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

Not to mention "Left-Wing Pish"

Wednesday 30 November 2011

Epiblog for St Roch


It has been a busy couple of weeks in the Holme Valley. Life goes on. We’re all still here. Just – but more of that later. Last Thursday, I had a visitor, and last Saturday, another! My social life, speaking as a parcel, is looking up no end.

Yes, a parcel I remain, sadly, as the saga of the Ramp (now dignified by an initial capital letter) has ground to an unhappy close, with Kirklees Council deciding, after weeks of filling in forms and supplying proofs of destitution, that we apparently don’t qualify for the grant after all, so even our “initial contribution” of £1956.54 was wrong. Or something. I have given up with these people. The good news is, that because I have a “degenerative condition” I can apply again at some point in the future, when I have got worse!

Given that the application form this time around was 28 pages long and contained questions such as “Are you now or were you ever a prisoner of the Japanese?”, I would rather hack my own toes off with a rusty knife and serve them up on toast to next door’s cat than give those inept, miserable bastards the satisfaction of screwing up my life by taking up vast acres of time, raising my hopes, then dashing them again, as they have done twice now. If they really want to make a difference to the “Streetscene” as it says on their letterhead, perhaps they could go outside and fill in a few potholes.

Talking of next door’s cat, I am happy to report that Spidey, like the poor, is also with us, yea, even to the end of time, it would seem, as he blithely uses the cat flap and comes and goes as he pleases now, quite regardless of the presence of a large hairy Yorkshireman sitting up in bed and watching him. I suppose the next stage will be the said large hairy Yorkshireman discovering that Spidey is actually sharing the said bed with him, if it gets any colder.

But I digress. Visitors. My first honoured guest was the Vicar, for tea, on Thursday. Martin, as we shall call him, for that is his name, has been promoted to look after two parishes round here, and his church is just up the road, but by a strange quirk of ecclesiastical cartography, we actually belong in the parish of Golcar, which is miles away. Anyway, that didn’t stop Martin making a welcome visit on Thursday, for tea, and bringing his little 10-week old puppy, Seth, who promptly went round and polished off all the dog food he could find in all the pet bowls around the kitchen. He’s a growing boy, little Seth, and unbearably cute, as well.

We roasted the chestnuts, which Debbie had got at the market last weekend, on the fire, and put the world to rights, aided by Granny, who dropped in on her way across the valley. I was delighted to be able to achieve one of my ambitions and use one of my all-time “must say” phrases, for real. “More tea, Vicar?” That only leaves “Follow that car”, “Not so fast, Dhakarumbha!” and “Take that, you bastard!” and my life will be complete.

Martin told us of his translation from the life of a hospital chaplain, bright-lit, ordered, self contained, to his work now, looking after two large parishes, semi-rural in nature, with just him and Seth rattling round in a huge, gloomy 1930s vicarage. It all sounded a bit Jane Austen to me, and I told him so. He replied, rather startlingly, that he had considered the issue and had agreed to give short term shelter to a family of Zimbabwean asylum-seekers, who were otherwise homeless.

The fact that he is putting up an otherwise homeless family of Zimbabwean Asylum Seekers in his otherwise huge and echoing Father-Ted style vicarage, makes him a top banana, in my book. It’s also an incredibly Christian act of charity. In contrast, I must say, to the attitude of some members of the Church of England to the “Occupy” protestors, which I have had cause to complain about, latterly the Dean of Sheffield, who seems determined in his opposition to their attempts to create a fairer, more just society, a situation from which we must draw our own conclusions.

Meanwhile, of course, Kitty continues her own “Occupy” protest, occupying the bin bag full of shredded financial papers (donated by Granny for the purposes of lighting the fire) in the corner of the hearth. Actually, I think she would protest more if you tried to take the bin-bag away, which is why it remains in situ.

I discovered - as well - there's actually a local Asylum Seekers' support group, which I didn't know about, but that they've also been contact with one guy, an Eritrean who was also homeless. He's likely to go off the radar because his living arrangements fell through.

Now I don't know about you, and I don't know about him, his rights and wrongs, I suspect he's a mixture, like the rest of us - other than that he's a human being, like us, two arms, two legs, shaves in the morning, some mother's son, that sort of stuff. A long way from home, and not a friend in the world, right now. Yeah, according to the hard of heart, those who had a compassion bypass at birth, he should go back whence he came, yadda yadda.

