What's in a name?

Ryanair deposited us back in Edinburgh last Saturday, so the past few days have included ticking off items on the Edinburgh 'to do' list. One of these was follow-up surgery on my precious laptop. Last time we were back in Scotland, my laptop died on me. I remember the moment vividly. It was all so sudden, just two days before I was due to leave to go back to Lectoure. One minute, I was opening up my email, the next the screen went dark. It felt like my best friend had just keeled over with a heart attack - well maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but I'm a writer, I'm allowed a bit of hyperbole.

Thankfully, a computer doctor lives five minutes away. An Italian who speaks English with a Scottish accent, he admitted my comatose computer on a Monday morning and by Tuesday evening it was chirping its little 'dada-dada-dadaa' ditty like a machine half its age. But the sobering news was that it had been on the critical list. The computer doc had cleaned out two potentially fatal viruses and at least half a dozen worms. Dosed with an updated virus check, my laptop was finally allowed home. Next day I whisked it off to the South of France to convalesce in the sun. It moved slowly, but at least it was moving. The next stage of surgery would involve increasing its ram, which sounded very painful to me but the Scots/Italian was sanguine about the procedure. 'Once we install it, it will be like day and night' Hmmm??

So last Thursday, I wrapped the patient up in its padded case (we're enjoying typically bracing Scottish Spring weather at present) and took it back to the computer hospital up the road. The Scots/Italian greeted us politely, but he didn't recognise us. I explained my laptop's case history and he still looked blank. Panic began to rise. How can you entrust a best friend to someone who has no recollection of nursing them through a life threatening illness? Then I added a detail that rang a bell with him and his face cleared. 'Ah yes, Jacqueline isn't it?' Confidence flooded back. It was going to be all right. I could trust him after all. He remembered my name.

'Fear not:for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine.' Isaiah 43:1

Most of us go through life feeling pretty anonymous. When someone remembers our name, it gives us a boost; when God remembers it, we find our identity.

Can you think of experiences where someone using your name made a difference? Do you think faith plays an important part in a sense of identity and self worth?

Can snakes turn into fish?

On Sunday, from the safe distance of our first floor terrace, we spotted a sizeable snake in our garden. Yesterday morning, my husband had another sighting, two of them this time, getting amorous near the back gate. He threw a lump of rock at them (our builders had the foresight to leave us with plenty of ammunition) and they disappeared into the undergrowth. Snakes, the harmless grass variety or otherwise, are as welcome in my garden as plastic garden chairs (see previous post). I grew up in a London suburb; I'm a townie. For me snakes were always something you watched David Attenborough cope with, secured within the confines of the TV set in the corner of our living-room.

Our Australian friends, who spend half their year in SW France and the other half in Oz, regard my wildlife squeamishness with lofty amusement. An American friend who lives in Southern California sent me an email the other day. She mentioned that a notice had gone up in her condo block warning that rattlesnakes had been sighted in the area. So there are millions of people out there for whom a couple of lovelorn grass snakes are really no big deal. I know all this, but it doesn't help. On Sunday night I lay awake in the small hours and fretted about the unspeakable horrors that might lurk in my Mediterranean garden. I'd pictured a rose arbour, meandering paths, swathes of fragrant lavender. I'd even spent an enjoyable hour on Sunday afternoon sketching a planting plan. Naive as a latter day Eve in her Garden of Eden, I hadn't reckoned on snakes.

Thankfully God has a habit of taking even my most ridiculous fears seriously. On Monday morning my devotional reading included Luke 11:11. I laughed out loud when I read it. 'Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?'

I thought about all the other worries and fears I lie awake fretting about, and it occurred to me that the Luke verse had a wider application than grass snakes. God my loving father, gives me fish, not snakes. One day, my garden will be as beautiful as I envisage it in my sketch pad. The snakes will turn out to be fish after all. Hmmm...where's that planting plan? An ornamental pond - now there's a thought.

Have you had any experience in your life of 'snakes' turning out to be 'fish'? How do you deal with the fears that keep you awake in the small hours?

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Living in peace with your garden furniture

We arrived back in Lectoure on Easter Saturday. The journey down had been great. We took our time, avoiding the autoroutes, building in a couple of overnight stops en route, exploring some places we hadn't visited before. The car-that-thinks-it's-a-van was packed to the roof as usual, any stray empty corners filled with tins of baked beans, jars of mint sauce and boxes of man-size Kleenex. No wonder the French think the Brits are eccentric!

Opening the front door after an absence of a couple of weeks is always a bit of a tense moment. What disasters might await? Will the hall be running with water or mice, or worse still both? Will the wallpaper we put up before we left have peeled off the walls and be lying in a damp heap on the floor? Will the livebox that powers our internet have been struck by lightening, leaving us with a very dead box that takes weeks to fix? As you may gather, I do tend to be a bit of a 'glass half empty' kind of girl.

As it turned out, the only disaster was the garden. We inherited a wilderness when we bought the house. After two months of warm spring weather and April showers the weeds were triffid size. My husband settled down to a couple of days of machete wielding and I lugged the garden furniture out of hibernation. I have a vision for our garden, one that doesn't include four grubby white plastic chairs, two equally grubby matching loungers and half a dozen assorted plastic flower troughs. But I'm stuck with them. The budget won't run to replacements at present. Blame the ailing pound and the flourishing euro. Blame anyone, even the man with the machete. I stomped up the road to buy bread. Never mind the glorious sunshine, the stunning hilltop view, I wanted new garden furniture - I did, I did, I did!

Then I turned the corner and there she was, sitting on a cheap folding chair in the lane outside her house, a very elderly lady with a serene face and a peaceful air, watching the world go by. Her house has no garden, weed-infested or otherwise, but she's found her place in the sun in spite of that, and discovered the perfect way to keep track on what her neighbours are up to into the bargain.

'I have learned the secret of being content' (Philippians 4:12) Something told me that elderly lady had learnt the secret too.

Do you think contentment's something we can learn? Does modern society encourage us to be content?