Epiblog for the 4th Sunday of Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Maisie’s book on the cult film Withnail and I continues to cause excitement across large swathes of Cumbria, having been featured in a double page centre spread in the Carlisle News and Star. The resulting demand has led to me adding “packing up orders” to my multifarious and various tasks list. It’s also been the week when we render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, in the form of completing my online tax return for the Inland Revenue, so they can spend it wisely on commissioning reconnaissance aircraft for the RAF, then pulling them apart with bulldozers before they have ever flown. Actually, I can’t quite see George Osborne as Julius Caesar, but on the other hand, all it would need is a laurel wreath and a toga, and the Ides of March is coming up soon…

I sat with my laptop, logged on, input all of the figures and, like the Oracle at Delphi, it pronounced that Lo! I owed them £27.80. I am almost sure this is wrong, because to be honest for a lot of the time I was pressing buttons and answering questions at random when I didn’t understand the question and/or didn’t know the answer, on the grounds that if I was really going to provide the information they asked for, it would take me years, even assuming I could get upstairs to the office, which I can’t.

Anyway, £27.80 a year is but a small price to pay to keep these leeches off your back, so I duly despatched them a cheque. Later in the week, I received my SSP payslip from my paid employment, and on it was a tax refund of £26.60, so in fact the whole exercise cost me a net £1.20. I hope the government uses my £1.20 wisely. It could keep the demolition of the Nimrods going for ….ooooh… five seconds?

The weather is awful, as usual. Either cold and dreary or cold and bright, but cold, whatever. Sometimes, when I think back to the times I have spent sitting in the sun, whether on Arran, in the Lake District, or at home out on the decking, it seems so improbable and remote that I ever did those things, or that I will ever do them again, that I could easily be thinking about a different person.

Tig’s most energetic act this week has been once again to embark on a couple of long meandering “walkies” with Grandad. Considering the condition of his heart, and the fact that he stubbornly refuses to take a mobile phone with him when he goes, concern was expressed about what would happen if he keeled over somewhere out in the remote countryside. His answer was that the dogs would go for help. I wouldn’t count on it, ever since the time when I fell over and Tiggy nicked the cheese and onion pasty out of my hand while I was lying flat on my back.

Other than that, Tig’s only action of note this week has been suddenly deciding to bark at the ambulance crew who came to take me for physio. I could understand it if it was the first time they had called, but I have been going three weeks now and she has never batted an eyelid before. Either there was something about this particular crew she didn’t like, or she really is going gaga and she’d only just noticed them.

Kitty, meanwhile, has developed a new game. She jumps up on my knee and actually stays there while I bool the wheelchair round the kitchen. She really looks as if she’s enjoying the ride, too, though I have to be careful not to corner too fast, or she digs her claws in. It reminds me of the time when Montaigne said “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?” [The original quotation, in 17th Century French, sounds much more impressive, by the way].

Other than that, our life remains a bizarre mixture of “Edwardian Farm” [about the only difference between us and the re-enactors is that we haven’t started using candles for lighting – yet!] and the busy social whirl of people coming round to the house to either offer me help and advice, and/or pick me up and drop me off somewhere else, like a parcel. In fact, I remarked to Debbie that our social life has improved so much since I have been in the wheelchair, it’s a pity that she gave my dinner jacket to Oxfam. [This was some months ago, even before I went into hospital. I was mildly discomfited at the time, but consoled myself at the thought of some guy wearing it while wandering around a Somalian village saying “cocktail, darling?” to everyone he meets].

One morning during the week, I got up to find that the stove had gone out. Disaster! Unfortunately the "economy" coal we are using is a bit of a misnomer, in that it burns more quickly than Homefire Ovals [I told you I could bore for England on the subject of coal]. While I steeled myself for the task of raking out all the ashes and re-lighting it, I warmed my hands over a lit gas-ring. On the kitchen counter I noticed a dry Ryvita which Deb had left, so I made my breakfast of it. So there I was, freezing cold, in a wheelchair, crouched over a gas ring, trying to warm my hands, while eating a dry Ryvita. Life just doesn’t get any better than this, really, does it?

In fact, it’s been a poohey week all round. I have two jobs, as you know, one which I love, but which brings in little to no money [publishing books] and one which brings in the money [digital printing and direct mail]. This week, I heard that the latter job may be coming to an end. Times are hard, government cutbacks, economy in recession, and if you have to make somebody redundant, I guess the obvious target is the guy who’s been off ill for five months and is now in a wheelchair. So, while we wait to see how that particular nest of vipers develops, we’re up against it a bit. No money coming in, other than what Deb earns from teaching and my newly-acquired DLA, is going to make paying the mortgage a tad problematic in months to come.

