Friday morning

Jan started a GP-assisted exercise programme at the local gym yesterday. Nothing too fancy, some bike work and some dumb-bells, but we'll see how it goes. Last time she was exercising regularly she had to stop because of breaking a toe in the famous Dances With Fridges incident; how will this attempt end? Watch this space...

She just contextualised something Biblical for me. I had always assumed that "if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out" was just, you know, melodrama and didn't mean anything. I hadn't even thought about what "offend" meant in this context. And then Jan mentioned this long discussion she'd had with a Muslim man a few years back, about male-dominated cultures where the women are required to cover themselves up in case the men are tempted to attack them and what that really says about the men, and it suddenly clicked. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. Don't say "I can't help it, I have needs, I can't control myself." If you aren't going to, who is? If thy whatnot offend thee, tie a knot in it. We are each responsible for our own thoughts, words and deeds, and the world is not required to make it easier for us. And if we mess up, we take the consequences and don't whine about it.

That, at any rate, is the ideal.