Epiblog For the Eighth Sunday After Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and one that almost saw the demise of this trusty old laptop, which would have left me no alternative other than to scribe these words out on a sheet of stretched goat’s vellum (I won’t stretch things too far by shoehorning in the stretched goat joke yet again at this juncture, just imagine it’s there, OK?) and nail them, rather like Martin Luther, Lex Luthor, or even Luther VanDross, to the door.

Fortunately, the damage to the laptop is confined to its screen, which we think can be repaired, ultimately, although at the moment, I am using the big screen from Debbie’s computer upstairs in the office, plugged in as an auxiliary. It may well be, that if the screen is going to cost hundreds of pounds to fix, then a cheap flat screen is the more viable option anyway.

It happened on Tuesday night: I had been working on stuff (as usual) and job applications, and trying to stem the endless tide of email, and so on. It had become time for tea, so I closed the laptop lid and carefully propped it up on its end, out of the way, or so I thought, leaning against the sofa.

At some point during my preparation of whatever culinary masterpiece I was engaged upon (the experience was so horrible that even recollecting it has wiped the crucial details from my memory) Granny arrived with Zak and Freddie, who we were babysitting for the night. Somehow, in all this seething mass of milling dogs and people, Debbie got up off the sofa to do something, caught the laptop with the toe of one of her size 10 commando boots, and knocked it over onto its lid. The fearful crack which ensued silenced the room as if it had been a pistol shot, then I called her a clumsy clodhopping gallumphing great moose, and she said it was my fault, and that it shouldn’t have been left where people could trip over it, adding for good measure that since I had been “clanking around like Ironside”, I smelt of “old people, cats, and leakages”.

After that free and frank discussion we all felt much better, and the rest of the evening passed in semi-monastic silence, though the dogs all bore a worried expression, and Tiggy kept raising a sympathetic eyebrow in my direction.

Wednesday dawned worse. At that point, of course, I didn’t know it was only the screen, and I thought I had lost the laptop and everything on it, since backups are about as rare around here as watering holes in the Atacama desert. While I was trying to find a mobile computer repair bod online on Yell.com, using Debbie’s little notebook, which only had the iffiest of connections to the outside world, Deb let Tiggy out into the garden. The next thing I saw was that Butch, the large and frankly unpredictable dog from next door, had got her pinned up against the conservatory door. Butch has "form" in this respect, because he's had a fight with Tiggy in our garden when he’s got out unattended before, and on that occasion he bowled her over and left teethmarks on her. Bearing in mind she’s 98 in human years, she wasn’t going to put up much of a fight.

Anyway, Deb was out of earshot so I trundled over to the door, clanking like a tank with the urgency of it all, and managed to wedge it open enough for Tig to scuttle back inside and escape, at which point it then looked as if Butch was going to try and follow, so I stood (or should that be sat?) my ground and stared him down. He had a prototype snarl on his face and for a few seconds I thought he was going to jump at my face but fortunately he realised from something in my demeanour that, had he attempted it, it would have been his last mortal act on this earth, and instead, he slunk off. Either that, or he didn’t fancy the idea of that much iron in his diet. So I shouted at the top of my voice to my neighbour to keep his ######## dog under control, and keep it in his garden, shut the door, and came back in.

Then, just after I had got back on to trying to sort out the laptop, Deb was outside at the front of the house getting in some coal and I suddenly heard a gigantic kerfuffle from that direction, with Deb shouting "#### off!" at the top of her voice. It turned out Butch had gone round the side of the house, reappeared at the front, and was now chasing Kitty in the front garden. Deb said she thought that Kits had escaped, but where to she didn't know. Faced with Debbie in full berserker Valkyrie mode, the dog had wisely turned tail and fled. I was all for phoning the next door neighbour there and then and ripping him a new one, but in the interests of peace and harmony, Debbie stopped me. A couple of times she went back outside to look for Kits, but couldn't see her anywhere around. I was scared she'd been hurt and couldn’t get back to us or something, or worse, that she was now lying dead somewhere under a bush with her neck snapped.

Glumly, I carried on working, thinking the worst, until, eventually, after about an hour and a half, she reappeared, with her head, ears, and whiskers absolutely covered in cobwebs, Wherever she'd hidden, no one else had been there for a l-o-o-o-n-g time. At least, not with a duster. So, all’s well that ends well, I guess, but as I said to Debbie, as soon as this current imbroglio over jobs, wheelchairs and money is sorted, a high priority needs to be beefing up the fence between us and them. Like Robert Frost once said, “good fences make good neighbours”.

Eventually I made contact with a guy who comes round to your house and fixes laptops and comps, and he came round to have a look. Using his instructions, we connected it up to a remote screen, (actually, I did already know how to do this, but I had forgotten), and he's coming back next week to see if he can take it apart and fix it. In a worst case scenario I might be without it for two weeks (eeek!) but at least I have backed everything up and saved it, better late than never, eh?

