostly opened and half consumed, all over the place. Her recently deceased, geriatric and oft-times incontinent cat could still be strongly smelled in the house. Her legs were full of ulcers; her hair long, lank and unwashed. She was, in short, going downhill fast.
We arranged to go over and see her as fast as we could and were horrified by the state of her and the house. My wife, youngest daughter "M" (qv) and I spent three weeks there and, in the end, brought her back to Ontario with us. We'd cleared out the house, sold it, packed up the salvage-worthy items and just "did" it. Sort out the details afterwards; no option.
We brought her to Canada as a visitor, 6 month visa, 6 months health insurance, and started immigration paperwork. Our family doctor went to work on her medical conditions, my wife, quitting work to look after her, went to work on her general well-being and we all went to work on adapting to a new reality.
Immigration, we were told by the lawyers, would take 18 months to 2 years so we would need to apply for an extended visitor permit so Mum could stay with us while we waited out the process. We did, and got it.
That Christmas, though, the world was shaken - quite literally - by the Tsunami in the Pacific that destroyed large chunks of the Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere. The Canadian government was urged to "do something" about the resulting refugee problem. It's name for what it did was "fast-tracking"; a process whereby those who fit the criteria effectively jump the queue and government resources are diverted to processing them. I make no complaint about that, they DID have to do something. I only resent lack of information given everone else and, particularly, the euphemism "fast tracking".
The guys who pushed in front of us while we were lining up in costume in the rain to get into the Shore Club Halloween party last Saturday were "fast-tracking" in exactly the same way but with much less justification and much milder consequences. Let's call queue jumping, officially sanctioned or not, justified or not, just that; QUEUE JUMPING". To call it "fast-tracking" is to tell only half the story. The other half is the bit my mother and whole family were stuck in; that's what we should call SLOW-TRACKING, I suppose, but you never hear that. Well, gradually, 18-24 months became 2-3 years. It's now over FIVE years, and we're still waiting, though I sincerely hope there are no Filipino families still sleeping on the beach waiting to be fast-tracked.
Meanwhile, we realised a few things in a rather unfortunate order.
First, our living arrangements were inadequate; too many stairs, not enough space - particularly for the girls, two of whom were at home full-time and being squeezed.
We moved. Found a huge bungalow with ample room for everybody on the main level but a full basement with a small apartment in it where the girls could get some privacy.
Would've been great, except for two things:-
1. It was a money pit. We were lied to. There's no getting away from that. The previous owner KNEW there were issues with the weeping tiles, at the very least but, long story short (for once!) this and all the other issues became our problem.
2. When the second 6 months' worth of health insurance ran out, we were told that, not only could we not renew it but, we should never have been sold the LAST one. The man who had sold it to us was "no longer with the company" (a euphemism I think we all understand) and, had we tried to claim on it, we would have been refused. The only way to get more insurance was for Mum to leave the country and re-enter as a "new" visitor. That way, she would qualify for travel insurance - good for another 6 months and, supposedly, the process could be repeated.
Oughta work, right? Nope. The extended visa that the government gives in these cases SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITS leaving the country and coming back in. It's a crime! Hmmmm, you'd almost think they knew, wooncha?
So we now had a very difficult situation in a number of ways. First, we had an 80 year old woman with no health insurance. One operation and we all go broke!
Now, of course, in 2009, we know that the solution to this is to move to the USA and join the Republican Party who have miraculously managed to work it so that millions of people living in fear of illness or injury that they can't pay for is a GOOD thing, representing "choice", "freedom" and "The American Way" while anyone trying to get "Big Insurance"* off the gravy train called "Health Insurance" (another one-side-only euphemism) like it is in any civilized country (as different from one that is merely "free" as in "free-to-get-shot", "free-to-die-on-the-hospital-steps, "free-to-vote-for-either-of-two-multimillionaires-as-long-as-I-don't-need-the-vote-counted) must be a "Socialist" which, as we know, is only one small step better than being a terrorist!
Having checked with the immigration lawyers that there was no sign of any useful progress and that relocating Mum back to the UK would not jeopardize the process (really, how could get any worse than completely stagnated, but we were understandably paranoid by this time), we set about fiding her somewhere to live.
I have to add at this point that my mother, while moody and erratic, still had most of her marbles at this stage. She knew what was going on and, although she didn't understand all of it (hell, WE didn't!), or like the bits she did understand, she did contribute to all these decisions. She was, in fact, much better, physically and mentally, than when we first brought her over.
