I am on a cruise. There is Dhan from Nepal who was very patient with me when I wanted calvados as a night cap and there wasn’t any in the Observation Lounge but there was in the Club so he sorted it. Dhan was looking forward to watching the Nepal v Sri Lanka match but it seems it was washed out without a ball being bowled. There is Luz from Peru in the Colonnade Restaurant and she knows about New Zealand wines.

However this is not about alcohol or cricket. There is Marina who looks after my suite and is also from Peru and is married to Lee from Scotland who works in the restaurant but I haven’t met him yet. There is Emmanuel from Nigeria at the deck bar and Akmed from Indonesia at the Patio restaurant. These I’ve met and talked to and I’m only four days into a two week cruise from Dover to Lisbon.

Sadly my friend Jacobs from South Africa, who I met on a previous cruise, is on a different ship but I’ve met his friend from Zimbabwe who laughed when I said I knew him and commented that, “Jacobs is quite someone,” which he is.

I have also had brief conversations with members of staff from the United Kingdom, Portugal, Tunisia, India, the Philippines, Bulgaria and Spain.

There are about 400 crew and staff of this cruise and about the same number of guests. I meet the staff because I need something from them. I know their names because they wear name tags and we talk because they seem to have the time and are polite and friendly.

The passengers don’t wear labels and there’s no need for conversation however I have had a sentence or more with those from the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, and Belgium. I have been invited to dinner tonight by Jenn the Entertainment Manager, British, so I will meet others there.

There can be few other situations where such a diverse group of people meet and are together for fourteen days. Off course the crew and staff are largely young while the passengers are largely not. The first are being paid, the second paying. English is the common language though I’ve heard many others being spoken.

I know being on a cruise is not ‘real life’, however we are real, we are alive, and all this diversity contributes to making a very very pleasant holiday.

P.S. It occurs to me that the worshippers at St Agnes Kennington Park derive from at least ten different countries and that we are alive, real, a community, and are there for the long haul.

I watched an Indian film on Netflix the other evening. The drama was based on a true life story of a boy from a small village who decides, because of an incident at school, to become a corruption free policeman. The film is very well acted and directed and good to watch.

However what stuck me throughout the film was the generally accepted assumption that the police were corrupt. The hero, as boy and man, was fighting against the norm for his society.

Here in the United Kingdom the two great scandals of recent years, in the Post Office and in the NHS over the use of infected blood, have been brought out into the open and are being investigated. There are many countries in which these things would have remained covered up.

Here the system of Justice, while not perfect, is relatively free of corruption. Bribery is not endemic.  

Today is the eightieth anniversary of the D Day landings. The beginning of the liberation of Europe from authoritarian rule.

Can we see the practical results of that hard won liberation in our comparatively corruption free institutions?

When I watch television it is more for entertainment than education. The high standard of the acting and the production makes almost any British drama worth watching. The courtroom drama  ‘Judge John Deed’ is often my preference. It is very well written and acted, and, being a fictional drama, is a good deal more true to life than ‘Judge Judy’ which is ‘reality’ television.

I have watched just two episodes of the drama ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’. It is based on a true story. It makes chilling viewing and, it seems, has brought the true story more fully into the paths of justice than might otherwise have been the case.  The official Post Office Horizon inquiry continues.

At theological college in the sixties I found many of the set texts, works by theologians, sociologists and  philosophers, very difficult to take in.  I claimed that I learned more about human nature and about God from the novels of Dostoevsky than from any of the works of the contemporary theologians. I was probably right – at least about myself.

Shakespeare and so many other playwrights, especially for me Tennessee Williams,  present us with the greater and lesser truths of life from the stage of the theatre.

Through all this I recognise that different forms, including the works of theologians and philosophers, show us aspects of truth from different angles. And reality television? I suspect not.

Last Saturday, in the light of last week’s ‘Thought’, I changed my usual pattern. I went through my compact discs, took out the Beethoven symphonies, put into the player the disc with symphonies 4 and 7, and sat, and listened.

It came to me that it was in my fourth year at boarding school when I shared a study with three or four others one of them would go to the Public Library each week and take out a set of gramophone records. We would listen to them for the week. It was his idea, his initiative. I would never have thought of it. Perhaps Beethoven 2 one week then Eroica the next. I can’t remember the order. He chose.

Recordings of compositions by Tchaikovsky were certainly there too, even though the Music Master dismissed him as, “feeding the senses and failing to satisfy the mind.” I disagree profoundly with that view but no doubt he had his reasons.

Dvorak was there and Handel. My friend’s mother was a member of the Royal Christchurch Musical Society which performed ‘Messiah’ each year. Had she provided the musical encouragement?

Now, more than sixty five years later, as I enjoy my listening (with the sound turned up quite loud), I have good reason to be very grateful to that friend, the Christchurch Public Library, and those gramophone records.

It is wonderful to have more time. Only, of course, I don’t. I have exactly the same amount of time that I have always had. There are the same number of seconds in a minute, minutes in and hour and hours in a day, as there always have been. The difference is that now I make the choices over what to do with the time.

These choices bring both freedom and responsibilities. I can no longer blame work for being late, or even the traffic. Now I have the choice to leave earlier and work no longer rules my life nor is it a convenient excuse for getting out of things I simply don’t want to do.

In childhood my time was controlled by others though in school holidays we were set free to wander or picnic or make huts in the native bush alone and free in a way that is, I think, unheard of today. Then in adolescence and throughout my working life there was always a ‘given’ time frame.

It is only now in older age that my time is my own. I can stay in bed all day if I wish or spend my time playing patience on my i-pad or watching Midsomer Murders or Judge Judy on television. And having control of my time if I choose not to exercise my mind my body or my spirit, within the restrictions my age imposes, the consequences are my responsibility. Oh dear!