Epiblog for Plough Monday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. And when I say “busy”, I mean “busy”. We have all been suffering from something called “first week back” syndrome, which basically means that from 9AM on Monday 4^th January, the phone and the email kept up a relentless barrage of everybody wanting everything all at once. Including things they could have asked, or sorted, back in November.  Mind you, I am also guilty of that, on occasion.

Deb was back at College as well, so dog walking was curtailed to shorter trips, and of course, this coincided with a turn for the better in the weather, with colder, brighter days replacing all that damn rain. Well, not completely, it has still rained more or less every day, just not continuously.  Misty doesn’t really notice the difference in the length of the walkies, but then dogs don’t really have much of a sense of time.  She still follows the same regime when she comes back. Harness off, towelled down, Muttnuts and “Butchers Dog” for tea, then steaming gently by the fire. 

Misty has, however, transgressed from the straight and narrow this week, literally. With Debbie teaching all day at College on Wednesday, Granny took Misty, Zak and Ellie up to the park. The minute the car door was opened, Misty heard something that spooked her, and off she went, straight over the edge of a 20 foot ornamental rockery.  Fortunatley, the Victorians had a habit of building ledges half way down their rockeries – perhaps they had mad collie dogs in the 19^th century, too – and Misty came to rest on the said edifice, about half way down. Unhurt, but reluctant to return to the bosom of her companions.  This left Granny two choices. Having deposited Zak and Ellie back in the car to avoid them also going AWOL, she was then faced with the option of a) abseiling down from the top and then rock-climbing back up, clutching a collie-dog, or b) legging it down the ornamental path in a big wide zig zagging circle to arrive at the foot of the rocks, then trying to entice Misty down the rest of the way, assuming that Misty was still on the ledge when she got there.

She was saved from either of these desperate choices by the intervention of a kind lady who was also walking her dog, which was also a collie.  While Granny kept watch from the top, the said dog-walker went round the long way, appeared at the bottom, and then, with no more ado, climbed up to where Misty was sitting, picked Misty up in her arms, and made her way gingerly back down. Misty treated the whole thing as a great adventure of course, even though the rest of us aged a couple of years in the space of a single afternoon.

A while ago now we made a “Misty Muttkins Woof Woof Woof There’s Someone At The Door!” bingo card of all the people she barks at, and this week I have to say she scored a full house when we had a tall, uniformed UPS man with a Moin Ali beard and a clipboard.  Zak, by contrast, is much more laid back, usually literally, on the dog bed he has now claimed as his. The only thing that seems to arouse his ire is when Debbie hoovers. Like nature, Zak abhors a vacuum. Debbie rather unkindly said that this is because her Mum never hoovers, so Zak had never seen one before. Sisterhood is powerful.

Talking of sisterhood, Matilda has been demonstrating universal peace and love by getting into fights with neighbouring cats. On Tuesday I heard an almighty kerfuffle going on outside on the decking, and I let Misty out, as this is the quickest way of separating the combatants, when they are two cats. One woof and they both skedaddled in opposite directions.  Matilda returned, shortly afterwards, to the door, with her tail the size of a bog brush, and one of the other cat’s toenail claws embedded in her nose, in the middle, right between her eyes, sticking out like the horn of a unicorn. Attempts to get her to come near enough for me to remove it failed, as they always do when a cat actually knows you want it to come to you. It is only when you are finally inking in the last words on a vellum scroll that the cat will come in from the garden, walk across your work, and rub its head on you.  Somewhere in the archives of my last real job, unless they have thrown it out, which is quite likely, there is a flow chart I drew of the order processing system, digitally signed by the muddy little toes of Russell, who walked across it one day when I was drawing it out at home.

Anyway, eventually she sat on the carpet and had one of those prolonged washes cats have when their dignity has been disturbed, as well as their fur, and she managed to remove the errant toenail herself, during that process. You can take the cat out of Huddersfield, but you can’t take Huddersfield out of the cat. I think she gets it from Debbie, who, in her younger days, didn’t count it a successful night out in Town unless you had had a fight in a kebab shop after closing time, and woke up the next day with someone’s toenail embedded in your head.

Meanwhile, I have diverted myself from the tedium of running year-end reports by working on the design of jackets for this year’s books. I am so disorientated by the change in the year that I keep referring to them as “next year’s books!” Mind you, if this year goes like last year, some of them might well end up being next year’s books, but we shall see.

All of this assumes that there will be a next year, of course. As I said in my last blog, sometimes it seems as though we are living in the era of the final apocalypse. The floods in the Calder Valley have gone down – for now, but the long, dreary clean-up continues. Questions, too, are beginning to be asked, along the lines of those which I posed in last week’s blog, about the slowness of the official response, and why the burden has fallen on so many volunteers and unofficial co-ordinators. There are those who view such questions as inappropriate or insensitive, at a time when people are still struggling to dry out and clean their homes and businesses, and rebuild their lives, but nevertheless it needs asking.  I repeat what I said last week – I am not decrying or calling into question in any way the efforts of the volunteers, they performed miracles, as witnessed by anyone who followed the Flood Action Group’s Facebook page – the question is, why should they have had to do so?

