Festering wounds . . .

I finished yesterday at Tibberton, a typical Worcestershire farming village that seems a world away from Worcester itself, but is only a couple of miles to the North East.

Today I am planning to go a far as Stoke Pound another village that boaters through the ages have looked forward to arriving at. It marks the upper end of the Astwood and Stoke flights of locks (six locks each) and the lower end of the massive Tardebigge flight of 30 locks.

There is a much-used pub at Stoke Pound - fancy that!

I actually arrived at Stoke Pound in the early afternoon and set about some necessary paint repairs on Chyandour's roof. When it was repainted a couple of years ago, a number of rust breakouts were not really dealt with properly, and they have erupted again. So it has been necessary to scrape them out to metal (rust) level and treat with Fertan. When this has done its work I will fill the craters to raise the surface to the current paint level again, and then prime and top coat. Hopefully that will sort the problem out.

Doing this got me thinking about how often in life we cover up things that have not really been properly dealt with, only to have them break out and bite us on the bottom again, usually when we least expect them, and often many years later.

One of the most insidious of these is the inability to forgive. Whether it is something monstrous or seemingly insignificant, they both have the ability to paralyse or so control our whole being that we can end up bitter or constrained by feelings that we do not really understand. Not was it for nothing that our Lord taught that we are to forgive to the uttermost, just as we have been forgiven.