My Somerset Life

A diary by Brian Snellgrove

Catching up on my diary

I have not written a serious diary entry  for some time so this is a summary of what has been happening in the last week or so. We been doing quite a lot of work in a garden in Peasedown St John for a delightful customer who has a garden area that he does not have the time to maintain and we have stepped in to tidy it up. I first started working with him in 2018 and then did another clearing job in 2022 and now I decided to upgrade the garden by removing historical features such as plants that no longer serve any purpose, old paths that have become matted with weeds and generally taking back the garden to square one and starting again.

At the same time I was hoping that people would sign up for a long planned lecture by me on the art of conversation which was due to take place on the 25th of September but only a small handful of people have decided to pay the small entrance fee that is required. I had expected in a place like Frome noted for its cultural activity to take an interest but for one reason or another the event has been ignored. It cost me more time than anything else. However the upside is that in the preparatory work I got the idea for writing a book so that is in full swing now and I will use Amazon self-publishing as a way to propagate it.

As regards my vineyard group it is no longer a church and I am trying to convince people but the best way forward is to invent or create a dynamic networking community where people can feel free to share, to pray, to have quality time together. When I founded the London-based network London Village back in the 70s, I gave away Power by the spadeful and more or less said that people could organize their activities as they wished and as a result we  created together up to 200 events a month with a membership of four and a half thousand.

There is an unfortunate desire among homo sapiens to retain power and control. My mind works the other way in that I want to give away power and control to other people and in the vast majority of cases I was not disappointed because they made the best of their freedom and acted in a responsible way. We have not taken a holiday now for some time and I find myself increasingly unwilling to travel by air but alternative methods such as trains especially in Europe not to mention the UK are very expensive.

I would like to get an unrestricted Rover Pass  but English operators do not seem to be doing this anymore. I think the United Kingdom has much to offer so we may satisfy cells by going on little trips for a few days here around there round the country.

As regards the political situation I despair of finding a politician or leader of a country who is not corrupted. I know in some organizations you have to swear allegiance to the devil and take part in certain rituals before being considered so the devil is really having a very good time at the moment. We can dream that Jesus will return and save us but as I’ve said before I can’t think of any reason why there should be the case because when he came the first time we didn’t treat him particularly well. Will he give it another go?

I know they were expecting the second coming in the first century AD so, fellow Christians,  I wouldn’t hold your breath and start coming to terms with the fact that we all have to do our part in making the world of more harmonious place.



My Somerset Life

A diary by Brian Snellgrove

slightly unhinged Weymouth

We decided to have a day trip to Weymouth to get away from it all if only briefly. Little did we know that there were two football matches connected with the city in directly or directly so we have to ourselves up for a lively day.   Direct trains to Weymouth are infrequent so we took the 10-22 train from Bath and found that we could hardly get on as the three coaches were nearly full. Thank goodness we did not join the train further down for example at Frome. The journey took just over two hours which was quite long enough and I found myself a little bit roasted by the EMF effects of the 100 mobile phones that were in our vicinity.

a crowded beach full of happy families. The beach is very safe and life guards are on duty. Good quality sand.

at the station

good historical display

Very great pride in the quality of the fish and chips offered in this town

their continuing campaign for inclusive advertising

knitted ice cream

knitted pedal cycle

In a fish and chip show – I was fooled when I saw this paper and tried to pick it up


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My goodness this car was throaty but I guess that’s part of the joy of owning a head-turner.

I was impressed with this church, the last time I came, but this time I was even more impressed by the beauty and caring shown here here they really do welcome everybody irrespective of race and creed and sexuality and the atmosphere was very positive so I hope they get a congregation to suit


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A jolly man and his friends celebrating his birthday

On an August weekend we would expect the whole place to the crowded as indeed it was. I found myself even more able to engage with people randomly and talk about all sorts of things. Buying oysters and so on was out of our reach but we did enjoy the most amazing fresh fish and chips with a haddock and a fresh fillet of mackrel for little short of 20 Pounds and one portion was enough for two of us. Francoise went for a swim, one of the few she has undertaken this year and I was very content to have a paddle and ground some of the unpleasant EMF energies that I picked up in the train.