So, it’s backs to the wall time, and I have been trying to fortify myself by reading Horatius by Macaulay. It’s old hokum in many ways, the story of Horatius who, with his two companions, held off the hordes of Lars Porsena of Clusium and stopped him for long enough for the Romans to demolish the narrow bridge over the Tiber and save the city, but nevertheless, it’s the sort of stirring stuff you need at times like these. Especially with the news of potential redundancy coming hard on the heels of last week’s MD diagnosis.

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods

Well, “facing fearful odds” is about right. The odds of getting another job at age 55, in a wheelchair, in the teeth of a recession, with the government planning to up the unemployed by 600,000 with their campaign of cuts, must be fairly high. When I haven’t been reciting Macaulay to myself, I have been manically humming “The Good Old Way” which differs in many ways from the hymn I talked about last week in that it wasn’t written by a gentle advocate of the still small voice, but in fact by someone called John Adams Grenade. A great name for a great, rousing hymn.

John Carr, writing about Grenade in 1857, in his “Early Times in Middle Tennessee” described him as follows:

“He embraced religion and joined the Methodists in the county of his nativity. It was deeply impressed upon his mind that he was called to preach the gospel; but rejecting the call, he lost all religious enjoyment. In the fall of 1798 he removed with his brother-in-law to Tennessee, and settled a few miles from the place where I lived, on Goose Creek, in Sumner county, and there I became acquainted with him. He learned there was circuit-preaching in the neighborhood, and made his appearance at meeting shortly after his arrival in the country.

At that time, he was the most pitiable human being upon whom I ever rested my eyes. His agony of soul was so intense that he scarcely took food enough to support nature, and the effects of his abstinence told plainly upon his health and physical condition in general. He was not deranged, but was in a state of desperation about his soul. He said that once he had enjoyed religion, but he feared mercy for him was clean gone for ever. Nevertheless, he constantly pleaded with God for mercy through Jesus Christ. Days, and weeks, and months together he spent in the wild woods, crying for mercy, mercy, MERCY! In his roamings the Bible was his companion always. His horse, which he sometimes rode to meeting, seemed almost to understand his situation. I have met him after he had started to meeting, when his horse was feeding by the roadside, while he sat with head upturned and hands raised towards heaven, praying God to have mercy upon him; and all the while he seemed unconscious that he was 'on horseback. Great pains were taken with him by preachers and people.

Quite naturally, his case excited sympathy, which was much increased among those who perceived he had been well raised and educated, and that he was endowed with an uncommon poetical talent. In fact, he was a born poet, and during his dreadful depression, he composed pieces of poetry, the publication of which now would quite astonish the world.”

Apart from the horse, and the poetry, he could have been writing about me, this week. But there’s something about "The Good Old Way", with its no-nonsense, back-to-basics assertion that despite the trials and vicissitudes of life, “I have a sweet hope of glory in my soul”. It grounds you, when something awful happens, and for me, after the numbness, always comes the anger, and the grit. I like to think of George Hirst, when Wilfred Rhodes joined him at the wicket in the Oval Test of 1902 against Australia, forever immortalised as “Jessop’s match” because of “The Croucher’s” bravura innings, that brought Wilfred Rhodes to the crease to join Hirst with just one wicket in hand and 15 runs still required for victory.

“We’ll get ‘em by singles, Wilfred”, Hirst is reputed to have said. And so they did. As an example of Yorkshire grit [Hirst was from Kirkheaton, just a few short miles from where I am sitting typing this] I can think of no better. It ranks with Cromwell saying to his men, “Trust in God, but keep your powder dry”.

When I wrote, in the previous Epiblog, before Christmas, about the suit of armour in the hall waiting to be taken down and dusted off one last time, I could never have dreamed it would potentially be for this particular battle, against someone who has been a former ally of some 21 years. Against people who I thought were friends as well as colleagues. It just goes to show the unpredictability of life. And when I wrote about looking for signs and listening for spooky voices, this wasn’t exactly the message I had in mind, in the same way as the prophet Jeremiah probably didn’t expect to be told, in one of the readings for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany:

See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.

That sounds scary, as well. Iconoclastic, in fact – in time of the breaking of nations, and all that. Although it is balanced out a bit by the next reading, from Psalm 71:

Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress.

A rock and a fortress is certainly what I need right now, given that the old one seems to be crumbling beneath my feet. The last reading for this Sunday, from the Gospel of Luke, contains the wonderful line about “physician, heal thyself”, and I am coming to realise that if I am going to get myself out of this, it is no good waiting for a fiery chariot to descend from the sky and drop me a rope-ladder, there is only one person now who can turn this around, me. Yours truly, the author. At the end of the day, if you want something doing, etc. In the same way as Horatius, maybe I am realising that my hour has come. And it is better to live one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep. So, “bring me my spear, O clouds unfold!” And all that.