The short answer is, of course, that, in the absence of any long term official help once the immediate danger was past, in the absence of a national disaster emergency Civil Defence force, if the volunteers hadn’t done it, then nobody would.  This is, of course, typical of the way in which government works these days – we elect people to ensure that the basic needs of safety and law and order are met, and they abdicate the responsibility by outsourcing the work, or ignoring the problem until a charity is forced to step in, because the government is playing brinkmanship with people’s livelihoods, and in some cases, lives.

This is especially true in the case of the homeless. Homelessness has always been a political football, and never more so than today, when the Junta’s “austerity” programme has massively increased the numbers of people with no home, many of whom are also reliant on handouts from food banks. I am a follower of several homelessness groups on Facebook and noticed this week a particularly poignant posting by one of them, based in Wolverhampton.

This morning, one of our friends on the streets, Hayley, was found dead on Queen Street in Wolves city centre. Our teams of volunteers had come to know Hayley quite well and are very saddened by this news. This sadness is shadowed by a sense of anger too however. It is an absolute disgrace that in 2016, there are incredibly vulnerable people living rough on our streets and are not only homeless but also contending with all sorts of health issues - mental, physical and emotional. I am not going to turn this into a rant but I would like people to be aware that people who are on our doorstep ARE dying NOW! We will be out as usual tonight but we know that the mood amongst the homeless community will be a sombre one.

I second that emotion, as Smokey Robinson might say, if he were here right now. And why NOT turn it into a rant? Rant away! It’s only by ranting and continuing to rant, these days, that you can get anything done in this country, because until the smug, self-serving, self-satisfied bastards are brought face to face with the reality of the consequences of their actions, and they are scared into thinking that people might actually do something unpredictable and dangerous out of their righteous anger, then nothing will happen. MPs will go on having three houses, two of them empty at any given time, while people like Hayley, whoever she was, are dying in the frozen precinct.

Anyway, back in the Calder Valley, people are realising it is going to be a long hard road to get back to where they were on Boxing Day, and reaction of various sorts is starting to set in.  Prince Andrew, no less, the Grand Old Duke of York, has been to visit, and see for himself the floods at first hand. He observed, apparently, that there was a lot of water, everywhere.  I know that the royals are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t, in that if he’d stayed away entirely, there would have been people who accused the royals of not caring.  However, his cavalcade of limos apparently caused a traffic gridlock in Todmorden and Hebden Bridge, and, to make matters worse, one of the limos managed to clip a small dog, which had managed to survive the floods, only to be dinged by a Daimler. Fortunately, apparently, it was none the worse for wear.  I would have had more respect for Prince Andrew if he’d got out of the limo, put on his wellies, and helped to clear some drains, but hey, what do I know, eh? What do I know?

The mainstream media has also – belatedly – picked up on the way in which the massive volunteer effort united some sections of the local community which had previously been at least strangers, if not potential adversaries. In an article in The Guardian, the title of which contained the phrases “How floods united the North” and “Chefs bearing curries, refugees with sandbags” that newspaper documented some of the more bizarre aspects of the relief effort – the “samosa runs” of hot Asian food from Bradford charities to be handed out to flood refugees and volunteers alike at the various “hubs” set up in the stricken towns, the Syrian refugees filling sandbanks, and the former member of Combat 18 who went up to a Sikh cooking curry on a camp cooker at one of the hot food distribution points, and, with tears in his eyes, shook the bloke’s hand and apologised for thinking badly of him and his kind in the past.

Officialdom has now begun to take over some of these previously voluntary actions, not always in the most appropriate or efficient way, however, or so it would seem. The council announced that there would be a process of applying for match-funded grants from a central government “pot” of up to £2m, for business premises damaged in the floods. The announcement was made on Friday lunchtime, and the deadline for applications is tomorrow. It reminds me of those Rotten Borough elections in the 19^th century where they used to keep moving the ballot box round the constituency, from pub to pub, to prevent too many people from voting.  And there is now an “official” fundraising single, sales of which will benefit the flood relief fund. It is by Cannon and Ball. Make of that what you will. With a bowl of warm water, you could choose from either a fruit bowl or an ashtray, depending if it’s the 6 inch or 9 inch version.

