Epiblog for Misty's Birthday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t be writing a blog this week, but we are living in momentous times, and I feel a certain responsibility (to whom, I haven’t a clue) to at least put down my feelings about it all, as far as it is possible to do so.  Besides. It’s the dog’s birthday.

Summer remains patchy. Sometimes you look out of the conservatory onto the garden, and it’s bathed in beautiful warm mellow July sunlight. Twenty minutes later and it’s like a January day, with rain pelting down.  Some of the herbs have suffered, as the summer wore on – mainly the ones that like warm, Mediterranean shores.

Deb’s term has now officially finished, although she’s still having to go into College at odd moments to tie up loose ends, and pick up and drop off marking, and we’re now in that weird no-man’s land where we are gathering our strength to try and get the camper back on the road and head for Arran. As I said last week, though, there is a hell of a lot to do before that can happen, so there may not be a blog next week.

I’ve also been trying to get on with some long-term planning for the rest of this year, in amongst working on the books. This is a thoroughly depressing task, having to think about what I will be doing in November when it really will be freezing cold and pissing down outside.  And then the thought that November is only three months away hits you like a bucket of cold water.

So, in odd moments, I’ve also been trying to pause and savour what’s left of the summer. Make a fuss of Matilda when she curls up on her little blanket at night, and give thanks (to whom, again I haven’t a clue) that she is safe and warm indoors, unlike all the other poor cats who are living wild and feral, or shut up in the pound with an uncertain future.

There are now three squirrels that visit regularly, and I have now got to the stage where I can actually differentiate between them, physically. I haven’t got as far as giving them names, yet, as that really would be tantamount to taking responsibility for their wellbeing in an uncertain world, and I can’t really cope with my existing responsibilities as it is. They do come and look accusingly through the conservatory door, though, when there is no bird food in the tray.

“An uncertain world” also sums up what I have felt about the wider situation this week.  I have come to realise, I suppose, on mature reflection, as it say in all good last wills and testaments, that not all of the 52% of people who voted to leave the EU did so out of racist motives. We will never know the true percentage of those who did. The explosion of racist abuse since the referendum decision was announced points to the fact that there has been an ugly underseam of racism in the country for many months now. Stoked by the government’s own anti-immigrant propaganda, until they realised that all it was doing was recruiting people to the banner of UKIP, and stopped it.  Leavened, also, with a generous sprinkling of religious intolerance towards Muslims. And yes, I know that cuts both ways in some cases.

As to the remainder, who knows? People may have mistakenly believed all that guff about the £350million for the NHS, even though Farage was quicker than Usain Bolt off the starting blocks to distance himself from it, and Iain Duncan Smith suggested that what the people who voted “Leave” thought were promises were merely “a series of possibilities”.  When pressed further on the negotiations, old Irritable-Bowel went on to say that they would be using “experts” to help, which must have made Gove choke on his cornflakes if he was watching, as he’d just spent the last three weeks telling everyone that the country had had enough of experts!

Some people, of course, voted “Leave” simply to send a “message” to the likes of Cameron that their lives were total shit, they felt overlooked, neglected, taken for granted, and all of this was true. However, that wasn’t the question on the ballot paper, and their actions were about as useful to their future prospects, and mine, as someone who sees their train is heading for a wreck, and pulls the communication cord.

Some people may have voted “Leave” because they believed Boris Johnson’s twaddle about “taking back control”, even though I am not sure he knew what he meant by it. It sounded good, though. An empty slogan from an empty vessel. This view of the EU as faceless bureaucrats in other countries controlling everything we do, is one of the points I never really understood. The Commission is appointed by directly elected ministers from the member states, the European parliament is directly elected, and the council of ministers is directly elected. So far, it all sounds pretty democratic. On top of that anything we don’t like we can veto! How is this some kind of superstate overriding our interests?

Now, thanks to a heady mixture of xenophobia, jingoism, and economic illiteracy, we will see “sovereignty returned” from the “unelected” EU to the Queen (unelected) and the House of Lords (unelected) plus a parliament headed up in the autumn by a new prime minister (unelected, apart from by a few members of the 1922 Committee).  You could not make it up.

Several people have suggested, about the referendum, that I should “stop sulking” and “admit that I lost”, so I would just like to clear up a few things. I am not “sulking”; if anything, I think I am still in shock. It takes time to process something like this, and since in any event, my main preoccupation at all times is the immediate and long term survival and prospects of my family and friends, and since this decision will have a very bad effect on those prospects and that future, you might expect me to be making plans and processing it for a while yet. And yes, probably harbouring some kind of residual resentment towards the situation I now find myself in, and the inevitable additional hassle and worry it will cause me.