But it looks pretty dark out there right now, outside, and it's cold tonight, even here, inside my kitchen, writing this, sitting next to the stove, and the drumming on the conservatory roof tells me it's raining as well, and I just want to know, all you people who go on about this sort of stuff, are you happy with him being out there, alone, in that? Irrespective of his rights and wrongs, just tonight, don't you think there might just be a better way to treat a fellow human being? You may think he shouldn't have come here, and he deserves all he gets, but could you really harden your heart to that extent?

And if, like me, you aren't happy with it, maybe we should put pen to paper, maybe we should put finger to keyboard, hand to plough, foot to accelerator, pen to chequebook, whatever, tomorrow, and start the long tedious process of doing something about it, and finding him, and bringing him in somewhere warm?

The truth is, despite government-inspired, divide and rule propaganda to the contrary, that asylum seekers are not entitled to cash help from the government and they are not able to claim benefits. However, while we take forever to sort out their applications (which is not the fault of the seeker) they have the right to be able to survive and live directly on a hand to mouth existence for the very basics they need to survive.

Despite what is reported in papers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail, taxpayers do not fund this directly, it comes from an EU fund that supports asylum seekers/refugees who go to any EU state. People living in limbo like this do not have a quality of life, as they are not allowed to work or do anything to improve their situations, and of course they have the Damoclean Sword of deportation always hanging over their heads, often to somewhere dangerous to which they have actually no connection.

Speaking of quality of life, my second visitor of the week was Owen, from South Wales. He of the free stairlift. He was appalled to hear of the council decision and he is going to come and build me a ramp, and fix the door which is hanging off its hinges, and chip back the 5mm lip of concrete with a chisel, so, after this weekend, I will be able once more to exit and enter my own house of my own free will, without being carted in and out like a sack of spuds. It won’t exactly conform to building regulations, but do you know what, Kirklees Council, if you object to that, then you can stick it up your arse, second shelf! It will be a year come 7th December, that I have been a virtual prisoner in my own home.

This will still leave me without a disabled-friendly downstairs bathroom and loo, but Owen seems to think he can sort out something at the foot of the stairs, a sort of bench-seat to allow me to transfer on to the stairlift, then I will once more be able to go upstairs, if it works, and sleep in the same bed as my wife, (yes, and my dog!) for the first time in 18 months.

Except that it may be too late to sleep with my dog on the bed, because for a couple of nights at the weekend, we all had to camp out down here, in the kitchen/conservatory, with Tiggy on a blanket and panting for her life, because she took a sudden turn for the worse. She is fifteen, going on sixteen (with apologies to the King of Siam) and when she had that cancerous growth removed from her lip at the start of September, the vet advised us then that there may be secondary tumours, and to watch out for “clinical signs”.

One such clinical sign was on Saturday, when she keeled over on her way back from her water bowl and lay on her side in obvious distress. We already had some Rimadyl from the vet for her, and we managed to get some of that down her, plus some Furosemide, and she calmed down, while Debbie knelt by her side, stroking her gently and soothing her by saying anything that came into her head. Eventually, we got her to lie on her dog bed, and on Saturday night and Sunday night, with an emergency trip to the vet surgery to pick up some steroids and anti-biotics in between, we all bedded down in here like Anglo-Saxons in the mead hall, me sitting up in my chair all night and Debbie with the duvet, pillows and sleeping bag.

Given that we already had every form of conventional veterinary medicine on our side, I started looking on the internet for “prayers for sick dogs” and discovered, via the magic of Google, that dogs have their own patron Saint, St. Roch. Apparently he was cast out for curing people of the plague by making the sign of the cross over them, and went and built himself a hut of leaves and branches in the forest, where he would have perished had not a spring of fresh water suddenly welled up at the site, and one of the hunting dogs of a local nobleman found him and started feeding him by bringing him bread rolls.

So, in addition to praying to Big G himself for Tiggy to recover, I prayed to Padre Pio, St Jude, and St Roch. I am not choosy, any Saint will do in a crisis, and at a push I’ll even make do with one of those Egyptians that looks a bit poochy from the neck up, and walks sideways.

