I don’t know what it is but somehow I seem to have this built in
affinity, this natural magnetism, for being in the right place at the
wrong time, for starting off my days in the most exciting of ways! I
don’t know what it is. Just lucky, I guess! Take this morning, for
instance: I was crossing the RR tracks, just across the corner from
St. James’, which leads into the town center, when all of sudden the
warning alarm began to go off and before I knew it the guard was
coming down – and right onto my right shoulder! Thankfully not very
hard, causing me instinctively to jump forward out of the way, not so
good because immediately I noticed that I was INSIDE the rails, on
the track side. Oh, great! Not to worry, though, as the bell always
sounds well before the train approaches, so wasn’t in imminent danger.
Would have made a good silent movie – me jumping back and forward,
fighting to find my way through the maze!
On Sunday Brother Rod Collier, a member of the bishopric, found me
outside waiting in the back for our ride home. He said he had wanted
to greet me (somehow he had noticed me there amongst the
congregation), but that one contact or another had prevented him from
catching up with me in the chapel. (Besides that, after my dressing
down, I had high tailed it out of there, I can tell you, to cool my
burning face.) Reading straight through my unrelenting curiosity, he
mentioned that, in case I was interested (Me?!), a lot of church
history had actually taken place in this very locale -- right here in
little ol’ Grimsby! AND that he would be happy to share the
information he knew with me sometime.
Just for a teaser, to go along with the subtitle, I can tell you that
Grimsby, being about THE major port on the northeast side of England,
was the very spot where early Church converts would have landed, on
their way across the country to Liverpool, from whence they boarded a
ship to sail the long distance across the Atlantic Ocean on their way
to America – and eventually, Zion, in the west. That would have
included our Scandinavian ancestors, trekking their way over from
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
[Came across another Debbie (yes, we both admitted it was a common
name among women of our age): the librarian here on the reference
floor, who helped me figure out how to print something today. (Had to
log onto one of the library’s computers in order to do it. All of us
library card holders are allotted a ready 30 free minutes of usage per
day at these stations. Also has a secure server, unlike the public
PolkaSpots network in the library or the O2 wifi available at MacDs.)
Deborah Jane. Nice – another Cabbage Patch-sounding name.]
Photos_
1- the legendary Grimsby Docks - with museum on the present site, the
National Heritage Fishing Center
2- a forefather of Grimsby, at his nets
3- RR crossing - site of my most recent “incident,” with train, sans me
Postscript_ Oh man, you should have seen the size of the spider I
found -- on its side – in the sink last evening. Ugh. Gave me a start,
I can tell you. I thought spider first, then nah, must be the green
top on a tomato. Shared that information with Sandra, who got up out
of her chair for that one. “Are you sure it’s not the green stem top
to a tomato?” Man, I don’t think so, but maybe I’m just imagining
things. (Interesting that she had the exact same thought as me, and
she hadn’t even seen it yet!) Yeah, it was a dead spider alright. She
casually said that it must have washed up into the sink with the
clothes washer water. (Probably didn't even begin to compare to the
gigantuans Erin encountered in Africa, but hey! this baby was BIG,
I'll tell you!) Oh, boy, kind of threw me off for the rest of
the evening. Where did it come from and where else are THOSE monstrous
things hiding?!
