Wearily upward

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." This is a children's rhyme that was used to encourage victims of name-calling to ignore the teasing, refrain from retaliation and remain calm, dating from the 1800's. The main idea of this advice: have a thick skin when it comes to verbal abuse. (see 1 Peter 3:15-17) And yet there is a significant amount of power that our words hold. The Bible says a lot about the power of the tongue. Proverbs 15:4, 21:23, 26:20, Matthew 15:11, Colossians 4:6, and 1 Peter 3:10 are but a few examples of Biblical instruction about the power of one's words. There are many more verses that teach on this subject. The main idea of this teaching: our words can either harm or heal; break people down or build them up, so use them wisely or not at all. Proverbs 18:20-21 (NIVUK) goes even further: "From the fruit of their mouth a person's stomach is filled; with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied. ...

I am learning a new skill: I'm teaching myself Java (the software development language, not the coffee, although the two go hand-in-hand). Thus I am reminded that very few things keep us as humble as learning something new. Compare learning computer coding with learning to type. When I was 15 years old my mum encouraged me to take Typing as a school subject for which I am eternally grateful. It took me a whole year to learn to type properly. It took a lot of typing exercises, countless pages of letter patterns, hours sat in front of the typewriter (yes, a typewriter) and a lot of determination. Now, thanks to learning that skill many years ago, typing this blog goes almost as quick as thinking it up. Typing has become second nature to me. Not so with computer coding. Not yet, at least. I'm still learning. I'm still practising to think in a certain way, while trying to remember the correct syntax for declaring variables, and figuring out why the computer is not prin...

My daughter turned 5 just after Christmas. Because most of her school friends were away we had her birthday party on the first Saturday of 2020. She asked for a Frozen themed party, because she absolutely loves Elsa. As part of the themed party, she asked for an Elsa birthday cake, to which my wife agreed. It would be one of those cakes where a doll is in the middle of a round cake and then iced/frosted (mind the pun...) to look like the dress of said doll. How hard could it be? Having seen my mum, a professional, do this pretty much every week while I was growing up, I thought it would be easy enough for my wife to produce this cake. However, we had a little last-minute getaway in Dorset for a couple of days in the week before the party and my wife had very little time to plan, order and get everything done. So I said I'll take the responsibility of baking and decorating the cake on my broad shoulders... How hard could it be? Pretty hard, it turns out. Not only did I manag...