Apart from their adventurous Wednesday, the animals have had their usual leisurely week. I have noticed how Kitty, whenever you say something to her, almost always answers back. Unfortunately, since none of us speaks cat, we have no idea what she’s saying, though the general tone is always both querulous and cantankerous. Spidey, next door’s cat (next door the opposite way to Butch) has been coming in through Kitty’s cat flap at night and sleeping in our spare bedroom again. I fully expect it to come down one morning and ask to see the breakfast menu. Apart from her tussle with Butch, Tig has been putting on her usual “I’m an old, deaf dog, me” act, hobbling around, at least until she hears the tantalising rustle of a packet of dog-treats being unwrapped, then somehow she manages to magically twinkle across the kitchen floor in a nano-second and stand there, tail wagging in anticipation.

For myself, it was a week of staggering tedium. The bright spot being that I finally got Zen and the Art of Nurdling off to press (now all I have to do is update the whole web site and then do loads of publicity for it). This only leaves me Catheter Come Home and Dora Darley is My Darling to finish of my own books, and then I’ve caught up with the massive backlog caused by me being in hospital. Not counting new stuff, or long-term pot-boilers and tinkerers, of course. And the four books by other people that somehow I must find time to lay out soon.

The dull spot of the week is still being stuck in the wheelchair. That, and the fact that Kirklees have still not approved the expenditure of £540 for the necessary concreting works, or come up with the spondoolies, means I have once again been confined inside, apart from my excursion to Physio on Thursday. Mind you, even though the weather has been milder, it’s still been cold and rainy, as opposed to just rainy, and I could have sworn I heard the weather man say something about flakes of snow again, last night, but I was only listening with 48K of my RAM, and missed the gist of it.

It has been lying heavily upon me, as I try and stand and maybe kid myself that I am getting a little higher off the seat every day. The consultant asked me, the last time I went to hospital, if I had given the wheelchair a name yet, and I told him I hadn’t, on the grounds that you don’t name an animal you intend to send to the abattoir as soon as possible. In fact, what I would really like to do when I am finally up and walking about again [and I don’t want to diss St Jude here, but if he could spend a little less time trying to extinguish the sideburns and a little more time interceding on my behalf, I’d be more inclined to place that small ad] is to take the wheelchair to Salisbury Plain, set it up on the brow of a tank range, ask the Army if I could borrow a bazooka and a couple of PIAT rounds, and blast the holy crap out of it. Amen.

Which brings me back to religion. Again. And the texts for this week, the eighth Sunday after Epiphany. Oddly enough, and in a feeble attempt to be serious for a moment, there does seem to be an element of reassurance about these bits of the Bible. Maybe I have been ranting too much and not listening enough. Or, once again, am I kidding myself?

The O. T. text is Isaiah 49, 8-16. I must say, resoundingly gaga though most of the Old Testament undoubtedly is, I do love the language and the rhythms of the King James Bible:

That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them. And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be exalted.

And of course the line about the highways being exalted gives me a thrilling echo of that Handel aria about “Every valley shall be exalted”, once again. I have said it before, but Handel as a composer definitely had a broadband connection to God, even though broadband wouldn’t be invented and mis-sold by the likes for Sky and Richard Branson for some two hundred years hence. On a more mundane note, I guess one of the reasons why Kirklees haven’t gotten round to my bit of concreting is probably because, after the winter frost and potholes, the highways are anything but exalted, and that is where their priorities and their manpower are being employed first.

In some more antiquarian copies of the King James Bible, of course, the typographers actually still used the long “s”, which looks like a lower case “f”, which gives some parts of the text, such as:

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee

an additional emphasis which I am sure Isaiah never intended. The Psalm, Psalm 131, is only three verses long – not so much a Psalm as a haiku. Actually, I should not make fun of the very precise and thoughtful eastern art of haiku. Expressing yourself in just seventeen syllables can be very diffic. Despite its brevity, here is an edited highlight:

Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.

Maybe that is my problem. I do exercise myself in great matters. And in my wheelchair, lots of things are too high for me, including the Marmite, which was in the cupboard over the sink, so that when I wanted crumpets with Marmite this morning I had to knock the jar off the shelf with a walking stick, then catch it one-handed in mid air before it splintered to smitheroons on the Double Belfast. Given that I had been working on publicity for Nurdling, the temptation to throw it straight back in the air and shout “Howzat!” was almost overwhelming.

But no, I haven’t behaved and quieted myself. My soul is not that of a weaned child, it is that of a child screaming for its bottle, red-faced with tantrums, and with good reason. A feed of God is long overdue. Big G please take note.

St Paul, meanwhile, is still writing to the Corinthians, who, if they had had any sense, would have either nailed up their letterbox, or moved, or both. 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 tells me:

Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

Yeah, Paul, whatever. I know, 41p for a first class stamp. Criminal, isn’t it? Fair enough, he that judgeth me is the Lord. I will take my chance with that, but I might have one or two comments of my own, in a spirit of 360 degree feedback. I wrote, back in December, that I have never, thank God, had a dark night of the soul, now I am not so sure. And if Big G’s answer to my complaints about being stuck in this wheelchair and sending round saints with fiery barnets to argue the toss is to tell me not to be so judgemental, and to be quiet and behave myself like a weaned child, then I foresee a parting of the ways ahead, and me logging on to "compare the creator .com" to consider my options. Maybe I am being too hard on the old duffer though. He's had a bad week too, picking up the pieces in Christchurch. And I am certainly better off than any of the victims.

