Dispensing Witan Wisdom Since The Days of King Eggbound The Unready...

Not to mention "Left-Wing Pish"

Sunday 27 March 2011

Epiblog for the Third Sunday in Lent


It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, although one which has been chiefly passed in waiting, and marking time. We "marked time" in more ways than one, of course, this week, because we put the clocks forward to “British Summer Time” by one hour, so my frantic preparations to get everything that I can boxed off here, before I go into “Broadmoor” for my physio, have 6o fewer minutes in which to take place.

On some fronts there has been great progress (I have written the hard copy press release for Zen and the Art of Nurdling, created jacket mockups for Catheter Come Home and Albion, and started laying out Revudeville) but on the “social care” front, there have only been tiny slivers of success, and that at the rate of a glacier melting.

The people who “officially” provide the ramps for Kirklees (as opposed to the previous department who promised to do so, and then found they didn’t have a budget) have been back in touch, and are coming to do a survey, next week, no less. There is corn in Egypt yet. Meanwhile, Oakmoor a.k.a. Broadmoor remains resolutely shut, because the existing old biddies already incarcerated there are still vomiting for England. Still, looking on the bright side, at this rate it could be a toss-up whether I end up with Broadmoor or Ramp-ton! (Boom Boom!)

The garden, now that we can see it, looks in a bad way from the depredations of winter. The daffodils are nodding bravely in the wind beside Russell’s mosaic, but Nigel’s painted memorial stone looks as though it’s suffered in the frost. One day, ramps permitting, I might be able to get down there and see. The brushwood bole is definitely in tiny leaf, though, which would have pleased Browning, the spray beginneth to springe, and the tree outside my “bedroom” window (in reality, what used to be Colin’s kitchen) has tiny catkins on it. And squirrels in it. Oh, and there are at least two thrushes, because I saw both of them together, so maybe the original one wasn’t as ubiquitous as I thought, and in fact the mouldy Christmas pud fed a whole family of thrush lookalikes.

Given that it was running up to being officially Summer, the weather this week has been officially mild, with the conservatory door being open to the outside world even when (gasp) there was no animal wanting to go either in or out. Tig has been taking longer “constitutionals” in the garden than previously, and as I type this, is basking once more in the patch of sunlight on the conservatory rug, slightly further this way than she was last week, as the sun and the earth shift inexorably on their axes.

Kitty is more reluctant to go adventuring, but then cats are always seekers after warmth; even Nigel in his prime, who used to wander far and wide, going his own little ginger Nigelish way, used to come back of an evening and curl up in one of his secret Nigel-holes amongst the filing in the office, or the stacked-up furniture in the front room. Anyway, Kitty has been treating it like any other week, and staying in the cat bed in the hearth, which managed to acquire another hole burnt in it, on Tuesday night, when a spark flew unnoticed out of the fire. Unnoticed, that is, until it started to smoulder… fortunately, Kits wasn’t in residence at the time.

The reason for the sparks is probably the new coal, which seems to have been delivered in humungous great lumps, almost the size of a bag of sugar. When I looked at the scuttle the other day I couldn’t believe the size of them, and remarked to Debbie that they might as well just give us the keys to the mine, and have done with it, except that the mine these days, as I’ve often observed, is more likely to be in Chile.

On the wider front, in the world outside our little green valley, the week has been bookended by two sporting defeats for England, in the Rugby last Sunday, which occasioned much shouting at the television from Debbie, and in the Cricket last night, which had the same outcome, only from me this time. Still, at least we no longer have the awesome responsibility at being best in the world at something, and we can return to our usual position of mumbling “mustn’t grumble” in a slightly embarrassed way, before sidling off or changing the subject. On the Rugby, I suggested to Debbie that it was probably time to consider bringing back Prince Obolensky, to which she replied “who?” I can’t believe I know something about Rugby that she doesn’t. Much googling of Youtube clips of old Pathe newsreels of his 1936 try at Twickenham against the All-Blacks ensued, with me doing my impersonation of the clipped 1930s tones of the commentator (“end here is Prince Obolensky, renning laike a racehoyrse…”)

On a more serious subject, I noted that the coverage of the crisis in Japan tailed off dramatically, once the media realised the nuclear reactor wasn’t going to go ka-boom any time soon, and they all high-tailed it back to their cosy studios. I did hear that Lady Gaga has apparently “designed” a charity bracelet for the people of Japan, as if they haven’t already suffered enough. In other news, we’ve been bombing Libya, with missiles that apparently cost £800,000 each, although we allegedly don’t have enough money to keep the libraries open at home. The pretext is that we are saving the lives of civilians, by bombing the cities where they live, in the hopes that, at £800K each, the missiles are smart enough to be able to recognise, and only hit, the baddies.

And this week has marked the March for an Alternative, intended to give ordinary people from all walks of life the chance to protest against the scale and savagery of government cutbacks, but in reality hijacked by a small group of anarchists who ensured that the only thing about it which appeared on the news was images of people breaking the windows of banks. Had I not been stuck in this wheelchair, I would probably have been marching with them. I would like to have been, but political activism, like going to the Lake District, going to the Isle of Arran, or even going to the pub for a pint of old-and-mild, is something else which I have lost from my life since my legs gave out. I’ve already said goodbye to the Lakes and to Arran in my heart, if I ever do get back there, it will be a miracle, the way things are going.

So, once again in search of miracles (and still not finding any) I turn to the Book of Common Prayer and find, firstly, an obscure footnote that says that I should actually have been reading the Collect for Ash Wednesday for every day of Lent as well as the actual Collect for that day. OK, sorry God, I missed that one. Blame the printers.

So in addition to

“We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

I should have added:

“ALMIGHTY [those caps again! I love it!] and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Well, I would be more than happy to trade an admission of my wretchedness at the moment (it’s not exactly a state secret) in return for “perfect remission”, so if you are listening, Big G, now as always, it’s a deal.

The Epistle this Sunday is Ephesians 5. 1., which exhorts me amongst other things to

“walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.”

