How sad it is when members of a family fall out with each other, especially a father and son. It seems even worse when this results in civil war, but this is what happened to King David and his son Absalom, as we learnt in our latest study at the Kielder Bible Study Group.

The country is in such great upheaval that the royal family has to flee from the capital for their lives, and then there follows a massive battle between sides, as can be read in 2 Samuel 18

Sadly all does not go well with the usurper and he gets his hair caught in a tree as he is trying to flee. He comes to a very gruesome end which is described in detail in Samuel.

There then follows another rebellion which is detailed in 2 Samuel 20 which details the Sheba rebellion. He was a distant relative of Saul. He suggested that the nation split in two and the non Judah tribes attack David. Joab David’s commander deals with the situation ultimately getting the people who were sheltering Sheba to cut off his head and give it to Joab 2 Samuel 20 v22

So this ends the rebellions and David is reinstalled as King over the whole country.

The local wildlife are feasting on all the plums. The rooks settle on the higher branches shaking them causing the plumbs to fall to the ground. A fox has then been feasting on them, along with the local mole colony. They have opened up one of their hills and evidently been dragging the rotting plumbs down their hole.

Having picked a very large tub full and spent three hours cutting and stoning them, I was able to use them for cooking. Some went to the freezer, some for a crumble and some for jam. The recipe is given below making 4-5 medium sized jars of jam

Ingredients
1 Kg washed stoned plumbs
Grated zest and juice from one lemon and one lime
900kg granulated sugar
300ml water

Method
Put plums in large pan
Add 300ml water
Bring to boil and simmer for around 30 minutes until the fruit is squashy
Add the zest, fruit juice and sugar
Boil vigorously for around 10 minutes until the setting point is reached
Put clean glass jars in oven at 140 C with lids off upside-down for 10 minutes. Also put lids in oven if metal
With great care take glass jars out of oven and fill to just below the top with the jam
Cover with disks of waxed paper
Put lids on, label and store in cool dark place
Should keep for around 12 months, though once open keep in fridge

This is book 4.  Last bus to Woodstock is the first Inspector Morse novel, and is more carefully plotted than many subsequent books in the series, as the reader is not deliberately led astray.

It is claimed that Colin Dexter starting writing what would become Last Bus to Woodstock on a 1972 family holiday in North Wales. Sitting in the kitchen on a rainy Saturday afternoon he committed to paper a few paragraphs regarding a detective named Morse. Knowing where it would be set in Oxford and from then onwards the great series of novels progresses.

This year we have a bumper crop of small plums. In fact so many that several branches have broken off the tree in the recent high winds. This has generated large numbers of windfalls which seemed a waste to leave to go rotten so have turned some of them into Plum Chutney. This tastes fantastic in salads or in sandwiches. The recipe is given below

Ingredients

1 large bowl full of stoned and chopped plumbs 1- 1.5kg
350-400gms chopped and cored apples (windfalls are good here)
250gms chopped onions
150gms raisins
1 Chopped chilli
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
600 ml cider vinegar – or white wine vinegar
250-300gms brown sugar (more sugar is needed if using cooking apples, and if plumbs are not quite ripe)

Method

Put all the ingredients into a large pan
Bring to the boil and stir until all the sugar is dissolved
Simmer gently for 1.5 -2 hours until a golden brown colour - stir regulalrly to make sure does not stick
Put clean glass jars in oven at 140 C with lids off upside-down for 10 minutes. Also put lids in oven if metal
The chutney should be thick and glossy now
With great care take glass jars out of oven and fill to just below the top.
Cover with disks of waxed paper
Put lids on, label and store in cool dark place
Should keep for around 12 months, though once open keep in fridge

This is book 3. I must admit that I have forgotten to update this so am a little behind compared to my reading still - The 7 kingdoms continue their battles, leading to magic cunning and cruelty. This being the third book in the characters are more alive. Very hard to put down

I have finally made the plunge and changed Broadband supplier as my existing supplier put up its prices by £5 a month, and moved to BT broadband. The move went fine, (well so far anyway). It happened when they said it would, and the wireless router was delivered on the same day preconfigured. Just plug it in, the broadband worked first time. Amazing. A little while later the laptop was talking to the router, and email back up and running again. Great
I then tried installing BT Net Protect on the small old vista laptop. It first required that I remove all the security I had on the machine then two hours later, as it is such a large download file I got it installed. So I next tried to install it on my more powerful windows 7 desktop. It would not install. It just came up with the message sorry install failed please try again. Now this would not matter if the file was relatively quick to download, but even with my 8 Mbs link it still took between 20 to 60 minutes to download each time. (For security the program forced a new download every time). So after a wasted the evening I gave up reinstalled what I had previously and left it.

