Earlier this evening on twitter I asked this question: “Do I stay or do I go – have finished meetings, am I better finishing work here, or better going home and finishing there?”

Steve replied: “Go home and have a walk in the evening sunshine – I should take my own advise!”

As it happened Emily, Jonathan and myself found ourselves surprisingly at a loose end this evening. With Steve’s words still on my mind, we took his advice and drove up to Scorton; it’s a beautiful little Lancashire village.

We parked the car by the bowling green next to the church. The crown green bowling was in full swing – a quintessentially English scene.

As we made our way up the hill Jonathan and Emily both put their hands through my arms as we walked along. As they are 12 and 16 I regard this as something of a miracle. Mark Twain famously said:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

It’s a real privilege to know that they both think that being around their old dad isn’t too bad after all.

Beyond the bowling green we decided to explore a new path alongside the stream. It was so pretty as the dappled light of the lowering sun shining through the trees.

We took the camera and each experimented with different scenes and views as we went along.

The plan was to walk up around the village and then back down to the village shop where they serve some of the best locally made ice-cream around. Unfortunately the shop was closed and we were left feeling just a little cheated. We had no option but to drive off to the local garage and buy a manufactured ice-cream instead. Sitting in the car scoffing isn’t the same as meandering along with a proper cone in your hand.

We finished our walk as we started it – hand-in-hand.

The touch of a hand is a very powerful thing, something very reassuring, very safe.

The touch of Jesus hand was very powerful indeed. One day he went to the house of a ruler who’s daughter had just died:

When Jesus entered the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread through all that region.

Matthew 9

There’s a gospel song that goes like this:

Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water
Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea
Take a look at yourself
And you can look at others differently
Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee

What safer place could there be.

This evening after I had finished work I went downstairs and noticed that it had stopped raining. I like to breathe in the fresh air after rain so I went out into the garden armed with a pair of scissors.

One of the things that we grow in our garden nearly every year are sweet peas. I don’t really grow them for their looks, I grow them for their scent, their looks are a bonus. Because of this years strange weather they have taken a bit to get going so this was only the second bunch I had cut.

Armed with my catch I came back into the kitchen picking up a vase in the utility room I placed them on the window ledge, stopping along the way to let Sue have a smell. They were lovely.

Just now I walked back into the kitchen and the whole room is filled with their fragrance.

Something about sweet peas means that they belong in the kitchen or in the dining room, I’m not sure why, but that’s where I always put them.

There’s a saying that goes around that smell is the thing that helps us remember the most:

Nothing is more memorable than a smell.  One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town.  Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.  Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.  A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.  Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

The smell of a certain sun-cream reminds me of holidays in Florida. It was very hot and we used loads of it.

The sent of a certain shampoo brand reminds me of cruising in the Bahamas. We had to shower every day before going to the grand dining hall for Dinner.

Johnson’s Baby Oil reminds me of bath time with my children when they were younger.

The odour of soil reminds me of days digging at the family allotment as a child.

The smell of incense takes me to a friends wedding where so much of was used that I felt ill, if I remember correctly Sue was pregnant at the time and really struggled.

Conversely, the thought of Bovril brings a rather unpleasant taste to my mouth because someone once left a cup in an open plan office while they were off work. It started to ferment and it took days to find where the terrible smell had come from. We still had to work.

The Bible tells of an occasion not long before Jesus when Mary took an expensive jar of perfume and anointed Jesus with it.

Then Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.

John 12

Nard was used as a burial incense – without knowing it Mary was signaling that the time for Jesus death was coming close.

I wonder what thought came to those who were present on that day, in that room full of fragrance,  years later when they smelled that sent again.