Hard lessons have taught me this much

Trust takes years to win, moments to lose

“Trust” means secure reliance upon a person’s:

• ability 
• integrity 
• emotions

In ALL cases “I don’t trust you” means:

• I can’t rely on your ability
• I can’t rely on your honesty
• I can’t rely on your feelings

People never tell you when they stop trusting you. You only find out later, if ever

Being thought untrustworthy and being untrustworthy have the same impact

Once trust is gone, it’s very hard to get back, and it’s NEVER the same as it was before

Trust is to a relationship as breathing is to living

Parcel of rogues

Call me Mr Simple, but the Scottish vote on independence seems like a no-brainer to me.

Given the choice, who would choose to be ruled by Cameron, Miliband, Clegg and the rest of the winners who strut their stuff at Westminster ?

Two issues seem to clinch it for me.

The enormous political pressure being brought to bear on the Scottish referendum by a combined front of threats from the main UK parties seems in itself a good enough reason to vote for independence. The fact that politicians want something so very badly should immediately alert everyone to see whose interests are best served by that desire. Not Scotland's, for sure.

And if you wanted a good practical example of why Westminster government is toxic, look only at this damp month of floods. While the Somerset Levels can be under water for weeks before anyone pays attention, the floods are seen as proportionately more important with every passing milepost towards London. This inverse proportionality means that if Scotland had floods, it would take several months for the Westminster government even to notice.

More.

The weasel words from Cameron, and the confusion about what money is to be spent on the floods, and the extent of his 'blank cheque' ought to warn Scots what to expect.

They should heed Burns himself:

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation

What am I missing ?

Today's headline news is that a policeman who lied about Plebgate has been jailed for 12 months.

Meanwhile Mr Blair, famously estranged from any kind of truth, hostile to any shape of moral principle, escapes any serious enquiry, escapes any kind of judgement. And as a result of his illegal war based on a foundation of compacted lies, Iraqis and Afghanis die and die and die.

Oh, and if I was a Palestinian, I think I might have a little difficulty in giving credence to the impartiality of any Peace Envoy who spoke at Sharon's funeral.

It would be so easy to feel a little unsettled about this.

Live today

Valerius Martial was writing at the end of the first century AD, and his poetry gives an astonishingly vivid account of everyday life then. He conjures up a very tactile and sense-rich picture of ancient Rome and the everyday encounters you could expect there.

But what makes his writing so enduring is that his concerns are so contemporary. His emotions, his voice, his anxieties and pet peeves - all are real, 3D, familiar.

Amongst all those his obsession with living now returns over and again. It seems to have been a very deep drive in him, and he expressed a determination to make the most of Now in many different ways. Maybe it's this limpet embrace of the Now which carries him so vitally across the 60 or 70 generations that separate us. His urgency, still for so long now, speaks clearly to interrupt our internal monologue which is so often engaged with the same pre-occupations.

Here's Martial:

sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie
(Living tomorrow is too late: live today.)

And again:

Quisquam vivere cum sciat moratur ?
(Who delays if he really knows how to live ?)

And again:

Properat vivere nemo satis
(Nobody can be in too much of a hurry to live.)

And he talks, too, about the quality of life. Not for him the attractions of being a workaholic. Instead:

..... gestatio, fabulae, libelli
campus, porticus, umbra, virgo, thermae
haec essent loca semper, hi labores
(exercise, conversation, books, the open air, colonnades, fresh water, the shade, the baths
These would be our haunts always, these our labours)

Yes, Martial had a point.

Heroic failures ?

When I was fourteen, I came across a quote from Dickens which struck a chord: a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.

It seemed to sum me up then, and it still does.

Combine this with The Idiot Teacher, where Homes tries to stimulate the kids by challenging them to start a museum of uninteresting things, the only rule being that the objects really have to have no interest in them at all. The kids themselves had to review the objects and decide whether to admit them. And of course the museum stayed empty.

I owe a life of messing about to a combination of these ideas.

And messing about throws up some failures. Well, OK, lots of failures. And some failures where I just haven't seen the possibilities yet.

I really liked doing this, for example:

What is it for ? Good question.

I saw some amazing pyrography, but thought the lines were a bit shaky, like arthritic handwriting. But it struck me that I could do the same with a router and paint, and do it more accurately and more quickly. It worked. But what next ? Who knows ? So far nobody likes this even a bit, so maybe this needs more thought.

How about this ?

It's halfway to being a clock, and I wanted it to be very simple. I live in The Now, or try to, and I thought maybe just a second hand would be good. Too urgent, apparently. An hour hand only ? Too vague. A minute hand ? Well, there is no suiting some people.

Current thinking is to have three identical clocks, one with each of the three hands on.....

It's tough having a smattering........

Parquet table 2

Choosing the layout

Finished result

This was my first attempt at a parquet table. Or rather the first successful attempt after a zillion different failed arragements.

Cutting the parquet isn't for sissies. The cuts have to be hugely precise. The slightest deviation from exact measurement results in a huge wander when multiplied by the number of pieces. Even so, there were few discards. But yes, you need a fairly good quality mitre saw to cut consistent sizes with square edges.

One tiny surprise was that years of annual cleaning and sanding when the parquet was huddled together as a floor had resulted in the centre pieces being thinner than the edges pieces where the machines could not reach. Having a job lot of parquet pieces, I did not check for thickness, having made the lazy assumption that the pieces would all be the same. When reassembled in new combinations, this irregularity resulted in a charmingly bumpy surface, which I liked a lot, but had to sand down as it annoyed everyone else. The final surface utterly planar and smooth as glass. Well, almost.

The variation in colour of the mahogany is so delicious that the surface is almost too attractive to put anything on. As this table top is now my desk, barely none of the surface is in view. Or even suspected.