Epiblog for Whit Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. All week we have been counting down the hours to the half term holiday and, with it, the possibility of going off in the camper van so that Misty and Zak can climb some more Wainwrights, and of course when it finally got to Friday, the weather had broken and it was more like October than May. So our plans were temporarily thwarted, and for the last three days we’ve been watching the rain sheeting down outside and listening to it drumming on the conservatory roof.

This has, necessarily, curtailed Matilda’s excursions into the outside world. On the few occasions where she has actually ventured onto the decking, all she has done is to scuttle as fast as she can to the end where Deb has fixed a tarpaulin across to provide shelter and shade when she sits out there having her breakfast. From underneath this relatively weather-proof vantage point, Matilda then glares at the rain for a few minutes until she realises, reluctantly, that glowering is not going to make it fair up, before scuttling back equally quickly through the downpour to the conservatory door, and mewing loudly to be let back in.  She then spends the rest of the day asleep on her Maisie-blanket on her chair next to the TV, transferring at some point in the evening on to the settee next to the stove, via a stop-off at the food dish. No wonder she’s the size of a house-end.

I could have told her already that glowering at the bad weather changes nothing, because I have been doing it for years. Even Misty, who is normally impervious to weather, has thought twice about going down the steps on a morning to do her usual three mad circuits of the garden.  She is, however, still up for the more formal exercise of a proper “walkies”, and dashes madly from door to door as soon as Deb shows any signs of getting ready. She’s probably done about half a mile before she even sets off,  most days.

As for me, I too have been up and down like a dog at a fair this week, what with the press launch of Ghost Hunting With Peter Underwood, the imminent arrival of Blood in the Air: The Chronicles of Kari True, and an unexpected extra press release to do for Gez regarding the event he is doing at The Orangebox in Halifax on 30^th May (6pm-9pm, if you wanted to go along).  At least the man came from Clarks and fixed the housing of my wheelchair arm, so I no longer had to type everything at a 45 degree angle. If I needed any more obvious illustration of the inherently pointless nature of my existence, though, it can be summed up by two separate but linked events this week, for which I found myself inventing The Golden Graham awards for taking the biscuit.

The first was the BBC journalist who asked to be taken off our list for press releases. Forgive me for having the temerity to breathe, but I sort of thought the point of being a journalist was that you made yourself available for news of all sorts from all sources, on the offchance that there might be a story there. And if it’s not for you, or of no interest, just delete the sodding thing, it’s only an email, after all.

The second was the very famous lady novelist. As part of the press list for Ghost Hunting, the author gave us a list of his own contacts, including some famous names (last week, for instance, I was talking about writing a letter to Uri Geller) Also on the list was a very famous lady novelist who was apparently a slam-dunk to write a review of Ghost Hunting somewhere ... so a review copy and press pack duly went off to her.  In the post on Friday lunchtime came a very nice letter, saying that she very much admired the production and it was a lovely book, etc etc, and the author was a great personal friend etc etc, but she couldn't review it as she is far too busy and therefore "I'll just be stingy and keep this as my own personal copy..."  Thank you, very famous lady novelist, that will be £11.99.

On the same day, I was startled by a knock on the door and a man with a clipboard appearing in the lobby:

“Does Debbie Nunn live here?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, wearily, “what’s she done now?”

It turned out that he was a courier and some piece of survival kit for the proposed upcoming trip had arrived for Deb. It had been sent out by the people who’d supplied it with just Debbie’s name and surname, and Huddersfield, and the postcode, but fortunately the courier had been here before with other stuff for her, and was intelligent enough to remember the house and put two and two together. So there you go. At last! A thinking man’s courier. DFD, I think their name was.