We had a tea consisting of drinks and Dorset apple pie with cream which to my taste was rather undercooked but I did not feel like complaining so I just ate it due to fully knowing that the ingredients were of good quality. We suffered no Ill effects.

The return trains were not frequent, 15.35 and 17.35 and the last train was about 20.00 We arrived half an hour early for the 17.35 to find a crowd of people already waiting to get on, the train being parked in the station. By the time the train was due to depart you could hardly move along the platform so we had formed ourselves at the head of a cube at the further this point away so we had a chance of getting a seat.

The seagulls noticed that a lady was about to open her bag of chips. The seagull was joined by another one who kept watch of few yards down and there was a supervising seagull who watched from the roof top opposite. Fortunately for her the lady decided to put away the chips otherwise she would have been dive bombed.

Overall we had a great time. The only problem was the time spent in traveling. It took us one hour by bus to get to Bath and then two hours seven minutes to get to Weymouth. Taking everything into consideration we spent at least 6 hours traveling but I must say I prefer to travel by train at least from time to time as you get to see the unspoiled countryside. Driving by car you can tend to believe that the whole countryside is made up of roads but of course this is not the case,

Theoretically we could have gone by car but I really couldn’t be bothered with the finding of parking place in this very restricted town, I didn’t feel like going to the outskirts of the town to wait for a park and ride in fact I just generally felt like letting someone else take over. The rail fare for us to with a card was £30.60  the petrol and parking would have cost us about the same even not more



My Somerset Life

A diary by Brian Snellgrove

Francoise’s birthday

Very strangely we had no clear idea before today about where we should go particularly to celebrate the birth day by having lunch. Looking through TripAdvisor is all very well but I find myself swayed by the one star and two star reviews who give very measured and reasonable arguments for why they did not enjoy the event. For example one very posh restaurant got a low rating because the proprietors let young children run around and presumably to disturb the other diners.

Roughly speaking if over 90% give a five-star rating it’s probably not too bad but the trick is to look at when the reviews were written and you can have a number of bad reviews inside 2023 but unbeknown to you there was a change in management at the end of the year so the review should really be disregarded.

Before this I did feel quite flat at the day because nothing had been organised and I felt I had let Francoise down but she was as puzzled as I was about a lack of direction. Normally our inspiration does not let us down. Anyway, about nine o’clock, I decided to pay a visit to a restaurant we had known for some time, see below. We then decided we would visit the Yeo Valley establishment which includes a restaurant which was highly spoken of.

I also realise that I had done all I could in terms of my new venture due to start 25th September in Frome and I now had to hand it over to others to bring forward my ideas in a practical way.

We ended up by going to Hartley’s Kitchen Bistro which is near Wells. We have been there many times and we I’ve never had any bad food and the proprietor, the ever affable Paul, always greets us and looks after us as best he can. We have known him so long that we can ask personal questions as to how he is and I asked a question about the arrangements for mailing us with information, so it’s not all meaningless dribble.

 

We then went off to the Yeo Valley organic group that have an organic garden, but also a restaurant which they call rather and wisely in my opinion ‘The canteen’  I got on very well with the organiser and found myself writing a 2000 word essay to him on his website. The kitchen was a hotel at one point and has wonderful views over the Chew Valley. My first visit was pleasant and I don’t think it will be the last.  I don’t have a huge amount of energy for diary writing at the moment but here are some images. If you want a meal with a difference here is the web site.   Blagdon, Bristol BS40 7SQ

very pleasant dining room

this was a converted hotel

I had the honor to be the black sheep of my family

old fashioned Ordinance Survey map

not sure what to make of this art work

men’s toilets with organized graffiti

The building in its previous incarnation as a hotel

 



My Somerset Life

A diary by Brian Snellgrove

Am I a churchgoer? Not really. 

I have had 80 years worth of being a member of so many congregations that I have lost count. I thought it would be a good time to reflect on all my experiences, good bad and indifferent, and see if this resonates with anyone else’s experience.