But there is one final lesson for me from this Sunday’s reading, which is in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

This is actually one of my favourite passages – so much so that I have left instructions for bits of it to be read at my funeral. But I was a bit puzzled by it turning up to accompany the Collect for the 4th Sunday of Epiphany. Where does it fit in?

I think the answer is that, whatever else I do, to get me out of the pickle I now find myself in, I shouldn’t lose sight of the most important things. We have actually been here before. When I wrote, in one of the very first Epilogues, about sitting up on top of the roof of the world, on the hills above Rochdale, on the eve of that crucial bank meeting in 2004 when they took away our overdraft on a whim, that what really matters is “charity”. As Larkin said – “what will survive of us, is love.”

So. Even if I do end up jumping off the bridge and plunging into the foaming Tiber, never to be seen again, even if I do fail to put anything in place of the missing income, and thus lose this house, and we have to move away from this green valley which has become home to us for the last fourteen years, and leave behind Russell, Nigel and Dusty sleeping in their long resting places in the leafy garden, I must not lose the capacity for love and charity.

But for now, it’s time to gird my “lions” and work on the old Fenwick battle cry. I still have one business to run, and that in itself could, eventually provide the shortfall in income. And talking of “Charity”, what about Rooftree? At least I still have a home – for the moment. There are other jobs to apply for. The Volscians are at the gates, but the wolf is not yet at the door. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Big G has blown a distant trumpet, though, and I must hasten towards the sound of tumult.

I’ll leave the last word to John Adams Grenade:

Our conflicts here though great they be
Shall not prevent our victory

Bring it on.

Epiblog for the Third Sunday After Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Once more the weather has been alternating. Raining when it’s warmer, frosty when it’s colder, though the frost is more photogenic. Unpleasant either way. The house is cold again, despite the stove roaring away, each week consuming the average output of the South Wales coalfield at its height, or (more likely today) the South American coalfield. Or so it seems.

Every time I look at the stove, I get this mental vision of happy, rubicund Welsh miners, flashlights on their helmets, marching in step on the way to the pit, led by the colliery band, pickaxes over their shoulders like the Seven Dwarves, although in my reverie, they are singing “Cwm Rhondda” and not “Hi Ho”.

In reality, of course, since the days of Thatcher, Major, and Heseltine and their demolition of our own home-grown capacity for energy production, the coal these days probably does come from Australia or Brazil or somewhere, and is probably mined by exploited “minors” rather than miners. It wouldn’t surprise me if they flew it into Heathrow in a jumbo jet. Never mind, we didn’t really want that tedious layer of ozone filtering out all that lovely sunshine, did we?

But I digress. The weather, yes. Nondescript to ghastly, as befits winter’s last desperate few flings of the dice. The day I become a rich man of independent means, I will immediately set in train arrangements to live somewhere hot and sunny where they still allow you to drink, and have a thriving local viticulture, from 1st November to 1 March every winter, and this diary will then come to you from some bodega or cantina, while the dun, fallow brown fields of the Holme Valley are covered with a blanket of snow, ticked around the edges by the dark stitching of dry stone walls.

Cato the Elder was apparently one of the first people to write about viticulture as a science, though I am told his text starts off well and then deteriorates in the later chapters into the latin equivalent of “You’re my besht matesh”, or, as he might have said, “vos es meus optimus amicitia” – I know it started with Hic and ended with [sic] anyway. The style of writers being affected by alcohol is more common than you think. I once got drunk on Grappa, the favourite tipple of Ernest Hemingway, and ever since then, I have understood why he wrote in very short sentences.

For now, though, we’re stuck here. No wine, no sunshine. The animals, God bless them, hate it as much as I do. Kitty stubbornly refuses to go out in the cold and sometimes has to be physically picked up and deposited outside the conservatory door; otherwise she will just stand in the doorway, sniffing the air and creasing up her eyes at the rawness of the wind and the cold, before making a dash back to her cat-bed in the hearth. I don’t blame her: the draughts in our house are like daggers, they have sharp points, and you can almost see them glinting out of the corner of your eye.

Tiggy has had an adventurous week, too, and has been a brave doggie, having been to the vets to have a (thankfully, non-threatening) growth removed from the side of her mouth, under a general anaesthetic, no mean feat at the human equivalent age of 98. She came back on Wednesday evening, and promptly turned her nose up at the special treat I had organised for her (a can of meatballs for her tea). Eventually, but only after having ensured that there was nothing better on offer, she deigned to eat it. She’s a contrary old dog, but I was glad to see her back, and so apparently unaffected by the experience.

Debbie has had an exhausting week. With her new teaching schedule, she has made what Granny Fenwick would have called a rod for her own back, now that she is teaching on a Thursday at crack of dawn in Dewsbury and then again on a Thursday evening in Halifax, it becomes a very long day. Last Thursday night, she got back, crashed out, and fell asleep on the sofa, so Kitty, sensing her opportunity, climbed on her comatose form, and promptly curled around and went to sleep as well, being at the same level as the front of the stove, and therefore toasting her whiskers.