As to admitting that I lost, I freely admit that. Even the people who think they “won” this referendum, have lost. There will be no winners, as they will find out to their cost.  The worst aspect of seeing it in terms of “winning” has been, of course, the massive endorsement to free range, casual racism which the result has given to those with a tendency to indulge in it anyway. They now think it’s OK in the street, in the supermarket, in schools, in shops, on the bus, on the train…

You have to hand it to Cameron. He has absolutely no intention of invoking Article 50. Hell will freeze over, and the Devil will go past the window on Bart Simpson’s skateboard, before Cameron invokes Article 50. Somehow, sometime, somebody is going to have to sit down with a large sheet of paper and some crayons, and explain this to the people who voted for Farage and Johnson. As he well knows, the trouble with Article 50 is that it was written in a way that didn’t take account of the fact that it would ever have to be used one day, because, a bit like a nuclear deterrent, the people who drafted it never dreamed that anyone would be mad enough to actually use it. It has been likened to a divorce, but that is far too amicable a simile. It’s not deciding who gets which CDs and making arrangements to visit every other weekend, it’s going to be more like coming home from work and finding your belongings in a cardboard box by the wheelybin, and new locks on all the doors.

So, now the country has been saddled with a huge problem by this combination of believing in fairytales, not liking foreigners, and a romantic idea of medieval monarchy dating back to the times when Richard the Lionheart was held captive in the Chateau Gaillard.  Still, all is not yet lost, Australia, New Zealand, India, Korea, and Mexico have all said they will sign trade deals with us.  Well, OK, we've lost the export trade to the single market, but here’s the plan of action. Start doing Korma ready meals, with added noodles for the Korean market (or maybe even added poodles, they're not that fussy) Meanwhile, I'm off to round up some sheep and whittle a boomerang, as soon as I've eaten this taco.

As I have said many times, this fiasco would be funny if it weren’t so damn serious. Farage had his last “yahoo, yah boo sucks” speech at (rather than to) the EU parliament, telling them to get a proper job. (He forgot to add the bit about get a decent suit, stand up straight, do your tie up and sing the  National Anthem) His last “proper” job was as a stockbroker. By gum, it were ‘ard in them days, going down the pit in search of them elusive stocks and shares, comin’ ‘ome and sittin’ in’t tin bath in t’scullery.  They treated him with amused tolerance. They know he has just legislated himself off the edge of relevance.

But the overriding impression at home was that nobody is in charge, and no-one knows what the hell is going on.  As Michael Gove was pledging, as part of his surprise Tory leadership campaign, an extra £100m a week for the NHS from 2020 (boy, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that one) on the very same day as George Osborne abandoned his target of balancing the economy by 2020.  The day Gove kebabbed Boris Johnson and consigned him to being the member for Uxbridge until he gets fed up of sorting out people’s housing benefit claims, resigns, and goes back to journalism, was indeed a good day to bury bad news. It was also a good day to bury Boris Johnson. On the other hand, is there ever a bad day?

But Osborne, though. What price austerity now? Was it worth it, George? Were the food banks worth it? Were the people who killed themselves because their benefits had been stopped in the name of austerity? Were the people who died with no food in the fridge? Was the rise in homelessness worth it, George? What about the people who were forced to move out because of the bedroom tax? Worth it? Do you look at the dismal sorry record of the last six years of austerity ruining people’s lives and livelihoods and think, yeah, a job well done. It was worth all the pain, because I hit my target of, oh, hang on… I have got no words for you, Osborne, only profanity, but I will say this. I hope everything you visited on them with your cruel and misguided policies comes back on you and yours, in spades redoubled, with the worst possible consequences. And even then you will have got off lightly.

As expected, noting the fact that the Tories were in complete disarray and the ship of state was drifting ever nearer the edge of the cliff, the Labour Party was keen to get on with the task of opposition and lost no time in opposing its own leader, with a staged non-democratic coup, consisting of the shadow cabinet resigning en masse, and blaming Brexit, although the whole thing was planned weeks ago by a group of disgruntled MPs who have thrown their toys out of the pram at the leftwards shift of the party (hugely popular amongst its membership) and now need a nappy change followed by de-selection at the earliest opportunity.