As always, though, the New Testament passage is more hopeful and redeeming, being the famous passage from the Sermon on the Mount, related in Matthew 6:24-34:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Now, there speaks a reasonable man. I can take admonition from Jesus. He always seems to find just the right note. He could have had a fantastic career in Human Resources if he’d been around today. This is probably a question for theologians, but why can’t God be more like Jesus? Oh, how I wish it was true, though: how I wish I did have the faith to give up worrying about tomorrow and whether or not I will be standing up or still sitting here. It’s true, I cannot add one cubit to my stature by worrying about it. And it’s very true, the fowls of the air do seem to get by – that speckledy thrush from last week has been back at the bird table again, and certainly in our garden, the grass is thriving. As are the tares and thistles, but that’s another story.

That passage actually reminds me of Donne, in “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” where he says:

“Oh how feeble is men’s powre
That if good fortune fall
He cannot add one single houre
Nor a lost houre recall”

So, OK, maybe Big G and I are back on speaking terms again. We’ve had a rocky patch. But I can’t live on promises forever. Like W B Yeats once famously wrote, “Too long a sacrifice, makes a stone of the heart.” But I guess another week won’t hurt me. Much.

Epiblog for the 7th Sunday after Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Despite the fact that, somehow, unaccountably, it has reached half-way through February without me really noticing, the weather is still stuck firmly in January mode. Cold, damp, wet, dark, rainy, apart from Monday’s brief radiance of pale sunlight, which may have been golden, but was almost certainly counterfeit.

With it being so cold and rainy, the animals are still reluctant to move far from the fire. Tig has shown a passing interest in “walkies” but doesn’t particularly relish being turfed out into the garden at night to do her “necessaries” before it’s time for bed. Kitty darts out of the door, scuttling across the decking, her ears flat and her tail down, and you can almost see her thinking, “Brrrrrrrrr!” Then she comes back in through the bifold doors and sits in her cat bed in the hearth, steaming quietly and giving herself an elaborate cat-wash to get rid of the rain from her fur, the pads on her extended back foot looking for all the world like the segments of a fresh, pink raspberry. Only a cat would think of licking itself to get dry. Actually, in the past, some of our cats haven’t even had to bother: my mother used to dry Ginger off with kitchen roll if he happened to come in wet from the garden.

My week has been singularly unproductive. Just getting anything done in this country any more is well-nigh impossible, despite the well-meaning efforts of the army of people who seem to be working on my behalf. This week I have learned that I may be getting some more intensive physio, and possibly a standing hoist at home, plus I have had visits from the Job Centre people and the Benefits Welfare Officer.

I have also managed, a considerable achievement in my opinion, to procure one of the two necessary quotations for the concreting of the ramp up to the side door of our side of the house. Set against those questionable achievements, however, was the fiasco that was Monday, and the renewal of the car tax.

While I was in hospital the MOT expired on my car, and the clutch went, so Deb arranged for the garage to come and collect it and store it off road at their premises all over Christmas and the New Year holidays period, while we saved up enough to have it fixed. Because I came home from hospital in a wheelchair and am now chairbound in my current state, this means that now I am receiving DLA, and I am entitled to a free tax disc in the “disabled” class.

Last week, we told the garage to get on and do the MOT, but for one reason or another, backlog of work, or whatever, they didn’t actually get round to doing it until Monday, by when it had got to the stage whereby I was ringing them up and haranguing them telling them that I needed a valid MOT to tax the vehicle.

We finally got the vehicle back from the garage on Monday afternoon, complete with new test certificate, and I sent Deb off with the MOT, the insurance certificate, the tax exemption certificate from DLA, and the reminder, to the nearest post office that does motor tax, only for her to be told that – whereas able bodied people can sit at home and do their car tax on the phone or on line - for disabled tax discs you have to not only take the stuff in in person, but also to take the original log book as well! So she had a wasted journey, and I was left considering whether this is actually discriminatory against people with disabilities.

Anyway, at that point, mindful of the fact that if we didn’t do something that day, as 14 days had gone by since the tax disc expired, and not wishing to get fined, I had no option but to go online and declare a SORN. That evening we found the log book and I duly signed and annotated it, and the next day, Deb went back and taxed it in the disabled class, handing over the signed log book, which should now be nestling somewhere at DVLA. I say it must be, but on Friday I received a letter from DVLA to say that, because I had not either taxed my car or declared a SORN, I may now be fined £80! I have written back to say that if they care to check, they will find that in fact, rather than not taxing it or declaring a SORN, within the space of 24 hours, we did both! I am hoping that it has just crossed in the post, or it will be yet more spaghetti for me to unravel.

All this was happening on Monday afternoon to the background of the plumber crashing around, having finally come to fit the missing “O” rings on Colin’s boiler, and in the midst of all that, Debbie’s Mum and Dad arrived back with their car on the back of an AA Low Loader, having failed to make it to Mike’s heart appointment at Papworth Hospital because the suspension collapsed on the A1. Deb had no choice but to give them a lift back home, leaving me to deal with the plumber while simultaneously on the phone to the car insurance company, trying to access an online version of my insurance certificate to print out. Anyway, the “O” rings were duly fitted, which should at least prevent Colin’s boiler from emulating the Space Shuttle Challenger any time soon.

