It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley
– as it was, in its own way, on the Isle of Arran. From which you can gather that, for the first
two days of the week in question, we were still on holiday. Wednesday was a day
of transit, and from then on, I have been back in my customary place, ploughing
my lonely furrow, and trying to catch up on almost three weeks of neglecting
the bundle of tasks which make up my mundane daily round.
It seems the weather’s been changeable while we were away,
but most of the plants have survived a mixture of being watered by Granny and
Big G, and my ruse of punching holes in all the plastic tubs to make them
self-draining, using a bradawl and a lump hammer, seems to have worked, by and
large.
The time we spent on Arran
was extremely restful, and there were even days when, for maybe half an hour at
a stretch, I did absolutely nothing other than sit and look at the sea. I had
actually taken the laptop with me, but Orange (the
bunch of shysters who charge Debbie £60-odd pa for her “dongle”) have a bit of
a blind spot with coverage up on Arran. Not so
much “Everything Everywhere”, as “Nothing Nowhere”. The dongle was deader than tank tops and
sideways-ironed flares. Deader than the dodo, Di and Dodi. So I was given
frequent opportunities to do nothing.
Doing nothing was strangely therapeutic. Normally I spend my time crossing things off
an ever growing list of things to do, and, if I am awake, I am doing something.
So to find myself staring at the sea for half an hour at a stretch was
strangely refreshing. I have to say that, if you were looking for a place to go
and do nothing, Arran is probably the place in
question. I could, of course, insert a full account of our 17 days away in this
blog, but if I did, it would be about 119 pages long, and in any case, I hope
to turn it into yet another book! So, suffice it to say that kayaks were
paddled, otters and seals were watched, the dog discovered the joy of fetching
back pebbles thrown into the surf, and Linda McCartney sausages’ profits were
boosted by many impromptu barbecues. Meanwhile, Debbie and Misty climbed up
Cioch na H-Oighe via the Devil’s Punchbowl.
Cioch na H-Oighe translates as “the Maiden’s Breast” by the way, and
there is a great photo taken from its summit ridge in “The Scottish Peaks” by
W. A. Poucher. If you google for it, make sure safe search is turned on!
Pretty much normal for two weeks camping beside Kilbrannan
Sound, in fact. Matilda, drama queen that she is, greeted us in the driveway on
our return from Arran, yowling and stomping
about. Also present in the driveway, although not yowling and stomping about,
at least not as much, was Granny herself, having come over to meet us and
explain why only half the house had electricity. She’s been living here while we
were away, catsitting Matilda and generally providing a level of security that
would deter any thief who didn’t want to spend the rest of his life sitting on
a lily-pad, catching flies with his tongue.
Anyway, she was busily surfing away in our kitchen on her
little netbook, when suddenly, apparently, there was a loud “phut” from the
fuse box, followed by darkness upon the face of the waters. Not deterred, she
apparently climbed on the sink (little knowing that all that holds the Ikea
sink cabinet together is chip fat, gunge, the power of prayer, and two small
metal brackets with an incomprehensible Swedish name) and flipped the master
switch. At which point, all the lights in the conservatory came on, then there
was another loud bang, and everything went off again, so at that point she very
sensibly decided to give up and leave it to us.
In the meantime, very resourcefully, she plugged in a long
extension lead to one of the sockets in Colin’s side of the house, and ran
everything off that. I have used a similar workaround in the past when a
similar thing happened, and while I was waiting for the electrician I had one
of those phone calls from someone trying to get me to change my energy
supplier. They asked me where I got my electricity from at the present time,
and I said “From a long extension lead plugged in to next door!” and they put
the phone down on me before I could explain further. Oh well, if they can’t
take a joke, they shouldn’t have joined, as they used to say in the Army.
The electrics in this house have always been a riddle
wrapped in a mystery cloaked in an enigma, or whatever the phrase is, even
though one of the very first things we did, back in 1997, was to have all the
old 1930s wiring ripped out and replaced.
Before then, lights used to go on and off at random, and we used to joke
that it was the spirit of old Mrs Ladbroke, the previous owner, who had died
here. One night when I was cooking tea, the kitchen light went off, plunging me
into darkness, and I said in a loud voice, “Come on, Elsie, stop pissing
about!” at which point the light came back on again, right on cue.
If it was indeed the restless, earthbound spirit of Elsie
Ladbroke, I think we’ve chased her off with the many changes and alterations
since, but the electricity is still, well, frankly, weird. As it happened, Deb had a trick up her sleeve
and knew which switch turned it back on without affecting the conservatory
lights. She tried it, and it came back on, and has been OK ever since. Touch
wood. Well, touch anything you like really, as long as you are wearing
rubber-soled shoes.
Brenda has apparently been missing in action while we have
been away, as have the birds. I am guessing Brenda is on holiday. I gather she
has some relatives in Brockholes.
