Epiblog for the First Sunday After Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The weather continues to be cold, unpleasant, and depressing, apart from some much-needed sun this morning to restore our spirits. Other than that, it’s either been cold and dark, or just cold, even the rain has been cold rain. And the darkness has been dark darkness, of the type you only seem to get at the dark time of the year, darkest before the dawn. I have been looking out of my window every morning to see if there is any sign, any glimmer, any hope of spring coming, but I guess it’s still too early. I’ve seen one or two squirrels, who are presumably as eager for spring to come as I am, foraging around and skittering from tree to tree. I know that, in reality, grey squirrels are just rats with very good PR, but you can’t help but admire their acrobatics, seventy or eighty feet up there, their scrabbly little paws grasping the bare cold branches.

Freddie would undoubtedly have been there, barking up at them, had he not been safely tucked up at home in Granny’s bed. One of the few words he recognises is “squirrel”. Zak doesn’t know the meaning of many words, although if you say “love and cuddles” he will come and allow himself to have his ears furfled, just within reach of the wheelchair. Tig’s days of chasing squirrels are over. She has been sprawled on the rug in front of the fire, resolutely warming her old bones. Kitty went one better – on Tuesday morning we came in to find her curled up asleep in the coal scuttle. We aren’t sure, actually, if the coal scuttle was because she wanted to keep warm, it being adjacent to the stove, or whether she felt safe in there, because at 4.30AM that morning we’d both heard her having a contretemps trying to repel something that was intent on entering through the cat flap. Just on the offchance that it had been a fox, sticking its head through, and she’d been very brave, we gave her extra rations of cat food for breakfast.

Down on the ground, that morning, when the squirrels were doing their high jinks, the frost was hard. In fact it was not only a hard frost, it was strict and particular, like the Baptists, confining itself just to those areas there the sun could not reach because of the shadow of the security fencing, its edges resolutely squared off, in straight bands, as neat as a field ploughed by the Amish. It seemed odd to me to be finding beauty in the stripes of frost down in the valley on the grass beside some industrial units, but I come back again to Karine Polwart “I can find joy in the sound of the rain, you have to find joy where you can”.

You certainly do. Joy has been in short supply this week, having largely been displaced by work, or at least the threat of work. The preparations which I have been (to a certain extent) putting off, to return to the world of work, what E. M. Forster called the world of “telegrams and anger”, have been preoccupying me somewhat. For telegrams, these days, read emails, but apart from that, E. M. was spot on.

Wednesday was going to be a crucial day. I had already lined up several tasks for myself, including emailing the office, doing the press releases for Withnail and the Romantic Imagination, unpacking the online shopping ordered previously from Sainsburys, etc.

Which is why I was hurrying to get up and get dressed on Wednesday morning. Which is why I fell out of my wheelchair. Having landed on the floor, I then spent an hour experimenting with various small plastic boxes and a set of folding step-stools to see if I could get back upright again. Sadly, the answer proved to be “no”, my legs just didn’t have the strength to push me those extra few inches that would have got me back onto the bed. Reluctantly, I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to call an ambulance. The next problem was the number to ring. Unlike the police, who have a number for non-emergencies, there doesn’t seem to be a similar arrangement for ambulances, so I had to dial 999 in the end. The operator determined that my situation wasn’t life-threatening and put me through to a nurse, who asked me, amongst other things, my date of birth, which the NHS is obsessed about, as I discovered in hospital. She also asked me how long I had been lying on the floor, to which the answer was about an hour, and then she said that they were a bit pushed that morning, but someone would get to me within the next 60 minutes, and in the meantime, if my condition did become life-threatening, to call back.

As it happened, it only took about 20 minutes for a couple of ambulancemen to arrive, assess the situation with jocular hilarity, then heave me back into the wheelchair in a matter of seconds. The rest of the visit consisted of them completing paperwork, which sort of maintains the standard NHS medical care/paperwork ratio I had already observed while in hospital. One of them looked at my framed picture of St Padre Pio on the windowsill and asked if it was a picture of me. Well, it makes a change from Douglas Bader. When I said it wasn’t me, he said “Well, it has a look of you”. To which I replied that I rather thought I had a look of him, but we’d agree to disagree.