Monday, then, was a draining day. Deb had some good news on Tuesday, though. She may well be able to pick up not one, but two or three more sessional courses, one of which may be teaching literacy to would-be teachers of literacy, and one teaching IT. So, with Debbie teaching the teachers and doing IT tech support, truly the Barbarians are at the gates. Still, it’s all money. The third one was to teach GSCE but she is unsure about it because it involves teaching literature and maybe answering awkward questions about the purpose of poetry.

I, of course, would love nothing better, and I have considered getting a long black wig, borrowing her staff ID lanyard, and pretending to be her, for just those lessons. The wheelchair just might be a giveaway, though.

By Friday, the pressure had eased slightly. But I had forgotten that Debbie was supposed to be meeting up with some of the Bolton University people in Manchester that night, and Granny came round because she was going to pick up Debbie off the late train and give her a lift home. All of which duly happened. Because Debbie hadn’t indicated whether or not she would want to eat when she got in, I erred on the safe side, and made her a Pea and Lentil Frittata with accompanying mustard and fennel mash, which she duly wolfed down anyway (despite having already had something in the pub, washed down with three pints) and then fell asleep on the sofa, half way through “Special Victims Unit”, with her head resting on the cat, using it like a pillow, resembling nothing more than one of those medieval tombs where the Crusader’s crossed legs rest on a little dog.

The snow returned on Saturday, God rot it. Actually, by the time I had finished glaring at it out of the window, it was already turning first to sleet and then to rain. I sincerely hope it won’t stick around for long. While we were watching the snowflakes fall, and arguing about whether you could teach anyone anything about poetry against their will, a thrush, in its vivid plumage, suddenly alighted on the bird table outside, cocking its head from side to side and searching for crumbs with its bright shiny black bead of an eye. Debbie mentioned that she had often seen it sitting on next door’s roof, but I was sceptical that it was the same bird. I asked her if she could remember what its song sounded like:

“Of course not. I don’t do bird impressions, I’m not Percy bloody Thrower!”

Realising that I was in a hole, I stopped digging. I spent the rest of Saturday pecking away like a demented thrush myself, at creative writing projects, which is at least a break from the endless filling in of online-job applications. For some reason, as well, there seemed to be a never-ending procession of sirens along the road outside for most of Saturday. In fact, since I have come home from hospital, there seem to be more emergency vehicle sirens than ever, or perhaps it’s just that I notice them more, and the “Big Society” really isn’t coming apart at the seams and descending into anarchy.

Of course, the rule of law is the only alternative to anarchy, and, coincidentally, the rule of law seems to be at least in part the subject of the various texts which the powers that be in the Church of England have decided are appropriate for the Seventh Sunday of Epiphany. This spooky coincidence does, I suppose, argue against the impression I had previously formed and put forward, that they are texts selected at random by a blindfolded Rowan Williams, sticking a pin into a Bible.

The Old Testament text, Leviticus 19: 1-2 and 15-18, kicks off with God telling Moses that he should point out to the Children of Israel that, because he is holy, they are holy. Nope, me neither. This is why the O.T. generally (and Leviticus in particular, to be honest) leaves me cold. Apart from the mildly amusing bit about not eating ferrets, like you would even want to, anyway. Even then, though, I did learn something from this passage. I was amazed to find that verse 18 says

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

I really thought that the O.T. was all about thunderbolts and smiting, yet here we have the later words of Jesus pre-figured. Very odd. By contrast, the Psalm this week failed to make even a dint in my lack of recognition. Psalm 119: 33-40 says:

Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight. Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way. Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear. Turn away my reproach which I fear: for thy judgments are good. Behold, I have longed after thy precepts: quicken me in thy righteousness

Much as I applaud the adventurous use by King James of the word “stablish”, I don’t necessarily go for keeping to the law. This doesn’t mean that I am an outlaw. My forest survival skills are minimal, and when it comes to tights, I don’t have the legs for it, and green just isn’t my colour. My problem comes with obeying the law when the law is obviously wrong. I am not alone in this of course, everyone has their own interpretation of what is “obviously wrong” – the Christian bed and breakfast owners who refused to serve a gay couple probably thought the law was obviously wrong, as well, though Leviticus is strangely silent on the subject of the full English breakfast.

It does point up a crucial dilemma for anyone who believes in any sort of moral structure though. What do you do when your beliefs clash with the law? Ultimately, unless we want anarchy, the law must prevail, otherwise you would have everybody making it up as they go along. We must respect the idea of the law, I suppose, pretty much in the same way as I respect the idea of the Monarchy, respecting the institution, whatever you might think of the current and future incarnations of it. All you can do is try and minimise the conflict. Don’t take a job in an abattoir, if you are a vegetarian.

It usually occurs in cases where there is a conflict between the letter and the spirit of the law. If you believe this situation is wrong, the best thing to do is to campaign for the law to be changed. UK Uncut are currently pointing up the gap between the legal and the moral position over taxation for multi national companies. What these people are doing may well be legal, but is it moral, when libraries, community centres and swimming pools are closing left right and centre?

Jesus, of course, decides, in the specified New Testament passage, to re-write the rule book in Matthew 5:38-48

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Love your enemies? What’s that all about then? This famous passage contains all of the things I find most difficult about Christianity. Every day I struggle against an overwhelming tide of crap, but the nearest I ever get to loving my enemies is that reluctantly, I allow people who really do deserve to have every last ounce of the living crap choked out of them on account of their innate stupidity, to carry on living. But usually, even that is only because I don’t fancy prison food much, and the alternative would create lots of paperwork. And I could bear a grudge for England, if grudge-bearing ever becomes an Olympic event. It’s easy for Jesus to say “be perfect” but, as I said last week, sometimes I am not even convinced that Big G himself is as perfect as we like to think he is, or at least, his idea of “perfect” is very different from ours.

