Friday Jan 16th. Currently in Terminal 5 at Heathrow, sitting next to the Fortnum and Mason shop, with a Gucci outlet over there next to Cartier and Tiffany. (Gucci really need to rethink their stock control policy – there is only one bag per shelf!! Somebody must have messed up the ordering – surely they’re not going to sell anything that way!) (You wouldn’t get that at Lidl.)

Oh, there’s the set: I’ve just looked over my shoulder and there’s a Harrod’s store. Am I in the wrong bit of the airport? I don’t think I paid enough to be in these parts. My ticket says Economy in bold type like it’s a warning to others to stay away from me in case they catch “economy”. Most of the people here look like they actually own an economy. I must have wandered into the wrong section. I definitely think I should have polished my shoes.

“For security reasons, baggage left unattended will be destroyed” repeatedly booms out over the tannoy. The lady says it in a very lovely voice so that makes it a bit better but as it’s the only thing that’s been said over the tannoy in the last half hour you’d think they could add a few more upbeat messages too. “On the count of three, everyone look at the person sitting opposite them and wink.” Or, “All those electronic devices currently being recharged at the sockets along the walls are free to the first person who touches them.” I’d like to work the tannoy.

Security stopped us going through when we first got to the airport as they didn’t believe we were traveling long haul with only carry on luggage. We got our tickets rechecked and then they let us through – but when we went through the scanners both our bags were taken to one side in what they called “random” bag searches.

I have been reading about the Desert Fathers (wrote Dessert Fathers first but that’s probably a totally different group) who went off in flip-flops into the desert in Africa in times long gone to seek solitude and caves and all of them thought sand was great. There were some Desert Mothers too, but in the main they were mainly chaps and so they’re called the Desert Fathers. The most well known in the 3rd century was Anthony the Great. (I don’t know if that was on his business cards – might come across as a little bit big headed. At cheese and wine parties “Hi, I’m Anthony the Great.” “Any relation to Anthony the Pretty good?” “No relation; merely far better than.”)

And if an Anthony came along after the 3rd Century and did something really brilliant and was even better than Anthony the Great had been, where does the naming thing go from there? Would he be called Anthony the Greater? Anthony the flippin’ Awesome? I’d like to think so.

Anyway, apparently in the intervening 1700 years or so, it seems that absolutely no Anthony has ever amounted to anything better than that which Anthony the Great achieved by sitting in a cave.

Come on Anthonys – for goodness sake pull your collective fingers out!

Still, I feel a little like the Desert Fathers or Desert Mothers today – not because of any competence in cave cohabiting or dune dwelling but because they were all probably clever and deep and mystical and people sought them out to ask them the big questions of life and they would come up with cracking good answers that made you go “Hmmm, wow!” Then that particular Desert Father or Mother may well leave that particular cave in which you had found them and seek a more remote one because with all these people seeking him or her out things were not so peaceful as he or she had hoped when they furtively flip-flopped off into the desert in the first place.

Here’s my deep Desert Parent-like thought for the day. It came in response to one of our children being frustrated that some “stupid” person couldn’t be persuaded to agree with their point of view.

If you don’t think about it too much my answer works…. “Don’t worry. If you change a stupid person’s view to be the same as yours, your view is now the same as that of a stupid person. Do you want to think like a stupid person? No? So don’t worry if someone thinks differently to you.”

OK – so I’m going to totally fail the Desert Fathers entrance test.

But there is, for both Ella and me, a definite feeling that as we head out on Friday we will not only be flying over the very desert these wise souls indwelt (if not over then pretty close I reckon and good enough for poetic licence) but also that we are entering into a potential desert experience. I’m sure we all feel we’ve lived in a desert place in areas and seasons of life.

For me “desert’ will be being out of my comfort zone, without a home base, away from family. Continually experiencing numerous new cultures in which I won’t have any shared history or awareness of how things are done.

But the desert is not merely a place full of emptiness.

Being stripped of our usual go-to comforts or habitual hideaways or the spiritual cushions we place around ourselves. We often work to walk the line of least resistance and can find ourselves carried along by the crowd rather than steering a conscious counter-route. When we find ourselves in a desert space the things that had previously been there surrounding us and are now removed will leave a vacuum. And there is an opportunity of filling the void with something good, or simply self-placed safe padding.

I am a little scared of the desert places – the different to my up-til-now-safe homely places.

And I feel very unprepared.

But not totally unprepared. I have learned one thing from the desert fathers.

For in my bag, although I don’t have much packed, The first thing that I put in….

was a pair of flip flops.

The following is something I wrote last year when we had first decided to shed most of our things – some would be given away, some put in a house contents sale – and some put on Ebay. Ella was apparently thinking of the big stuff first, the things with some value, the items it would be worth putting most time and effort into. I, on the other hand, spent a lot longer than I probably should have on things which were not necessarily ever going to be one of our “big money items”. It was early days – and I got a little overexcited about little things. But I found this on my notepad today and would like to remember the first of many Ebay hits and misses.
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I’m sitting in a fevered state. Literally. Fevered. Smitten by Ebayitis. If that’s a word. It’s probably more likely to be a medical condition. Selling our life.

