Sunday 17 March 2013

Dennis, the healing tree maker.

















     Every year at about this time, in late February to early March, if you were to walk along the short lane that leads to our house in Totnes you will  see a tree with the most beautiful pink-white blossoms in the back garden of a house.  The man responsible for bringing this tree into life was Dennis who lived in the house with his wife Dorothy until about 20 years ago when they both moved to a nearby residential home for the elderly.


     Dennis and Dorothy have long since passed away but as each year passes I cannot help but compliment the members of the family who now live in the house on the inspiration the blossoming tree in their garden gives me. I know others have said this too. I say Dennis "made” the tree for it was given life because he grafted a cutting from a cherry tree on to the root stock of a plum tree. The newborn tree flourished and now as a mature tree its fruits look at one and the same time like large cherries and small plums and they're delicious to eat. I call it the "Chum Tree."
























     As well has having green fingers, Dennis also had healing hands.  

     When he first told me about his healing hands I expressed my scepticism. At the time we were having a beer together in our local, the Bull Inn, and aware of my dismissive attitude to his claim Dennis asked me to let him hold my wrist and as soon as his hands came within six inches of mine I could feel a warm aura from them. He stroked my wrist a few times and although there was nothing wrong with my wrist I found his aura and touch a soothing experience.  

     People from all over the country would visit him at his house to have their aching joints touched by him and as far as I ever heard his patients always left feeling better. Dennis provided this service out of his love for his fellow beings and never asked a penny for it.

     "Any road," (as he, being a Yorkshireman, would say) I hope Dennis would be happy that he is still exercising his gifts through the healing "Chum Tree." 








Wednesday 6 March 2013

Rest in peace Hugo Chavez : ha tenido coraje



I didn't always agree with your politics Hugo, but I admired the way you used Venezuelan oil wealth to help the poor of your country and the poor of other countries and I also admired how you refused to listen to the overwhelmingly selfish, divisive propaganda that is the mantra of capitalism.


I have no truck with those who might believe I'm simplistic, misled and naive in carrying a torch for you. Here in the United Kingdom I live under (and under is the word) a coalition government  which claims to condemn the wealth of financial tricksters at the same time as saying the very same money cheats should not be stopped from earning even more than they did when their greed was first exposed.



 ¡Viva la revolución





Monday 4 March 2013

Chris Grayling, beacon of human tenderness and human rights

     Speaking on BBC Radio 5 yesterday morning (3rd March, 2013) the Right Honourable Chris Grayling MP, the UK government's secretary of state for justice stood out as a beacon of human tenderness when he championed the idea of human rights. He did not think that other Europeans were interpreting human rights in the correct way. He suggested that Europeans didn't realise that human rights were something to be cherished and were therefore too precious an entity to waste on those who have got themselves into unfortunate situations,  like prisoners and no doubt those who receive welfare benefits and those filthy poor people who are being moved from the  districts they have lived in for generations because only clean living rich people should be living there. Grasping grandmas have had to be dealt with too. You know, the ones living in council houses who are now, quite sensibly, being evicted from their two bedroomed flats because they have a spare room and have the temerity to think they can occasionally allow their adult children, their grandchildren and friends to stay with them overnight.

     Thankfully, as I write, government legislation has led a number of these latter day upstarts (who at every turn and at any time threaten our rights) to be shifted north to places like Peterborough, Leicester and Bradford where I am relieved to presume lots of poor people live and where these alien and non-alien immigrants who have had the temerity to live in their own community will not stand out as a blot on the Kensington and Chelsea urban landscape.