Perish the thought

We thought about many things at our Harvest Thanksgiving on Sunday.  One thing we thought about was perishability.  How long would anything last that was on display?

 

 

 



Typically, the Star of the Show - homemade bread without preservatives - though much admired was deemed to be the first to go in the perishability stakes.  So we ate it for harvest Lunch, which was very nice.  It seems that so many wonderful things just don't have the legs to last (or in the case of food items get legs and for that reason don't last . . .).

What, though, would last the longest?  "Canned stuff", was the general answer. The question was spontaneous, so I am quite proud (sorry) that I may have even got the answer right as I looked at the display and made my own guess - Bisto.  The combination of being sealed and dried and salty makes it almost everlasting - certainly half a lifetime.  Not much fun compared to homemade bread though.

What I was really looking for, though, (and it wasn't there) was honey.  Honey lasts for a very long time too and is great to eat as well!

 

Then there is the honey for your soul:

 

My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste. Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off.

Fore!

Today I feel impelled to tell the story of one of golf's most famous words, aptly pictured here:

The game of golf as we know it developed amid the coastal sand dunes of Eastern Scotland.  St Andrews is enshrined as the town most associated with the development of the sport that now spans the world.  And with it the shout, "Fore" as the now traditional warning.

At the beginning of April in 1877, Alexander Kilcallon was playing on the Royal  course when, like many before and since, he was struck by a ball 'inflicting a wounde grievusse'.  What was to make Alexander's story amazing was that exactly a year later to the day - this day - he was struck by another golf ball in a very similar way.  The duality seemed too much of a coincidence and he consulted the Minister of the Kirk (Church).  The Minister, Rev. Hamish Kincaird, was not at all sympathetic.  He despised the worldly pleasure of sport and pointed Alexander to a Biblical Proverb that occurs identically twice (in Proverbs 22:3 and 27:12) - identical verses for identical incidents. In the King James version it reads

A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.

Perhaps it was the way that the Reverend Kincaird pronounced the word foreseeth to make his point, but Alexander Kilcallon took the word back to his golfing party as a cry of warning.  Presumably it was quickly reduced to the one syllable that any passing walker is wise to observe!

Not the intended application of the Proverb but very useful and undoubtedly the most shouted Biblical syllable on the golf course - though perhaps others are sometimes used in anger as well . . .