THE HONKEYMOON CAFE

Taking up an interest can not only be a way of filling one’s spare time and be a change from our daily routine, but sometimes a way of finding ourselves and even a liberation. In the same way as we only have one life, or at least can only experience one life at a time, though even that’s debatable, we can only be in one place at a time, so you might think. Yoga and meditation are commonplace, but the closely related transcendental meditation, and astral projection are yet to appear regularly at our village hall. Astral travellers claim to be able to lift themselves out of their physical body and go for a wander, so I suppose they can be in more than one place at a time. I used to think that OBE used to stand for Order of the British Empire, but now I discover it also stands for Out of Body Experience. This phenomena is not recognised by the medical fraternity and it’s difficult to prove it exists but that won’t stop some in our village from having a go. The British eccentric is alive a...

The past is only ever just behind us. If something disturbs it, it takes very little for it to catch us up. I remember it was a Thursday night when Dave asked me if I knew any reason why Jean hadn’t turned up that evening to help out. I shook my head and could see Dave was both confused and worried.  Jean lives alone which is not unusual, but when for no reason we know of there’s no answer, all sorts of disasters spring to mind. In previous generations living alone was seen as a sad outcome as, due to illness or bereavement, an individual might be forced into a state of loneliness. Nowadays it’s more likely a lifestyle choice. After the raising of children and or the collapse of a long term relationship that independence is sometimes hard to surrender. Two fellow dealers in antiques had lived independently for some years. When Mike proposed to Josephine, after giving it some thought, Josephine accepted provided she could keep her flat and live there too, so maintaining some of the ...

What makes us think we have any control over our lives? If we are lucky do we put it down to our determination, our skill, or craft? And what of those that have no luck, do we blame them for where they are, what they do not have? The line is very fine between success, if that’s what you think it is, and failure, and some people are in no way to blame for where they are; but we’d be better people for offering them a hand, should they need it. Most lives are subject to fate’s bagatelle, a game of chance, and one wonders for whom the game is an entertainment?. Anyone but the Dawsons in our village, who always seem to ‘come up trumps’, will recognise the serendipity, and misfortune, that most lives are subject to. One morning in our village shop, ahead of me in the queue was a character I knew only slightly. After serving this person Paul our shopkeeper shook his head, and I raised an eyebrow,  ‘Terry,’ he said and nodded in the direction of the person who had just left, ‘if it weren’t...

More Dawson catastrophes. Charles Dawson and his part during the WW1 in Egypt alongside Lawrence, then Captain Nathanial Dawson, accidental discoverer of islands and coloniser, both knighted for their services to the Crown. Trawling through dusty old papers, diaries and correspondence is not my idea of heaven, however it is Rachael’s, our village historian. She sometimes refers to herself as an amanuensis, not necessarily copying manuscripts but spending as much time with them, researching the background to my stories, and more profitably, the history of the Dawson family and their catalogue of catastrophes.  The political map of the middle east is complicated enough now but during the first world war it makes the current situation look almost straightforward. The French and British had not given up colonial control but needed Arab help to overcome the alliance between Germany, and Turkey and their Ottoman empire which had possessed Arab lands since the fourteenth century. India to...