My wife, always something of a "Google Wizard" started researching "Care Homes", refering to me on points of geography, what areas were like etc. but generally running with the project of finding Mum a nice place to live. She succeeded.
Early in 2006, 18 months after Mum came to Canada, we took her back. Disillusioned, upset and angry, we went to Dorking, Surrey. Mum's new home was to be (and was, for the next 3 and a half years), Nower Care, a small (55 residents when full) Care Home in two old houses, nicely refurbished and joined by a modern annex. She was happy there most of the time although, towards the end of her stay, it's hard to imagine her liking anything much. If any of you chance upon this epistle, Nower Care people, thank you. I've thanked you already but, here, I do it more publicly (well, a BIT more).
At the age of 84, while still at Nower, Mum developped breast cancer! Supposed to be to old for it. Should've picked a more age-appropriate illness. Got it, got treated, got a bit sore for a while, got fixed. No problem (so far, but that was 2 years ago) but it does highlight the wisdom of the decision we made in 2006 to take her back to the UK. I don't know what a foreign national with no insurance would have to pay to be treated for breast cancer in Ontario but I'm betting the number has lots of zeros on the end.
Fast forward to 2009.
Suddenly, Mum wants to take the stairs down to meals instead of the lift. She doesn't remember whether she's had visitors this week, what she had for lunch. Then, she falls. The doctor comes by, does some tests and discovers that, apart from the obvious, but not dangerous, injuries from the fall, she has other problems. Kidney function, liver function, cognitive ability, all severly impaired. Hospital. Tests.
For bout 12 weeks, I would phone the hospital to be told by a nurse that she was "comfortable" (find a new word please, ladies, it gets dull), that they were still waiting for test results, etc. When I could get a doctor, he told of concerns over liver function, urinary tract infections and unwillingness to co-operate with attempts to get her mobile again.
Eventually, "they" (they refer to themselves as the "care team") decided that a) there was no clinical reason to keep Mum in hospital any more and b) she couldn't go back to Nower because she wasn't mobile enough (which means "at all") so she would be assigned a Social Services Case Worker who would contact me to arrange and choose a nursing home.
The "Discharge Co-Ordinator" whose job it is to free up the hospital bed said this could all be done in two weeks. That was optimistic and probably driven more by budget-myopia (one main symptom being the inabilty to see anything that prevents others from doing what YOUR budget says they should do) than anything else but I have to say that things did move fairly quickly after that - about 5 weeks, I think it was. Once again, thanks are due to all involved in that process - if you stumble here you will know who you are and you all helped along a potentially nasty process (Special nod to "Sue", a League Of Friends volunteer at the information desk at the East Surrey Hospital)
We went over again. We moved her again. Less stuff, a LOT less marbles - three days after we left her, I wasn't sure she knew we'd even been, or even who we were - but, again, a nice place, still in Dorking, with a view of the Downs from her window. She's still immobile - being ably hoisted from chair to chair to bath to bed to chair by a procession of ever-smiling nurses, has consistently said she likes the food (although she often says she prepared it herself), still wonders why I'm (whoever the "I" refers to) playing football "outside" - something I've always done too much of, it seems. People who know me will tell you how funny that is - trust me, just laugh!
Immigration Canada are still doing whatever it is they do - 5.5 years on. The probably marginal 80 year old "Family Class" applicant whose file first landed in an in-tray late in 2004 is now a nowhere-near-marginal 85 year old applicant. If I told them, they'd just throw her application right out (probably only take a couple of years) but I'm inclined not to do that. Let's just see how long this takes; what the answer is. It's all paid for now anyway. Hell, they ignored us for long enough - boot's on the other foot now. Do government types realise how damaging stuff like this is? In my early years in Canada I had swallowed the CBC standard description of Canada and its government as caring, fair, a bit wacky sometimes, certainly slow, perhaps a bit dull (but hey, look who lives next door) but basically harmless. Now, I see it (the government) as arrogant, evasive, tricky, incompetent and to be avoided at all costs. You did that, Immigration Department, by doing nothing, very slowly. I would have felt much better about them (and, frankly, not too surprised) if they'd just laughed in our faces right at the beginning. "You want to bring WHO?" We could've saved my mother and ourselves a lot of grief, saved her, us and (ironically) the government a lot of money (because all the money they would have been able to tax has now been spent on very expensive care in a foreign country and NONE of us will ever see it again) and devoted all of our resources to something else, like the twilight years of my Mum's life, maybe.
* How come it's "Big Tobacco", "Big Oil" etc. but not "Big Insurance", the biggest leeches yet invented - but wait!