A couple of days later BT sent me a helpful email reminder saying that now I had the broadband up and working, I should install NetProtectPlus and if I was having any problems gave a phone number with a real person person to speak to. So like a fool I uninstalled all the program that clashed with the NetProtectPlus, download it again and tried to install it again. It failed so phoned up help and support. Now for the last 16 years I have worked either as part of a IT support desk or been responsible for one so I know a little about IT support and this was a prime example of how not to do it. The very polite lady took no notice of what I said and proceeded just to try and reinstall the software, even though I had told he it had just failed. She was evidently working from a check list. After it failed for her she passed me over to a level 2 support lady. Again very polite but working from a check list, though she did have an interesting set of reasons as to why it did not work – Incomparable with IE9, did not like the Java I had installed, the same for the pdf reader – it was not Adobe; and the wireless router was at fault; the speed of the broadband was too slow etc etc After three hours she came up with the idea that I had a virus on the machine. Well I told her this was not likely as I had scanned it before staring the process, if there was one it would have come from her machine. Still she insisted that this was the reason and proceed to reinstall one of the rival supplier programs I had removed to scan the machine. Well of course there was no virus. So after 4 hours on the phone to India it was escalated to the next level of support

A couple of days later after several emails and attempted phone calls contact with level 3 support is finally made. The person here seemed to largely want to repeat what the previous person had done, and when I pointed this out they almost stopped communicating with me. Three hours later it did not work. As this person was not really communicating with me except when I was needed to reboot my machine or log on to the BT site to get the download , I was using my old trusty laptop. It was now not working very well, and crashed giving the blue screen of death. The first time probably in 3 years. On further investigation I found that NetProtectPlus was using twice as much resources as anything else on the machine, making it almost unusable- so it has been removed and my previous protection put back on. A brief review for the BT forum website on NetProtectPlus has page after page of complaints about it. A few can be found here http://community.bt.com/t5/Other-BB-Queries/problems-downloading-Bt-netprotect-plus/td-p/32240 It has comments from users who are even having problems getting it to work on brand new machines. After 7 hours on support calls and 2 hours trying to do the install myself I have given up with NetProtectPlus, and put my old protection back. It may work well in a cabled environment but it does not seem to work in a nornal home environment.

A shame really otherwise the process had gone very well – just avoid NetProtectPlus until it is improved.

This section of 2 Samuel chapters 12 -14, along with what we are looking at next time is an area of the Bible that is not often covered in detail in sermons. Previously I have read it a couple of times once when I read the whole Bible in a year and after that when I reread the whole Bible in historical order, but this time taking three years to do so. Both were quite a challenge.

The study we looked at linked here  looks at what happens to David’s family as a result of his fling with Bathsheba. Evidently his Son Amnon thinks that going after a beautiful women is OK, except that this time he goes way too far and rapes his half sister. Her brother Absalom then rightly takes offence at this and kills Amnon his half brother. Meanwhile the impression given is that David just looked on not really knowing what to do when all this trouble and strife was happening in his family. Sadly Nathan's prophecy from 2 Samuel 12 is all coming true.

Eventually there is a sort of reconciliation between father and son in 2 Samuel 14 but this does not last long as will be seen in the next study.

The thing to remember is Paul’s words from Galatians 6 v7-8

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

Book two is - The Road to Grandolfo – by Robert Ludlum

Black humour by the spy master Robert Ludlum – General Mackenzie Hawkins starting his illegal activities, with Sam Deveraux the ex-Harvard Lawyer helping him. His first plan for making lots of money is a very ambitious one

Watching the Great British Bake Off, always makes me feel really hungry, especially for things I cannot eat due to the low fat diet I am on, so to combat this graving, I thought we would have a lovely Risotto, with freshly baked bread. The ingredients for the Risotto were largely inspired by what needed to be eaten in the fridge. (Any suitable vegetables will really do. ). Anyway this is what I used to make a meal for two.

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion finely chopped
• 1 clove of Garlic finely chopped
• 1 red pepper coarsely chopped
• A handful of stick beans chopped to 1 cm lengths
• A stick of celery finely chopped
• 2 large courgettes coarsely grated
• 175gms Risotto rice
• 1 litre of vegetable stock (or Chicken stock)
• 1 tbsp of Olive oil (a couple of glugs)
• Half a glass full of white wine
• Herbs – Chives, Tarragon, Basil, Parsley, Mint
• Salt and freshly ground back pepper

Method

• In a large pan lightly fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil until the onion goes translucent
• Add the chopped pepper, chopped stick beans, and chopped celery and fry for a further minute
• Turn the heat up and add the Risotto rice making sure it is all thoroughly coated with hot oil. The rice will become translucent
• Add the wine stirring round and let it simmer. This removes any alcohol it has but keeps the taste and flavour
• Add half the grated courgettes
• Stir in the chopped herbs, and season with salt and pepper
• Start adding the stock. 1 spoonful at a time and stirring the pan regularly. The heat will probably be needed to be turned down but need to make sure simmering
• Each time the stock becomes absorbed add the next spoonful. This whole process will take around 20 minutes. After 10 minutes of stirring and adding stock
• The mixture will become creamy in texture as the rice cooks. Just before serving add a little more mint just to add that fresh taste.
• Grated Parmesan cheese can be added if required.

Serve with warm crusty bread. (and the rest of the bottle of wine if allowed to drink it)