Padre Pio has been unofficially adopted, by the way, as the patron saint of “Blue Monday”, the January day which has been officially designated, having been worked out by mathematical boffins, as the most miserable day of the year. Even though Padre Pio’s feast day is not 'til September, the Catholic Enquiry Office in London proclaimed him as such. They designated the most depressing day of the year, identified as January 22, as Don’t Worry Be Happy day, in honor of Padre Pio’s famous advice: “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

We haven’t quite reached Blue Monday yet, though, we’re only at Plough Monday. Plough Monday was – indeed, still is, where it’s celebrated – the first Monday after Epiphany, and traditionally marked the return of the plough teams to work on the land. Since medieval times, especially in Eastern England, it was marked by the ritual parade of the plough through the streets, the ploughboys wearing blackface as a rudimentary disguise, carrying out mummers’ plays and sword dances, and levying “fines” on those who refused to join in the fun.

For some reason, in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, a straw bear was carried through the streets. From as early as 1400, it was linked to fundraising for the church, and the “Plough Guilds” often put money into keeping a “Plough Light” burning in the church. The Reformation put an end to all of that, of course, although secular versions of the ceremonies still survive, and a straw bear is still paraded through the town as part of Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival to this very day. Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival is a wonderful idea, isn’t it? It sounds like something out of “Midsomer Murders”. Barnaby, thou should’st be living at this hour.

All of which I was thinking about on Wednesday, the day having been completely trashed, while I cooked my late breakfast – now late enough to be my lunch – of bubble and squeak. I love bubble and squeak. I could write a book on it. I might do, one day, if I am spared. For now, I will impart the basic secret of all bubble and squeak to you, as time is short. You must have the patience, and the confidence, to leave it unstirred for long enough to burn on the bottom, and there is a blue fug in the air around the stove, and only then turn it over and break up the delicious burnt bits amongst the rest of the food. Give a man a bubble, and you will amuse him ephemerally; give a man a squeaker, and he will be able to annoy people at parties. But teach a man to cook bubble and squeak, and yea, he will feed his household for a lifetime.

So, that was Wednesday written off. The bubble and squeak was much more successful than my other culinary effort this week, Yorkshire Pudding made with gram flour. Debbie requested a Yorkshire pud, but could only provide gram flour, so I thought I would try it anyway, adding yeast. It still resolutely refused to rise, though, and the result was a scorched, half-inch-deep flabby flatbread, that smelt and tasted of chickpeas. Tiggy liked it, though.

And so we come to Sunday, and another week has been ticked off on the 2011 calendar already, without me really getting to grips with any work. Not entirely down to me, but I must take on board the lesson of Plough Monday, and buckle down to getting something done. My physio on Thursday was cancelled owing to a combination of several of the ambulancemen having phoned in ill (they looked OK on Wednesday) and the ward at HRI from which they were going to borrow the walking hoist being closed because of Norovirus. Something tells me Big G didn’t want me to have physio that day.

The Collect for today seems to imply that this is the commemoration of the baptism of Jesus. I don’t know much about baptism or Baptists, Strict or Particular. I did try and do some research into baptism, on the web, and got sidetracked by a report that a church in North Carolina baptised 2000 people at once, by lining them up in a car park and then turning a fire hose on them. The internet is like that. You log on to get your email and find that four hours later you have bought a second hand car and married a 13 year old girl from Texas. Or vice versa.

Anyway, it seems that Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan, by John the Baptist, and a dove descended from heaven coupled with a spooky voice from the clouds proclaiming Jesus as the son of God. All of which seems to stack up, as much as anything else in the Bible does. Baptism for the Christian is supposed to signify re-birth and the shedding of sins. Again, all good stuff, I would be glad of any chance to wipe my slate clean, with or without the aid of John the Baptist, or near offer. It's the baggage of fixed morality that comes with it, that is the problem for me. That, and the stuff about forgiving.

At least Jesus received a proper sign, my week has just been more of the same. A dove and a spooky voice would be very useful to me right now in determining a) how long I am going to be stuck in this wheelchair and b) what I am supposed to be doing with my life both now, and in the future. Last week, I was content to chop wood and carry water. This week, I have been making bubble and squeak, a laudable aim in itself, but I can’t believe that it is what Big G wants me to do with the rest of my life. I would be disappointed if that was the case, unless it was making enough bubble and squeak to end world hunger. That would be a different matter.

Anyway another week calls. Plough Monday. I won’t be blacking up, but do hope I will soon be ploughing my usual furrow, either that, or doing something completely different. I have got to the stage where I really don’t care, as long as I do something.

So I will be looking out for doves, and listening for spooky voices. Don’t disappoint me.