Well, that’s me stuffed then. Walking in love is another thing I used to be able to do, in several senses of the term. The problem with the giving of thanks – or one of them – is that you never actually know the moment you are happy – not until it’s passed, and you are looking back on it – but at that actual moment, the moment where your happiness was maximised, and – like every other rhythm in the universe – was just about to pass the tipping point and become its opposite, the experience is so intense that it defies definition. “We had the experience, but missed the meaning”. It is only when you look back that you remember the days when you walked in fields of gold, and the girl you walked in love there with now walks elsewhere, either in reality or in her thoughts. Very seldom does the beginning accord to the end, as the Gawain poet says. Or, as John Donne said – oft quoted by me:

"Oh how feeble is man’s powre
that if good fortune fall
he cannot add one single houre,
nor a lost houre recall"


This week’s Gospel is St. Luke 11. 14, which starts out, rather splendidly:

“ Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was dumb.”

It certainly was, picking a fight with Jesus, and he zapped its sorry ass.

“And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered. But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils.”

Mamma Mia, Mamma Mia, not Be-el-ze-bub! In a minute, we’ll all be doing the headbanging scene in the car from Wayne’s World! But Jesus, equal to the challenge, faces them down and says that actually, he casts out devils by using the finger of God. However, he does then proceed to give them the Scarborough Warning, in George Bush terms:

“He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.”

Maybe that is my problem. By going through these blind-man’s buff contortions, these gropings towards the concept of what might be called a God, by not blindly accepting it all, I have “scattered” and lost my way, in the process of trying to be a signpost to others, even if only to say “don’t go there”. Maybe I have, like the man Jesus describes in this passage, invited seven kinds of devils to dwell within me. If it wasn’t so difficult to justify the ways of God to men, I might be more reconciled. If only, as I have said before, God could be a bit more like Jesus in his everyday life. But, as it is, yes, I remain scattered, like last year’s dead leaves dancing before the winds of March, before breaking up, brittle, in the sunshine of April.

The last bit always has me chuckling though:

“And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”

I just have this aural vision, if that’s allowed, of Jesus speaking in the voice of the Prince Obolensky commentator, or Leslie Phillips, going “Ra-ther!” at the mention of “the paps which thou hast sucked”. So, that’s me being toasted by demons with pitchforks for all eternity, I guess. Sorry, Big G, I know St Luke was trying to be serious, but humour is the last ditch of my defence, right now.

Next week brings a renewed challenge, of course, with the possibility that Broadmoor may re-open as early as Monday. These next few days are going to be critical in the fight to recover the ability to walk, if I can do it. I am determined to do it, because I don’t want my life to be over at the age of 55. Please don’t tell me that my life won’t be over, even if I am stuck in this wheelchair for the rest of my life. I know you mean well, but my old life, the life which, for all its faults and struggles, was when I walked the fields of barley, and when I was last sort of happy, died on St Swithun’s Day last year. And I cannot call back that time, or any other time I have lost, any more than I can recall the “lost hour” this week that saw us transit to British Summer Time.

Whatever follows is bound to be different. And probably, barring miracles, unpleasant. And maybe painful. Very seldom does the beginning accord to the end.

Sunday 20 March 2011

Epiblog for the Second Sunday of Lent


It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. That fleeting fugitive, the sun, has been reported in occasional sightings, here and there. He peeped through a window, or he briefly gilded a tracery of boughs in the garden outside the conservatory door, transfiguring them momentarily into something from the margin of a Medieval illuminated manuscript. He has been stimulating the “squerels and bestes smal of gentyl kinde” to scamper along the railing at the edge of the deck, and nick the bits of stale bread from the bird table. At this time of year, though, “bytuene Mersh and Averil, whan spray beginneth to springe”, he is fickle and unreliable. By the time you turn your head to look for him, he has already ducked back behind a cloud, out of sight.

Right now, as I type this, he is spotlighting the patch of the conservatory rug where Tiggy is sleeping, in a re-run, almost to the minute, of last Sunday. But I know, because today is the vernal equinox, and from now on the days will lengthen to Summer, that the patch of sun she is sleeping in has shifted inexorably since last week, as the stars and the planets themselves gradually edge round their orbits, and the well-trammeled course of the universe runs on, like a clockwork orrery.

She’s tired because she’s already been out in the garden this morning for much longer than usual. I don’t know if it was because of the coming of Spring, with all its potential new dog-sniffs and smells, or whether she is having problems with her plumbing again and needs some more Propalin from the vets. [If you want the full story on Propalin, you only need Google for “incontinent bitches” but whatever you do, don’t do it with “safe search” turned off, or in a room where your maiden aunt is close at hand next door.]

She’s also tired because she’s been on a couple of long walkies with Grandad, which they have both survived. She celebrated her safe return the other night with a special tea I prepared for her. I chopped up some courgette into small cubes and seared it in a skillet with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then mixed that with the remains of the penne pasta we’d had the night before, plus some shredded turkey, some dog mixer and a few generous dollops of “real” dog food out of a can that was open in the fridge, whisked it all up with a fork, et voila! She wolfed it down and showed her appreciation by pushing the empty dish round the floor with her head for a while, which is something I, personally, would like to see adopted as acceptable human etiquette and table manners, especially at formal dinners.

Yes, well, I did say our animals are spoilt. Every animal any of our families has ever owned has been spoilt. I haven’t yet got around to cooking Bouillabasse for Kitty, but it can only be a matter of time. Meanwhile she remains as elderly, strident and vocal as ever, especially when she thinks the dog is getting shredded turkey and she isn’t, so I had to hand-feed her some as well, and she made sure she caught my hand in her front paws and held it there, with just a hint of claws, until her rasping little tongue had cleansed my fingers of every greasy morsel.

Talking of creatures with rasping tongues, Debbie has been alternately preparing her teaching stuff, as (unbelievably) her second lot of reprobates are now due to take their exam next week. Surely it can’t have been ten whole weeks? But it is. When she hasn’t been staying up til the early hours typing lesson plans, she’s been shouting at the television, especially when the Six Nations is on, and England are losing and/or winning, but playing badly.