Start off small – – it’s difficult to get rid of things. I started with some farm animals. Not real farm animals – not sure if Ebay has a policy on livestock. Maybe PiggEbay or PuppEbay would take off. Anyway – I was selling 30 farm animals: assorted sheep and cows and donkeys and inconclusive birds which may or may not have been intended to be turkeys that I picked up in a charity shop years ago, with the thought that they would people, or animal, the toy farms I was going to find for visiting children to play with. Never found a farm – so the animals were probably ripe for the selling. Unplayed with. Unneeded. And yet kept “just in case”. Along with so many other things.

Took them into the garden to get a photo in a natural setting – photographed them standing up in the grass. That took longer than it should have because it was all a bit windy and some of the animals’ legs were not strictly speaking the same length as each other – – and anyway when I did finally get them all standing at the same time and got the photo the result looked like they had no legs at all because the grass was a little long. So I kicked them all over and took a photo of them lying down.

Ebay’s advice is to take lots of photos so I did – you can upload 12 photos to show your offered item to its full potential. So, a dozen photos of the same 30 animals in a big laying down group shot, looking like they’d been slaughtered by some crazed farmer.

From 12 slightly different angles.

It looked like a rural crime scene banned by Countryfile. If I’d added some horsey outlines in white tape, a vet with their head in their hands and a grumpy, knurled Scottish looking Detective Inspector musing darkly about the abhorrence of such a crime it wouldn’t have looked out of place.

I created a listing – wrote about how great these animals were and that no, they weren’t real but were ideal if you wanted animals but didn’t want to feed them. It was light, it was witty – – people were going to bid just because they loved the listing so much.

Then I launched. Action. Auction. Set for 7 days duration. I’d put it on with free postage and packing because it said that would attract more buyers. The animals didn’t seem very heavy so I figured I could stuff them into an envelope at minimal cost. To compensate for the free P &P I daringly added a starting price of £2.99. Then I sat back to watch the frenzied bidding begin.

You probably know this but I didn’t until now. As a seller, on your ebay page it tells you how many people have viewed the listing. It tells you how many people are watching. It tells you how many people have registered a bid. By day 3 the figures read: 1 – 0 – 0. In three days only one person had even bothered to click on the picture and read my brilliant item description. By day 4 the figures read 1 – 0 – 0. Hmmm. By day 5 they had escalated to 2 – 1 – 0. Someone was watching it! Someone had stumbled across it and was interested enough to click the “watch” button. No bids yet but not to worry… I could wait. I had time. Finally on day 6 a bid cascaded in.

£3.20.

Would it be bettered? Would someone swoop in with a counter bid and force a bidding war? A furious cattle battle?

No.

£3.20 was the only bid. I wanted to be the perfect ebayer so I wrapped them straight away. At least, I tried. They wouldn’t all fit into an envelope and quite a few of them had sharp little pointy hooves and feet and claws which kept poking through whatever I rammed them into. Wrapped them in the end in plastic sheeting surrounded by brown paper and a lot of tape. The next day I drove down to the post office to find out how cheaply I could post it. I had to hand over £2.80.

Brilliant!

(That’s not a sarcastic “Brilliant!” that’s a genuine excited “Brilliant!”)

40p. Clear proud profit! My baby steps toward financial security. So long as you don’t include packing costs and petrol and if all my labour was free. 40p. Look at me. Ebaying!

Oh, and I guess Paypal take a cut, and then there’s the listing cost that Ebay take. But those are what I like to call hidden costs. And the beauty of hidden costs is that they don’t need to be taken into account because they’re hidden.

And I for one am not going looking for them.

Not when I’ve just made a cool 40p.

Buns for tea!

Maybe it”s a male/female,thing – but I discovered that Ella had been assuming that, having spent many hours poring over the site there would be something impressive to show for it. I went and got 4 shiny 10 pence pieces and proudly displayed them, like magic beans in my hand thinking then she might “get it”. I genuinely couldn’t understand why she wasn’t as excited as me. She pointed out the fact that we had three floors, several cellar rooms and a huge garage full to bursting with “stuff” – I opened a drawer and got out a box of 200 marbles (unopened since buying them 4 years ago thunking they would be really useful for something). These would be my next sale…..

I’m going to need to list more than one thing at a time methinks.

Yesterday we were on air. This time next week we will be in the air. (Smooth link or what??) Or still in the airport if there’s a delay. Annoyingly, as we’re only taking carry on bags there are various things we might like to travel with that we can’t. I like to have my leatherman with me (bit like a Swiss Army knife but shinier) for those just in case moments when something really needs cutting or pliering or a small piece of wood desperately needs attacking with a ridiculously teeny tiny saw, or a bottle needs urgently opening. But I can”t take it on board for obvious reasons.

Neither can Ella take tweezers (I can’t imagine there has ever been, nor ever will be anyone who manages to hijack a plane by storming the cockpit with tweezers. “Divert this plane or I swear I WILL pluck your eyebrow Captain. And, I’ll only do one of them – think of that!! You will look ridiculous. Then I’ll puncture the auto-pilot.”)

