Thank goodness for young neighbours and great nephews.

I had to get a new television.  Mine was deemed ‘old’ by the BBC and unfit for ‘Iplayer’ or ‘Netflix’. It was not simply a matter of unplugging the old and plugging in the new. Who knew that the television was in some way connected to the box in the study that makes my mobile telephone work? It was. Then the new one had to be ‘programmed’.

Fortunately one of my great nephews came to Sunday lunch and offered to come back the next day and sort it all out. He did. It involved a good deal of work little of which I understood. I gave him dinner. It was the least I could do.

British Telecom have ‘Gone Digital’, whatever that means and sent me a new ‘box’. Going Digital also involved plugging and unplugging ‘systems’ and entering numbers. Fortunately I have a young neighbour who helps with my garden and who understands these things. 

He came round and we telephoned British Telecom on ‘speaker’. My friend did the talking and answering the, to me, incomprehensible questions. The telephone is almost sorted. No home line;  just the mobile and the television.

Thank goodness for the young!

I thought back wistfully of my childhood when there was a telephone on a wall in the cold back hall. You wound a handle, lifted the receiver and a voice would say, ‘Number please.’ You gave the number and the voice would say, ‘I will put you through.’ And that was it. Of course sometimes one couldn’t get through. We survived.

Sometimes there is conversation and a general feeling of camaraderie in the men’s changing room at the Castle centre following a swimming session. On Monday, having done my 500 meters, I sat, pausing before the business of getting dressed and reassembled.

“How was that?” One of my fellow swimmers asked. We went on to discuss the benefits of swimming. He then suggested I take up yoga. I told him that I had – ‘chair yoga’.

“Say that again,” a younger man asked and I repeated,  ‘chair yoga.’

“How do you spell that?” And I spelt it. The young man laughed and said that he had thought I was referring to some particular Eastern variety of yoga. I said that the yoga I did involved me sitting on, beside, or behind a chair and that it was probably my New Zealand accent that misled him.

A general discussion followed about countries of origin and yoga. Among our number were men from Nigeria, Romania, Eritrea, Japan, Martinique and Sierra Leone; and some white Brits as well. We were all Londoners living near Elephant and Castle.

The conversation went on to problems of backs, knees and symptoms of unknown cause. We touched on the efficiency or not of Southwark Council. There was a brief comment about the American political situation and by the time I left it had moved on to football.

I wonder if the same thing happens in the women’s changing room or in most changing rooms.

Today is the first day of Lent for most Western Christians. Lent is that time of prayer, fasting and alms giving which precedes Holy Week and Easter. In my childhood it was quite usual to ask or be asked, “What are you giving up for Lent?” It was often chocolates, or sweets. We had Lent boxes to put some of our pocket money in each week. That was our alms giving. I can’t remember what we did for prayer.

In adulthood I remember once visiting my mother and, mistakenly, picking up her glass of gin and tonic instead of mine (it was after six) and taking a sip. It was only tonic, no gin at all. When I commented on this she said, “Of course not, it’s Lent!” She did not publicise her Lenten fast.

Recently I’ve become aware of how general fasting is in the world’s religions not only in Judaism and Islam but also in Buddhism and Hinduism. I shouldn’t be surprised. While so much attention is focused on the differences and divisions in our world there is a great deal that we have in common.

And perhaps we are being joined in out Lenten fast by a multitude of our secular friends who are on a diet to lose weight. I was frequently reminded at theological college that you must not separate mind body and spirit. We may end up this Easter fitter on every front.

I have always known that people of different countries and different groups eat different foods. I have known too that people eat with different instruments, knife and fork, chopsticks, fingers, and spoon and fork. And even within those categories there are subtle differences in the instruments and in the various ways of holding or using them.

It is only on this visit to Thailand that I have realised the importance of something much more basic. Western food and the manner of eating it is designed to be individual. Asian food is designed to be eaten communally. It is possible to have a meal of noodle soup or a rice dish here on one’s own. I do it frequently and enjoy it. However to really appreciate Thai food there needs to be at least four people, five or six different dishes, everything arriving whenever the food is ready and it is shared.

Certainly in restaurants serving western food having different courses in a particular order each dish for a particular person is still the norm though sharing food has become more common. I remember going to my favourite restaurant above all others, St John in London’s Smithfield where it is the custom to share – if it suits you. I was with a group of friends and said, as we were looking at the menu, “We usually share.” One of the group replied, “Actually I don’t.” And fair enough too though that would simply not work in a Thai restaurant here.

Today I have seen cormorants, gulls and herons at remarkably close quarters. Even closer were three crocodiles, one of them swimming, one which didn’t move, and a third which was sunning itself on a branch. It looked at me and then, quite deliberately, slowly turned around to have its back to me. But the most surprising sight on my gentle tour by boat of Sri Lanka’s Negombo Lagoon was that of one of the monkeys that came on board to eat the bananas offered by the boatman. This monkey ignored the bananas offered, deftly unscrewed the top of a bottle of water which was on a ledge at the bow, deliberately knocked over the bottle and drank the water as it poured out. Somewhere I thought I could hear Charles Darwin say, “I told you so.”