This has, of course, been the week when the full horror became apparent of the aftermath of the earthquakes in Japan, and the subsequent nuclear near-meltdown. And the week when, in the face of what you or I would probably call common sense and consistency, British warplanes began bombing Libya. And the week when Westminster Council pushed ahead with their plans to “ban” rough sleepers” out of existence, in certain areas of their domain.

I mention these events to point up the fact that I am aware of what is going on in the outside world. I am not like one of those 18th Century Rutland Squires, compiling a meticulous journal of what the weather was like on a day to day basis, while all the time on the Continent, Marlborough was rampaging from Ramillies, to Oudenarde, to Blenheim to Malplaquet, but not necessarily in that order.

The horrors and injustices of the outside world belong firmly in the drawer marked “Why does God allow such suffering to take place in the world?” This is one of the fundamental questions that gnaw away at the foundations of anyone’s belief, and, of course, there is no answer, when it comes to natural disasters. With man-made problems, you can at least console yourself with the thought that Big G has chosen to work his purpose out via mankind, and sometimes mankind can be very stupid indeed, and less than perfect humans are going to screw up, either big-time, as in Libya, or relatively small-time, as in Westminster Council with their despicable, petit-bourgeois attitude to the poor.

When it comes to natural disasters, matters of faith are just that. You either feel it, and believe in God, in some way shape or form, more or less strongly (less, in my case, from time to time) or you don’t. You can’t prove it, logically, though St Anselm, bless him, had a good old go (if you ever want to give your brain a workout, try reading his Ontological Proof of the Existence of God - the temptation to skip to the end and see who dunnit is almost irresistible).

And if you accept that God is unknowable, ineffable, and all that stuff, you accept that – as I have said many times before – our noses are too close to the tapestry, at least in this life, for us to be able to make sense of the wider picture. It comes with the territory. One of the most telling exchanges I have ever read on this subject was something I found on an internet message board, following the Boxing Day Tsunami a few years ago, when a poster asked why God hadn’t intervened at the time of the event, and someone replied “how do you know he didn’t?” God’s idea of relative good and harm, and what constitutes a successful outcome, must be a lot different to ours.

Certainly, as also happened with that disaster, in Japan we are seeing the hand of God in the bravery of the rescuers and the mercy of God in the tireless efforts of the medics to treat the survivors, and in the heroic striving of those who have lost everything to start again and rebuild their lives, we see the truly indomitable nature of the human spirit.

Which is, I suppose, a lesson for me, to count my blessings rather than enumerating my misfortunes, as I have been doing for previous weeks. My own news this week has been paltry by comparison, though in my own life it could be as momentous, in its own way, as an earthquake. Well, a small tremor, anyway.

For some time now, my physios have been talking about stepping up my treatment to make it more intensive. The problem is, as they see it, that the once-a-week sessions at HRI don’t give enough of what they call “carry-over”, building each week on the previous week’s achievements. Some time ago they referred me to an intermediate care facility, sort of a half way house between proper hospital and home, called Oakmoor, where people can go and have intensive therapy for up to six weeks. Now, a bed has become available, and I may be going there next week. It is unclear at this stage how long I will be staying (partly because it depends on my progress, or lack of it) and whether I will be able to come home at weekends – despite being only a mile or so from our house, it seems to be purely residential. The fact that I keep mistakenly calling it Broadmoor instead of Oakmoor, and the fact that the same site also houses an old people’s home, have both been causes of great hilarity to Debbie and her extended family.

So, basically, next Sunday, I could be incarcerated in "Broadmoor", having intensive physio, and once more reliant on my dongle – watch this space. I must admit, I had no idea I was signing up for such an epic quest, last year, or even when I came out of Calderdale. I feel a bit like Gawain, plodding on through the “wilderness of Wyrale” and warring with the Wodwos. Except that in my case, I have even lost my faithful Gringolet, as the insurance claim for Fifi was settled during the week, and I am now officially car-less as well as careless. Actually, the last word is a lie, I have never been so full of cares as I seem to be right now, especially as I know the next six weeks could potentially decide whether or not I ever walk again. Perhaps St Jude, fiery Barnet and all, has been working his magic, when I least expected it.

When I think of all the bright ideas and intentions I came home with, back in the days running up to Christmas, I can't believe how many of them have been shot down in flames, stripped away, or negated just by the daily grind of getting by in a wheelchair. So, by way of light relief, I flipped open my trusty Book of Common Prayer, to see what delights the heady brew of Anglicanism has served up for me this week. I must admit. I quite liked the Collect, it struck a chord with me, especially the bit about

“ALMIGHTY God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.”

I definitely do need defending from any more adversities which might happen to the body, yes Siree. You must be readin’ my mail! [And, in passing, I love the way the typographer in the Prayer Book puts “ALMIGHTY” in caps, just in case you didn’t get the message or were a bit slow on the uptake.]

The Old Testament passage is 1 Thessalonians. iv. 1. I keep wondering, you know, why all these old outposts of the Church were named after rugby union XIVs, and what happened to the Epistle to the Ionians, the Epistle to the Barbarians, and the Epistle to the Harlequins? They probably all ended up in the Apocrypha after the Council of Nicea.

Anyway, this one, too, started off with a big booming bell of a message for me:

“We beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.”

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to walk and please God, and abound more and more. I look forward to the day when I can say “with one abound, I was free”. The remainder of the passage, however, seems to be about avoiding fornication, and how

“every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the lust of concupiscence”.

I’m afraid to say that the “lust of concupiscence” sounds so appealing that I am very tempted to go out and commit it right now, except that a) I can’t get out of the house, still no ramp and b) I have no idea what it means or how to commit it. Still, getting out of the house is not necessarily a barrier. I subscribe to the local “Freecycle” branch and regularly receive emails from them, listing items members are anxious to either dispose of or acquire. This week’s contained, amidst the fish tanks, dog beds, pressure washers and kitchen cupboards, an offer from a “39 Year Old Prostitute, Skelmanthorpe.” I didn’t know vice had reached as far as Skelmanthorpe, I thought it was still all flat caps, aertex vests and pigeon racing up there, but anyway, two days later, a shamefaced email of apology was circulated to all members by the moderators, claiming that somehow they had unaccountably failed to pick up on the word “Prostitute”. I was tempted to email back and ask never mind that, what they were doing allowing people to charge for things on Freecycle, but I decided life was a bit too short.