Funnily enough, I found an echo of this in considering the final text specified, 1 Corinthians 3:10-11 and 16-23.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are your's; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are your's; And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

If God’s purpose is so at odds with wisdom, that the wisdom of the world is foolishness in the eyes of God and vice versa, and God knows the thoughts of the wise, and they are in vain, why are we bothering? Why am I even bothering to type this sentence? (Why indeed, I hear you cry!)

I am still waiting to be battered by Big G from last week. I don’t know which is worse, actually, being battered or being ignored. In the week, Maisie sent me a couple of prayer cards bearing novenas to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes and things which are despaired of. In the spirit of a football manager who is trailing 2-0 in a crucial fixture with 30 minutes to go, I have been using them, bringing on the nuclear option, the sub Jude to play up front alongside Padre Pio. I had previously thought that praying for the intercession of a scary Italian monk with the gift of bilocation would be enough to gain Big G’s attention and get me up out of this bloody wheelchair, but clearly I need the extra beef of the big lad carrying a club, with his hair on fire. Yep. Definitely my kind of saint.

One thing Jesus did get right in his bit of today’s scriptures was that line about the rain falling on the just and the unjust: so, once more the weather has prevented me from getting out and about this weekend, but I have at least been assuaging my longing for the North of England with its mountains and fells, and the lake shore at Derwentwater where I suspect that even now the first green buds are showing on the bare branches of the trees overhanging the lake, I’ve been playing music from Northumberland while writing this. For some reason, “Keep Your Feet Still, Geordie Hinny” has attached itself to me as an “earworm”. I like it because it has personal associations – I remember Uncle Bert and Auntie Nancy getting up on stage at the Blackburn Welfare Club and singing it at their golden wedding anniversary party – but also I like its unremitting working class humour in the face of adversity.

Perhaps it’s a skill I need to acquire. I get a feeling I’ll need it next week.

Epiblog for the Sixth Sunday of Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. I have stepped up my applications for jobs, to the extent that I can now fill in one of these on-line agency “vacancies”, together with covering letter and statement of suitability for the post, in about half an hour. The trouble is, with these, it is very much a case of quantity, not quality. You throw enough mud at the wall, and some of it will stick. I am not convinced that half of them are “real” jobs anyway, I suspect some of them are cunning ploys to get you to “register” with this or that online job search agency, so they can bombard you with shit and spam forever after, world without end, amen. I was going to say they are a necessary evil, I suppose, but in fact they aren’t. They may be evil, but unlike traffic wardens, say, they are totally unecessary, a bunch of idiot middlemen who get in the way.

Talking of idiots who make you do extra work for other people, I was surprised to find that two of the applications so far are demanding that I send documentary proof, in the form of scanned copies of things like my passport or birth certificate (one of which has expired, the other lies I know not where) to prove that I am eligible to work in this country. This is because of the requirements of the Borders and Immigration Act or something, which has now thrown the onus on to employers to check the eligibility of their employees, a job that used to be the Government’s, of course. Presumably this leaves the UK Borders Agency more free time to do what it is they do best, ie pull two year old kids from their parents’ beds at the crack of dawn and deport them to countries where they are likely to see their close relatives gunned down by a government goon squad. Well, we wouldn’t want to get in the way of such important work, would we?

I’ve been so busy with this plethora of blasted forms that I have barely noticed what the weather has been like this week. Wet, cold and dull, is the closest I can approximate to it, I think. Neither Tig nor Kitty has shown any inclination to venture far outside, and I can’t say I blame them. The dark nights seem to be sticking around as well, although it is now light, just about, after 5pm, and the first faint glimmers of dawn are around 6.50 in the morning. I see these more often than not, but, since the skies have been so cloudy of late, I don’t see the stars that go with them. Even though the return of the dull rainy windy weather has meant that temperatures have risen, we’ve still had to place another interim order for more coal (a mixture of economy doubles, supatherm and homefire ovals, if you were even vaguely interested, which I guess you aren’t) so the Chilean miners will be putting down the deposit on their holiday homes on the coast as we speak.

It’s also been a grim week because it’s the anniversary of Greenjewel’s death. I can’t believe it’s been a year since she died and I can’t believe all that’s happened in that time. It was good to see the tributes on The Archers MB, and that she is definitely not forgotten. I toyed with the idea of trying to update my own tribute, but in the end I decided I couldn’t improve on what I wrote this time last year, on here.

Kitty’s latest trick, following on from jumping up on my knee and riding round with me on the wheelchair, is now to settle down and go to sleep there, which is all very well for the first hour or so, til the pins and needles becomes unbearable, and I have to reluctantly turf her off. I say "reluctantly" because she is warmer than a hot water bottle and also, unlike a HWB, she doesn’t cool off, although she does need refilling from time to time, not with boiling water, but with cat food.