It was a touching scene, and as I looked across, I must confess I was moved to observe what a unique miracle she is, from her wonky nose to her rasping tongue, her mad glaring eyes, her claws, her old, bony limbs with their threadbare fur, twitching while she is asleep, snoring, and dreaming of dismembering some hapless victim. Then there’s also the cat.

As with Tiggy, medical matters loomed large for me this week, because it was the week when I finally discovered the outcome of the tests which I had while still in hospital, to determine the long-term prognosis of my condition, whatever it finally turned out to be. Since that day in October when I first had the tests, my intrepid little capsule of blood has been on a pilgrimage worthy of the relics of any saint, first to Leeds and then to Newcastle, in search of an answer, and the results had finally come back to my Doctor at Huddersfield, like a homing pigeon that arrives back after being missing for several weeks and having been given up for lost. I didn’t have to go to the vets to find out what was wrong with me, I went to HRI, after my physio session (though I have considered asking the vets to sort me out on several previous occasions, when I couldn’t get a GP appointment!)

It turns out that, because of some dodgy genes (as opposed to dodgy jeans, £8.99 from Mr Buyrite) I am indeed suffering from fascioscapularhumeral muscular dystrophy, which is easy for you to say, as I said the consultant at the time. It didn’t really come as a shock, to be honest, because we’d already suspected as much, it was more like finally finding out the name of that irritating unwanted guest who you have noticed hanging around for a while now. My genes, if you imagine them as a train, are missing a few carriages off the end. I blame Richard Branson.

On the way back from HRI in the ambulance transport, the radio was playing “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum, which was possibly a bit off-message for West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service. Although I wasn’t shocked by my diagnosis, or by Mr Greenbaum’s opinions on “when I die and they lay me to rest”, I did feel the need to mark the occasion in some way, so I got Debbie to unearth the dusty old unused china teapot, buffed it up, washed it out, and made myself a pot of Twining’s English Breakfast tea, even though it was 2.45pm. As the Americans say, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with English cuisine, provided you eat breakfast four times a day.

Meanwhile, irrespective of the long term prognosis, in the short to medium term, plans to get back to something like full-time work are proceeding, but often at the pace of a glacier rather than a river. At this rate, it is looking like February before I will be fit or able to do it, probably just in time for the next instalment of the big freeze. In fact at the moment, I feel a bit like one of those archaeological exhibits that they find entombed in a glacier in the alps, still with the remains of what they ate or drank 3,000 years ago [in my case, it would be English Breakfast Tea, obviously].

It’s been two weeks now since, under the influence of that week’s Collect, I said I was watching out for doves and listening for spooky voices. I have actually, officially, given up. I hereby give notice to the Almighty, in case he is listening, which I sometimes doubt. This week’s Collect, in my feeble attempt to follow the liturgical year, seems to be all about John the Baptist being arrested and Jesus wandering around the shores of Galilee telling people to rise up and follow him.

It actually brought to mind one of my favourite hymns, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”

In simple trust, like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.

The hymn is apparently from a poem called "The Brewing of Soma" by the American Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, [that's him at the top] and the tune, which I always thought was based on a traditional English folk-song called “The Riverside” is, in fact, apparently, “Repton” by Parry, who also wrote, of course, the most popular setting of “Jerusalem”. Whittier was known for writing in favour of the abolition of slavery, and recruited Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to the cause. His home, in Amesbury, Massachussetts, is a national monument.

It seems very odd that such an “English” hymn could have such a transatlantic origin, although of course, New England originally came from old England, I guess.

“Simple trust” is probably what I need. The type of faith that could indeed persuade you, or someone like me, with the genes of fishermen in my body, however defective, to beach your boat for the last time, lay down your net and creel, and go and follow in the footsteps of this stranger with his weird ideas about loving each other and forgiving people and the meek inheriting the Earth, not to mention his curing the lepers and creating wine out of water. You can see why they did it.

Whittier’s poem contrasts the Vedic Priests becoming intoxicated by drinking Soma, their ritual drink, with the method for contact with the divine as practised by Quakers: sober lives dedicated to doing God's will, seeking silence and selflessness in order to hear the "still, small voice" described in I Kings 19:11-13 as the authentic voice of God, rather than earthquake, wind or fire.

If I don’t have simple trust, then I am stuck here, I guess, and the only progress that I have made this week, is that, unlike most people, I now know what I am dying of, although of course, it is a slow-burning disease and a cardiac arrest could just as easily see me face-down in the sprouts at Christmas dinner one year. “You never know the minute or the hour”, as Blind Willie McTell sings.

