Airport musings

 



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Thank yous

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  Airports are fascinating places. Ive spent quite a lot of time in them recently as Ive travelled back and forth visiting Mum. On a recent trip I watched as the plane I was due to fly in landed, discharged its passengers and prepared for take off. There are more people than you might think involved in this process. Two guys position the steps. Someone fixes the fuel pipe into its slot. Two guys unload and load luggage. Two guys position chocks under the wheels. Someone puts a rope round the wings to stop us walking under them. And then there's one special someone whose job it is to wave little red torches in the air so the pilot knows exactly when and where to stop.  As I was watching the well oiled Easyjet machine in action in the pouring rain it reminded me of all the unseen people in church, so necessary for the smooth running of the whole thing. Who orders the loo rolls, tidies the errant stationary cupboard, orders the tea bags for Mums and Tots?   Who does the...
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The Queen

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  A while ago I had an interesting conversation with an American friend about the Queen. My friend said that she admired the woman, recognised the hard work and the committment and the sense of duty, but couldnt quite understand the whole inheritance thing. How can it be fair or right that by an accident of birth some random person gets to be a king or a queen? I tried to explain my understanding of this. Its not the family that you are born into that makes you a Monarch. The Queen didnt become Queen when her father died and someone said ' The King is dead long live the queen'. She only got a job title in that moment. She became Queen when she divested herself of all her vastly expensive robes and stood in a white cotton shift under a canopy, away from the cameras and the watching world and was anointed with oil by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a sacred ceremony. In that moment she, like David and so many Kings and Queens through history, accepted the call of God o...
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Messiah

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I don't remember much about my school days - or about anything really , I have never been able to remember stuff - but one memory I do have is being in sixth form when some guy came to talk to the whole yeargroup about Handel. Specifically about The Messiah.   I have no idea why he came and I vaguely recall that most people were singularly uninterested.  But as he played us bits of the oratorio and told us about the life of the composer I was fascinated.  Id probably not long become a Christian so the words from Isaiah sang out to me.  The fact that the whole massive work had only taken 24 days to write amazed me. All those parts and harmonies and instrumentations.  I loved the fact that the debut concert was a charitable event raising money for two hospitals and a debt relief charity.  As a result of the first ever performance of The Messiah 142 indebted prisoners were set free.  How amazing is that?? It was probably as a result of that talk at s...
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