Despite their reluctance to stray far from the warm fireside, Kitty and Tig do at least have the freedom to wander where they will, a freedom currently denied me by this bloody wheelchair. This week I have been trying to procure quotations for concreting a ramp up to the door at our side of the house, since the proposed long-term solution of a ramp to the front door of Colin’s half seems to be permantly stuck in bureaucratic mud for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, but which are probably to do with Kirklees not wanting to spend any money on me until it is absolutely definitely positively confirmed that I am going to be stuck in a wheelchair forever. I suppose I should be grateful that their reluctance signifies that at least there is still a glimmer of hope, and overall, I am of course grateful for the efforts of all the many people and entities I am targeted by in their continued zeal for my welfare. These are just some of them (there may be others I have forgotten):

Occupational Therapists
Physiotherapists
District Nurses
Wheelchair services
Stores and Equipment
Whatever the people are called who do the ramps and the long-term adjustments to the house if these become necessary
The hospital (who still see me as an out-patient)
The GPs (who probably still see me as a nuisance)
And finally the Social Care people, whose budget this current attempt at an interim concrete ramp is going to come from, on the grounds that it is preventing my having a normal social life not being able to get out of the house and being confined to just two rooms, and always either in the wheelchair, or in bed.

I didn’t have a normal social life before, of course, hence the Somalians getting my dinner jacket via Oxfam, but I am not bothering to tell them that. There are much more important considerations to getting out of the house, to do with freedom and independence. At the moment I have less freedom of movement, and less space, than a prisoner in a maximum security jail. Certainly I have less variety in my surroundings. I know that, in the words of Lovelace, the Cavalier Poet,

“Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage
Minds innocent and quiet take them for an hermitage”

But even so, sometimes the only thing that stops me screaming aloud in anguish about the prospect of never seeing the Lake District or the mountains of Arran again, is the blind, irrational hope that somehow, somewhere along the line, things will all come right again. But at the moment I am an encumberance, a parcel, something that trundles between two rooms, and if it does need to travel further, has to be lifted and hefted, signed for, strapped down in the back of a taxi, and wheeled into reception at the other end. The days when I could just say,”Sod it, I’m going painting!” and get up and into the car and drive off in to the sunshine, are gone, long gone. They are all part of “the land of lost content” a kingdom that grows bigger every day, or so it seems, with each new realisation of things I now can’t do.

I shouldn’t torture myself by doing it, but I have been playing "The Joy of Living" by Ewan MacColl, and the bit where he sings:

"Farewell you northern hills, you mountains all goodbye
Moorland and stony ridges, crags and peaks goodbye
Glyder Fach farewell, Cul Beag, Scafell, cloud-bearing Suilven
Sun warmed rock and the cold of Bleaklow's frozen sea
The snow and the wind and the rain of hills and mountains
Days in the sun and the tempered wind and the air like wine
And you drink and you drink till you're drunk
On the joy of living"

I can’t get past that verse without crying. I am also not convinced that he sings “Scafell”, I think it might be “Goatfell” which is the highest mountain on Arran, and anyway it fits the scansion, so my mind inevitably makes the substitution.

In the meantime, I fill in application forms for jobs I will struggle to get to, even if I get past the interview stage, and continue wrangling with what I guess I must now call my former employer. I have said before, that when it comes to vulnerability, we are all just three bad decisions away from being on the streets. What I didn’t realise, til this cropped up, was that hey, the bad decisions don’t even have to be yours!

A couple of nights during the week, I stayed up late, once because I was writing the next Glasson novel and once because Channel 4 had unaccountably scheduled a programme with Jon Snow about wartime painters of the 20th Century at 2am. God knows why they show this stuff in the middle of the night when only weirdos and insomniacs can see it, given the dross that they pump out at prime time, but still. Anyway, I was expecting large helpings of Stanley Spencer and that is what I got, so I was happy for a while. I was also happy to hear that the tawny owls in our trees seem to have made a comeback, for several nights now I have heard their call and response, with the male hooting and the female "scritching" in reply. Bless their little owly souls:

“When blood is nipped, and ways be foul
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To whit, to woo, a merry note
While Greasy Joan doth keel the pot.”

Mention of souls of course leads me to observe that I have had little time for religious contemplation this week, in fact I dithered over whether to even bother writing an epiblog, since I have nothing to say that is of any use to me, let alone anyone else, and I have even held off sending emails to people to whom I owe one, because time after time it just descends into a dirge of angry complaint by me against God or whoever is at fault for my current fallen state.

Anyway, having decided to look at the Bible passages which our elders and betters in the Church of England have ascribed for study today, I wondered vaguely if any of them would be connected with St Valentine’s day. Answer, no. A quick search reveals that nobody really knows who St Valentine was, except that he may have been a Roman martyr, killed for marrying Christian couples in the regign of the emperor Claudius II and buried under the Appian Way. Or he may have been an eastern Orthodox bishop. Or something. Either way, “his” flower-crowned skull is exhibited in a basilica in Rome somewhere (but then, whose isn’t) and his relics are also in a box in the Birmingham Oratory (not the most romantic of cities, to say it’s St Valentine). The thing with these relics and saints and stuff like that is that usually there are so many of them, that it you did actually open the box and re-construct St Anthony or whoever, you would be bound to have some bits left over at the end, the odd tibia or collar-bone, a bit like those puzzling little spare widgets in the boxes of flat-pack furniture from Ikea.