Simple trust is what could make me get up out of this wheelchair, but to do it would take a leap of faith comparable to that of a skydiver as he exits the hatch, that his parachute will open. Faith that, if I did decide never to go back to the office, but instead to try and make a career as a writer in the next fifteen years, before the FSHMD makes me too decrepit to do anything, or to try and get Rooftree instated as a charity, or both, I will have the simple trust that “the Lord will provide.”

So, we’ve had some of winter, and its stormy winds; we’ve had an earthquake (there was one in Glen Uig only this week) and I am sitting by the fire, typing this. Could it possibly be that, in this idea of “simple trust”, and all that it entails, I am hearing a still small voice?

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm

If it really is, of course, then it’s the scariest thing to have happened this year. It has implications I can’t even begin to guess at yet. Like John Greenleaf Whittier, I am quaking in my boots. But I am listening.

Epiblog for the Second Sunday of Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. What can I say about the weather that I haven’t said a hundred times before in oh so many ways? I hate it. I hate winter with its cold dark darkness and its dark coldness. I tolerate the winter sunshine, particularly on snow or frost, for its brief, transitory beauty, but that’s about it. The rest of it, the succession of leaden-footed days when it feels like you are living in a Tupperware box inside the freezer, you can keep it. The only good thing you can say about this week to be honest is that it did at least turn a shade dramatic, with the high wind overnight, shaking the branches of the trees in a truly demented fashion, flinging rain against my window, and flapping the cat flap all night long and keeping me awake, as if an army of phantom cats was tramping back and forth through my downstairs bedroom.

I lay there on Saturday morning in bed, having previously woken at 4.30AM (now a regular occurrence, for some reason) and at dawn, wanting to get out of bed, but at the same time being aware of how cold the tip of my nose was, and thinking yet again of Alan Hull’s “Winter Song”.

When the wind is singing strangely, blowing music through your head
And your rain-splattered windows make you decide to stay in bed
Do you spare a thought for the homeless tramp who wishes he was dead
Or do you pull your bed-clothes higher, dream of Summertime instead,
When Winter.... comes howling in.

When Winter comes howling in. Well, it certainly did that day, every time the door was opened to let either Tig or Kitty (briefly) into the garden. Debbie has even taken to shouting at the wind “Give up! We want some coal left!” every time it howls up the chimney, because, of course, the more it blows, the more the stove burns up. I, meanwhile, have definitely been dreaming of summertime, instead.

Deb’s had a busy week, too, what with her teaching classes starting up again, and the deadline of Friday for her to hand in her written piece of work for her MA. Since she was bound to be busy, I thought I was helping, when I put together yet another online order for the week’s shopping from Sainsburys and submitted it Tuesday lunchtime, for delivery on Wednesday. So I was quite surprised when she came back from her familiarisation visit to her Dewsbury class on Tuesday afternoon, clutching many, many bright orange carrier bags.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to Sainsburys on the way back!”
“Well, you didn’t tell me that you were placing an order.”

So it was that we became the proud possessors of four tubs of caramelised red onion humous, and eight bottles of diet tonic water. Plus two of everything else, including two bags of broccoli florets. In fact, it was easier in the end to list what we didn’t accidentally duplicate. We should definitely go on “Mr and Mrs”.

One of the things we didn’t duplicate was bog rolls, but fortunately Debbie had included this humble yet essential item on her list. I looked at the packet, and it proudly announced that it was Sainsburys basic bog roll “for everyday use”. Which sort of implies that there are times when, sitting on the loo, you want something more celebratory. “What the hell, bring it on, let’s push the boat out: I am having my wedding anniversary dump. Break out the ’79 quilted stuff!” It reminds me of those dopey “serving suggestions”, like the one on the front of the packet of “biscuits for cheese” which shows a biscuit with a lump of cheese on top of it, just in case you felt adventurous and were considering trying to stick the cheese to the underside of the cracker with an extra-large gobbet of margarine.

Debbie has had a mixed week. No sooner had we had the news of her success with the Kirklees job, gaining her two additional classes in Dewsbury, than we heard that one of her Halifax classes was being cancelled because not enough people had enrolled. So, one step forward, half a step back. First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

She spent most of the week closeted in the conservatory, which she has sort of kitted out as a little study in the five months I have been away in hospital. However, because of the limited storage space in the kitchen proper, we also need to use the conservatory cupboards in some cases for storing vegetables, so you occasionally get the effect of a teetering pile of books on adult literacy, topped off, in rather surreal fashion, with a cauliflower. I mentioned this to her and all she said was “Look, it’s a work in progress, right?”

This was also the week in which I had my first physio session for five weeks, which established that I could still move my legs, stand, and take steps, but little else. I have come to the conclusion that, despite the army of well-meaning people who are tasked with my continuing progress, the only way I am ever going to stand up and walk again is if I just do it, and keep on trying to do it, however many times I fall over and crunch myself in the process. Coming back from physio, I noticed from the back of the ambulance that the hardware shop at Longroyd Bridge was now (according to the notice in its window) selling “invisible nails”, which must be a bit of a bugger when it comes to stocktaking. Shades of “I can’t find my camouflage net.”