But yes. Back down to earth with a bump, and some tricky
decisions to make over the next few days, especially the knotty problem of
whether to pay the crematorium £400 to continue to bury my parents’ ashes (and
those of Granny Fenwick and Auntie Maud) for another decade, by which time I
might have joined them, or £90 to dig them up (including an exhumation licence
from the bishop) following which they become the problem of my sister and
myself, deciding on an appropriate alternative place and method of disposal. Not surprisingly, it’s been on my mind a lot
since I got back. In one sense, I don’t believe that what is contained in those
four oversized coffee jars in the grounds of Chanterlands Crematorium is the
actual people concerned, any more than I believe that “I” am the sum total and
essence of this decaying mobile hamburger my spirit inhabits. But I want to do
right by the memory of the old folks, and it’s a problem I could do without,
right now, to be honest.
While we’ve been away on the Isle of Arran, with only
intermittent internet access, the country seems to have gone completely
wingnuts overnight. Or at least the government does. What the ducky chuff? The fact that the Opposition has given up,
folded its tents and stolen away into the night seems to have given a green
light to every last little nasty impulse in the Junta’s locker.
Lorries driving round with billboards on the back which say
“Illegal Immigrants Go Home!” or words to that effect. Home Office officials stopping
people in the street and asking for their papers. UKIP politicians talking
about “Bongo Bongo Land.”
All of which amounts to a shameful attempt on the part of the Junta and those
to their right to issue a dog-whistle message, over the heads of reason and
logic and straight into the Daily Mail mind of white van man bigot Britain. And
it’s working, sadly. The irony of the
billboards being written in English is lost on the likes of the EDL.
The references to Bongo-Bongo Land just serve to point up
still further, if any such pointing were needed, the true basis of UKIP’s
opposition to immigration. It’s a primitive, atavistic, knee-jerk response
against anybody who isn’t white. So in
UKIP’s world, Africa is still full of
savages, and England
is swamped by brown people. The sad
thing is that UKIP may have a point, both on the misappropriation of overseas
aid (but, in that case, what do you do? Cut off all aid and let children starve
in order to force some tinpot dictator not to use aid money to buy the arms we
offer to sell them, wearing our other hat?) and on the fact that immigration is
a total mess, and will be until we extricate ourselves somehow and unhitch our
wagon from the Franco-German EU political project to turn us all into one
homogenous superstate. But people don’t
vote UKIP for those reasons. They vote UKIP because they don’t like brown
people, specifically Muslims.
Richard Dawkins has been parading his dislike of Muslims, as
well, this week, on Twitter, a forum which some people seem to mistake for
informed social comment. Owen Jones, who
I often find to be insufferably righter-on-than-thou, actually did put his
finger neatly on the spot when he said that what he objected to, as an atheist
himself, was Dawkins presuming to speak as if all Muslims were one homogenous
lump. I have to agree with his. While there are some things that Islam does
need to be challenged on – the oppression of women, honour killings and ritual
slaughter of animals would be high on my own list, acting (and Tweeting) as if
all Muslims believed mindlessly and relentlessly in this heady cocktail,
underscored with a background of Jihad, is as crass and untrue as if you said
all atheists were pompous buffoons with Twitter accounts and over-inflated
egos, when in fact it’s just Richard Dawkins.
And finally, by way of comic relief, Tory peer Lord Howell
has said that instead of fracking in his backyard, which is – of course –
solidly Tory and in deepest West Sussex, we should be fracking in the
“desolate” North-East. Then, a few days later, in the teeth of the
all-too-predictable shitstorm that ensued, he said he’d made a mistake – he
really meant the desolate North-West! Oh,
for God’s sake, Lord Howell. When you’re in a hole, stop fracking digging.
All of which sort of makes me wish I had stayed longer on Arran. But I didn’t; I couldn’t, and time brought me
home, and moved me along its inexorable stream, nolens volens, and brought me
to Sunday. Today marks the feast of St Taurinus, who was the first bishop of Evreux, in Normandy,
and who died in 412AD
St Taurinus had, apparently, a legendary life, by which I mean
not that he achieved great things and marvellous achievements, but that large
sections of it were completely made up by a monk named Deodatus in the 10th
Century, adding in a miraculous appearance by an angel to Taurinus’s mother,
Eustycia, announcing that her son would have a distinguished life. His godfather was Pope Clement I, who apparently entrusted Taurinus to Denis
the Areopagite (not to be confused with Denis, the first bishop of Paris, in case you were
tempted; no, me neither.)
By now, Deodatus was really getting into his stride, and in
the next bit, Taurinus faces up to a demon that takes three shapes, that of a
lion, a bear, and (rather bizarrely) a buffalo.
Scholars have pointed out that these could be interpreted as references
to him confronting the Roman religion (the lion) the worship of Diana (the
bear) and local cults based on fertility and agriculture (the buffalo).
Further miracles associated with Taurinus, according to the
account of Deodatus, include raising a girl called Euphasia from the dead after
she had been burned in a fire, and on her restoration to life, there was –
miraculously – no trace of any burn marks. This miracle is said to have been
responsible for 120 people converting to Christianity. He topped this off by casting out a demon
that allegedly resided in a statue of the goddess Diana. The demon, “a small,
dark, and bearded being” (probably Andy Hamilton) left the statue, abashed, and
went on its way.
