Epiblog for Palm Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Spring seems to be finally declaring an interest, but it is still stubbornly cold, and March isn’t giving up those leaden skies without a fight.  One of Maisie’s indestructible daffodils is in bud, a single splash of yellow amongst the dreary dun brown of the remains of winter’s ravages. The green is getting greener, between the trees, but I still don’t think we’ve reached that stage “bytuene Mersh and Averil, whan spray beginneth to springe”.

Now that it’s been just about warm enough to have the cat flap in Colin’s side door open all the time, Matilda has been growing used to coming and going as she pleases, although she does still also go to the conservatory door to be let in and out as well.  The optimum solution would be to have a cat flap cut into the conservatory door, but at £289 (because it involves re-glazing the entire panel) it’s a long way off, yet.

Actually, a dog-flap would be a better investment, since Matilda's needs could be encompassed within such a structure anyway and it would save me having to trundle over there and let the wolf-pack of Misty, Zak and Ellie out into the garden to do their necessaries. As it is, they stream out across the decking, barking their stupid heads off and tumbling all over each other down the steps into the garden. Zak and Misty have been doing the usual route-march over the moors from Dove Stones to Chew Valley Reservoir, but Ellie has been excused, owing to only having little legs.

Deb herself is getting demob-happy, counting down the four remaining days of teaching next week until Easter sets in.  In case you doubt her current state of demob-happiness, pause to consider that we were watching Inspector Montalbano for about twenty minutes on Saturday night with one of us under the misapprehension that we were watching Wallender. And it wasn’t me.  The disparity only emerged when, noting the prominent role of Luca Zingaretti, Debbie observed that, in this episode, Wallender was taking a long time to put in an appearance. Some times I worry about  that girl.

One of the many personal challenges I had to overcome this week was the saga of the wheelchair wheel.  For some days, I have been concerned because it had seemed to me that I must be losing strength in my arms, especially in my left arm - the evidence being that the wheelchair was becoming harder and harder to propel, especially on that side. Ruling out a sudden and dramatic weight gain (I have been more or less stable at the “lard mountain” stage of physique since my discharge from hospital in 2010 when I gradually put back on the weight I had lost in the exertion of nearly dying) the only other option was deterioration in my arms. This was very depressing, because ultimately, once I lose that, I am also looking at losing the ability to transfer independently. So it has been a constant worry, at the back of what passes for my mind these days, depressing me every time I thought about it. 

There is a school of thought that says you should always look for the simple answer that’s right under your nose, before considering anything more complicated.  This became evident to me on Wednesday night when I looked down at the little front “bogie” wheel of the wheelchair on the left-hand side, and noticed that the large heavy-duty screw that holds it in place was sticking out at a weird angle, and the front wheel had collapsed to one side and was chafing on the housing that holds it in place.

My joy at realising that the difficulty in propelling myself wasn’t due to my encroaching decrepitude, but rather to the fact that the wheel must have been gradually going out of true and rubbing for days, slowing me down by “binding” on the housing, was tempered somewhat by the fact that unless I did something pretty soon, the screw/axle would come out altogether, the wheel would collapse, and the wheelchair would probably pitch me out on to the floor.  I gently edged over to the box where I keep the Allen keys and reached down, picking up the pouch and shoving it in my pocket.

Very slowly, I then edged myself round so I was facing in the opposite direction. I didn’t have the option of doing it quickly, anyway, as the wheel was jammed solid and it was like driving with the brakes on. Torn between having to use force to get anywhere at all, and not wanting to precipitate the very disaster I was trying to avoid, eventually I made it next door, and I was able to “park” alongside the closed commode, and shuffle sideways on my “banana board” off the wheelchair onto the aforesaid thunderbox.

Once I was out of the wheelchair, I tipped it on its back and I could see immediately what the trouble was. The wheel is actually held in place by two reciprocating screws, one from either side, that tighten somehow into each other. So although I could push the offending article back in place with my fingers and, using the Allen key that fitted, get it finger-tight, there was no way of actually “nipping it up”. Then I remembered that my dad’s old penknife had a saw attachment on it that ended in two “prongs”. Fortunately, the end of the saw fitted in the other side of the double-ended axle screw.