Because her planned trip to try out all this gear has been thwarted by the weather, the desire to forage, which obviously burns strongly in her, has manifested itself in other ways. On Saturday she returned with Misty from their “walkies” bearing a huge chunk of fungus in a carrier bag. This was a lump of “Dryad’s Saddle”, which sounds rather like an embarrassing medical complaint, but is, in fact, allegedly edible.  Its Latin name is Polyporous Squamosus which is a fairly roundabout way of saying disgusting and inedible. We have subsequently discovered that you are only supposed to harvest the young ones, not the old hoary warty specimens that have survived many a winter gale, feeding off the dead hearts of trees.

Having washed it, in itself a considerable feat since it was the size of a dinner plate, and checked it for (non-vegan) maggots, I then tried to cut it up to shallow fry it. I trimmed off the stalk and the rind, which apparently you are supposed to do as a precaution and then – having switched to a bigger knife with a serrated edge, finally managed to cut it into strips and set about cooking them.  Half an hour later, it was still going.  I suggested to Deb that she might like to fish out a bit and try it, since all that seemed to be happening, as far as I could see, was that the outside bits were getting more crisp and burnt black, but it still seemed to have the same consistency as when it was raw.  An attempt by her to chew on half a slice confirmed this.  Sadly, her free breakfast was not to be. It was like chewing through a leather strap, albeit one sautéed in olive oil, seasoned with “Season-All” and basted in garlic.  So Deb ended up having Marmite on toast and the mushroom went out for the badger.  Let’s hope we don’t get back from our trip, if it ever happens, and find Brenda stretched out on the decking next to her bowl. 

So, it’s been a manky old week, weather-wise, and for that I blame UKIP, since God is obviously annoyed by their success in the local elections, and has sent it to punish us.  And as for UKIP’s success, It is the fault of the Labour party because they have consistently failed to challenge the false frame of reference put forward by all of these right-wing crypto-fascists, from the Tories to those parties who are two stops beyond Barking and well off the bus route.

Many people in Britain today think that "there's too many of 'em (brown people, though the party hierarchies are careful not to actually say this - except for UKIP, whose oeuvre consists of a series of unguarded moments) over here, taking our jobs and our resources, and that all you have to do is rock up at Dover docks to be handed the keys to a council house and entitlement to a full set of benefits.

Plus, people are filled with hatred for the corrupt and venal antics of existing MPs over pay and expenses. If you are waiting for a bus in the rain at 6.30AM to take you to some crappy, low-paid, zero hours contract job and you read in the paper that your MP has just claimed £6000 for a Swarkovski crystal duck feeder, you are (justifiably, in my view) livid.

And many people are fearful and distrustful of the EU political project and think that the idea of Europe has gone way too far beyond the original concept of an international trade agreement. Put them together and what do you get? Bippity Boppity Boo, a vote for UKIP.

Instead of saying about immigration "hang on, this is all bollocks, and the majority of legal immigrants are not a drag on the system, but provide positive economic benefits" and challenging the perception that all brown people come from Bongo Bongo Land, Labour has "apologised" for opening "the floodgates" when at the time they signed up to it, it was actually the right thing to do (read Jonathan Portas on the subject). So, that's one argument lost before we started.

On Europe, Labour have refused to even consider a referendum, which comes across to the people who have (admittedly misguided in come cases) concerns about the EU political project as Labour saying "there there, proles, we know best" and creates yet more sunshine for UKIP's haymaking. And finally, on policy, Labour has stuck so rigidly to its idea (I'm being charitable here, and assuming some thought went into it) of being the Tories but in slightly cheaper suits, that the public now views the entire Westminster community as being out of touch and mired up to their necks in sleaze. In the old Labour party, the structure of people coming up through the ranks from the Union movement at leased ensured that there was some connection and shared experience. I doubt that the skinny latte brigade who "advise" Ed Miliband have ever done a hands turn in their lives.

Coincidentally, largely because of a combination of Debbie being out late teaching, boredom, and nothing new worth watching on TV, during the week I re-watched a programme we’d recorded earlier last year, a documentary about Hitler’s rise to power.  We should not forget that Hitler used the democratic process to actually achieve power in Germany; it was only after he was elected that he pulled up the rope ladder after him, arrested all his opponents, and appointed himself as Fuhrer of a thousand-year Reich.

