At coffee after church at St Agnes I said, “Why don’t we have a working bee.” There was a surprised silence. “You know,” I added, “to tidy up the church grounds.”  ”But what have bees to do with it?” I was asked.

Only after some investigation did I discover that the term ‘working bee’, for a group of volunteers undertaking a common task usually for a charitable cause, is peculiar to New Zealand. In England sewing bees yes, working bees no.

I’d discovered some time ago that while I grew up putting ‘sippets’ in my soup people in England were putting ‘croutons’ in theirs. The Edwardian English adopted many French terms leaving behind the 19^th Century words. My great grandfather in Devon had sippets in his soup and we continued to do so at Mt Peel in my youth.

‘Skiting’ was deplored in my New Zealand childhood and there were no ‘skites’ in England when I arrived here in 1962. There were some ‘show offs’ though, and ‘showing off’ was equally frowned upon. Different words with the same meaning. Now, thank goodness, children who show enthusiasm or talent are applauded not reprimanded.

There’s a story which illustrates the shifts in the meanings of words over time.

During the construction of St Paul’s Cathedral, it is said, the king was taken on a tour of the works by the chief architect, Sir Christopher Wren.  When the excursion was complete the king told Wren that the new building was amusing, awful, and artificial. Wren did not feel insulted. He was very pleased. In the 1600s amusing meant amazing, awful meant awe-inspiring, and artificial meant artistic. 

Whether the event happened or not the meaning of the words then is clear.  

And ‘amusing’ has had a very varied history. When Cousin Mary told me sometime in the 1980s that her manservant had cried when she left Persia in the early 1900s, she said, “it was most amusing.” And she did not mean ‘funny’. She was very affected by his tears.

Nowadays words seem to change their meaning very quickly certainly as far as slang is concerned ‘evil’ and ‘wicked’ have no negative connotations at all in some contexts. While the ‘cool’ of the sixties had nothing to do with temperature nor does the ‘sharp’ used by my optician to describe my  new spectacle frames have anything to do with knives.

My age seems to excuse me in my use and misuse of many words. However when it comes to politically correct speech I walk through a minefield and am likely to be ‘blown up’ at any miss step.

It is Saturday and I’ve just come back from my local Farmers’ Market. It’s what I do on Saturday mornings. The market is in the grounds of St Mark’s Church across the road from Oval tube Station. The pavements around the station were swarming with people. It was difficult to get through. They were not going to the market. There was cricket at The Oval. A Test Match. Day three of England versus Australia. And the crowd? Those going to watch the cricket at The Oval this morning were racially diverse and almost totally male. I’m surprised the law allows it!

The fires on Rhodes and Corfu continue to make headlines with horrifying images on television news. Fire is terrifying. It must be dreadful for those involved, locals and tourists. The Greek economy with tourism a major part of it is bound to be adversely affected. From the news it would be easy to imagine the whole of the Island of Rhodes is being evacuated. It is not. The destruction and devastation is serious. No injuries have been reported.

In one report today online I read:

‘Wildfires continued to burn across Greece on Monday, with the islands of Rhodes and Corfu – both popular tourist spots – worst affected.’

The report continues with stories of ’panic’ and ’hysteria’.  The stories of individual tourists and what is happening to them make frightening reading.

I have friends holidaying in Corfu. This morning I sent a WhatsApp message wondering if they were ok. I had this reply,

“We’re fine thank you. In the thirty years we’ve been coming to Corfu there have always been wildfires some very close indeed to us. The fire services and the locals put them out. These ones aren’t close and they worked through the night on them and apparently have almost done so. The panic was caused by a new municipal disaster policy which was implemented for the first time yesterday. Everyone got alerts their phones. Caused panic among the first time tourists. Locals bemused.”

Near the end of the long online report I read: 

‘The UK Government is not advising people against travelling to Rhodes, despite the fires.

Mr Mitchell (a Foreign Office minister) said: “It’s important to remember that only 10 per cent of the island is affected by these fires. And therefore it is the tourist companies and the holiday experts who are best placed to give guidance on whether or not a family or individuals’ holidays are going to be ruined by these events.

“What we’re telling people to do is to keep in touch with their tourist company, and that is the right advice.”

Can we rely on clear factual news from the television news and print media?

We ‘did’ Shakespeare’s, ‘All the world’s a stage,’ speech from Act 2 of ‘As You Like It’ when I was at school and it must have registered as I still remember much of it, not least:

‘Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’

I still have all of my own teeth, some of them bought at a price from a wonderful dentist, and as for the rest I’m not doing too badly. I have however been thinking lately about purpose and in particular the purpose of old age.