I arrived back to find Debbie in a state of ferment, because BBC Radio Cumbria had been on the phone, wanting to interview Maisie about Withnail and the Romantic Imagination at 10AM Friday, and needed an answer by 1pm. I rang them back and told them yes, we would be delighted, thanks, on the grounds that even if Maisie couldn’t do it, I could put on a falsetto voice and pretend to be her. Anyway, it turned out she could, and did, in fact, turn in a barnstorming performance, but it meant that Thursday afternoon and all of Friday were devoted to letting booksellers in Cumbria know about it, by means of emails and a hastily-conceived mailshot.

Unfortunately, Friday coincided with Debbie having to hand in her written module for her MA course, and thus it was rather a high pressure day all round, especially as the printer decided to run out of toner at teatime. By the end of the day, the tension had got too much for me, and I let rip with a two minute rant about how I hated winter, hated the wheelchair, hated the cold and dark, was fed up with everything, etc etc etc. It wasn’t very grammatical, it was liberally peppered with expletives, and it just sort of petered out, but it came from the heart. Fortunately, Debbie thought it was funny, and I must admit, even I felt better at the end of it. But I was still in a wheelchair.

Last week, I wrote that I would be watching out for doves and listening for spooky voices, in my continued quest to find out what all this wheelchair-related crap actually means. Yes, it is a chance to re-evaluate my life, yes, I can change to direction I am going in, yes, yes yes, but to what avail? What choice, what guidance? Needless to say, both doves and spooky voices have been absent. Though the birds in the trees running down to the valley have certainly been busy this week, as they prepare for the run-up to St Valentine’s Day, the day when traditionally, according to country lore, they pair off for the Summer. As Chaucer puts it, in "The Parliament of Foules":

On every bough the briddes herde I singe,
With voys of aungel in hir armonye,
Som besyed hem hir briddes forth to bringe;
The litel conyes to hir pley gunne hye.
And further al aboute I gan espye
The dredful roo, the buk, the hert and hinde,
Squerels, and bestes smale of gentil kinde.

So far, of the list given by Chaucer, I’ve only seen the birds and the squirrels, unless you count Kitty as a “beste smale of gentil kinde.” But, nevertheless, the bird activity does seem to be increasing. It’s a while since I read that Chaucer poem, with its weird references to Scipio Africanus and its problematic dating (there are fifteen extant versions and no one can work out which is really the original, apparently) but I was struck again by the very first line:

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne

The life so short, the craft so long to learn, in other words. Ars longa, vita brevis. A well-known, well rehearsed saying, but one that has taken on an added poignancy for me, since I realised that I really don’t know if I am ever going to stand up properly again. It led me on to read “Sailing to Byzantium” by W.B Yeats again:

“That is no country for old men; the young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
Those dying generations at their song
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas …”

Especially the bit where he says:

“An aged man is but a paltry thing
A tattered coat upon a stick …”

And pleads with the “sages”

“Consume my heart away, sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal,
It knows not what it is …”

“Fastened to a dying animal” sums up perfectly how I see my predicament at the moment. I am sorry for all this self-pity, but I used to climb mountains. I used to play cricket. I used to open the batting, for God’s sake. I am not asking to fly like the birds, just to be able to totter from room to room again.

Yeats’s answer to the decay of his mortal body is of course the “artifice of eternity” in the poem, as evidenced by the gold mosaics, which he views as the consummate art of the Byzantine period, and the artificial birds constructed by “Grecian goldsmiths” of “hammered gold, and gold enamelling” for the amusement of the Emperor. I quite like mosaics, I have actually constructed one, and it was very hard work, I can tell you. And painful, cutting your fingers on the smalti every time. And coincidentally, my search to find out what the Collect was for this, the second Sunday of Epiphany, led me, via John the Baptist’s description of Jesus as “the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” to a description of a mosaic in the Church of Sts Cosmas and Damian, that depicts not only Christ, but the Twelve Apostles, as sheep. Jesus, however, gets to be a sheep with a halo, standing on slightly higher ground, just so you know who is in charge.

According to Martin Warner, writing about them in the Church Times:

“The churches in Rome that commemorate the early Christian martyrs of that city are decorated with mosaics that illustrate the theme of triumph through suffering. They graphically suggest a shared identity between Jesus and his disciples, who are all illustrated as sheep. This commonality between teacher and disciples was foretold by Isaiah: “Ours were the sorrows he was carrying . . . and by his wounds we have been healed” (Isaiah 53.4,5).

The sixth-century mosaics in the church of Sts Cosmas and Damian are among the earliest of these. They depict the 12 apostles as lambs attendant upon Jesus, the chief lamb, haloed and standing on an outcrop of rock from which flow the four rivers of paradise in the new creation.”