I was struck by the many congruencies between the approach of Hitler and the Nazis and UKIP’s campaign.  As the HistoryPlace web site succinctly puts it:

Hitler offered something to everyone: work to the unemployed; prosperity to failed business people; profits to industry; expansion to the Army; social harmony and an end of class distinctions to idealistic young students; and restoration of German glory to those in despair. He promised to bring order amid chaos; a feeling of unity to all and the chance to belong. He would make Germany strong again; end payment of war reparations to the Allies; tear up the treaty of Versailles; stamp out corruption; keep down Marxism; and deal harshly with the Jews.

The similarities are obvious.  Substitute ”Britain” for “Germany”, “Europe” for “war reparations” and “Muslims” for “Jews” and you’ve almost got the UKIP manifesto, such as it is. I’m not saying that Nigel Farage is Adolf Hitler, far from it. Nor am I saying that UKIP are even now compiling a list of disused and mothballed Army or RAF bases to be used as internment  camps. But I am saying, and I challenge anyone to deny it, that we are heading off down a road to right-wing repression, possibly even dictatorship, based on xenophobic and generally racist popular support, unless we are very careful about it. The genie was originally released from the bottle by the Junta trying to look tough on immigration and it isn’t going to go back in, any time soon. Because unless someone starts to challenge, and keeps on challenging, the shaky ethos on which UKIP’s support rests, the only other alternative is that the two major parties will try and leapfrog each other in a series of meaningless yet ever more reactionary lurches towards repression.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born…

There was a particularly chilling interview with a market trader in Rotherham (a town with a relatively high percentage of British Asians, where there have been flashpoint cases of “grooming” in recent years) about why he voted UKIP. He said words to the effect of “there are too many of the wrong sort of people coming over here and it’s time someone did something about it”.  He declined to elaborate on the “wrong” sort of people when asked by the interviewer, but it was obvious what he meant.

Of course, now that UKIP have actually been elected onto the council in some areas, people who voted for them (and people who didn’t) will see how useless they are, how they fail to get things done, and how their policies will lead to further cuts - and how, apart from on Europe, they have a policy vacuum, filled with largely sketchy fruitcake recipes scribbled down by Nigel Farage on the back of a beer mat. They won’t be able to get by on vague nebulous promises, and their local reputation might well suffer. Also, many people who voted UKIP probably didn’t even realise the difference between a European Election, a Local Election, and a General Election. Pretty much in the same way as they don’t know the difference between an asylum seeker, a legal immigrant, someone who was born British but has a different ethnic heritage, and an illegal.  So if they were hoping that their UKIP councillors will rise up en masse and take us out of the EU, and “send ‘em all home”, they will have a long wait.  The only way that UKIP could do that would be by winning at a General Election.  The best a UKIP councillor could do is object to twining with somewhere in Belgium!

However, we should remember that people originally laughed at Hitler and thought he was a buffoon. Not necessarily the German working class, but the intellectuals and the intelligentsia derided Hitler and poked fun at him, probably right up to the week they were arrested. As political blogger “Beastrabban” observed last weak, by the time you hear the jackboots on the stairs, it’s usually too late.

So, if there is a lesson, particularly for the Labour Party, out of all this, it is not to duck the argument on immigration. Labour CAN'T ignore immigration as an issue because, like it or not, and personally I HATE it, every white van man, racist granny and bigot in England thinks there's too many of  ‘em over ‘ere taking our jobs and houses. All that will happen if Labour ignores the issue is that they will lose even MORE heavily than they are currently set to do. What Labour has to do is TAKE CONTROL OF THE AGENDA and DISPEL THAT MYTH. Even down to things like finding immigrants who are making a positive contribution to society at the sharp end and highlighting these cases. A massive positive publicity blitz needed to correct misapprehensions. Then they need to set out their own sensible immigration agenda while NEVER CEASING TO POINT OUT THAT THE TORIES AND UKIP CANNOT BE ANY HARDER ON IMMIGRATION. however much they bang on about it, and are LYING if they say otherwise.