Happier Animal Story

I begin to write this on September 13th. I can't post it till the 24th. That's because there are surprises to protect. Youngest daughter "M" is coming home for a visit and we have decided not to tell her what's been going on here for the last week. That's why YOU don't know about it either - until I post this. I have to tell a very recent story

Yoda is, of course, still missing in inaction. When this story begins, he has been gone about 9 days.

The acting manager at the NSLC (the real one retired in May and has not been replaced yet) has a son, who has a boss, who knew somebody who was going to drown some kittens. At that remove, of course, the story gets a bit fuzzy around the edges but, basically, Son, being that sorta guy, utters the maritime equivalent of "No way, Jose", acquires aforementioned kittens (undrowned) and takes them home to Mum. Mother and son say "but...." to each other for a while until she, being that sort of Mum, takes the kittens and the box they came in to the local farmers' market, tries to give them away, succeeds only partially, brings the last three to the NSLC (for verily, t'was her weekend off) and suggests to me that, since she can't keep them all, one or more might help ease the pain of Yoda's loss, and they were going to be drowned and who could do that and what else could I do and damn that son of mine and aren't they cute and I like that one best and whaddya think, good idea eh?

I replied that yes, it might help, and yes, they were SERIOUSLY cute but my wife, broken up over Yoda, had categorically said NO MORE CATS. You can't keep them in, she said, it's not right. You can't let them out, she continued, it's too dangerous. We shouldn't have them at all, she concluded. it's just not fair, either way, to anybody, cats included, and that's final. I had agreed but suggested to"Mum" (just to keep the naming simple for the confused reader. I trust you understand she's not MY Mum, of whom more at a later time) that she should take them round to our place at her leisure, just so my wife could SEE them, and, who knows, maybe she'll change her mind.

We have two of them.

They were VERY young, probably five ananarf weeks, and should still be with THEIR mum but they are doing really well. They've been here a week as I write this and are already noticeably bigger. I won't attempt to describe them - pictures will be added - but they are, as advertized, seriously cute.

ENGAGE TIME WARP!

It's now October 1st, youngest daughter went home today, so the cat, so to speak, can come out of the bag now.

The day after the kittens arrived (they were named, incidentally, "Rez" & "Q" (RezQ, geddit?) by my wife who has a talent for such things) was Labour Day (or "Labor Day" if you live in the land that still discriminates against U).

On that day, our neighbo(u)r told us that mutual friends had a problem with a dog. The mother of a friend of theirs was suffering from Alzheimer's, one of the lesser known symptoms of which is a complete inability to look after dogs. For many, this is not a problem. Some do not even notice. But this particular lady HAD a dog and researchers have found that that drastically increases the chances that this particular symptom will present, so it was. Her daughter had tried to take the dog but couldn't keep it in her apartment so she put him in a kennel so she would have sufficient free hands to scratch her head and think about what else to do.

Some while later, she met our mutual friends and explained all this. They offered to try and take the dog (let's call him "Teddy", if only because it's his name) but THEIR dog, a young boxer who, by similar logic, we shall refer to as "Lucy", was having none of it. So little of it was she having, in fact, that she DID have some of Teddy; a small piece of his head, to be precise.