For me, then, Valentine's Day remains the day when the birds choose their mates, as in Chaucer, and the day when Dame Durden and her maids and men are all together met, as in the old folk song.

So, having established that St Valentine was primarily of interest to the greetings card industry and no-one else, I turned to the Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, though God knows why. The theme this week seems to be leprosy. In the Old Testament passage, 2 Kings 5, I discover that:

“Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the LORD had given deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper.”

Following a misunderstanding with a servant maid (how many times have we heard that before!) the Syrians sent Naaman off with a few changes of raiment, ten silver talents, and six thousand pieces of silver, to go and see the King of Israel and ask to be cured. But when the King of Israel read the letter “he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?”

Which is fair enough I suppose. We’ve all done it, when you open a gas bill on the same morning you have just trodden barefoot on an upturned three pin plug en route to the bathroom for instance. Though in my case it’s usually the gas bill that gets “rent”, rather than my jarmas.

Anyway, Elisha hears that the King’s been rending his clothing again and asks why, and eventually this leads to Elisha telling Namaan to go and bathe in the River Jordan seven times. Namaan, who sounds like a querelous old bat, comes back with “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean?”, at which point, had I been Elisha, I would have been tempted to say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

But, after much argybargy, he relents and, surprise surprise, he “dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” So there you go, I like a story with a happy ending. I love “Abana and Pharpar” by the way. If I ever start a firm of solicitors, that is what I will call it.

The Gospel passage is about lepers as well. The passage is from Mark 1:40-45. Jesus cures a leper and, perhaps wisely in view of events, tells him to keep quiet about it.

“See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.”

But of course, the leper blabs to all and sundry:

“He went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every quarter.”

Which proves, if anything, that in “Saviouring”, as with any other line of business, there is nothing worse than creating a demand you can’t satisfy. Before you know where you are, the lepers will be setting up online forums and posting about your poor customer service, and how they waited in all afternoon to be cleansed, but nobody turned up.

Whatever this is about, I am not getting it. The other New Testament passage is from 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, which I sort of thought I “got”:

“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”

I wish I could bring my body to subjection, At the moment, the reverse is true. My body is bringing me to subjection. I think the message is to me, if any, to concentrate on the fights that need to be fought, and not “beat the air”. To concentrate on the main prize, getting up and walking once again. The race is not always to the swift. It’s not the fights you dreamed of, but those you really fought, and all that.

Which just leaves the Psalm. I must admit, I had not really taken much notice of the Psalms before I started this run of Epiblogs. Apart from “The Lord’s my shepherd” which of course is known to all of us lapsed agnostics, strictly Chapel of Rest. But for the second week running, reading the Psalm (Psalm 42 in this case) was like being slapped round the head with a Craster Kipper.

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.
Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

Again, it could have been written by me, now, this week, with the rain drumming and the owls hooting, beleagured at my own hearth, beset by troubles at every hand. The only difference is the psalmist resolves “I shall yet praise him” whereas I am not so sure. I fear I may be in an abusive relationship with Big G. Bad shit happens, but still I go back. I show the bruises in public, but claim I walked into the door again, like Luka. Maybe it is time to ask him to put up or shut up. Send me a sign. Or, as Donne put it so much better in his Holy Sonnet:

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

"That I may rise and stand" - Amen to that. So, I am waiting to be ravished. And that’s official.

Epiblog for the Fifth Sunday of Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The weather has turned wet and wild, with rain drumming on the conservatory roof for hours on end. Black nights, full of rain and wind, that is what this winter has become, for me. Dull, cold days, when you never see the sun.

This week also saw the third anniversary of Nigel’s death. Three years, can it really be that long since the old furry ginger lad closed his great green eyes for the last time? It is, though. And, to be honest, given that he was old and ill anyway, it’s probably for the best that he didn’t live on to take part in the awful times we’re now experiencing. His time had come.

This was a week of rejection. It has finally sunk in that my colleagues in the direct mail printing world don’t want me back. So, while stinging and smarting from that, I have been doing what anyone else would do in the circumstances, and applying for jobs, and on Thursday I had my first job interview since October 1989, and my first ever one in a wheelchair.

And on Saturday, I opened a letter telling me that I hadn’t got the job. So for a day and a half, I was allowed to live in the delicious land of might-have-been and imagine that I had put up a good performance on the day, which clearly wasn’t the case, since they must have rejected me more or less the instant I had got back into the lift! The word “bastards” has never been far from my lips since that letter dropped on the doormat.

Since July 2010, I have lost the ability to walk, been diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy, and lost a job. Plus the car has blown up. For the last two months I have been perpetually cold and tired, and probably, if truth was told, clinically depressed, and frightened as well.

I think it’s about time I took command of this situation. Well, I have made a start by telling the garage to fix the car. I don’t know yet quite how we’re going to pay for it, but that’s another issue. I am getting quite used to jumping off cliffs and not knowing if there’s a trampoline or rocks at the bottom.

I’ve also started work on another novel featuring Glasson, the protagonist of The Nine Quines. So now, simultaneously, I am working on laying out Zen and the Art of Nurdling, writing Catheter Come Home and Dora Darley is my Darling, as well as this new, as yet un-named novel, when I should be doing publicity mailshots, 2010 accounts, and laying out Revudeville and Hampshire at War. Oh, and now, applying for more jobs.