Apologies for shouting. but really, Labour seems to have a death wish right now. And they need a leader with the common touch who doesn't sound like a posh boy from a Tory school. Sorry to be brutal, but the alternative is five more years of Tory nuclear winter, or even worse Tory/UKIP nuclear winter, and I am not sure even now that it's not too late.

As it is, we’re heading back, or so it seems, at warp factor speed, to the 1930s, and once again, if you think I’m exaggerating, then consider this extract:

The ruling classes are vastly concerned to maintain the morale of the workers, perhaps because they fear that “Satan finds some evil work for idle hands to do”. The best way ever devised to maintain a man’s morale is to give him useful employment at a fair wage… That is not some Utopian dream of all sharing alike, but in every employed person getting a fairer share in the wealth he helps to produce, and humane provision for such as are unable to work, for any proper reason. There are innumerable tasks crying out to be done, which would absorb the greater number of the unemployed, directly or indirectly, and be of the utmost national value, and the plea that no money can be found to put them in hand is a deliberate untruth. Millions and millions of pounds are found annually to pay the most extravagantly rewarded ruling classes on Earth… There is never any difficulty in finding the millions for these privileges and absurdities, but if money is wanted to drain our rivers and prevent untold damage and loss by floods, or for reclaiming thousands of square miles of land that would support hundreds of thousands of workers, or finishing building ships that would win us back our maritime leadership, there is a different story! The money could not be found!

You might be forgiven for thinking this was about the Somerset Levels in winter 2013/2014, but in fact it is an extract from a letter to the Birkenhead Advertiser in 1933 and quoted in SOS: Talks On Unemployment by S. P. B. Mais in 1934.  Mais toured, and broadcast from, the worst areas of depression and unemployment in the early 1930s, but unlike the perhaps more realistic and cynical appraisals of his near contemporaries, Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier and J B Priestley in his English Journey, both of which appeared the same year, 1936, Mais is relentlessly cheerful and optimistic, especially about the many schemes being run to occupy the time of the unemployed and help them learn new skills, or feed themselves and their families by growing vegetables and allotments. This is another argument which still resonates down to the present day, of course, with zero-hours, workfare, internships, and government schemes designed to remove people from the official unemployment statistics.

Mais, in his effusions, fell foul of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, who argued, pretty much in the terms used by the Birkenhead correspondent above, that the schemes were ill-attended and useless, and that in some cases, (teaching cobbling and boot-repairing for instance) they actually damaged the prospects of the cobblers and shoe menders in the area who were still in work, by undercutting their trade, providing the same service for free.  They argued for large scale infrastructure projects to get Britain working again. The NUWM is actually quite an interesting movement – it disbanded itself voluntarily in 1943, when it was a case of all hands on deck to stop Hitler, but maybe, just maybe, it is an idea whose time has come again, especially given the dreary backdrop and prospects for politics in the UK today. Especially if it was the National Unemployed and UNDER-employed Workers’ Movement.

So, somehow, we’ve arrived at Sunday, in a country that, as the result of the last week, is slightly more fascist and considerably wetter.  I suppose in one sense we shouldn’t be surprised at the weather – it is, after all, a Bank Holiday weekend.  What used to be known as Whit Sunday, in fact, before its more boring modern nomenclature became attached. Although there is some debate on this – if you do the traditional thing of counting the Sundays from Easter, then it’s next Sunday, not this, but the idea of having Whitsun in any month other than May just seems…wrong to me, somehow.  Anyway, if we do disappear into the wild blue yonder in the camper next week, this Epiblog might have to serve as next week’s as well, at least until I can plug back into the internet.