“For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.”

Yes, well, thank you Paul, that was a bit of a slam-dunk there. I will do my best not to indulge in concupiscence, once I have looked it up, but I can’t guarantee anything, I am human, I am fallen, Spring is springing, and time is short.

The New Testament, Matthew xv. 21, is the story of the woman who came to Jesus because her daughter was “grievously vexed with a devil”. In a curious development, the Disciples try to have her sent away, because he is only sent “unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The point of this passage is apparently that the woman is a Caananite, a gentile, and therefore not one of those to whom Jesus has specifically been sent. Although he does not send her away, he is brusque with her and almost tests her faith, saying “It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs”, and only finally, when she will not take no for an answer, and replies “Truth Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table” that he relents and cures her child.

So we are supposed to take from this that although Jesus was mainly concerned with saving the Children of Israel, despite that there was enough left over for anyone with enough faith to benefit from him. Like most bits in the Bible where Jesus does something odd, unexpected, or mardyarsed, it’s probably something to do with fulfilling ancient Hebrew prophecy. It usually is.

Anyway, I especially like the bit about the dog eating the crumbs which fall from the master’s table. If that alone is enough to earn you the grace of Jesus, then someone who goes to the trouble of chopping up a courgette and pan-frying it in balsamic vinegar for inclusion in the mutt’s tea, must be in with a chance, and I trundle into next week’s unknown challenges with renewed hope that walking, abounding, and Spring, might be just around the corner.

Sunday 13 March 2011

Epiblog for the First Sunday of Lent


It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The mad winds of March have arrived with a vengeance, with a positive vendetta, in fact. Thursday was the sort of wild, blustery day that almost made me glad to be confined to barracks, except that, of course, Thursday was the one day when I had to actually venture forth, to physio. On my way there, from the window of the ambulance, I saw my first municipal daffodils of 2011. Not fluttering and dancing in the breeze, so much as being flattened by it, like the ones in Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale”

“Faire daffadils, that come before the swallow dares
And take the winds of March with beauty.”


Maybe Spring has sprung. It is too early to tell. This was also the week when (getting our money’s worth as a family out of the NHS) Debbie’s Dad received the results of his recent visit to Papworth. He needs something called a Pulmonary Endarterectomy, which is not nearly so much fun as it sounds. It involves them cutting through your breastbone, and fiddling around with your ventricles, there is a 5% chance that you might not survive the experience, and all sorts of side effects are possible during the prolonged recovery period, including going temporarily loopy, apparently. On the other hand, if he doesn’t have it done, in a couple of years’ time, he might be carrying a tank of oxygen around with him wherever he goes. I don’t envy him his choice, to be honest.

While Mike was travelling down to Papworth to learn this drastic news, Zak and Freddie were staying with us, which involves communal feeding, an activity often akin to trying to get all the little silver balls in the centre of the maze.

What should happen is that Kitty eats Kitty’s food, Tig eats Tiggy’s food, Zak eats Zak’s food, and Freddie eats Freddie’s food. Simple enough. What actually happens, however, more often as not, is that Kitty eats Tig’s food, and Tiggy starts off by eating her own food, sometimes at the same time as Kitty, then moves over to the cat food. Freddie sniffs his own food, then moves in to finish off Tiggy’s food. Zak, meanwhile, eats his own food, but when he’s finished it, he goes round and hoovers up everyone else’s leftovers. Sometimes, when Freddie’s moved over to Tiggy’s food, Kitty starts eating Freddie’s food, and he comes back, wanting to finish it off, but instead, he stands idly by, whimpering for sympathy, because he doesn’t dare barge her off it. Kitty has eaten so much dog food of late, I fully expect her to produce a lead from somewhere and ask to go “walkies.”

We have also acquired another pet, albeit a wild one, a fine speckled thrush that now visits the bird table on the decking daily. The other morning, as Debbie came through, it was there, and I remarked to her that the thrush was back again, and she replied that I shouldn’t worry, as these days you can get cream for it. The thrush is not so much a Thomas Hardy “Darkling Thrush” as a Robert Browning "wise thrush that sings each song twice over, in case he never might repeat his first careless rapture" - and every time I see it, I think inevitably of the lines from Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins,

“Glory be to God for dappled things”.

The thrush is engaged in a long term project which involves eating the remains of an old Christmas pudding that we put out on the bird table back in January, still in its plastic bowl. Given the gusto with which it tucks into this on a daily basis, there is of course always the alarming possibility that the thrush will grow correspondingly huge as the Christmas pudding diminishes, and one day we will find a thrush the size of a football resting on the decking, too big to take off.

Debbie has been getting all trepidacious this week about the prospect if having to possibly teach Shakespeare as part of a pre-GCSE course next year (this is the academic year, starting from September. Academics have different years to the rest of us, in the same way as farmers have different weather, because they get up early and they work hard). She only likes one Shakespeare play – Macbeth. We were quoting bits of it to each other the other night while watching Jamie Oliver. I know, it’s just one white-knuckle ride of excitement round at ours. The last couple to have a life like ours were Blake and his wife, who used to sit in the garden reciting Milton to each other, Mind you, to spice it up, they did it in the nude, and of course, famously, in the middle of it, Blake was arrested for sedition, so we’ve got a long way to go yet. Anyway, I digress. We were reciting Macbeth, and I did the bit about life being a poor player

“A tale told by an idiot
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”


Which moved Deb to observe that it wasn’t very “nice”, as a speech. And I said no, it wasn’t. Shakespeare wasn’t known for his political correctness, but to be fair, "King Lear" would be a lot less interesting if Lear got taken in by social services or care in the community, rather than being allowed to wander about on the blasted heath, raving in a thunderstorm. Actually, in Kirklees, that probably would have happened even if he had been taken in by social services, but we’ll leave that for now.