The idea that there is a choice between giving aid overseas and giving aid to “our own” which has been rumbling along behind all the fundraising efforts this week, has been given a new lease of life by the India announcing that it had 10 space missions planned this year, leading people to ask why we are giving overseas aid to a country that has a space programme at the same time as street-urchins and beggars living in appalling poverty. The short but harsh answer is that the Indian government’s aspirations are such that, if the UK government chopped all the aid tomorrow, and the NGOs could no longer channel it to India’s poor and needy, the Indian government would not immediately abandon its plans to launch sixteen satellites and put the effort into poor relief instead – it would carry on its merry, sweet way and let the beggars starve. We know this, and they know that we know this, and in that respect, the Indian government is just as bad as ours, abdicating responsibility and indulging in brinkmanship with the poor as pawns in the game.

Fortunately, overall, the UK government spends 0.7% of its income on international aid. Less than 1%. And – bringing the argument back into the realm of the floods - the government has failed to apply for millions available from the EU to help cope with flood emergencies, because it is not politically expedient for David Cameron to be seen going cap-in-hand to the EU at a time when he is trying to appear tough and anti European to appease the hairy-handed wannabe-UKIP supporters who keep him awake by howling at the moon if they don’t get their regular fix of Daily Mail xenophobia.  So people in Yorkshire are denied help for the good of the Tory party, or at least that faction of it currently led by David Cameron.

There are, of course, sadly, other areas which will not be getting any help from the EU, flooded or otherwise this winter.  They contain people in a desperate state, suffering from cold, disease, and malnutrition. They are the refugee camps on the Macedonian border, and the civilians stuck in the midst of the fighting in the Syrian city of Madaya. I am not going to say that we should be concentrating on these people at the expense of those whose lives and livelihoods have been damaged by the floods in the Calder Valley. It is impossible to quantify a scale of suffering, and say that this suffering is worse, or “worth more” on some kind of “suffering scale”, than that suffering.  Suffering is suffering, and any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.  The pain of someone who has lost their pet cat in the floods is just as acute as the pain of someone who has had to kill and eat their pet cat in Madaya, in order to stop them starving. They have already eaten all the dogs.  There have been reports of people eating grass, and leaves off trees, just to try and stay alive.

When will the bloody murderers responsible realise, and call a cease-fire? Or, failing that, if we must bomb Syria, at whatever enormous cost, then surely it is not beyond the wit of the combined military minds behind these operations to come up with a plan that threatens the besieging forces to lift the siege? Or at least to air-drop humanitarian supplies? Well, the answer is no, and no, because the besieging forces are actually Syrian government troops, reinforced by Hizbollah, and newly emboldened, no doubt, by the ill-timed adventurist intervention of President Putin (not gay: that’s official) on the side of a President in Syria who barrel-bombs his own people.  The World Food Programme relief convoy for Madaya has been delayed because of unspecified hitches, so by the time it reaches its destination, tomorrow, or possibly Tuesday, yet more people will have died.  Meanwhile, a similar situation is developing in two more besieged towns, Foah and Kefraya. Make a note of their names. You’ll see them on the news next week, accompanied by pictures of dying children, unless of course the media is distracted by Big Brother, or David Cameron taking a “tough stance” on something, or the need to run a further attack on Jeremy Corbyn or something.

Meanwhile, as with the desperate conditions in the Macedonian camps, where winter has set in with a vengeance, or in the camps at Calais and Dunkerque, where the situation has also been exacerbated by flooding, the poorest, the most vulnerable, the people who have lost everything, suffer and die this winter. As predicted.  And not just by those who are being wise after the event – there were lots of people who were wise before the event, and the politicians didn’t listen.  So, it has now got to the stage in Madaya where possibly the only hope of getting the aid convoy through is a cease-fire negotiated by Ban-Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the UN. It’s only a Ban-Ki-Moon, shining over a cardboard sea, but it’s their best chance.

Today is the anniversary of various Saints and “Blesseds” (but not Brian Blessed) including Archbishop William Laud, who was beheaded in 1645 despite a Royal pardon, which sounds a bit harsh until you remember that the King at the time, Charles I, had seen his realm shrink to the bough of an oak tree in Worcestershire, and the Puritans, our version of the Taleban, but thankfully it was 470 years ago and we got it out of our system, didn’t give a stuff what Charles I said.  I’ve chosen, however, to title this Epiblog after tomorrow, Plough Monday, traditionally the first Monday after Epiphany, where, in England, the farm workers started breaking the ground on a new year, sometimes accompanied by high jinks and black-faced mummers and similar tomfoolery.

I’ve chosen it because I would like to see several ground-breaking things happen. I’d like to see a new start in several areas.  There needs, literally, to be ground-breaking in this country. Ground-breaking to build new flood defences. Ground-breaking to build new, affordable homes and council houses for rent, not for sale. There also needs to be some ground-breaking ideas that people are worth more than profit. That everyone should have somewhere safe and warm to lay their head. That no-one should go hungry. That the community spirit which carried the people of the Calder Valley through the terrible days immediately after the flooding is worth preserving, and building upon, and spreading, if possible.  That we should give up interfering in foreign countries far away where we only make the situation worse, by creating misery and increasing the flow of refugees.  That we should spend the money we’re currently spending on bombing Syria on aid instead, either there and/ or at home. That the swords be turned into ploughshares.

