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.

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.