I owe a lot to my parents who introduced me to the Christian Faith mainly because my father was a vicar serving in the Church of England which is the established church, but maybe not much longer as an act of UK Parliament is going through the process in the UK of dismembering the church and it’s relationship to traditional Christianity and indeed traditional life in the United Kingdom. I suspect we are all going to be pressured to become Muslims but that is a side issue that I did not intend to write about today.

I know that Jesus died for our sins and created the seeds of an infrastructure where we could build our own community and serve each other or should I say enlighten each other to make this planet a little bit less like the hellhole that it resembles at the moment. He did not create the church, by the way.

I know that civilizations have come and gone, some of them probably quite advanced, but ours is not particularly distinguished in the first place and we seem to be digging deeper holes for ourselves as the decades progress.

Christian values are very valuable to me because they balance the importance of the individual with the importance of the community and describe a situation where everyone has value as part of God. We are given if you will ‘manufacturers instructions’ to show how we can live our life to the best but we seem Hell Bent on ignoring all these and doing things our own sweet way which as it happens is not particularly sweet.

As a vicars son I did rebel quite considerably between the ages of about 16 and my early 30s. Now however the tone of my life had been set when I was very young and I did manage to meet a number of people who had a great influence on my life although they did not know it at the time. My theory is that we all have divinity within us but it is hidden under several layers of concrete and it takes a lot of time for it to emerge in the fresh air.

My standard is the Church of England because that what I was bought up on. I like the Methodists because they are understated and unpretentious and the ladies make the best cakes. I have never been quite happy with the Evangelical Church in all its forms because of the emphasis on asking others if they have been saved and sometimes putting on pressure.

I am put off by people who wave their arms around and speaking tongues and ask loudly for the Holy Spirit to come into them when in fact that’s what happened 2000 years ago, the Holy Spirit did come in to us all and it is freely available for us to use.  Why beg or beseech god for something you already have?. My simple brain cannot understand.

I would rather say to people, have you been educated? Do you understand what life is all about? Is there anybody that you use as a role model? Do you find there is a gap in your life? Are you afraid of death? However I must say that whatever type of church I go to I do love to hear a good sermon. I’m not ready interested in the hymns or the prayers because I cannot concentrate on prayers to save my life, sorry to say, and most hymns are like a dirges although some of the words are good. I like Christmas carols.

I hope I have roughly kept on track in my life but when the reckoning comes what I die and I see my past life I will probably find that this is not correct. However, listening to good sermons keeps me on the straight and narrow and stops me from doing things that would be self-damaging.  R C Sproul who is an evangelical preacher, now deceased in America, spoke about the need for not taking for granted what your partner wants or accepts and learning to keep an open mind and actually talking about things by setting aside time when you focus on each other’s needs and requirements.

On the occasions when I do not go to church or take part in an act of worship I do listen to Trans World Radio which is freely available on Freeview and probably as a radio station as well for all I know. Whatever you say about America they do produce some excellent preachers who really know their stuff and explain often with a sense of humour. Human nature and our relationship to the almighty can be influenced by prayer, discipline, focus and most of all understanding.

Of all the morning TV shows I dislike the least I can say that GB news is up there amongst them and on certain topics BBC News comes the distance second but I do not trust the BBC as far as I can throw them. I tend to listen to TWR (above) to make a godly start to the day. I ALWAYS hear something which inspires me. I cannot say this of the news.

At my age I like to mix with people who have nothing to prove and who have led a full life and are looking forward or experiencing the senior years of their life. Such was the case at Frome men’s group last night Thursday the 13th of June 2024 when I heard Richard Loveless give a personal testimony of his life, how he met his wife, how he worked in Kenya, how he then went to work in Birmingham before retiring and coming to Frome.

It is very important for me to hear someone speaking from their heart and I had spoken about testimonies in the last few days in these diaries. I found myself saying to someone today, if you say what is in your heart, people will know it. Everything else is wallpaper. I need also  to meet and share with people who are actually doing something. It is all too easy to show up at church, say all the right things, actually do very little. I would rather meet a person who has made 10 mistakes and learnt from them than someone who has done nothing for fear of upsetting people.