Since a picture is worth a thousand words (or two thousand of my drivel) I’ve stuck a picture of this at the top of the page. I don’t understand about the triumph through suffering bit, because all I see is suffering, and if I had my way, every innocent lamb born this spring in the cold and the snow would live a long and happy life and only ever die of natural causes. I cannot conceive of anyone being capable of looking into the innocent, trusting eyes of a lamb, and then consigning it to an abattoir, any more than I could consign a member of my family to one.

But that’s just me, I guess. Out of sorts with myself and the world. Slightly drunk, watching the miserable rain hammer down on the conservatory, feeling sorry for myself, feeling sorry for the lambs, whose very innocence seems to single them out for a brutal and nasty end, and wishing things were otherwise. Not understanding, not seeing. I’ve been at this point before, and I recognise the landmarks. It’s not exactly 40 days in the wilderness, but it could be. I know that I would be quite happy to see St Valentine’s Day tomorrow if that was possible, the day when, according to the traditional English folk song

“Birds begin to prate”
and

“Dame Durden and her maids and men are all together met”

So we carry on, but only because we have no option. And, since we seem to be ending on a downer, or at least I am, we might as well go the whole hog and close off this Epiblog, which has turned into a bit of a “poetry corner”, with one by Gerard Manley Hopkins that sums up this week perfectly, for me.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Except for the rain, he’s bang on. Don’t send me rain. Instead, in the words of those well-known theologians Morecambe and Wise, “Bring me sunshine! I looked for "Dame Durden" online but couldn't find it amongst the extensive Copper Family repertoire, even though it's one of theirs, so you will have to make do with "When Spring Comes in" instead.

”

Epiblog for the First Sunday After Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The weather continues to be cold, unpleasant, and depressing, apart from some much-needed sun this morning to restore our spirits. Other than that, it’s either been cold and dark, or just cold, even the rain has been cold rain. And the darkness has been dark darkness, of the type you only seem to get at the dark time of the year, darkest before the dawn. I have been looking out of my window every morning to see if there is any sign, any glimmer, any hope of spring coming, but I guess it’s still too early. I’ve seen one or two squirrels, who are presumably as eager for spring to come as I am, foraging around and skittering from tree to tree. I know that, in reality, grey squirrels are just rats with very good PR, but you can’t help but admire their acrobatics, seventy or eighty feet up there, their scrabbly little paws grasping the bare cold branches.

Freddie would undoubtedly have been there, barking up at them, had he not been safely tucked up at home in Granny’s bed. One of the few words he recognises is “squirrel”. Zak doesn’t know the meaning of many words, although if you say “love and cuddles” he will come and allow himself to have his ears furfled, just within reach of the wheelchair. Tig’s days of chasing squirrels are over. She has been sprawled on the rug in front of the fire, resolutely warming her old bones. Kitty went one better – on Tuesday morning we came in to find her curled up asleep in the coal scuttle. We aren’t sure, actually, if the coal scuttle was because she wanted to keep warm, it being adjacent to the stove, or whether she felt safe in there, because at 4.30AM that morning we’d both heard her having a contretemps trying to repel something that was intent on entering through the cat flap. Just on the offchance that it had been a fox, sticking its head through, and she’d been very brave, we gave her extra rations of cat food for breakfast.

Down on the ground, that morning, when the squirrels were doing their high jinks, the frost was hard. In fact it was not only a hard frost, it was strict and particular, like the Baptists, confining itself just to those areas there the sun could not reach because of the shadow of the security fencing, its edges resolutely squared off, in straight bands, as neat as a field ploughed by the Amish. It seemed odd to me to be finding beauty in the stripes of frost down in the valley on the grass beside some industrial units, but I come back again to Karine Polwart “I can find joy in the sound of the rain, you have to find joy where you can”.

You certainly do. Joy has been in short supply this week, having largely been displaced by work, or at least the threat of work. The preparations which I have been (to a certain extent) putting off, to return to the world of work, what E. M. Forster called the world of “telegrams and anger”, have been preoccupying me somewhat. For telegrams, these days, read emails, but apart from that, E. M. was spot on.

Wednesday was going to be a crucial day. I had already lined up several tasks for myself, including emailing the office, doing the press releases for Withnail and the Romantic Imagination, unpacking the online shopping ordered previously from Sainsburys, etc.