We will hopefully do better than when we last flew and managed to wander out of Brussels airport when we were only meant to be swapping planes there. A little awkward and still not entirely sure how we managed it. Also had our passports stolen and I got food poisoning and we were only away for three weeks. There are SOOooo many more things to mess up over 6 months.

One thing that has been interesting is that it wasn’t until today that we both felt we had actually finally fully “stopped” – that the slowing down process had actually finished and the constant feeling of needing to do the next thing/be in the next place/worry about the next worry which has been a constant subliminal shadow for so many years had at last come to a stand-still. That’s not because we’re not doing things now and it’s not that there aren’t things to remember and worry over (“don’t wander out of connecting airports” being just one of my mental post-it notes to self). But the juggernaut that is the last 20 years has slowly, slowly braked to a rest.

Rest is one of the four words we have been challenged to associate with what it is to “Sabbath”. Stop. Rest. Delight. Contemplate. And we were wonderfully reminded of the idea of Sabbath yesterday. Shelley, who heads up a Jewish charity and who’s a friend of Ella’s from school texted to ask whether our taking this year as a sabbath year was due to 2015 being a “Shmita” year.

What, you may well ask, is one of those? Those of you who spend a lot of time in chapter 25 of Leviticus (and come on, who doesn’t love to? Huh? Huh?) would happily tell us (or alternatively turning to Wikipedia we find) that in the Jewish calendar, every seventh year is a Shmita year, where fields are left to rest and things are not grown. So that the world itself takes a sabbatical, as per God’s request in the book of Leviticus. And 2015 is designated as a Shmita year.

During shmita, the land is left to rest: you can’t plough it, sow into it or harvest it, but you are allowed to water it, fertilise it and weed it if needed. But it, like us, needs to rest. And resting – a part of what it means, I think, is to allow God to do his thing. The ground will be refreshed and the plants will come again after a sabbath year.

When you dig down into many of the laws God gave in the Old Testament the thought that lies behind it (unsurprisingly) makes pretty good sense. To take a sabbath – to allow things to rest – to restore balance, to remember that a lot of what we allow our lives to be embusyed by (l like to confuse the spellcheck) could be laid down and then, after a time, taken back up – or maybe left lain down as new opportunities have a chance to come into view.

Our sabbath year has coincided with a biblically based sabbath year. I like that. If you happen to have a good Jewish friend, wish them a happy Shmita. (And as debts are supposed to be cancelled during a Shmita year if you happen to owe them a tenner, now would be a really good time to go visit.) But for us, even though we’re resting the “to do list” is extending.

I’m just off to pluck my eyebrows in case I don’t get the opportunity for a while.

It’s done. For the last few years, whenever we’ve mentioned the amount of stuff we have accumulated over the last 28 years I’ve said.. “Well, when we leave I’ll put a sign at the end of the road that says “house contents sale” sell the lot and leave.. And now we’ve done it.. It was exhausting. Emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting. 300 people came over the course of 4 hours.. It was like being burgled in slow motion. At one point you couldn’t get in or out of the house past people with armfuls of our belongings queuing in the hall to pay. And despite the clearly labelled signs on virtually everything, over and over again they asked me “How much do you want for this?”

How much do you want for the huge wall clock that for 20 years has told you that it’s time for school or to start tea or helped you count the minutes until a friend arrives. How much do you want for the little armchair that you have prayed in, cried in and daydreamed in each morning? The little one by the Aga that friends have confided secrets in and God has kept you company in while you made supper for a stranger? How much do you want?
The truth is I don’t really want anything at all for ‘it’ because there isn’t a price that reflects what ‘it’ meant to me.. But there is something I want more. I want it more than the things around me and more than the security of knowing what tomorrow will bring.
So I make up a price for the desk, the chair, the clock and the dress. I give away the books and the pictures and the rugs and the lamps. And more that more that goes the better I feel, the less I have the more I have to give.
Ella xx

In january this year Jon and I chose a word for the year.. Complete. Complete as in “Make my joy complete” or “Complete in Christ” or as in “I have actually completed something”. Complete as in ticked off the list, finished, accomplished, done, achieved, pen down, walk away, complete. Hopefully not as in ” I made a complete fool of myself.” I don’t know about jon, but I think I had in mind a kind of reminder to myself that I should stop worrying over how much there is still to do and take pleasure in finishing the thing I was doing without rushing on slap dash just to get it done. I think it began with noticing how many things I had begun but not finished… Chairs that were half upholstered, curtains almost hemmed, pieces of furniture painted on 3 sides, and a nagging feeling of being rushed all the time.. No time no time. And then somehow by March what with one thing and another life suddenly slowed down. And one day there was time … I’m still not sure how it crept up on me but there was time.. Time to go through the photographs that I had stuffed into a basket for almost 30 years. Photos of the children, of life as it was when they were children.. They are all grown up now. And that era is complete.. I have spent so long saying when the chikdren grow up… And suddenly here it was. Time. So we spent time slowly going through the basket, laughing, crying, remembering and sorting into two small shoe boxes. One to keep and one to give to the children, and a huge pile to throw away.. That chapter has ended. Complete.