The purpose of Alzheimer’s or its equivalents is different and is about community. I’m thinking about my purpose ‘compos mentis’ now.

A good friend quoted Powell to me the other day, “Old age is like being increasingly penalised for a crime which you never committed.” That is fine except that some of the negatives of old age are clearly caused by our own behaviour and habits earlier on in life. And many of society’s ills are clearly caused by our collective past practices.

When my mother was in her nineties she quoted, “Old age is not for sissies.” And she, always positive throughout her life, added, “It sometimes takes until eleven in the morning for me to feel positive about the day ahead.”

There is of course a fundamental question as to whether there needs to be any purpose in life at all. I believe there is. It has something to do with living life to the full.

So far in my thinking I’ve managed to divide life into three sections each with a different emphasis. It’s not a matter of ’either or’, or, ’all or nothing’. It is primary emphases. 

The emphasis of the first stage of life seems to me to be on the body and the whole business of growing up physically. Of course we are integrated beings and everything is involved but I’m thinking chiefly or primarily.

 Then I think the emphasis shifts to that of the mind and using the mind. That’s the second stage or phase. This is middle age.

In the third stage, old age, the emphasis (and this is the stage I’m interested in especially because I’m in it,) is the spirit. Is this the age of the spirit? Or, as a friend put it at lunch the other day, of reflection. Could this be the mood of the third stage?

We’ve rather lost it in the West but in the past here and in other cultures old age is the age of experience and wisdom to be respected and learned from. This, I think, is the age of the spirit – the age of the deeper realities, the spiritual realities.

If this is the case it’s doesn’t really matter if others want to learn from their elders or not. If ‘they’ don’t want or value us does it matter? That may be their loss not ours. What is important surely is that I, at this stage, live life fully.

The worship of youth is the fault of my generation not theirs. In the same way, ‘He (or she) is so spoilt,’ when said in condemnatory tones about a child is surely the fault of the spoiler not the spoilt. 

The Fifth Commandment: ‘Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,’ has long since disappeared from the knowledge of the nation. Somewhere from the sixties or seventies we began to idolise our children and another commandment went down the drain with that.

But none of this need prevent those of us who are older giving full value and purpose to the time of life we have now. I think my time may be about reflection, understanding (or trying to) and learning. And all of that seems to me quite interesting and not in the least like punishment. 

Tennis was the only sport I really enjoyed and I remember as a boy playing each summer in the Peel Forest Tennis Tournament. Peel Forest was our local village. My performance was adequate unlike that of my elder brother who was very competitive and very good indeed. 

My mother had played for her school and was Captain of Tennis. I remember old school photos of her in the Woodford House Tennis Team. She was also Captain of Hockey.  I did not inherit the sporting gene.

In the 1980’s when I was working in a parish in Kensington I used to be given tickets to the Centre Court at Wimbledon including for the men’s final. Sorry, ‘Gentlemen’s Singles’, it’s Wimbledon and there words as well as manners are important. An elderly parishioner had, I think, inherited tickets for Centre Court seats and she, being elderly and no longer wanting to go to Wimbledon herself would give some to me.

This year, being elderly myself, I’ve been watching Wimbledon on the television. It’s wonderful. Not the same as being there but still wonderful and without the hassle of getting there and getting home again. A Thai friend has been staying, himself a very capable tennis player until his knee gave way, and he has been asking awkward questions.

“Why ‘love’?” and, “Why fifteen, thirty, forty?” Deuce makes a degree of sense but there was not much sense in the rest even after a little research. I did enjoy Google’s conclusion for ‘love’. It was something to the effect that even if you lose, ‘love’, you continue to play ‘for love of the game’.

At Wimbledon we see the best, the world’s tennis playing elite. At Lord’s there’s the Ashes with the elite of cricket from Australia and England playing there. I’m not watching that. I hated cricket at school. It was compulsory.

What puzzles me is that while these elites are to be celebrated, to be elitist is not. To be ‘Elitist’ is placed alongside being ‘Racist’ and ‘Sexist’. 

From the Oxford Dictionary. Elite:  a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.

To be the best seems very good to me even if I’m not.

From Roget’s Thesauras Synonyms for Elitist: highbrow, name-dropper, pompous person, stuffed shirt, stiff, pompous ass, social climber.

I understand that ‘Elitism’, another negative word, only came into being in the 1950s.

Changing words and changing meanings, it can be difficult to keep up, but more of that another time.