So it was, dear reader, that I became possibly the only person in history to fix a wheelchair wheel with an Allen key and a penknife, with perhaps a soupçon of my father’s engineering genes, while seated on a commode. So far, the repair seems to have held, but I had better keep an eye on it and/or get it checked out at my next wheelchair appointment. It’s a minor escapade, but, having sorted it, it felt briefly as if I’d been that bloke who climbed out onto the wing of a Wellington bomber over Essen and put out the burning engine with a fire-extinguisher.

So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself at having dodged that particular bullet, and scored a small victory, especially after the disaster on Monday, when the garage came to pick up the camper van. I’ve let the story run ahead of itself, so I need to catch my breath and re-wind a bit here so we’re all on the same page again. Debbie went out to the camper in the driveway on Sunday evening intending to just go down the road to the garage and put some diesel in it, preparatory to setting off to college on the Monday morning.

She had come back inside, saying that she was having some difficulty with the lock, and  couldn’t open the door, and also that one of the tyres looked a bit flat. I suggested that she shouldn’t try and force it, and that I had better get the garage to come and look at the lock, as they had done some work on it as part of the vehicle’s recent visit to the garage for its MOT in February (the old lock was a bit feeble and wobbly, and they’d fitted a replacement linkage inside the door) because I didn’t want to pay again for work we’d already had done in February, if it had gone again so soon.

The garage man came down on Monday teatime and, looking at the vehicle in the daylight, he confirmed that it had been the subject of vandalism while parked at our house. Specifically: three of the tyres had been slashed and the other one deliberately punctured. There had been an attempt to jemmy the driver’s door, and in addition superglue had been poured into the driver’s door lock. Superglue had also been squirted into the lock on the filler cap. The hoses to both front brakes had been cut, and both front brake callipers pulled down away from the point where they connect to the brakes.

I didn’t want to leave it in situ for another night in case whoever it was decided to come back and finish the job, so I agreed that they should tow it up to the garage and they’d lock it up there for me for the night.  In the meantime, I reported the damage to the police, and they attended on Monday evening and took a statement.  On Tuesday morning, before the garage opened properly for business, West Yorkshire Police and scenes of crime officers attended and went over the vehicle, confirming the damage and taking photographs.  I was given a crime number and it’s now in the hands of the insurers. And there I draw a veil over the sorry proceedings, which will no doubt rumble on with mountains of paperwork for weeks to come, except to observe that if I ever get within an axe-swing of the bastards who did it, they will be going home in an ambulance, with their windpipe in their coat pocket. I don’t do forgiveness.

Of course, while I have been battling this overwhelming tide of ordure from all sides, the outside world has taken the opportunity of my temporary distraction to go completely insane.

It’s not been all bad news. David Cameron has announced that he doesn’t want to serve a third term. This rather presumes on his part that he will get a second term, bringing to mind the old joke about thieves breaking into the Kremlin and stealing next year’s election results. You shouldn’t count your chickens, Dave, me old pal, me old beauty. One in the hand is worth two in Kate Bush. Or something.  Given the swingeing welfare cuts that the Blight Brigade are planning if they do manage to get he chance to inflict five more years of austerity nuclear winter on us, it’s rather a pity he has to have a second term, let alone a third. Maybe he doesn’t, but I am not holding out any hopes.

Meanwhile, under local anaesthetic and with the reluctant facial expression of a bulldog chewing a wasp, the Director-General of the BBC announced that they were sacking Jeremy Clarkson. He didn’t actually add the words “reluctantly, because we can’t think of any other way out of this mess, without seeming to excuse his boorish behaviour, although God knows we’ve tried” but the subtext came through good and strong. It was the most unconvincing statement of wanting to do something since Tony Blair declared in favour of banning fox-hunting, then abstained in the Commons vote.