She has also completed the third in her trilogy of disasters, when she switched on her laptop on Friday morning and it was dead as mutton. I have been telling her for ages to back up all her teaching stuff, but I may as well have saved my breath to cool my porridge. Mind you, I have no room to talk, it is only since my own laptop scare that I have been zealously backing things up left, right, and centre, with the resounding clang of a stable door being bolted, long after the horse has fled. After considering various “Domesday” scenarios, a quick phone blitz by me found someone who would allegedly fix it, or at least look at it, that day (a different someone to the someone we found to look at mine, who still hasn’t come back to me after two weeks). The laptop was duly transported to their premises on Chapel Hill, and lo! It was fixed by the simple expedient of removing the battery, which had become flatter than a flat thing on a flat day in flatchester. A new battery costs £65.00 (ridiculous! At least Dick Turpin wore a mask!) so for now, she’s running it without one, straight off the mains. A narrow escape, though. Phew.

There is still no sign of my ramp, in fact not even so much as a response to the ranting email I sent to Kirklees Council on Monday. So I have now invoked the nuclear option, I have written them a letter. For the moment, I have contented myself with posting them a copy. They will not like it. They will like it even less if they ignore the posted letter and find me nailing a copy to their door, a la Martin Luther, having first invited the Huddersfield Daily Examiner to watch me do it. My letter was prompted by my receipt of a missive from them, during the week. Aha, I thought, at last, something is happening, - but no, it turned out that it was as msilshot from the head of social care saying that, despite what I may have read in the press about the Tory cuts affecting social care budgets, not to worry, because in Kirklees the service would be just the same. In my reply, I have asked if this is intended to be the good news, or the bad news.

Anyway, that is enough about the ramp – last week I was admonished for having no patience, and I take that criticism constructively, in the spirit in which it was intended. I guess Big G does have a lot on his plate right now. First Christchurch, then Japan, a lot to clear up.

That is true, though, about me having no patience. I am not a patient man. But it does have a good side, because I have no patience, I am not willing to wait for a better life for the downtrodden; I also believe in life before death. Because I have no patience, I am not willing to tolerate the injustice of homelessness. Because I have no patience, I am not prepared to put up with people being shoved around by the Government, and kicked when they are down and on the ground through no fault of their own.

On Sunday, I woke up to rain hammering against the window, and lay there, listening to the patterns of its pattering, as I was thankful for the roof over my head. It was a bit like waking up to rain in a tent, in fact, that moment when you are grateful for the invention of the sewn-in groundsheet. Then I thought about all those who are out in the rain right now, but don’t want to be.

I stood amazed, during the week, at the proposal by Westminster Council to ban the “soup run” to homeless people in their area. Of course, on one level, we should not be surprised at a bunch of self-serving, fat burghers and Pharisees have concocted such an idea. They have “form” in that respect, after all. Was it not Westminster Council that banned the run in their hallowed precincts at Christmas the other year? Unbelievably, on that occasion, it was supported by the editor of “The Big Issue” and I wrote to him and told him he was an idiot. He never replied. Perhaps he already knew.

To the councillors of Westminster, it would seem that the homeless are a sort of wilful and tiresome irritation, so obsessed with the taste of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato that they are willing to leave their homes and their jobs, hitch-hike to London, and sleep rough in a doorway in Covent Garden just for a sniff of the stuff. It is an indicator of just how far those set in authority over us take us for mugs, that this kind of bollocks is actually served up as some sort of justification for the ban.

The truth, I suspect, lies nearer to the fact that rich people who live in Westminster don’t like seeing poor and homeless people as they go about their daily social round. It grates on the residual node of what used to be their shame gene, before they had it surgically removed. It reminds them of the fundamental injustice of their continued existence, compared to the people in our society who are really struggling. Johann Hari, writing tellingly about this in The Independent, points to the distant view of Canary Wharf and all its glittering towers, from the perspective of the homeless who “live” – or rather, exist – in Covent Garden.

Anyway, I have written to the Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Westminster asking her what she intends to do about the homeless, because you can’t ban them from existing. Now that no one will feed them, will they be left, in some cases no doubt, to starve in the gutter? I await the reply (if any) with interest. Because, as it says in my Bible, if they cared to look, “the poor are always with us”.

So, I have not been a happy bunny this week, no change there then. It was not until late on in the week that I actually turned to studying the collect, epistle and gospel for the First Sunday in Lent. (I am glad to be back in synch with the Church, in ordinary time, or whatever, but for a while, Quinquagesima was quite a sexy word…) In fact, before looking at the scriptures, on Ash Wednesday itself, I read T S Eliot’s poem of that name, something I try and do every Ash Wednesday, in the same way as every Good Friday, I try and read “Goodfriday 1613, Riding Westward” by John Donne. For me, the hallmark of a great poem is that each time you read it, it gives you something new, and for me, "Ash Wednesday" certainly passes that test. It is one of the great religious poems of the Twentieth Century, or indeed, probably of any century, steeped in the language and rhythms of the King James Bible, and prefiguring in many ways the later flowering of some of the same themes and ideas in “Four Quartets”.

This year, though, I tried to read it in a slightly different way. One of my problems with Eliot is I know too much about him. I spent three years studying the man at University, and have resolutely kept up my interest ever since. So I know that Eliot wrote the poem as part of the process of becoming reconciled and joining the Church of England, in 1936, and that it is in some ways an agonising mixture of remorse and regret for him, renouncing his previous life up to that point with all its rights and wrongs, including the guilt over the collapse of his marriage and the mental illness of his first wife.

This time, though, I was looking for concordances with my own plight, and I just let the lines wash over me, only pausing where I found something that resonated particularly with me. It turned out, not unexpectedly, to be the lines about renouncing things, something I have been forced into doing rather a lot of in the last six months. I am not giving up anything for Lent, I have already given up far too much.