By Sunday night, we’d more or less said our goodbyes to Tiggy, and I was remembering all the many miles we’d travelled together, how she’d been to Ireland, and up Scafell, and Snowdon, how she’d been up Goatfell on Arran and swum in nearly every lake in the Lake District, how she’d plodded the entire towpath of the Lancaster Canal when Debbie kayaked it the other year. She’s been part of our lives for fifteen years, and her going will leave an immense and unbridgeable gap in our lives. There will never be another dog like her, and we’ll always remember her.

Desperate, on Sunday night, wondering whether to call in the vet, we rang Juanita at her animal sanctuary for help, and she sympathised too, because Oliver, her 20-year-old dog, with whom Tiggy shared a snooze under the table during our memorable St Swithun’s Day visit, had finally died, back in September. Debbie made me promise not to blub when I phoned Juanita, then made the mistake of playing “Auld Lang Syne” by the Tannahill Weavers just before I made the call, with the result that I “roared like a bairn”, the whole time. Juanita’s advice was, as always, sound, and helpful. We had two choices, either let nature take its course or call the vet in, and in effect those may become one choice, when it comes to the time to finally let her go.

Tiggy, of course, had other ideas, and promptly confounded us by not dying. As I speak, pausing to touch wood and offer up yet another hasty orison in the general direction of St Roch, she has responded well to the new medication and is back to how she was before she had her “episode”. We, however, have aged about 50 years apiece, and are totally drained, but at least each remaining day we have her is a blessing, and there’s no telling, when you think about it, that any of us will be here this time tomorrow.

Conventional depictions of St Roch, I remarked, also show him with a wound on the thigh in more or less the same place where, I noticed (on finally going to bed for the first time in 48 hours) I currently have a wound on my thigh, from pouring boiling water on it when I was trying to fill up the hot water bottle, which is a touch too near stigmata for comfort, and at least spooked me!

It’s not been a good news fortnight then, and I was hoping that the weather would at least get better (it didn’t) or that something would happen in the world at large to lift my gloom – any light at the end of the tunnel?

So, finally, today, to end a week of gloom, we had the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s formal statement on how we are doing. Well, it was all supposed to be worth it, wasn't it, this wrongheaded, doctrinaire, primrose path to disaster, it was all going to come right because the magic economy fairy was going to sprinkle trickledown dust on the private sector and it would magically burgeon, creating health, wealth and happiness, and we would all be so “ankle-deep in gold dust” that throwing some of it to the grateful urchins and charities who would be doing the work which the government had washed its hands of would be funded to the max, and stuffed to the gills with smiling big society volunteers, who would make Hare Krishna “chuggers” look like manic depressives.

Yeah right. It was all supposed to be worth it. If it's not hurting, it's not working, and we're all in this together. So. let's have a look, then. Has all that grief and pain of the last 18 months been worth it? Have all the redundancies been worth it? What about the people made homeless? That worth it? What about all the people taking their pets to the animal sanctuary - or worse, turning them out of doors, because they can't afford to keep them any more? What that worth it? What about Mark and Helen Mullins? Worth it? Was it worth all the pain and suffering George Osborne, David Cameron and their lickspittles have inflicted on us?

Do we have a rosy, glowing economy, with a bright future of sunlit private sector vistas and happy green uplands where finches and fairies skim between the trees? Has it worked? Or - if not yet, might it work very soon, if we could just cling on with the last vestiges of our fingernails?

No. It hasn't.

and

No, it won't.

And the worst thing is, not only do I know this, and knew all along it would never work, but Osborne and his acolytes know it too: because you can't artificially divide the economy into public and private, four legs good, two legs bad, however much you put your propaganda machine into overdrive and set everybody at each other's throats with divisive, demonising divide and rule tactics. It's the economy, stupid, as William Jefferson Clintstone once memorably observed, and it all depends on each other.

And despite that, they've chosen to wreck the economy. And wreck people's lives, futures and prospects along with it. Seventy years ago, they would have been shot for treason. How times change.

If I start to think about the dismal state the country is in for long, a red mist starts to descend, sometimes, and if I then go on to link it to my own situation, it is often, sadly, followed by a black mist. I haven’t really written before about the black mist, because I think writing about it gives it strength, and gives it a claim on you. Ideally, I would choose not to name my demons, in case I become attached to them, or vice versa. The black mist doesn’t have a name, though occasionally, through the black mist, you can hear forlorn voices sobbing, and crying “Nevermore!”

