A friend of mine told me this week that he received a call from his wife informing him that she was on the bus on her way home from town and that she had bought the curtains they had seen last week.

She ended “Put the Kettle on Love – I’ll be home soon”

To which her replied “and what about the car – you went to town in the car”

I am intrigued by this ability in all of us to forget crucial details, most often when we are engrossed in other matters which consume our full attention.

Keeping hold of the whole complexity of the reality of our journey, that we arrived in town in a car, but we left on a bus thrills me, because it shows up massively in what it is like to be consumed in the present and not hung up with the past.

Of course, my friends wife had to get off the bus and walk back to town carrying heavy curtains to collect her car.

And for us, we too have to occasionally / frequently go back metaphorically to explore our past and see what it has to say to us today, in our present moment which is constructive and relevant, even if it is painful.

My friends wife, irked as she was by her error, and worse still that her husband pointed it out, had to laugh in the present, and regardless of the mess, he had put the kettle on and the hot coffee was waiting for her, as required on her arrival home.

My next blog will be: Happiest Day of My Life

William Defoe