I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.


It is all about sitting still and accepting your fate, two things I am singularly bad at. To say that Eliot wrote it when he was busy embracing Anglicanism, it is a very Zen idea. And yes, I do have “matters that with myself I too much discuss”, like will I ever get out of this wheelchair.

The next passage that seemed positively to glow off the page for me was the famous section which starts:

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.


A critic once asked Eliot what he had meant when he wrote the line, “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree”, and Eliot calmly replied that he had meant “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree.” A warning against reading too much into poetry, perhaps. But these lines for me signify the (again very Zen) idea that there is no “me” as such, or at least, whatever constitutes “me” is not my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained in the hollow round of my skull. And in the same way that Big G doesn’t go in for intervention, fiery chariots, and sending St Peter around with a cement mixer and a gang of disciples, but instead works through mankind, so the leopards in this case are God's agents of destruction. God’s cats-paws, separating what is me from what is not me, like the wheat and the chaff. Perhaps the late, great Dr Spooner was nearer the truth than he thought when he stood up at Oxford that day and solemnly intoned “Our Lord is a shoving leopard.”

Then there are some of the saddest lines in the poem, where Eliot renounces the sensual life. Lilacs and hyacinths always seem to stand for ideas of sex in Eliot’s writing, for reasons probably to do with his habit of wandering around in rose gardens with Emily Hale. Not that I am suggesting any impropriety.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


T S is not wrong. Brown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown. And blonde hair, too – especially blonde hair, sometimes. I do not know if my Lenten life from now on, having given up walking, at least temporarily, will also entail giving up other things, I look forward to the sweetness of May, my favourite month of all the year, and, sad as it may seem for my spiritual development, right now, I would rather be out in the garden listening to the antique flute, than struggling to climb the third stair, especially if it isn't wheelchair accessible.

And so I left Eliot to his own self-recriminations, and turned to the Prayerbook, and to 2 Corinthians 6:1-10 (King James Version), which seems to be about not receiving the grace of God in vain, and which I have to confess passed me by, almost completely. I didn’t know quite what to make of it, neither a hat nor a brooch. All flowery stuff, King James language and all that, but I still don’t get it. Obviously I need to read it again on a day when I am not so bitter, so cribbed, cabin’d and confined, and not feeling so hard done by, if such a day ever comes.

The New Testament text, Matthew 4 1-11 (King James Version) is the famous passage where Satan takes Jesus out into the Wilderness and alternately taunts and tempts him. I’m not entirely convinced about Satan, the Devil, call him what you will. I don’t think I believe in an actual bloke in furry jodphurs, with horns and a tail, carrying a pitchfork. I think it stands for the part of us that is capable of doing evil nasty things, the pebble in our shoe, the grit in the oyster. In other words, it’s a personification of the bad that is in all of us. And, I suppose, part of the principle of Lent is that in fasting, in giving something up, we are showing that we have the will power, the capability, to deny that in ourselves. So instead of just turning the stones into bread, Jesus points out that man shall not live by bread alone.

So the devil takes Jesus “ up into an exceeding high mountain”, and shows him “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them”, and basically offers them all to Jesus if he will give up and worship him instead. Jesus, of course, not to be swayed from his purpose, tells Satan to “do one” and after that “Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him”.

I wish I had Jesus’s ability to forego all of these temptations. I have had to give up many things in the last six months, but I have not done it willingly, I have not offered these things up to God, they have been taken from me, and I have held on to them until they were finally wrested from my grasp, and even then I have carried on lusting after them, and bemoaning the fact. In Lent, it seems, I am being asked to accept these losses, even maybe to add to them, albeit temporarily.

So, once again, I have found myself in the same stony ground, the same rock, the same hard place, my tempter still at my elbow saying “use your impatience for your own ends and not those of others”, telling me to feel sorry for myself and to complain long and loud when things don’t go my way. And do I have the strength to say no, and renounce these things, in Zen terms, to let it go with both hands, not to care that I am giving up so much of the world I used to inhabit, to sit still and wait for the Spring to come?

The only true, honest answer I have this afternoon, on the first Sunday of Lent, is, I do not know if I have the strength within me to vanquish the tempting foe, or to acknowledge that one day my bones might be nibbled by leopards. So, in the meantime, I continue to bleat about my fate, and remain a shadow of my former self. In fact, to be honest, I am not even happy with this Epiblog, I don't really know why I wrote it, or how you had the patience to get this far reading it, if indeed you did. Sorry.


T. S. Eliot - Ash Wednesday by poetictouch

Sunday 6 March 2011

Epiblog for Quinquagesima Sunday


It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, another week in my life as a parcel, passed from pillar to post, heaved in and out of the house like a sack of spuds, and signed for at either end. The indolent burghers of Kirklees still refuse to sign off the cost of the concrete ramp which would give me some degree of independence, with the result that I seem to have taken over from Aung San Suu Kyi as the world’s longest running case of house arrest. I am winding up to unleashing a new salvo at Kirklees, and when I do, this time they will feel the bang in Reykjavik.

I am utterly fed up of not being able to get out of my own house. Various people have offered to put up various sorts of temporary ramps, but, to be honest, why should they? Why should I have to organise my Sister to come from Northampton and go and buy a load of decking and stuff that will then only have to be dismantled at some later point when Kirklees get around to doing what they said they would do back in December? Especially as we have paid council tax at an exorbitant rate for 14 years and all we get is potholes and having to negotiate with the bin-men about the glass recycling? Just sign off the ramp.

So yes, I am not happy. Or should that be no? I am not happy anyway. It’s been another cold, nasty week, weather-wise, only redeemed by some feeble pale sun this morning, as I sit typing this with the cat on my knee, performing her usual valuable function as a hot water bottle, Tiggy snoozing in a patch of sunlight on the rug in the conservatory (she gets up and moves around during the day as the sunlight moves across the floor!) Zak dozing on the armchair, also in the conservatory, and Freddie curled up asleep next to Debbie on the sofa. Give it an hour, with the stove ticking away and eating up the anthracite, and I reckon I will be the only one still awake.