And so it was that, on Labo(u)r Day afternoon, Teddy came to visit to see how he got on with our existing canine residents, Bu & Mokey (see previous posts). He's still here. He's family now. He's a stone deaf, 12 year old Corgi/Jack Russell cross (possibly blended with other genetic material of unknown provenance) and he's an absolute delight. The poodles accepted him with nary a second glance and he follows everybody around, presumably waiting for them to say something (which, of course, they never seem to do on account of the whole stone deaf thing). He barks when he thinks it's appropriate so to do, but he's almost always wrong.

So, we are still missing Yoda, but Rez & Q are twice the size they were when I started this post and developing quite distict little characters, Teddy has settled in and all seems well.

Astute readers will have worked out the reason for the delay in posting this. We shocked the pants off hono(u)rable #3 daughter when she got here. Introduced her to Teddy and told her the story. Warned her that Ricardo (who is really HER cat, after all) had "lost weight lately" and promptly handed her Q (who, apart from the fact that he was about 0.03% of the size of Ricardo, at least shares his black and white colo(u)ring). Waited till she was all cooey over him and then casually produced Rez (GREY and white) and asked her which was cuter. We await, still, the answer.

Off to add pictures, enjoy.

Next time, probably, The Saga Of Mum. Stay tuned.

More Bad News

I've waited two weeks but now feel I have no choice but to inform my readers of another animal tragedy.

The wonderful Yoda, ragdoll extraordinaire, best natured (and arguably best looking) cat I have ever known, didn't come home two Thursdays ago after one of the nights-on-the-tiles that he was prone to enjoy.

Maybe somebody has him and is looking after him; we have a friend whose cat came home after two YEARS gone, but, at this point, we have to figure something, animal or mineral, got him.

He arrived with us, quite three inches long, on the same magical day as the already obituarized L'Uther. Originally, he was only supposed to stay a week or so before starting a new life out West (Go West young cat!!) but his life and ours took a turn when I was offered the chance to buy him and present him to my wife for her upcoming birthday. We put him in a little box and put it in front of her at the dinner table. The box walked. Great moment.

He grew into a huge fluffball, throwing off huge gobs of fur with every step. The chair I am sitting in - a LazyBoy (TM) style recliner, was his favourite - if I sat here for more than 20 seconds, Yoda would be on my lap immediately.

We are not supposed to have favourites, are we? It's not fair on the others. Well, dammit, I don't care who knows, Yoda was my favourite. I love them all, L'Uther will always be a special memory, but there was only one Yoda.....ever.

I am not one to hold any delusions about an afterlife - in fact, I am planning an entry here soon on that and realated topics - watch this space. The concept is ridiculous to me; for cats, doubly so. But I DO understand the urge to WISH such a thing could be. Yoda's gone. Misadventure, probably. Unpleasant, almost certainly. Very very sad. I'll try to put up a picture.

There will be a happier follow-up to this story. No, I don't expect a miraculous return (though I'd surely like one), something else. Related, but "else". Can't talk about it yet - all will be revealed in a couple of weeks.

On a lighter and separate note, I am told you can find this blog ACCIDENTALLY!!!! Just stumble on it in Google. WOW. It happened, I gather, when one of my NSLC customers (yes, thank you, still lovin' it) wanted to know the store's hours. Type "NSLC Hubbards", or something like that, to Google and third item down was "Dyve's Dyary". They read it. They bookmarked it. They told me. Does that mean I'm famous?

Thomas Cook Dublin

A couple of weeks ago, I was directed to a story in the Irish Times and elsewhere about the sad end of the Thomas Cook branch in Grafton Street, Dublin. Actually, from what I can gather,it was he end of that company in that country completely, but it was that main branch closure that was of particular interest to me.

Recent economic difficulties had pushed the company to bring forward the already planned closure. They just shut the place down with virtually no notice. The staff, understandably, were not amused and locked themselves in. The dispute seems to have mostly boiled down to one over redundancy payments - how much they should get for each year of service. They put video clips up on Yoochoob and were eventually arrested by the Garda (Irish police) who turned up in seemingly excessive numbers to evict the staff.

