OPEN MY EYES

Went out fishing with Daughter No. 3 yesterday. Had a wonderful time. Always good to be in a boat with a daughter – not many things to distract them when out on the sea. She caught a lot of mackerel, and a beautiful garfish, one of the most striking looking fish we get in our waters. They have incredible turquoise scales (which are now ringing our bath tub), and even their bones glow a bluey-green, apparently caused by a phosphate of iron.



We didn’t realize there was a whale in Poole Bay.

We must have gone right past it. We saw the RNLI lifeguards on their jetski looking for something, but didn’t know it was a struggling whale that had been reported by someone. The poor thing later washed ashore, dead.

The sea is full of surprises – didn’t expect to get a garfish, and didn’t think there was a whale about. Funny how you can miss the obvious – how could we not see a whale that must have been right where we were?

I did manage to avoid the nutter who has taken to swimming across the incredibly dangerous harbour mouth each day, although with the low sun behind him I didn’t spot him until quite late on. It can only be a matter of time before he goes the same way as the whale.

A friend rebuked me today for not adding tags to my blog posts – said it makes it hard to find things I’ve written on subjects that might interest him. I was puzzled as to why he couldn’t just type a word into the search box at the top of the page.

Different ones of us have different ways of spotting the obvious I guess.

Its only in the past couple of days that I’ve realized the mudflats of Poole Harbour are stuffed with clams. Having discovered it, Grace and I stuffed ourselves with them last night – fresh clams, in a wine and cream sauce with linguine. Delicious.

Life is full of surprises. The obvious often stares us in the face and we walk past, oblivious.

Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law (Psalm 119:18)… I pray that that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you (Ephesians 1:17-19).