The reason we have got Freddie and Zak is that Mike (Debbie’s dad) is going down to Papworth Hospital tomorrow for his heart appointment, so Granny brought them over late last night, together with their little overnight bags, food and bowls, to stay for a couple of days. Mike has gradually been working his way up the NHS hospital system with treatment for his heart condition following his near-death from a pulmonary embolism the other year, and I guess with Papworth, he’s now reached the pinnacle. It’s like Oxford or Cambridge in the University world. I just hope they can do him some good.

The last time they tried to travel down to Cambridge for the appointment, they came back on an AA low loader, because the suspension collapsed on the A1 at Sutton-on-Trent, so I hope they have better luck there, as well, this time around. The car destruction fairy seems to have lighted on us instead, this week. Following on from her initial exploratory foray into the demolition of what remains of my life, with the laptop, last week, Debbie topped it off when she ran into the back of a parked car in Leeds on Tuesday night and managed to write off Fifi, the Citroen Berlingo.

So, at the moment, even if I could get out of the house, all I would be able to do is to trundle down the drive and look at the space where my car used to be. Fifi the Faithful, who always got me home and never left me stranded, even when she herself was on her last legs. Once, it broke down just as I turned into the driveway, having got me home through thirty miles of snowdrifts and black ice. The odometer read 189,000 miles at her last MOT, and many of those were up windy little lanes bordered with dry stone walls, through places like High Flatts and Birds Edge, en route to my daily transit of the Stocksbridge Bypass and being buzzed by would-be organ donors on the way to work for not going fast enough. It had towed our tin tent of a collapsible caravan round Arran, it had been to the Lake District so often it could probably have found its own way there and back, it had been round London, to Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, to Oxford, to Cheltenham, to Little Gidding, and nearly to Burnt Norton, had I not been too stupid to read a map properly. Many’s the mile we’d travelled together. No more. Never again. Farwell, old companion.

Still, it could have been worse, much worse. Debbie, thank God, is OK, if a little shaken by the experience. And it’s always possible to get another car, provided you are willing to throw enough time and money at the problem. Already the thicket of official forms has started growing and sprouting out of all control, and I look forward to days, if not weeks, of wrangling about the value of their offer and the state of the vehicle. The mangled remains of it will be collected from the garage tomorrow, and that will be that. It’s just down to money and paperwork from then on. Like so much else in life. But the fact remains, I now have one less potential avenue of freedom.

I was reminded, by my reminiscing about the car, of some of the other vehicles that have occupied significant places in my life. For some reason, I was thinking specifically about my Dad’s old Reliant, XAT 540. You can tell how old it was by the registration, but this was, of course, back in the 1960s, when we lived just off Crowle Street, behind Alexandra Dock, in Hull. Because he had a full motorbike licence which allowed him to drive a “combination” (as the MOT rather quaintly calls a motorbike-and-sidecar) he was also able, by a loophole which I am sure has since been closed, to drive a Reliant three-wheeler, which was referred to even more prosaically on its log book as a “tricycle”. I don’t have a picture of XAT 540, but I do have some grainy 1960s snaps (inherited in a biscuit tin) of my time as a street urchin in the slums, and in one of them, a precursor of XAT 540 is to be seen, parked on the waste ground in Alexandra Terrace where we used to play on the bomb site. This gives you some idea of what it looked like.

Looking back on those photos, it seems amazing now that we used to play on a bomb site, which was the result of a Luftwaffe bomb-aimer in 1941 missing the dock and hitting a row of terraced houses instead. If kids today said to their Mummy, “Mummy mummy, can I go and play on the bomb site?” their mother would probably insist on driving them there in a 4 x 4.

Anyway, I digress. XAT 540. Yes. A wonderful vehicle. The engine sump once overheated and set fire to the passenger seat on Ferriby High Road when my dad was coming back from Blackburn’s and he had to stop, throw the cushions out into the road, and stamp on them to put it out. Fortunately for his passengers, on that occasion, he didn’t have any. Fire always seemed to be likely, or at least a risk, in a vehicle which always smelt strongly of petrol and castor oil, and which had a sort of rubberised canvas soft top, which must have meant, thinking about it, that it was possible to run it as a convertible, with the top down, though in Yorkshire, in the 1960s, we never did.

Getting into it was like (I imagine, because I’ve never done it) it must have been clambering into the cockpit of a World War Two aircraft. And often, with my Dad, setting off on a mission to try and drive to Withernsea, Aldbrough, Spurn Head, or elsewhere along the East Yorkshire coast, and back, it carried a similar degree of uncertainty about whether you would return, especially in those days before roadside recovery, when the only options if it broke down were to fix it yourself, or to call out a local garage, of which there are very few in Holderness. Especially on a Sunday. Conversation was limited by the roar of the engine, and it would actually have been easier if we had had leather flying helmets, goggles, and an intercom.
But they were happy days and now I understand at last why he was so sad when XAT 540 went to the happy hunting grounds, to be replaced by the more modern, sleeker, “plastic Rat” type of Reliant, the ones with a fibreglass body. This week, I think I have just had my “XAT 540 moment”.

So, given that I am stuck here, for yet another day when the sun will be glinting off the scree slopes of Helm Crag, and I am not there to see it, I decided that I may as well look at the appointed Scriptures for the day and see what I can make of them. (A hat? A brooch?) Why I bother, though, I do not know. If God really existed, and really cared for me, there would be an enormous “Shazam!” the clouds would part, and a fiery cement mixer would descend from the heavens, together with Elijah and the children of Israel, and they would get on with mixing concrete. So far, it hasn’t happened.

