Epiblog for the Feast of St Egbert

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Fortunately, it seems that the hailstorms and the thunder and the rain have finally left us for this winter (although I always say that, and find that I am speaking too soon) and we’ve had a few days now of quiet, cool-ish weather, interspersed every now and again with some quite pleasant sunshine, provided you stayed out of the wind.  We haven’t entirely escaped “Aprille, with his shoures soote” that pierce “the droght of Mersh” to “the roote”.  It’s been cold at night, though, and I have been keeping a wary eye out for frost, which could damage the tender young herbs, even though they are in tubs.

This has pleased Matilda somewhat, and she seems to have gained a bit of a new lease of life, with her numerous comings and goings out on to the decking and back in again.  It is actually quite tedious letting her in and out all the time, but the alternatives (either a cat flap in the double-glazed conservatory door at a cost of approx £250, or opening up the existing cat flap again and feeling the joy of the wind from the Urals whistling around your ankles) are even worse.

Misty, too, has been enjoying the longer evenings, because now at least her meanderings over the featureless peat bogs and moorlands with Debbie usually end in daylight, unless something goes massively wrong.  Zak has been an occasional willing companion, but Ellie now seems to recognise that, in the canine panoply, her role is to keep the chair warm for the others when they get back.

We’ve seen the badger again, as well, and once more it was at approximately 10.30pm, so we are obviously a fixture on Brenda’s nightly route. It has been suggested that we should put out some peanut butter sandwiches for her, because apparently badgers love peanut butter.  I hasten to say we have not actually done this, as I fear that the logical extension of such a move would be the badger ambling into the conservatory one day, and asking for a table for one, and to see today’s specials. Either that, or waking up with it snoring next to me on the pillow. Much as I love badgers, there are limits.

The squirrels and the birds are also very active, as you might expect – they’ve started doing that Alfred Hitchcock thing again where they all line up on the branch outside my bedroom window and peer in, encouraging me to get up and put the birdseed out on the decking.

Getting up has, however, been a bit of a problem of late. Partly because once again I seem to be constantly in the grip of some sort of low-grade lurgy, which seems always on the edge of flaring up into something more serious, and keeps me awake at night and sends me to sleep during the day, and partly because my wheelchair itself is not very well, and I suspect one of the wheels may be on the way out, which makes sliding on and off it via the banana board somewhat problematic, as it’s always more difficult to hit a moving target. A service call is booked for the morrow.  

Still, I haven’t fallen off my perch yet, and neither, it would seem, has Her Majesty. There is obviously something in the “Gin and Dubonnet” diet that promotes longevity, which is why her mother lasted to be 102 (degrees proof). 

Predictably the media (the same media that hacked the royals’ phones and drove Diana, literally, almost, to an early grave) went into full-blown “Gawd Bless You, Ma’am” mode. I do, actually, have a lot of respect for the Queen, more so than I do for some other members of her extended family.  As I said elsewhere this week, I feel about the monarchy a lot like I feel about Trident and about the EU.  Given a free hand and a blank sheet of paper, personally, I would never in a million years have set off down a route that led to here. The current state we’re in is the result of generations of meddlesome idiot politicians, many of whom, have, sadly, gone to their graves unpunished. But we are where we are, and we have comprehensively painted ourselves into a corner whereby all the other options are even worse, so we might as well persevere with what we’ve got and try and make a fist of it.  Just don’t expect me to be happy about it, that’s all.

As part of the Queen’s birthday celebrations, Obama has been in town, taking this opportunity to put in his two penn’orth about the perils of Brexit. He might as well have saved his breath to cool his kedgeree, since the people voting to leave are mostly doing so because they don’t want brown people coming to “their” country (which happens to be mine, too, but we’ll let that go by outside the off stump for the moment) and depressing property prices. So they are unlikely to listen to someone, er, brown, as demonstrated by Boris Johnson, who chose to make Obama’s colour a feature of his rebuttal of the President’s remarks.

