SIX WORD SATURDAY

Having spent the entire day with the band practising. I can easily do my six word saturday this evening:-

Seven Hours Singing - Result - Sore Throat

Evolution vs Creationism - A personal view

My attention was drawn today to a video where a group of Atheists and Agnostics had visited the Museum of Creationism. On the whole, everyone was polite, opinions were exchanged and everybody went about their business. But it set me to thinking. What was the point of it?

Having an honours degree in Natural Sciences and having majored in Evolution and Geology, you might think you could guess which side of the fence I sit on, but you might also be wrong. Who knows - I certainly don't. And this really is my point. I believe the only thing I know for certain is that there is a great deal of stuff I don't know and I certainly wouldn't presume to try to impose my beliefs, opinions, faith or lack thereof upon anyone else. I get very perplexed by evangelism, on both sides of the debate. Consider Richard Dawkins, a true evolution evangelist, who I noted recently, takes great delight in any piece of evidence which, in his opinion, disproves the evidence of God. I find this just as distasteful as somebody knocking on my door and wanting to convince me to follow their particular brand of organised religion.

Why can't we have it both ways? Scientific types like myself like to be able to prove their hypotheses, find hard evidence that their suppositions are correct and it could be argued therefore that the lack of any hard evidence would disprove the existence of God. But the whole point of Faith is to not need evidence, just to believe. As Douglas Adams said (and I am paraphrasing heavily here because I can't be bothered to look up the quote) if God did something to prove he existed to all the doubters, he would disappear in a puff of logic, which would rather defeat the whole object of the exercise.

What I think I am trying to say here is why can't we have it both ways. At school when I was a child we were taught Religious Knowledge and we were taught Science. We were not given beliefs or opinions, we were given information, and it was up to us to decide what we believed.

My closest personal friend is an Anglican Priest. She jokes about converting me and I joke about turning her to the dark side. But they are jokes, because we have respect for each other and in particular, she respects that I don't really know what I think/believe and she doesn't presume to try to tell me what I should think or believe. She works as a Hospital Chaplain and has to deal with some really dreadful things. What she does and how she lives her life is an example to us all, but it doesn't mean we have to agree with her beliefs, just respect them.

So there, I think I found my conclusion. Let's all just respect each others opinions.

Tomatoes

I've not had a lot of luck with tomatoes this year. I have three plants in the mini-greenhouse and they have produced about 20 tomatoes between them! So I was quite pleased when I saw that my cherry tomato Tumbling Tom, which is in a basket stand (about 4 feet high) starting producing masses of little cherry tomatoes.

Fast forward to a few days ago, when I kept finding my little Cairn Terrier, Maisie, playing with little green cherry tomatoes. 'Oh No' I thought 'the cherry tomatoes are dropping, they must be sickly for some reason'. I checked and watered and fed and hoped.

Then I looked out of the window yesterday and saw.... Maisie standing on her hind legs picking the damn tomatoes right off the plant.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

My Monday Wordle won't work!

Apologies but some issues with code. Will try again another day!!!!!!!!!!!!

Six Word Saturday

Don't know if this will work from phone (2nd attempt) but here goes.

Having lovely time on our narrowboat






-- Post From My iPhone

Micro Blog - Update

It's been a busy week and not much time for blogging.  So far this week I have put together a 2 year cash flow forecast and P&L statement, visited loads of craft shops in a 40 mile radius of home, purchased a cash register, two tables, 8 chairs and 4 wicker baskets.  Oh and 24 perspex 12 x 12 trays to display scrapbooking papers.   Today I spent an hour and a half with the new commercial business guy at the bank and now have my business banking set up and took out my retail premises and public liability insurance.

So not a bad effort for 4 days.

To celebrate lovely husband and I are taking a few days break on our narrowboat, so will only be able to mobile blog (don't know how successful that will be but I'll give it a shot).   If it doesn't work, I'll have to make do with twittering.

Have a good weekend all.

Guest Blogging - My first time!

Hi, I am really proud to announce that I was chosen as one of the guest bloggers for C.Beth's blog whilst she is on vacation. C.Beth has a really great blog and is also responsible for The One Minute Writer blog that so many of us are fond of. You can read my guest blog here and if you can also visit The One Minute Writer here.

Big News - Dreams on the verge of reality

I will now stop teasing and tell you my big news. As some of you will already know, I gave up my job in June after having been a career person for more years than I care to mention. I had been getting more and more disillusioned and fed up with the daily grind and the extensive travelling I had to do was getting very tiring. I decided to take some time to myself and decide what I really wanted to do next. After a few abortive forays into looking at other, possibly more satisfying jobs, I decided to stop looking at the Situations Vacant columns and the job sites on line and actually really think about what I wanted to do.

I have long held a dream that one day I would run my own business, in particular a Craft Shop. The kind of craft shop we crafters love to potter around in, looking at the lovely card stock, feeling the new yarns, sorting through the latest delivery of stamping blocks and tools. Those of you into handicrafts will know what I mean. There used to be a very successful and lovely craft shop in our village, but the owner moved away to be nearer family and now has a successful business about 50 miles away. We have all missed it terribly and hoped someone would come in and fill the gap.

Well just as I had reached the conclusion that I really didn't want to work for anybody else and I really did want to take a risk a branch out on my own, the perfect little shop premises became available in our village, about 100 yards from my house and in my price range!

To cut a long story short, after viewing the premises, talking with the Landlord, picking the brains of other shopkeepers in the village and several heart to heart discussions with my husband. We decided to go for it and here it is!

Yesterday afternoon, I took possession of the keys and took great delight in taking down the 'To Let' signs. I have put up a 'Coming Soon' Poster in the windows (see below) and now have a great deal of work to do to put together my business plan, redecorate and do the shopfitting, find suppliers and buy in stock and of course, do a lot of marketing in the area to let people know we have a craft shop again.

I have to admit to being absolutely terrified, but also very excited and can't wait to get started.

So here it is, Tutbury Crafts, coming soon. I plan to open in early October, which sounds a long way off but in fact is only 10 weeks away!!!!!!!!!!!

I have had lots of great feedback from people in the village already and hope that is a good omen. I have a lot to live up to as the previous craft shop was really good. It was also in bigger premises, so could keep more quantity and variety of stock than I will be able to, but you know what they say, mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow (hopefully).

I will keep you posted on progress over the next few weeks.

Wish me luck!

Six Word Saturday

Here is today's six word submission to describe life at the moment:-

Getting close to realising my dream