That would be a harvest worth breaking the ground for. I know this is crazy, but I am going to start praying for it. Apart from writing about these problems, and signing petitions, and writing to politicians, and donating tins to the food banks, there is little else I, personally, can do.  But I think I, too, need to do some ground-breaking, some revision, some sowing of seeds in my own life. I need to take stock of what I believe, and what to do with it.  Today, tomorrow, going forward. Of course, next week, I will be back on the treadmill of work, and soon, this evening, I will be plunged back into the domestic tasks of drying off and feeding dogs, making tea (Debbie can dry herself) and baking some greengage jam tarts. I may complain, but I am lucky to have the wherewithal to do so. Later, no doubt, Matilda will come in, also yowling for food, and I will feed her.  But as I go to bed tonight, there will be kids yowling for food in Macedonia, Calais, Dunkerque, Madaya, and yes, maybe even in the Calder Valley.  I need to decide what, apart from praying, I can do about this.  Maybe we could make a start by putting all the waste land down to grow food, as we did in the war as part of “Dig for Victory”.  Distributism, and the return to craft-work, have been derided as being pseudo-bucolic in this modern era, but now people can use the internet to sell their wares, instead of having to load up a cart and take them to market, is it such a crazy idea?  What about persuading supermarkets, instead of skipping out of date food, to take it back to the distribution hub in their delivery lorries, which currently go back after delivering to their stores each day,  empty, and for the food to be there sorted and distributed to those who need it? 

As in Langland’s Piers Plowman, we have a “faire field full of folk” to work with in this country there is no shortage of skill and talent, just of the political and religious will to make it work for the common good.  Don’t take my word for it, here is A. G. McDonnell at the end of England, Their England:

Soon Donald could see that, although they walked out of step, in groups and parties, mingling with each other and changing from moment to moment, with here and there a man by himself, although in fact they did not remotely resemble the disciplined advance of an army on the march, nevertheless, every single one carried a weapon of some sort, even if it was only a cross-bow or a bill-hook or a scythe. And yet none of them wore anything that might be described as a uniform; mostly they wore black suits or shabby corduroys, and they carried their weapons in a careless, amateurish way.

The rumbling noise grew louder and more continuous. The faces of the two vanguards were now visible, and Donald saw that all the men of those two armed bodies of civilians were shaking and quaking and heaving with inexhaustible laughter. The vanguards met immediately below St. Catherine's Hill, where the road had widened out, somehow without Donald noticing it, into a great broad open space, and in a few moments all the men were talking and laughing together. Nobody listened very much to anybody, but they all seemed to be in raging, towering spirits. They threw their weapons down apparently at random, and pulled books and scrolls and parchments and pieces of paper out of their pockets and chattered away and declaimed and recited; and suddenly and queerly and instinctively Donald knew that they were all poets.

Once there seemed to be some sort of alarm sounded, for they all sprang to arms with inconceivable rapidity, and ranged themselves in battle array and handled their jumble of weapons in a manner that was the complete reverse of carelessness and amateurishness. When it was found to have been a false alarm, they shoved their weapons away again—one, a little fellow, stuffed a great meat-axe casually into one coat-pocket and hauled a quarto volume out of the other, and one arranged his Hotchkiss machine-gun into a three-legged table and sat down on the ground and began to write a poem upon it—and fell to talking and laughing and scribbling and shouting and declaiming.

I have reckoned to be some kind of Christian in the past, although I don’t believe that the entirety of the Bible is the received word of God, and I don’t believe it’s morally right to attempt to convert someone to a particular belief system, especially against their will, and nor do I think that the Church (any church) has a universal moral answer which is applicable in every situation or circumstance. I sort of believe in Jesus, at least I believe he existed, but I struggle enormously with the whole Son of God thing.  I have no answer whatsoever to the problem of evil in the world, save that God’s ideas of right and wrong must be radically different to ours, or he/she/it knows something we don’t. I do believe that people survive after they die, probably in a way to do with multiple universes and different planes of existence that we don’t fully understand, and probably never will, until it’s finally revealed to us. I do think that something listens to my prayers, sometimes.

And that’s about it. Not much with which to fare forward and plough all those muddy acres that lie ahead, but these fragments I have shored against my ruin, as Eliot said. After all, it worked well enough when Adam delved and Eve span, and there was then no Gentleman… Right now, though, all I can fall back upon is that traditional cry for Plough Monday, of “God Speed The Plough”.