Nevermore the trip to the Lake District with Tig snoozing in the back of the car and the kayak sitting on its hydraglide on the roof, Deb snoozing in the passenger seat and Ewan MacColl warbling “The Manchester Rambler” on the CD player. Nevermore being able to walk from one room to the next. Nevermore the sunshine and happiness. Nevermore the sitting by Derwentwater and painting, nevermore the financial security, nevermore the self-worth of being able to provide for yourself and others, nevermore your friends, nevermore your independence, nevermore your usefulness. Once Tiggy really has gone, and it can only be a matter of time, nevermore, nevermore, nevermore. A few more years of this struggle and then - ?

And at times like this, when the black mist is at its worst, I feel like getting all of my tablets, and all of Tiggy’s tablets, and every tablet in the damn house and washing them down my neck with a bottle of whisky. There is no doubt in my mind at all that Debbie would be better off if I was dead, provided the insurance policy pays out on suicides. Her financial woes would be over, and she is still young enough to find someone else to love and take care of her.

You could say it is faith that has stopped me. So far, at any rate. Faith, and a lack of whisky. Faith that things will get better, and that there is a lesson from little Seth, that old dogs go, and eventually young dogs come along to take their place and the world turns, and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. You could say it is sheer stubborn-ness: why should I be the one who gives in, when the guilty, the people responsible for this mess, from God downwards, to the “colleagues” who so kindly organised my redundancy, to the idiots in government who are trashing the economy, go unpunished? You could say it is my desire to prove everyone else wrong, that I was right all along. You could say that while Tig still needs me, while Kitty still needs feeding, and while there’s still a few wrongs to be righted, I had better keep going.

Personally, I honestly do not know. But for the moment, the black mist seems to have receded.

Thursday 10 November 2011

Epiblog for Remembrance Sunday


There are certain stories which come around at certain times of the year and obsess the media for a few days, sometimes even causing an outbreak of “spats” on message boards across the face of the internet. The appearance of the first charity Christmas card catalogue, the annual (and shameful) culling of seals by Canada, the Boxing Day hunt meetings, even the first cuckoo. So it is with poppy day.
I don’t actually recall poppy day being such a big deal when I was at school – the tray of poppies came around, you put your donation in the tin, you bought a poppy and you wore it. These days, under the forensic glare of the media, it certainly is a big deal. You can’t even turn on your TV without finding programmes that are normally miles away from anything military suddenly morphing into “Remembrance Day Specials”, and wearing a poppy – or worse, not wearing one – has become a political act, by which you can be judged, irrespective of any other evidence either for or against! Even TV newsreaders such as Jon Snow have been dragged into the controversy.

This year, there have been particularly sparky exchanges on both sides, because of stories about FIFA not letting the England football team wear poppies on their shirts during the friendly match against Spain on Remembrance Day weekend, and because of our old friend Anjem Choudhary and his merry band of useful idiots wanting to burn poppies in the streets near the Albert Hall on the day itself.

FIFA’s excuse is that if they allow one nation to bear “national symbols” on their shirt, then all nations will wish to do so. In effect, they sort of have a point – we would soon be up in arms if the German football side wanted to put swastikas on their shirts – even if it was done in memory of people who died in Germany resisting the Nazis! FIFA, however, is a totally discredited body led by a totally discredited windbag. Everybody knows that FIFA is, in many respects, very like the EU – the English are the only people who actually obey the rules, and as a result, they are usually the only ones who get the shitty end of the stick. I would have a lot more respect for FIFA’s rules if their sudden discovery of a rule book extended to them opening it and reading the page about not trying to bribe people in distant parts with jiffy bags of the local currency handed over clandestinely in car parks. However, it seems that their rules only work selectively, on days when Sepp Blatter is actually in the office.

The football imbroglio has been solved by a typical British compromise, which allows the team to wear the poppies on their armbands instead of their shirts. This may solve the immediate problem, but long term, international football needs a cleaning of the stables at a much more fundamental level. Perhaps Prince William and David Cameron could keep up their pressure on Sepp Blatter over other, dare I say, more important issues around FIFA, although I suspect that, in Cameron’s case, as usual, he saw a bandwagon rolling by, and couldn’t resist the temptation to hop on!