Fortunately, the animals, poor mutts that they are, don’t realise the pickle we’re in. Actually, it’s worse than a pickle, it’s more of a chutney. But for the moment, Kitty and Tig are happy enough to scoff their tea and lie by the fire and keep warm, which is the sort of thing you would expect an elderly dog and cat to do in the circumstances, to be honest. Kitty continues to jump on my knee and even sleeps there now, purring away happily while I trundle the wheelchair back and forth. I can’t bear to think that, if the worst comes to the worst, we could have to give Kitty back to the CPL and Tig would have to go and live at Granny’s while we look for somewhere to rent.

There are still a few twists and turns before we get to that impasse, however. We could sell Colin’s half of the house, move everything back into this side, and hope that the revenue accruing, less the cost of the building work necessary to turn it back into two houses, is enough to pay off our mortgage and other debts. Then all we would have to do is find money for food and monthly bills. Either way, it’s going to be a bitter spring, and a rough and rocky road ahead, and I may have to reconcile myself ultimately to being stuck in this blasted wheelchair for the rest of my life, and living off benefits, in a different place to this. So I doubt we will see Arran again this year, or indeed the Lake District, any time soon.

So far, I have spent 600 words or more wallowing in self-pity, so I suppose it’s about time to look at the Collect for this Sunday and try and work out what all this stuff means. If there really is a God, and I am not just imagining these feelings, what is the purpose of this process of stripping away the old life I used to inhabit, layer by painful layer, and what, if anything, is going to replace it? I say “if anything” because, to be quite honest, some days, at the moment, I can’t really see the point in continuing. And normally I am the first one to rally and say, “oh well, there’s always somebody worse off than yourself” – well, that may be true, it is true, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Not any more. I just feel sorry for those poor sods as well.

I must confess I don’t understand the prescribed reading for this Sunday from the Book of Kings, which appears to be a description of the prophet Elisha carrying out an early form of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. All very fine and dandy, but, like much else in the Old Testament, potentially gaga and irrelevant. The Gospel, from Mark 1, has Jesus wandering around Capernaum, proclaiming in synagogues and casting out demons. Again, pretty much what you’d expect him to do, really. The psalm, psalm 142, struck a familiar note, though. The psalmist could have been describing my situation, right now.

I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

I cried unto thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.

Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

Yep. Check check check. All the above applies. Especially the bit about asking for deliverance, which I have to say has not been forthcoming. Mind you, of course, sometimes I think that I embody Big G with too much humanity. I may be guilty of anthropomorphising God. After all, if you are the creative motor that drives the whole universe including everything that ever was or ever shall be, I guess that piffling human ideas of justice and reward might not be top on your list, especially as we don’t have the capacity to even understand the list, or why he wrote it in the first place.

It is quite startling to think what God’s “to do” list might look like:

Create World
Fowls of the air
Do Creeping things
Gardening/put up fence round orchard
Snake repellent (B&Q)
Speak to Adam
Flood earth (NB don’t forget the Unicorn)
Brief Jesus re mission.
Manna/Fish Fingers x 5000

Either way, it’s pretty clear to me this week that God’s priorities are different to mine, especially his priorities for me. I also don’t understand the final bit of the Collect, which is once again, another chunk of 1 Corinthians, verses 16-23:

For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!

For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.

What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.

And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law;

To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.

To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.

And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you

I freely confess that I find this contradictory and confusing, like much of the Bible. Nothing new there, then. Am I “preaching the Gospel”? Hardly, since most of the time I don’t understand what is being said to me or what is being asked of me. But if I am, am I doing it willingly or out of necessity? And what’s that about being all things to all men? That is precisely what I am not – and probably why I didn’t get the job. I am not good at dissembling and pretending to be something I am not.

Whoever it was who wrote the letter to the Corinthians (was it Paul?) has a very different approach to me. I will not pretend to be something I am not. If it means that I am unable to share the Gospel with anybody because of that, tough shit. If the Gospel is meant to get you, it’ll get you some other way, and not by listening to me wittering on about my week in the Holme Valley, dealing with an endless stream of disasters visited on me for reasons I am unable to fathom.

So there you go. I have reached the same point, I think, as I reached when I stopped writing the Epilogues in Here Endeth The Epilogue. I honestly do not know where I am going from here. Ironically, in the week that contained Candlemas Day (or, as it is better known, Groundhog Day) I am suffering from Vuja De. I have never been here before, and I have no idea what is going to happen next. I am an old and bitter man with nothing to say and no answers.

I’ve been consoling myself by listening to some of my favourite brass band music this week. Trying to find some reservoir of strength to draw on, something that will get me back to something like the person I once used to be, instead of this shell I am now inhabiting. I must admit, I am stirred somewhat by the great inspiring romantic names of the brass bands – the poetry of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, the Brighouse and Raistrick brass Band, the Black Dyke Mills band, and the Besses O’The Barn.

But, as W H Auden once observed, in his poem “In Memoriam, W B Yeats”

Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper

So, why bother? I may as well save my strength for the struggles to come. In the meantime, despite the fact that we know that it almost certainly won’t be alright in the end, I fall back on the talisman of the brass band playing Cwm Rhondda.

Guide me, O thou great redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land.