Category: Uncategorized

Letters from the past

Thank you for seeing Sally. She responds well to your style.
Thirty years later, having re-read many letters dating back thirty years, I’m still puzzling about what my style was or is.

Let me put you in the pitcher
The words of a Yorkshire woman who was bringing me up to date with her family. Like many the complexity of family life it looks sparse on the written page. We catch a glimpse of survival.
Other similar letters updated me about young people who would now be in their 40s and who would be living with the impairments and challenges of their history and health like ripples from their personal big bang.

Thank you for your help
And many thanks for asking me and for the encouragement I got from all of you.

We would like to invite you to take part…
From weddings to conferences to gatherings of all shades, shapes and sizes.

Guess what? First conker!
That one from mum. She knew just what to send. Much missed.

Lots of thanks, love, best wishes for birthdays, Christmas and other occasions.

I’m sorry I’ve not written recently
I’m sure I must have sent this phrase as often as I received it. Unfortunately it remains true. There seems to be a common feeling that we don’t spend enough time and effort on keeping in touch with each other.

Reading all of these again has filled out the gaps, plumped up the personal connections and bought back a rich tapestry of relationships that thankfully has sustained me over these four decades or more (I’ve not yet found anything from before my 20th year). So much for tidying up. As for what to throw away, I’m honestly no nearer knowing.

In our life and our believing

The love of God

JAL 14.02.2019

Forgetting stuff

Still moving house. Still sorting out. It’s time travelling for beginners. The furthest back I got yesterday was 1986. Then today we found the telegrams that Bob’s parents received for their wedding in 1947.
I also realised that recently I’d forgotten a lot of the stuff in the middle. Not completely forgotten but certainly lost track of the complexity of it all. For example, how involved I was with Surestart in Sheffield or being a school governor in Sheffield.
For too long now my horizon has been bounded by what happened a few years ago. As a result my memories are a bit unbalanced by those negative things with the more positive stuff being pushed further away, buried even. So it’s been good to find each precious bundle of paper, representing a project or training session, or letters from friends or proofs of books. Some day someone may tell some of these stories; minstrels may sing songs about them.
Most of it is now going into recycling. But it has been good to catch up with those events again. My air ticket to Jamaica, photographs of Iona, notes of speech therapy lectures and papers I’d delivered: all there waiting to reconnect and remind me of the real Janet Lees and her journey. Thanks to those of you who played apart: the encouraging ones.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

JAL 13.02.2019

Christ of the scrapheap

Some things are difficult to move. That’s when you’re very glad that Jesus turns up, with his ginger beard and lovely smile. ‘Please could I have your dishwasher’ he asks. ‘I recycle the metal’, he exlains. It seems a good idea, along with 2 broken lawn mowers, a broken metal chair, some unwanted chicken wire, an old barbecue, and finally the washing machine that stopped working a fortnight ago. What a lot of stuff!
Bob reminded me that for some of the steel works he used to visit as Chaplain in Sheffield it was pre-used metal that was the beginning of the forging process. Even so recyclers like this door to door collector have collected a lot of negative stereotypes, not least the name Rag and Bone men. This phrase has been doing the rounds for several hundred years and the forbears of today’s collector mostly lived in extreme poverty. The current incarnation was a strong young man with a medium sized truck. More a dog and bone man, for his cab companion and his mobile. ‘Phone me back in 5 minutes’, he told his caller. Then he heaved the items onto the back of the truck. It’s not a profession I’d be strong enough to join.
After a further trip to the Oxfam warehouse and then another to the municipal tip we’d had a morning of encountering Christ, George McLoed style, on rubbish heaps.

I collected in the morning when the day had begun,
I collected at noon and at the set of sun,
I came up your street, a dog on my seat,
And collected stuff until the day was done.
Recycle stuff, whoever you may be,
Don’t throw away what can be reused you see,
The earth is fragile and we’re making it a tip,
It don’t take long to make a recycling trip.

(tune is, Lord of the Dance)

Scrapheap Christ,
Hanging there, flies buzzing,
May your presence on the rubbish tips of the world
Remind us of our responsibilities
To reuse and recycle
And so tred gently on the earth.

JAL 04.02.2019