A truly surprising realisation is that it has taken me eighty three years to discover one of the most celebrated quotations of G.K.Chesterton. 

That when we choose not to believe in God, we do not thereafter believe in nothing. We then become capable of believing in anything.

Even at this age I have new discoveries to make. 

PS And another new discovery is that Chesterton’s celebrated quote is actually by the Belgian Emile Leon Cammaerts who wrote chiefly in French and English and translated Chesterton’s Father Brown books into French. I continue to live and learn.

A truly surprising realisation is that it has taken me eighty three years to discover one of the most celebrated quotations of G.K.Chesterton.

That when we choose not to believe in God, we do not thereafter believe in nothing. We then become capable of believing in anything.

Even at this age I have new discoveries to make.

PS And another new discovery is that Chesterton’s celebrated quote is actually by the Belgian Emile Leon Cammaerts who wrote chiefly in French and English and translated Chesterton’s Father Brown books into French. I continue to live and learn.

Yesterday was the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle, Doubting Thomas. I have always liked this remembrance as it reminds me that the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. Doubt is at the very heart of faith. Faith, Hope and Charity (or Love if that is preferred) all have this element of doubt or of risk. They are the stuff of life. Not one of them is a dead certainty.

In old age I am finding that planning for the future is primarily about living in the present. Of course I still have a diary and appointments ahead, not all medical, and there are arrangements to be made for tomorrow. However my focus is more than ever on today and relishing the moment. It’s rather good. I suppose some of it is letting tomorrow take care to itself.

Today is polling day in the United Kingdom. A major question for the political prophets has been, ‘How big will Labour’s majority be?’ or ‘How many seats will the Conservatives lose?’ Similar questions put in different ways have such different tones.

There has, understandably, been a good deal in the news about the forthcoming general election in the UK. Some of it has been about gambling in which Members of Parliament from both sides of the House, it seems, have been involved. And I heard, quite distinctly, one news presenter referring to MPs ‘gambolling’. I do hope they have been. News stories and pictures of MPs gambolling in the fields might be good for the country and lighten the atmosphere considerably. The warm weather would be right for it too.

This time in Bilbao I was determined to try and come to terms with the inside spaces of the Frank Ghery designed Guggenheim Museum. I have always enjoyed the outside, the stone, titanium and steel of the construction and the wonderful shapes of the building be it ship or flower. The inside as exhibition space I have found more difficult.

Once inside, following my Basque guide’s suggestion, I went firstly to the vast exhibition space which now is fully occupied by The Matter of Time a steel sculpture by the American Richard Serra. It is a monumental work which was commissioned for the space and it fills it.

It is, ‘a site-specific instillation of unprecedented scale and dimension in recent history. Freed from the traditional pedestal or base, the eight sculptures were conceived to induce a global experience that also engages the exhibition space.’

It consists of huge curved steel plates, each different but associated and arranged so that you can walk between them.

I tried. I walked around and between them and found the experience disconcerting and disturbing. There are no flat surfaces apart from the floor and at times I felt that it was curved as well even though it was not. I have never been good at enclosed spaces and the nightmares of both my childhood and adulthood have involved being trapped in tunnels and the like. Perhaps, if it was meant to do this, it worked.

I did not spend long with the Richard Serra and went and sat down in a different gallery.

There are those who argue that some work is there precisely to cause a reaction, to disconcert and perhaps distress. If it is, that’s fine. I realise more and more that there are films and books, paintings and art in various forms the purpose of which is to engage in this way.

At the age I am now I can choose not to engage. It is not that I only want ‘happy endings’ and ‘comfort food’ but rather that I encounter enough sad endings in life to not deliberately embrace them in art. And as for food I want it to delight my palate as well as feed my body. I am prepared to try something different but I am less prepared to knowingly enter distress.