I’ve written fairly extensively on the subject of the history and traditions of Whitsun before now, even on this blog, so I won’t bore you by repeating it verbatim.  One of the aspects of it which, traditionally, does appeal to me, however, is its community nature.  Back in the days when “community” meant something and we didn’t all shut ourselves away in our own little cells.  Especially in the North of England, Whitsun would be an opportunity for the local Wesleyans to put on a charabanc to the coast, and the same people who filled it would also have been in the chapel choir and the brass band and the cricket team, and probably all worked down the same mill together as well.  In this year of all years, perhaps we should also recall that they probably joined up together in the local Pals’ battalion, and probably all died together, as well.

The religious meaning of Whitsun is tied in with the idea of the Pentecost, when the gathering of Christ’s followers, including the Twelve Apostles, were filled with the Holy Spirit in (supposedly) the same “Upper Room” where the Last Supper had been celebrated.  Acts 2, 1-16 tells how:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

As with any of the miraculous events recounted in the Bible, you can either believe that something inexplicable, something supernatural, maybe even something Holy, happened, or you can dismiss it as a collective hallucination and mass hysteria. There is not proof, in the way a scientist would understand the term. It is simply a matter of faith. I would be more sceptical and cynical myself if I had not also experiences times in my life when I felt bathed in holy fire and full of the abilities to speak to all nations. 

That sounds incredibly grandiose, even hubristic, written down like that, but what I mean is that there have been times when I was so suffused with the idea (quoting Julian of Norwich) that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, that, at the time, I could have reached out my hand and done miracles.  One evening walking under the old Lebanese Cedars in the grounds of my college. One day driving back to Chichester from a book fair in London, in high summer, with the van window open, singing wordless scat songs of joy all the way down Halnaker Hill. One evening at Brough Haven, watching the tide ripple through the reeds and set the sunset glimmers dancing on the water. One day at Lochranza on the Isle of Arran when the sun picked out a particular sward of green grass behind a stand of trees. Watching the sun set over the Kintyre Peninsula, or over Loch Nevis from Inverie.  There have been others, less well documented, less well remembered.

Eliot incorporated the symbolism of Pentecost in the section in Four Quartets where he describes the air raids on London in the Blitz:

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

And suppose, in some senses, being filled with the Holy Spirit is terrifying, if it means a total change and re-alignment of everything you believed or thought up to that point.  In that manifestation, it is very like the Zen idea of Satori, the moment where the Zen Master realises his oneness with the universe. Yuelin Shiguan, (1143-1217) wrote a poem after he experienced his Satori:

A thunderclap under the clear blue sky

All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.

Which is again similar to Eliot’s “awful daring of a moment’s surrender”, from The Waste Land.  I don’t think I have ever managed to go that far down the road. Any experiences I have had of that nature have been entirely benevolent, and I have always wished I had enjoyed more of them.  Nor was I able to induce them at will, however much I prayed, like Yeats in Sailing to Byzantium:

O sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing masters of my soul

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is…

Such glimpses as I have been allowed have been more along the lines of  Philip Larkin and The Whitsun Weddings, where the significance of the moment which presumably sparked the poem is that it was shared by this random selection of travellers on the train, for all of whom it was at once both significant, being their wedding day, and mundane:

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

Eliot also picks up on this juxtaposition – that often, it is not the big things that we’ve psyched ourselves up for, or the moments we’ve been looking forward to, but instead it’s the times when quietude and attunement has allowed us to open some sort of portal

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

I could do with some more moments like that in my own life, to be honest. It sees a long time since I had one, although I suppose being in the forest clearing beside Coniston Water the other week probably came close.  As did seeing the crosses of the wind-farms poking out of the sea-fret off Walney. It would be nice to have a week where the significant portents, if any, are comforting rather than terrifying. As it is, I think that (pace Wordsworth) the world is too much with me, late and soon, getting and spending.  And if you are struggling similarly, I wish you the same, although maybe  in the form of the dove of peace rather than tongues of refining fire.

As it is, for me, I could, right now, almost reprise the moment in the draught church at smokefall, except for church, read kitchen: while I have been typing this, the coals on the stove have gone right down, so I need to mend it up again. And, as usual, I guess I’ll put the kettle on.