Since this week has also contained St. George’s Day, the massive sentiment-topped midweek blancmange that was the Queen’s birthday tended to overflow into St George’s Day at the weekend as well, and the internet was clogged up with people wanting to swear allegiance to Her Majesty (von Hanover Saxe Coburg Gotha Battenburg) and St George (that well known Turkish/Syrian/Palestinian itinerant dragon-slayer).  It seemed pretty clear to me from what Obama said that there wouldn’t be any free lunches across the pond for the UK if we vote to leave, and this week the Treasury also published a report on the potentially damaging economic consequences of Brexit. Ironically, however, because it was promoted by George Osborne, the Chancer of the Exchequer, it was widely rubbished, on the grounds that you can’t believe a word he says and he has missed every target since 2010, when in fact this may have been the one pronouncement he’s made that didn’t require flame-retardent undercrackers.

Cameron must have been quite glad of the distraction of the Queen turning 90, as it momentarily diverted the focus of the news media away from the vicious Tory in-fighting over Europe, and the continuing deterioration of his government and all it stands for. Jeremy Hunt seems determined to press on into the valley of death, the only difference being that, unlike the government of 150 years ago, this time around, Florence Nightingale will be on strike.  Nicky Morgan, allegedly the education secretary, apparently can’t spell “sincerely”. And Channel 4’s continuing investigation into the 2015 election expenses scandal is daily uncovering more and more evidence that, in fact, the government consists of the finest politicians that money can buy. 

For our foreign readers, a quick word of explanation might be necessary here. There are strict limits on the amount of money that can be spend by each side within a single constituency during an election. Each candidate gets a free leaflet, free mailshots etc, and all other expenses are subject to a maximum cap. What the Tories did was to fill a “battlebus” with activists and drive them round from constituency to constituency. While they were in the constituency, they worked to get the local candidate re-elected, but the cost of the battlebus and the activists came out of a national budget for national campaigning only.  Opponents claim that the Tories breached the local spending limits by subterfuge, and in the nine most marginal seats, where the battlebus troops made a difference on the ground, in effect they “bought” those constituencies.  And I have to say, opponents have a point.

Meanwhile, in Liverpool, following on from my piece last week about the government response to the official petition asking that homeless ex-service personnel be housed in refurbished abandoned MOD bases, a Labour (yes, Labour) councillor, Frank Hont, has rubbished the idea that the city’s homeless could be housed in abandoned and empty buildings, after a 6,000 signature petition called for this. Writing in the Liverpool Echo, he called the idea ill-informed, saying “If rough sleeping could be resolved simply by housing people, we would do it tomorrow.” Well, go on, then. It seems to me that one of the prime causes of homelessness is, er, not having a home. Or am I missing something here?  The model suggested by the petitioners has worked successfully in the US, Canada, Australia, France and Finland, by the way.

Things are not much better this side of the Pennines. In Leeds, the local council is trying to stop Dion Smith, a local jeweller with a shop in the city centre, who has been handing out cups of tea, biscuits, soup and snacks to homeless people in the city, often accompanied by his bulldog, Lulu. He has received the unwelcome attentions of Business Improvement District (presumably some sort of local government quango) that employs people in bowler hats and overcoats to wander round the city centre assisting visitors. I kid you not. They are called, rather sinisterly, The Welcome People, although The Men In Black seems more appropriate. Anyway, Mr Smith has had a visit from this crowd of jokers:

Last week we were approached by three people wearing bowler hats who said we should stop providing food to the homeless as it was attracting intimidating and undesirable people to the area.

Translation: we don’t want the yuppified centre of Leeds and the yuppified people who shop there exposed to the harsh realities of life under a council that would rather spend money on the Tour de bloody France than sorting out the problem of town centre homelessness.  I’ve said this before and I will say it again. The problem of homelessness would be solved in a month if MPs and Councillors were forced to sleep outside in a sleeping bag every night until something was done about it. But because our politicians (of all parties) are, by and large, with a few shining exceptions, lying, venal and corrupt two-faced shits, the problem goes on.