The actions of “Muslims Against Crusades” (membership, approx. 12), are of course more problematic. Theresa May has now banned them, as I speak, which has achieved the following results – instead of being justly, and justifiably, ignored, they are now all over the news; they will pop up again next month under a different name; they have dissolved as an organisation, which doesn’t stop them burning poppies as individuals on 11 November; and of course she has not only fanned the considerable inferno of Mr Choudhary’s own self-importance, but also given the approving nod, once again, in a dog-whistle, subliminal message sort of way, to all the white van men, the BNP and EDL supporters and Daily Mail/Sun readers who think that anyone who is a bit brown is automatically an enemy of the state and should be deported, irrespective of whether they are British or not. The people who now look questioningly at you if you don’t wear a poppy

Of course, what these people neglect is that actually, in both World Wars, many people of many faiths fought for Britain, and – for instance - Khudadad Khan, the first soldier in the British Indian Army to win the V. C., in 1914, was … a Muslim. But, sadly, this is unknown territory to the many, many people who now seem to view wearing a poppy as being equal to “being patriotic” and “supporting our troops”. And with that, of course, comes the baggage of tacitly supporting the likes of the EDL, thinking there are too many immigrants, they are all after our jobs, all Muslims are fundamentalist terrorists and all the rest of the shit that goes with it. Shit which I utterly reject.

Which brings me back to my own reasons for wearing a poppy. Because I like to pick and choose my wars, you see; I’m funny like that. The First World War was a tragic and blunderful episode that wasted lives and left a generation blighted. I can empathise with wanting to remember that needless, heartless sacrifice, and wanting to ensure it would never happen again. And I would wear my poppy in memory of my great-uncle, Harry Fenwick, of the RFA, gassed at Ypres in 1917, and Debbie’s great-grandad, William Evans of the Suffolk Regiment, died of wounds in 1915. I can certainly see the point of commemorating the struggle against Fascism, 1939-45, and the sacrifice, again, of the fallen in that massive conflict, such as my Mother-in-Law’s distant relative James Ross, RAF, whose Hawker Hurricane plunged into the Irish Sea, sadly with him still inside it, one January day in 1942.

But, and here I am going to surprise you, like Anjem Choudhary, I am against the war in Afghanistan. For completely different reasons, of course. He sees it as part of a global war on Islam, which is to be countered by introducing Sharia Law and re-establishing the Caliphate (!) I am against the conflict in Afghanistan because I think it is now a waste of time, we have already telegraphed to the Taleban, for God’s sake, that we’re giving up in a couple of years, the place is beyond redemption, sadly, the puppet government established by the US is hopelessly inept and corrupt, and all that our troops are doing now is being professional targets, and coming home in body bags.

This doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry when one of them is killed, or sympathetic to their families for their sacrifice and loss. But I think it is perfectly possible to respect and honour, even, the professionalism of our armed forces out there, making the best of things with poor equipment and shortages, with little or no help from our European “allies”, without tacitly approving the bungling adventurism of the politicians that put them in harm’s way. And if they are injured, then the Government should make damn well sure they are looked after – and well looked after – for the rest of their lives, not leave it up to some charity set up by a tabloid newspaper with questionable morals and motives which gets them off the hook. We didn’t need “help for heroes”, we’ve already got a Government to do that sort of thing, and failing them, the British Legion. But of course the Sun, and the tendency it both fosters and represents, has commandeered the “Help for Heroes” agenda in the same way as the EDL has commandeered the cross of St George, and would do to the poppy, if allowed.

So, in answer to those who would castigate me for picking and choosing what wars I support, and for having my own reasons for wearing the poppy, I can only remind you that in the years 1939-45, people fought and died for the right to choose which government and which policies you support, and for the free speech to debate it, and for the right to wear or not wear a poppy without being coerced either way, for your own reasons. And if we lose that, if we forget it, and forget – for instance - that Muslims have won VCs as well, if we continue in some Gadarene rush towards an even more xenophobic and bigoted nation, using the poppy as a symbol, for all the wrong reasons, allowing it to be hijacked in the same way the St George’s flag has been hijacked, if we forget our history, if we forget the enormous and painful sacrifices of the struggle against Fascism, we may just be condemned to repeat it.

Lest we forget.