Not content with this, he converted a pagan temple into a
church, and when two of its acolytes attempted to stop him entering it, he immobilised
them by making the sign of the cross, only relenting when they promised to
convert. Finally, he brought back to life Marinus, the son of the
local prefect, who had fallen into a hole and died from the impact. After a
short prayer, Taurinus revived the young man. At once, Marinus requested
baptism for himself and his entourage, and 1200 other people.
Not surprisingly, after such a miraculous life, a cult grew
up around Taurinus after his demise. A monastery dedicated to Taurinus was built
around 500AD, and it was restored in the tenth century at the instigation of
Richard I of Normandy.
Taurinus's relics were translated to various places. In 892, Bishop
Sebarius transferred some of his relics
to Lezoux (Puy-de-Dôme). Some of this Lezoux group of relics was later carried
to the Abbey of Cluny. The remaining group was transferred to Gigny (Jura), and
they were still present there as late as the 12th century. Other relics were
deposited in the church
of Pézy before being
transferred in 1024 to Chartres Cathedral.
In 1035, the abbey of Saint-Taurin was placed under the
jurisdiction of the Abbey of Fécamp, which also claimed the body of Taurinus.
The monks of Saint-Taurin claimed that they owned a part of the saint’s relics.
In 1247, Gislebert de Saint-Martin, abbot of Saint-Taurin, had a reliquary
built to house the remaining relics.
Clearly, much of the life of St Taurinus is complete hokum.
Clearly, much of religion (at least as defined by Richard Dawkins and his followers) is
complete hokum. And yet, and yet… take that mention of Chartres Cathedral for
instance. The first, last, and only time
I ever visited Chartres Cathedral, I had one of those experiences associated
with holy places, which I have had before, at Holy Cross Abbey, notably, and which
I can neither explain nor even really satisfactorily describe. Like T S Eliot, I had
the experience, but missed the meaning. But it was something to do with
experiencing the timelessness of God coupled with a knowing that everything,
ultimately, was alright, despite the many and obvious injustices and evils of
the world, illness, war, cruelty to animals, all that stuff. And at the time it
totally overwhelmed me, and sent me stumbling into the street outside, full of
what I guess an orthodox theologian would have called “the Holy Spirit”,
whatever that means. Glastonbury ruins,
Little Gidding, Castlerigg Stone Circle, and the shores of Kilbrannan Sound
have also, all, at one time or another, been my churches.
If there is a linking theme in these experiences, it is in
the experience of timelessness. The more I think about it, the more I am
becoming convinced that "Godness", whatever it is, is linked to eternity and
being “out of time”. And I am not alone in this. T S Eliot agrees with me,
though he often wraps it up in so much verbiage that you only catch glimpses of
it; John Gribben agrees with me, but he wraps it up in science I don’t understand,
because I dropped physics in the third year like a red-hot brick; and
surprisingly enough, C S Lewis agrees with me:
Almost certainly God
is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If
a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen
to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty—and
every other moment from the beginning of the worlds—is always the Present for
Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to
the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.
Suppose I am writing a
novel. I write “Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!”
For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval
between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary’s
maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first
half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and
think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only
character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spend in
doing so would not appear in Mary’s time (the time inside the story) at all.
It’s not only religious places and sacred sites, either.
Possibly one of the most prosaic manifestations of it was when I was doing a
conference at Loughborough
University (of all
places) in 1986, some four months after my mother had died. I happened to look
out of the window of the room that had been provided for me, across onto a flat
roof of an adjacent building. On the roof was a large pool of accumulated rain-water, and
as I watched, the wind rippled the reflected sunlight into a dancing of
sparkles. And at that point I knew, in some way I don’t even know how to begin
describing in words, that my mother was alright, and that all shall be well,
and all manner of thing shall be well.
Even though her ashes, her mortal remains, were buried under a memorial
tree in a dreary municipal crematorium in Hull.
Maybe what we call miracles – or what others call miracles –
are simply aberrations in time. I say “simply”, but in fact the science that
would “explain” them to the likes of Richard Dawkins is probably several
blackboards-worth of equations, many of which we haven’t even written yet. And it’s not in the often-ludicrous tales of
the exploits of saints, but in the nexus of holiness, the nodes of worship,
even the physical places associated with it, that their true spiritual worth
lies. Maybe your prayer to St Padre Pio, or whoever, works better because you
believe that you are standing in a place where he once trod.
I’d like to say that my holiday on Arran, as well as
providing some much needed down-time and reminding me that the world doesn’t
need me to keep an eye on it 24/7, has also reconnected me to Big G and revived
me, spiritually. It isn’t true. There
was still only one set of footsteps on the beach at Kilbrannan Sound, but
perhaps they weren’t mine, after all.
Maybe this string of disparate shining experiences, my spiritual pearls,
if you like, isn’t yet completely finished and tied off. For now, however,
while I catch up on the boring mundane jobs which were all piled up waiting
for me, and go off to water the herbs, and Debbie takes Misty off for a
walkies up Castle Hill, I am content to let the mystery be.
No comments:
Post a Comment