If Labour had any sense (which clearly they don’t, see under Frank Hont, above) they would make the food banks and the class war on the poor and the disabled into a mantra for years to come. Every time some chinless wonder starts going on about the free market, austerity and competitiveness, they could blow them out of the water by just pointing out that it’s the way to the food bank, in the same way as we’re constantly reminded by them that apparently nationalisation or any form of state interventionism to save an ailing steel industry, for instance, will immediately transport us back to 1979 and dead bodies lying unburied in the street. Yeah, right.

Anyway, today has been a rather sombre day, weather-wise at least. While I have been typing this, the weather has turned dull and grey, and the wind cold, once again.  Today is the feast of St Egbert, who is not to be confused with the later Egbert, Archbishop of York, apparently. If only one of the two Egberts had been a swineherd, like St Dunstan, we could then refer to the other one as “Egbert No Bacon”! (Badum-tish! Here till Friday, try the veal).

Our Egbert, today’s Egbert, was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman, probably from the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, who was born some time in the 650s AD.  In 664AD he went to Ireland to study, by which time he must have been in his mid-teens.  His destination was either County Louth or Connaught. It wasn’t entirely a trouble-free journey, as his companion Ethelhun died of plague. Egbert also caught it, but, surprisingly for those times, survived.

Egbert had vowed, while ill, that, if he was spared, he would become a perpetual pilgrim and would lead a life of continuous prayer and fasting.  On his recovery, he began to organise the monks in Ireland to go to Frisia. He became known to, or friends with, all of the names which are associated with the great era of Northumbrian saints – St Adalbert, St Swithbert, St Chad, St Willibrord, St Wigbert, and others.  Despite having influential contacts with the royal house of Northumberland and of the Picts, he failed to stop King Ecgfrith of Northumbria from sending an expedition to Ireland in 684AD.

He did, however, manage to persuade the Iona community to adopt the Roman method of calculating Easter from 716AD onwards. Ironically, the first day that his own monastery celebrated Easter according to this new method was also the day Egbert died, on 24^th April 729.

Apart from almost being a saint by association more than in his own right, Egbert doesn’t seem to have been particularly saintly in any of the normal aspects of sainthood, eg miracles and stuff like that.  But, nevertheless, I guess he meant well.  He tried.

He holds, however, absolutely no lessons for me or for my religious life. Not that anything much does, these days. Still, it’s been a long week.  And next week isn’t going to be much better. Still, at least if Debbie’s back at work, it will bring a temporary halt to her mission to make our house look like the IKEA catalogue. And, in the meantime, apparently it’s been announced that my new nephew is called Luke, which means I can at least revise my will.

I am, though, increasingly questioning myself these days, especially in the matters of my spiritual life.  Believing that God is somehow connected to time, and that people who die live on in another space we can’t access until we follow them, is all very well, but where does Jesus fit into all this? Did Jesus really die for me, Steve Rudd, 61 year old unwanted marketing director and largely unsuccessful publisher, who is going to wizen away into a walnut over the next decade or so? And if so, why? What the hell was he thinking?

Meanwhile, as I get less and less religious (or should that be fewer?) I did spend what might be referred to as a reasonably enjoyable hour this afternoon listening to choral evensong on BBC Radio 3. I may be turning into one of those people who says they only go to church because they enjoy a good sing.

I almost don’t want next week.  I’m so very tired.  And I have to deal with people who, to be honest, don’t care if I spend £123.08 on their vanity projects with little prospect of any return.  But, on the plus side, my petition, which once had 198 signatures, now has 6,740, and a real chance of getting to 10,000 before August, and provoking a response from the government. It’s obviously going to be a response that “the existing legislation is adequate” but even in itself that can be challenged, it puts down a marker.

Perhaps my last act on this earth is going to be giving the government a jab in the arse over animal welfare. Anyway, I could wish for worse. The badger has been tonight, and eaten some more peanuts. If Jesus is all he claims to be, there would be more, and better, badgers in the world.  Meanwhile, the jury is still out.

Here’s a little ditty for St George’s Day to keep you going.