An Ever-rolling Stream

I'd like to say that this week's title is as a result of an exciting journey in a picturesque landscape.  A few years ago there would have been little doubt about that but, since retirement, such journeys are few and far between.  Instead, the words come from a hymn often sung at Remembrance services: "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away / They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day."

This week's journey has certainly been exciting, but not in the sense of travel.  Nevertheless, those lines are relevant in more senses than one.  I thought of the effect of a river on the rocks and boulders in its path.  What seems so hard and permanent is proved to be quite changeable as the river passes constantly over it and gradually wears it away.  In the same way, something that seems insurmountable in life can melt away or take on a completely different shape.

When I joined the Liberal Democrats a couple of years ago, it was just before a leadership election.  Because their constitution accords a vote on such matters to every member, however new, I received a phone call one day from Norman Lamb, asking for my support.  Seeing from his notes that I was a new member, he asked why I'd joined the party and I gave him the same two reasons that I've told other people.  One was the 'heritage factor', a passing comment by my father that his father (who died within a year of my birth, so I have no memory of him) "always spoke well of the 'little Welshman'" i.e. David Lloyd George.  The other was a long-held observation that their way of politics was co-operational, rather than confrontational, which seems a very common-sense approach to so much in life.

Once I was proudly wearing the yellow dove, came the big question, 'what could I now do to further the cause?'  I went to meetings, to a regional conference, to the launch of the general election campaign, but this was all 'taking in'; what could I 'give out'?  I felt - and still do - a great reluctance to get involved in political discussion; it's one thing to hear a speech and feel in agreement with it ... it's entirely another to come up with the right answer to a question on the hoof (or the doorstep!).  So far, I have contented myself with office help in election campaigns, folding leaflets and so on.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, when an e-mail arrived last week - part of an all-member circulation - asking if I'd like to stand as a candidate in next May's local elections, it was quickly on its way to the 'deleted' folder.  A follow-up this week almost joined it ... until I noticed a phrase at the bottom, 'or an election agent'.  Curious, I decided to find out what this might involve and, discovering that it sounds very much like being the accountant for the campaign, I'm now considering whether I want to be involved in a way I had never imagined before.

My other excitement is more personal.  A particular problem had been occupying my thoughts for the last few weeks and I'd been finding more difficulty than usual in sleeping.  Often I'd woken after a couple of hours' sound sleep and then lost an hour or two in a vain struggle to regain Morpheus' embrace.  Over and over in my mind, I would replay potential conversations, alternative attempts to overcome this difficulty: if I were to say so-and-so, would that lead to ... or would it make things worse?  I'm sure many others have played the same unproductive mind games before me.

This week, what I had anticipated with some apprehension as being the encounter that would herald the denouement of the matter, was suddenly precipitated into a business meeting.  The parties assembled in readiness for this but, before the serious discussions began, conversation revealed that the problem that had confronted me was not precisely what I'd thought it to be.  The sharing of views and an understanding of each other's situation quickly led to a solution that will, it seems, be beneficial to all parties and certainly one that I'm looking forward to seeing in action.

Some dreams, as in the hymn, die at the opening day ... others linger, turn into nightmares, and need tranquillity and common sense to dispel them.