Living in Ormskirk, Part 03

Friday, 10 June
Evening at a Pub

Robbie is here. Robbie is Julia's Brazilian cousin. His mother and hers were sisters, but Robbie was born and raised in Brazil, and still lives there. He will be here in England a few days, then will tour parts of Eurpoe, meeting again with Julia and David later this month in Vienna.

He's somewhat dark-skinned, has a slight accent, and is good fun. Retired now, he used to teach information technology at a college there in the southern part of Brazil.

Nick came, too, David and Julia's younger son; first time we've seen him this year. He's teaching English at Bangor University and will be extremely busy the next two weeks, but after that, hopes to spend more time with us. We hope so, too, but don't know how realistic that may be, given that his dissertation is due in September, 2012.

Anyway, we met Robbie and Nick, Julia and David, James and Kim at the Star, a pub in their village of Rainford. The pub was quite crowded, mostly with people the others knew.

Somehow we had even more fun than usual, perhaps because of the two 'newcomers'; I don't know.

Robbie says winter where he lives in Brazil is like the weather we're having now, which is mostly dry (eastern England is officially in a drought now) but chilly; one needs both sweater and jacket, and we've kept a little heat on in our flat.

(But the most fun part is, the sun doesn't set this time of year until around 10:00, and even by 11:00, you can still see red sky in the west.)

I've been reflecting on my life, and in very recent years, at least, it seems to have been very easy, and to be all about having fun, and so disgustingly superficial, so obscenely trivial, I don't even know why I blog about it.

A priest once told me it's only pride wanting to live a heroic life; to do that is for very great souls, not souls like mine, and perhaps in His mercy, to look after Demetrios is the main thing God is calling me to do, and I should accept that and (at least for a beginning) concentrate on doing that as best I can.

I hope he was right! Because at least Demetrios does seem genuinely very happy now, in contrast to the miserable man I first met, who told me he had secretly been unhappy all his life, although he had put on a good front for his friends.

He's still working hard on his book, and perhaps that is another thing my life is about, helping him with that (arguing every paragraph with him). So far, it expresses very succinctly his thoughts, which in itself is a tremendous accomplishment, but is only for his own benefit. Now he needs to transform it into a piece of communication. So he's working on some explanatory notes, some definitions, and a few small diagrams to illustrate what he means. I told him even 'E=MC2' is meaningless unless one knows that E stands for 'Energy,' 'M' stand for 'Matter' and 'C' is not only for 'Constant', but specifically for the speed of light.  'And even to say that is meaningless unless you have some idea what the speed of light is,' I added.  So far, he has written only his very compact formulae, all of which need considerable unpacking.

Well, if it ever reaches the form it should, as I trust it shall, I shall feel very honored to have helped him with it.

So maybe my life isn't entirely useless, but it does feel that way just now.