I also have a bit of a dilemma. Amongst the books recovered when Debbie and her mother emptied out the car yesterday was my copy of The Book of Common Prayer. Oh good, I thought, this will save me hours of googling, I will just turn to the texts for today in the Prayerbook, instead. Problem. The Prayerbook seems to think today is “Quinquagesima Sunday” and also that I have missed Sexagesima and Septuagesima Sundays as well. Argh! But the internet tells me that I am now in something called “Ordinary Time”, and gives an entirely different set of readings. I have to observe, that if the Lord God Almighty doesn’t know what bloody day it is, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I must admit, I like the word “Quinquagesima”, even though it does sound a bit like a disease of the upper respiratory tract. If it really is “Quinquagesima” then the text is the famous bit from Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, in its entirety. This is the bit that starts “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal…” and I have said before, that, notwithstanding Paul’s single handed patronage of the entire postal system of the Eastern Mediterranean, nevertheless, this is one of the most haunting, evocative, and beautiful passages of the Bible, especially in the full fat, high tar King James version, and I want it read at my funeral. I’ve quoted it at length a few weeks ago on here, so I won’t do so again, it’s there to look up if you want it. If there is a lesson for me, I suppose it is in the bit about

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”

The fact is, my faith is not strong enough to move mountains. It’s not even strong enough to move me to the mountains, rather than vice versa. If I had a strong enough faith, perhaps I would somehow be in the Lake District right now, watching the white spring rainclouds scudding over Derwentwater in the fresh breeze. (Actually, the word “rain” in that sentence is superfluous. All clouds in the Lake District are rain clouds.)

The New Testament Reading is Luke 18, verses 31 onwards, where Jesus warns the Disciples of his impending trial and crucifixion, and, in passing, cures a blind man, begging at the side of the road to Jericho. All pretty mainstream stuff, and it’s good to see Jesus gainfully employed at what he does best, Saviouring and Miracles. I wonder if he also does concreting?

So, having covered off the possibility that it might be Quinquagesima, I now return to ordinary time (I am starting to sound a bit like Dr Who here) and look at the stuff lined up for the Ninth Sunday of Epiphany. Actually, time at the moment is anything but “ordinary” – as I remarked to my physiotherapist on Thursday, with all this shit going on in my life, I am currently suffering from “Vuja De!” I have never been here before, and I have no bloody idea what is going to happen next.

The Old Testament text seems to be Deutronomy 5, 12-15, including

“But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work--you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.”

I can’t speak for the male and female slave, because we don’t have any, or the resident aliens – actually, I think Polish plumbers do sometimes work on a Sunday, but I guess they go to Mass beforehand, so that’s OK. Anyway, the rest of it checks out. As predicted, none of our livestock is doing any work today, they are now all snoozing, and Freddie’s little grumbling snores sound like someone sawing wood in a distant room.

The psalm for today is Psalm 81, which includes the verses:

“Raise a song, sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our festal day.”


I am not so sure about the tambourine, though bearing in mind Great Aunt Alice’s connections with the Sally Army, I guess I ought to be all for it. I have to say that, as an instrument, its most stimulating exponent in recent years, has been one Michael Jagger, who belongs firmly in the camp of Satan. The trumpets, however, have given me an idea for this week’s music clip, another bit of my funeral service. (Cheerful, moi?)

The next bit is Paul again, still wearing out his Parker 61 and working his way down a stack of Basildon Bond to give the Corinthians the benefit of his opinion. The selected passage, 2 Corinthians 4, 5-12, tries to explain the rationale of the human condition as being something precious, but contained in a clay pot, and therefore vulnerable.

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”

Strangely, that does quite sum up how I feel this week. Hard-pressed on every side, check, struck down, but not destroyed, check. I could really do, though, God, if you are listening and you really do exist and you really are John Wayne, I could really, really do with the sight of the 7th Cavalry galloping over the hill to my rescue. Soon. Not Calvary, but Cavalry, is what I need right now. As that well-known contemporary theologian Grandmaster Flash once wrote, “don’t push me, ‘cause I’m close to the edge, I’m tryin’ not to lose my head.”

The New Testament passage is Mark 2:23-3:6, with Jesus and his disciples harvesting grain on the Sabbath and generally getting up the noses of the Pharisees. This time, the Pharisees are trying to suggest to Jesus that he shouldn’t do anything on the Sabbath, even if it involves good, such as restoring someone’s withered hand. This seems to contradict the admonition in Deutronomy, to keep the Sabbath day “holy” Is it “holy” to break the rules to do something good on a day which is supposed to be holy by virtue of inaction? I guess that the meaning of this passage is probably intended to be that rules, while not exactly made to be broken, can only take you so far, and what really counts is the wisdom to know when to make a new rule, which is fine as long as you are Jesus, because you obviously have that wisdom, but as the example of the EU shows, sometimes the rest of us are “earthen vessels”. So, is Jesus saying “apply the law selectively” here, or is he just advocating good old common sense?

The key seems to be that Jesus was “grieved at the hardness of their hearts”. Perhaps the acid test for any rule is, does it act in favour of, or against, a compassionate outcome? If the latter is the case, perhaps it’s time to look at whether we need to vote in some new rules. Often, the original purpose of rules gets forgotten, and they end up working against what it was they were initially intended to promote. The Data Protection Act is a prosaic, but apt, illustration of this.

These days, of course, Sunday has gone too far the other way. Unless you make an effort to not shave, and keep the blinds closed, and unplug the TV, it’s just like any other day. Maybe life was more peaceful, and yet, strangely, slightly more risky and interesting, when we were buzzing through the grainfields of East Yorkshire in XAT 540, and the AA man didn’t work on the Sabbath.

So, there you have it. Next week will be Ash Wednesday, and then we will be into Lent. “After the Christmas, comes the crabbed Lentoun,” as the Gawain-Poet put it. At least we’ll know what the Sundays will be then. Sermons and soda-water. Ash Wednesday of course always brings to mind Eliot’s famous lines about:

“Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still”


While I appreciate the sentiment, right now I have been sitting still for far too long. And while I know what Eliot means about cultivating detachment, which I agree, is probably what I need to do – “sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself” as the Zen saying has it – nevertheless, I do care. I care that I am stuck here in chokey, and I may have to start digging a tunnel. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Or in my case, a single ramp. All concrete proposals welcomed. In the meantime, on this sprightly hautboy play!