Anyway, the end result was that the buffoon in question received some sort of just desserts, for doing what would have earned you or I instant dismissal for gross misconduct, had we lamped someone in our place of work.  Cue the endless procession of dismal apologists popping up on the news saying things like “It’s just Jeremy, that’s how he is…” If you .think they had a point, try substituting “Adolf” for “Jeremy”. But these people live in a world where they believe everything has been spoiled by woolly-minded, weak-kneed liberalism, where you can get away with any form of bullying, violence, or hate speech by labelling it “banter” – a world where the way to react to women is to  treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen;  a world where the fox enjoys it.  Yes, how much better it must have been in medieval times, before political correctness, when if a household employee failed to provide hot food on demand, you could just behead him, and throw another slave on the fire.

As if a million people signing a petition to reinstate Clarkson was not sufficient evidence that the entire nation had gone bonkers, we also had the rather grotesque spectacle of the re-burial of Richard III’s bones in Leicester Cathedral, and the self-styled “Ricardians” in the congregation at the corresponding service in York Minster throwing a hissy-fit because the sermon mentioned the rival proceedings 150 miles away.  I have had some dealings with the Richard III Society in my previous job, trying to organise a prospectus leaflet being mailed out in one of their newsletters, and I have to say that their entire membership, insofar as I have interacted with it, gives a convincing impression of being several stops past Barking, and well off the bus route. 

A lot of egos could have been salved, and  I daresay a lot of money saved as well, if, instead of the elaborate ceremony, the TV people had just run the original film of the archaeological dig, backwards, with a muted soundtrack of “Land of Hope and Glory” underneath.  He could have had a nice corner of the car park, a little space all of his own, complete with yellow chevrons and a symbol meaning “Reserved for Dead Monarchs Only”, where ordinary members of the public could have placed floral tributes, teddy bears, and semi-literate messages of condolence.

The dominant news of the week though, which it has been impossible to ignore, is that it seems that the co-pilot of a German Wings/Lufthansa flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, under the influence of depression, locked the pilot out of the cockpit and then flew the plane deliberately into a mountain in the French Alps, killing himself and everyone else on board.

This is the sort of tragedy that shakes your faith, and no mistake. Once again I find that I have no answer to the massive question it poses, of why Big G, if he was there and on watch, allowed such a thing to happen.  Saying it’s all part of God’s plan just doesn’t cut it. Who would want to worship a being, an entity, that incorporated such things in its plan?  Although I suppose if God is really an omnipotent eternal force that contains everything that ever was is, and shall be, worshipping it is pretty futile anyway, since the last thing it needs is our puny adulation.  So, once more, I am forced onto the back foot, and all I can say is “God knows”. I guess that you could put up a case for saying that suffering is necessary in some degree, because otherwise how would the human condition ever recognise happiness, except by contrast. It reverts to one of those quasi-philosophical “big” questions of the kind we used to sit up and argue about late into the night at college, boosting the profits of Nescafé, before we knew any better – which would you rather have, a full life or a happy one? Though I reckon if you asked the relatives weeping in the airport lounge for their loved ones, you might get a “Jeremy Clarkson” in reply, and deservedly so.

Katie Hopkins, meanwhile, has vowed to leave the UK if Labour are elected in May. So, folks, you heard it here first. My standing as an independent candidate in the Colne Valley is only ever going to take votes away from the opponents of the Blight Brigade. So I won’t be standing as an independent for the Bolshy Party at the election; instead, I will be voting Labour, not because I believe in, or support in any way, Ed Miliband, who has been a disaster zone as leader of the opposition since 2010, but simply to get rid of the Blight Brigade and, now, as an added bonus, to get rid of Katie bloody Hopkins! And I urge you all to do likewise. True, if it works, Ed Miliband will be Prime Minister, so it’s not all good news, but maybe there’s a way we can work around that. And, just pause to think again about the massive advantage: Katie Hopkins will be gone! Gone! Ding, dong, etc.

Meanwhile,  my comment about UKIP last week seems to have provoked a response from one of my dearest, longest-standing correspondents and readers of my blog: I wrote:

"is there any UKIP candidate, anywhere, who isn’t either nutty as a fruitcake, racist, bent, homophobic, or perm any three from four?" 

And she asked:

Don't bent racist nutty homophobic fruitcakes deserve a voice too? I thought that's what democracy meant.  