My ideal occasion, very similar to last night’s men’s group was that I meet someone who has had an interesting life and I’m able to learn something from them but also if I meet someone who is in difficulties then it is my privilege and honour to do my best to help them on their way perhaps even protecting them from the dark side of human life. The most important thing to me is making a difference. That is why I speak to people in the street as I do and have written about frequently.

I also find a wider and wider gap between sheep and goats and by this I mean those who have swallowed and accepted the version of the world that the mainstream Media describes, and what is actually going on behind the scenes and if you look at another of my sites covid-unmasked . net you will see how passionate I am about the truth.

I consider this a Christian duty to try and help people avoid selling their souls and their bodies to something that is designed for nefarious purposes. I am not interested in ‘converting’ any one because I simply don’t know enough about them. If someone asked me a question to my face or why I do things I would happily respond and if that leads to a growth in someone’s face then that is very wonderful but I don’t make preconditions and assumptions when I meet a stranger because you never know what path they have done through and how they have suffered.

In a way I think we are all broken and wounded and it is the way we respond to this by way of showing character that distinguishes our sense certainty draws then to my attention. I don’t have time to waste with people (though I will be polite to them) who are not interested in growth and development and are satisfied with the three dimensional world in which we live. It’s not that I dislike them but I can’t see the point. Jesus said  ‘do not cast your pearls before swine’ and And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.

In other words we have to respect people’s free will and the implication above  is to show by example so I have to ‘let my light shine before all men that they may see my good works and glorify my father who is in heaven’. The act of  sharing, giving time and energy to someone is an act of love that speaks for itself.

I admit to basically a mixture of selfishness and unselfishness but I do manage to do a fair bit for other people and spread the subliminal word of God whenever I can. So to summarize, I don’t want to be with time wasters but those who have already realized the value of having a spiritual life with all the benefits that it gives and I want to spend time with active people moving forward in my understanding. This can happen within and without a church building.



My Somerset Life

A diary by Brian Snellgrove

Yet another inept zoom session – when will people learn?

Before I start to whinge, here is a leaflet that I saw in Frome Cheese and Grain this evening. Unsung minorities which are not so small as we would like to imagine are nevertheless important so well done whoever it was for this local initiative.

 

A brief word today. There is a social and cultural group called Christians in Media. I receive a lot of material including an invitation to come on a zoom call at midday today Thursday the 13th of June.  Maybe it was the time of day but there were only eight of us and four people did not show their faces.

I’m convinced that it is vanity that stops people from showing their faces.  They claim technical difficulties but I don’t believe that because all you do is to plug in a camera in one of your USB ports and the computer does the rest including recognizing the particular make and model of the camera.  When I run zoom meetings I will not accept people without seeing their faces as staring at a black square, or a photograph of someone, does not add to the experience.

The mediator or coordinator was only moderately sure of how to use Zoom and he introduced himself for five minutes and then we had 2 x 20 minute talks about artificial intelligence and the media and the effect on children.

Fairly early on I asked in the chat if the meeting was going to be recorded but that was ignored. It is vital that the person who runs the meeting actually keeps an eye on the chat because if you are muted there is no other way of drawing attention to a particular matter.  There was one point when someone was making a noise in the background because they’re microphone had not been muted but that was indeed dealt with.

Anyway it was decided about 12:45, 45 minutes into the event, that we should split into breakout rooms. I was with three other people and one or two decent points were made. The coordinator told us what he had experienced but seemed uninterested in the result from the group of which he was not a member.

He then said we had to finish now and I wrote a note in the chat asking why do we have to stop after one hour but I got no response to that.

The point is that zoom meetings require extra effort for people to become involved especially if their participation is required. 10 minutes is two short a time to discuss 40 minutes of talk and it left me with a sense of frustration. Mercifully, I have learned the lesson myself and always include people, I always read the chat, I always respond immediately if someone has any sort of difficulty or need.

If the feedback from participants is not required then why not make a broadcast, publish it, and people can listen to it when and if they please.

A participatory event requires a totally different mindset and very few people of my experience I’ve got the balance right. It’s no good leaving a meeting with people wanting to make many points and being unable to do so.

I don’t think this is photo-shopped though you can never tell.  I believe it.