Unfazed, Corbyn simply appointed another shadow cabinet, and when some of them resigned, another lot. For a while, it was like Hull City in the old days, where you used to ring up Boothferry Park to see what time the match was, and they said “what time can you come?”.  The guy who had come in to tune the TV in the meeting room was almost offered the job of shadow secretary to the treasury, until they realised who he was.  The plotters then engineered a vote of no-confidence in Corbyn, who ignored it. You have to hand it to the man, he has balls of steel. His “well, if you want me out, you’ll have to carry me out” struck a chord with me. One of my few appealing characteristics is stubbornness. In the right circumstances, I can be stubborn for England.  When I see it displayed in such monumental quantities in others, I am filled with admiration. I almost considered re-joining the Labour Party, until I remembered that if I did, I would only have the faff of resigning all over again when they did something else stupid.

The turmoil following the “Brexit” vote has not been the only news this week, of course. We were called upon to witness the sacrifice of a group of naïve yet trusting young men, led by out-of-touch idiots with no tactical sense whatsoever, young men whose hopes of a bright future were extinguished on the field in northern France. But that’s enough about the England football team’s ignominious exit from Euro 2016, it was also the 100^th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme.

It was especially poignant to see the religious service broadcast on the day from the Thiepval Memorial, in the heart of what used to be the battlefield.  Not so much for the content, but for the sheer scale of the place, the rows and rows of white crosses stretching off in every direction. Each one of those represents a life unfulfilled, children never born, previous happy times never to return. Each one of those represents someone grieving alone by the fire, knowing their loved one lies (if they lie anywhere, so many of them had no known grave, thanks to the devastating effect of high explosive artillery shells) in a muddy grave far away, unvisited. That is what war means, and that particular conflict was followed by a worse one. God alone knows what a third war in Europe would bring, and that is something that must be avoided at all costs, whatever side you voted for.

In this week of anniversaries, it’s also the third anniversary, today, of the day when, back in 2013, Deb, her dad, Freddie, Zak and me travelled up to Baildon in the  camper to pick up Misty from the collie dog sanctuary. It’s a sad comment on the transitory nature of life that two of those companions are no longer with us. Freddie died in May 2014 and Mike in February 2015.  Still, as it says in the song, we who must remain, go on living just the same.  We deliberately didn’t want to find another dog like Tiggy after she’d died, and in that respect, Misty’s been a great success.  She couldn’t be less like Tig if she tried. And her occasional forays into acts of sheer random loopiness, such as whirling round and round and barking whenever someone comes to the door, followed by her invariably treading on her food dish and sending muttnuts scattering all over the tiles, do keep us on our toes. Border collies are supposed to be incredibly intelligent and able to learn up to 150 commands. So far we have done “sit” and “give paw”, in three years.  Still, it could be worse, for her as well as us. If Em hadn’t found her tied up with a piece of wire y the side of a busy road in Northumberland that day, and handed her in to Baildon, who knows where she might have ended up.

I haven’t researched a saint for this week, because I didn’t know I was going to write this until I started writing it, but I haven’t been entirely Godless either. I have been trying to pray, although to whom, I am not sure, and I have also been painting eikons again, particularly one of St Gertrude of Nivelles which I hope to auction in favour of Rain Rescue, who are having a bit of a funding crisis with the extremely expensive vet bills being racked up by Violet, the chihuahua  currently being treated by them for a really severe case of Demodex. She is expected to make a long, if painful, full recovery, at a cost equivalent to the GDP of a small European country.   Next after that will be another Madonna of Macedonia eikon, this time for Desperate Asylum Seekers Huddersfield, who are having a charity auction in September as again, their funds are perilously low.  After that, who knows, but at least it keeps me busy and stops me sitting on the end of my ramp, raving incoherently at the passing traffic, which, at times this week, has seemed like the only sane response to an uncertain world.  

So, that’s the state of the union, I guess. Still the same as ever, slow to chide and swift to bless.  Next week I am really going to have to shift up a gear. There are books to be done. Now! I know I always say this, but this time it really is true. It’s either that, or let the monster, work, squish me like a bug.  I hope there may be some time for painting, but I doubt it. I still have an unfinished “Last Supper” to polish off, which is probably the only thing I will ever have in common with Leonardo Da Vinci.

And as for the prayers, well, who knows.  Someone very dear to me, forty-odd years ago, once said to me that every time you light a candle in church, that is a prayer. So I’ll be here with my medieval world, lighting candles, burning incense (known forever in our house as incest) and painting eikons. Yes, it seems a bit of a pisspoor response when really, I should be raging, but for now, I’m all raged out, and hurting, and not really on speaking terms with the Almighty, though, like in the song, sometimes I turn and someone’s there, sometimes, I’m all alone.  Anyway, it’s time to give La Muttkins her birthday tea, with four prayers and four candles (a phrase that sounds oddly familiar…)