None of that is what this post is about.

I'm not going to try to go into the rights and wrongs; I'm too far removed and it's really none of my business. I just wish them all well.

I just found the whole episode extremely sad. You see (many may already know), I had some of the best, and some of the toughest, days of my working life in that office.

This is the story of the 1976 Irish Bank Strike.

I had heard stories of the previous bank strike in Ireland six years earlier but by the time of the 1976 one, I was working in London as part of a small group of Foreign Exchange Cashiers who, in between developing and installing primitive (though, then, state of the art) computer systems, were sometimes made available as "emergency reliefs". We'd covered a flu epidemic in Glasgow, a mass suspension of staff at the London flagship branch (all but one later vindicated), and so on.

When the bank staff went home in Ireland, early in the Summer, they caused enormous disruption to everyday life; no way to get money out, nobody would take a check, nowhere for people like the bus company to get or deposit the vast amounts of small change they handled, no way to pay wages.....you can imagine, I'm sure.

One of the, truth be told, minor disruptions was that, at the start of the summer vacation season, there was nowhere, nowhere in the whole country, to change money. Well, there was ONE place. Under the law at the time, only the banks were allowed to sell foreign currency. There was ONE exception. You've guessed; the FE Dept of Thomas Cook, Grafton Street, Dublin.

If you were visiting Ireland and needed to change money, there were, in theory, a few other places you could go. Trouble was, there was nowhere THEY could go. This handful of jewellers shops,exchange bureaux etc. were in the habit of taking all the currency they bought to their bank. Oops. We got all that too.

Well, the four staff in the little FE cage were, as you can imagine, swamped. Two more staff from the Traveller's Cheque distribution centre upstairs were available to help (their customers were all banks!) and three of us Brits from London went over to try and help out.

7 to 9 people in a box built for 4, in Summer with no air conditioning. Sacks of money on the floor behind us because there was nowhere else to put them. Customers started arriving early in the morning and lining up outside. When the manager's wife Maeve (bless her) let the first ones in at 9am, the queue was already 4 hours long and never got any shorter.

Maeve would manage the queue all day, spelled from time to time by one of the travel agency staff whose customers couldn't get to them anyway. We could hope to serve the last one about 9.30pm, having blocked the end of the queue at 5pm. More business transacted in August alone than in the whole of the previous year - and that had been a record.

Besides the "real" FE stuff, we had to do other things just to "oil the wheels" - ours and everybody elses. CIE, the bus company, would send trucks round with all the change they had taken in bus fares - 100 Pounds per bag, mixed silver. We needed that for the tills but somebody needed to break it down into manageable bags and count it all. Bring on the travel staff again - they'd do this all evening. In exchange for the coin, we would pay the wages to the bus drivers and conductors. They would come in with their pay slips, we'd stamp them and pay them out of all the money people were spending on Spanish Pesetas et al.

Farmers and all sorts from the other end of the country would send their family members to Dublin on the train - an overnight trip for many - just to line up at Cook's all day, change the money for their family trip and go back again. For some, it was their first ever trip to Dublin.

It went on for about 10 weeks. I was lucky; I rotated in and out, doing three spells of two weeks, then back home to London to recuperate. The "regulars" were just stuck there. But for all the sweat and crazy conditions, I remember it as one of the happiest times of my working life - a real high spot.

I went back to Dublin to work, in more regular circumstances, several times and always loved it. From 1979 to the mid 80's, I considered it my second home. I doubt it would have been the same were it not for the experiences and friends made through adversity of the '76 bank strike.

So it was sad to see the old place shut down in such an ugly fashion.I could have just said that. I suppose, but then I like to tell stories.

If anyone knows where any of the following folks are - please let me know, or point them at this blog. I always think dedications are a bit hokey, but this entry is dedicated to:
Tommy Tobin (deceased),Maeve Tobin,Dave Adams,David Lalor, Paul O'Malley, Bob Beatty, Richard Brennan, Pat Byrne, Brian Latham and Malcolm Wing. Oh yes, and to Derry Troddyn (deceased) who sent me.