Well, yes, they do. But they should publish a manifesto that says clearly that they are bent, racist, nutty, homophobic fruitcakes, and stand on that platform, instead of pretending to be a serious political party. 

And so we came to today, as if through a maze of thickets, arriving at Palm Sunday.  I always have a problem with Palm Sunday, the bitter-sweet juxtaposition of the entry of Jesus in triumph into Jerusalem, and the inevitability of the downfall that was to follow, with the final twist in the tale, for those who believe it, of his eventual victory over death. It marks the beginning of one of the most significant weeks in the Christian year, containing Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Saturday.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!”
is all their breath,
And for His death
they thirst and cry

Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, or a colt, depending on which version and/or translation. The colt option is to do with “fulfilling ancient prophecy” – a catch-all explanation used in Bible interpretation for anything strange, wacky or odd, in the same way that archaeologists always attribute anything they can’t otherwise explain to “ritual” usage. Commentators who favour the donkey option point to it as a symbol of peace, whereas if Jesus had entered Jerusalem on a horse, that would have been seen as martial and warlike.  I like the donkey option – there’s a pleasing symmetry with the donkey that carried Jesus to Bethlehem in his mother’s womb, which has also been noticed by U A Fanthorpe in her poem What the Donkey Saw:

No room in the inn, of course,
And not that much in the stable
What with the shepherds, Magi, Mary,
Joseph, the heavenly host –
Not to mention the baby
Using our manger as a cot.
You couldn’t have squeezed another cherub in
For love or money.

Still, in spite of the overcrowding,
I did my best to make them feel wanted.
I could see the baby and I
Would be going places together.

Palm Sunday is always a difficult concept for me to grasp. Not so much the volatile behaviour of the crowd – anyone who has ever done anything that exposed them to public gaze or approbation knows how quickly the mood can change from “enthusiastic band of supporters” to “angry mob baying for blood”.  What I struggle with is the necessity of it all.  As I’ve written many times before, the first time I ever learnt the Easter story, at primary school, almost my first thought was “well, if Jesus is the all-powerful Son of God, why doesn’t he just get down off that cross and smite the Romans into the middle of next week?” I could just see him striding into Pilate’s chamber and knocking him flying off his chair with a swift backhander, his bare Roman legs flailing as he lands in a heap with his bowl of soapy water on his head.

Fifty-odd (coughcough) years later, I still struggle with it. It’s all part of the same knotty problem that prevents me forgiving, I guess. Jesus didn’t do revenge, and although he had the power to stop it happening, he allowed himself to be sacrificed, acknowledging the need for suffering in the world by weeping over Jerusalem as the city came in sight, an event known as the “Flevit super illam”, referenced in the Gospel of Luke, 19:41.

So, for theological reasons I really don’t comprehend, Jesus, who was both God and man simultaneously, chose a full life over a happy one, and suffered under Pilate and was crucified, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed. This explanation requires the help of a member of the audience, the necessary betrayer, in the form of Judas. If you allow this as the explanation, this sort of stacks up, but it’s never really explained why Big G had to do it this way, when with a single “shazam” it could all have been put right. Once more, I find myself questioning God’s motivation and motives. If you believe it, we’re back to “love unknown” again.

It seems to come down to the fact that the grit in your eye is needed to ensure that you appreciate being able to see again when it’s gone. That the pebble in the shoe which we call Death is a necessary companion on the road of life, and that loss, and pain are necessary in order to allow us to be happy and flourish by contrast.

Anyway, we have already reached Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. A week which will end with me turning sixty. How did that ever happen? Well, I can truly say that I’ve had a full life, not a happy one, though I didn’t necessarily choose it – except by default, by making bad decisions!  Still, as Shakespeare said: “If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.”

I am, however, going to attempt something by way of sport this afternoon. Not in the sweaty jockstrap sense of the word, but, after the week I've had, in the sense of doing something for myself for a change, just for a couple of hours. Some painting, and some baking, and maybe a further perusal of the herb nursery’s catalogue. If it ever gets warm and stops raining, there is much work to be done outside, and even in the time it has taken me to type this, the daffodil that was in bud in the first few paragraphs has opened fully, a single brave banner waving in the wind and rain outside, summoning me into next week, and into the battle.