Which is why I was hurrying to get up and get dressed on Wednesday morning. Which is why I fell out of my wheelchair. Having landed on the floor, I then spent an hour experimenting with various small plastic boxes and a set of folding step-stools to see if I could get back upright again. Sadly, the answer proved to be “no”, my legs just didn’t have the strength to push me those extra few inches that would have got me back onto the bed. Reluctantly, I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to call an ambulance. The next problem was the number to ring. Unlike the police, who have a number for non-emergencies, there doesn’t seem to be a similar arrangement for ambulances, so I had to dial 999 in the end. The operator determined that my situation wasn’t life-threatening and put me through to a nurse, who asked me, amongst other things, my date of birth, which the NHS is obsessed about, as I discovered in hospital. She also asked me how long I had been lying on the floor, to which the answer was about an hour, and then she said that they were a bit pushed that morning, but someone would get to me within the next 60 minutes, and in the meantime, if my condition did become life-threatening, to call back.

As it happened, it only took about 20 minutes for a couple of ambulancemen to arrive, assess the situation with jocular hilarity, then heave me back into the wheelchair in a matter of seconds. The rest of the visit consisted of them completing paperwork, which sort of maintains the standard NHS medical care/paperwork ratio I had already observed while in hospital. One of them looked at my framed picture of St Padre Pio on the windowsill and asked if it was a picture of me. Well, it makes a change from Douglas Bader. When I said it wasn’t me, he said “Well, it has a look of you”. To which I replied that I rather thought I had a look of him, but we’d agree to disagree.

Padre Pio has been unofficially adopted, by the way, as the patron saint of “Blue Monday”, the January day which has been officially designated, having been worked out by mathematical boffins, as the most miserable day of the year. Even though Padre Pio’s feast day is not 'til September, the Catholic Enquiry Office in London proclaimed him as such. They designated the most depressing day of the year, identified as January 22, as Don’t Worry Be Happy day, in honor of Padre Pio’s famous advice: “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”

We haven’t quite reached Blue Monday yet, though, we’re only at Plough Monday. Plough Monday was – indeed, still is, where it’s celebrated – the first Monday after Epiphany, and traditionally marked the return of the plough teams to work on the land. Since medieval times, especially in Eastern England, it was marked by the ritual parade of the plough through the streets, the ploughboys wearing blackface as a rudimentary disguise, carrying out mummers’ plays and sword dances, and levying “fines” on those who refused to join in the fun.

For some reason, in Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, a straw bear was carried through the streets. From as early as 1400, it was linked to fundraising for the church, and the “Plough Guilds” often put money into keeping a “Plough Light” burning in the church. The Reformation put an end to all of that, of course, although secular versions of the ceremonies still survive, and a straw bear is still paraded through the town as part of Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival to this very day. Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival is a wonderful idea, isn’t it? It sounds like something out of “Midsomer Murders”. Barnaby, thou should’st be living at this hour.

All of which I was thinking about on Wednesday, the day having been completely trashed, while I cooked my late breakfast – now late enough to be my lunch – of bubble and squeak. I love bubble and squeak. I could write a book on it. I might do, one day, if I am spared. For now, I will impart the basic secret of all bubble and squeak to you, as time is short. You must have the patience, and the confidence, to leave it unstirred for long enough to burn on the bottom, and there is a blue fug in the air around the stove, and only then turn it over and break up the delicious burnt bits amongst the rest of the food. Give a man a bubble, and you will amuse him ephemerally; give a man a squeaker, and he will be able to annoy people at parties. But teach a man to cook bubble and squeak, and yea, he will feed his household for a lifetime.

So, that was Wednesday written off. The bubble and squeak was much more successful than my other culinary effort this week, Yorkshire Pudding made with gram flour. Debbie requested a Yorkshire pud, but could only provide gram flour, so I thought I would try it anyway, adding yeast. It still resolutely refused to rise, though, and the result was a scorched, half-inch-deep flabby flatbread, that smelt and tasted of chickpeas. Tiggy liked it, though.

And so we come to Sunday, and another week has been ticked off on the 2011 calendar already, without me really getting to grips with any work. Not entirely down to me, but I must take on board the lesson of Plough Monday, and buckle down to getting something done. My physio on Thursday was cancelled owing to a combination of several of the ambulancemen having phoned in ill (they looked OK on Wednesday) and the ward at HRI from which they were going to borrow the walking hoist being closed because of Norovirus. Something tells me Big G didn’t want me to have physio that day.

The Collect for today seems to imply that this is the commemoration of the baptism of Jesus. I don’t know much about baptism or Baptists, Strict or Particular. I did try and do some research into baptism, on the web, and got sidetracked by a report that a church in North Carolina baptised 2000 people at once, by lining them up in a car park and then turning a fire hose on them. The internet is like that. You log on to get your email and find that four hours later you have bought a second hand car and married a 13 year old girl from Texas. Or vice versa.

Anyway, it seems that Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan, by John the Baptist, and a dove descended from heaven coupled with a spooky voice from the clouds proclaiming Jesus as the son of God. All of which seems to stack up, as much as anything else in the Bible does. Baptism for the Christian is supposed to signify re-birth and the shedding of sins. Again, all good stuff, I would be glad of any chance to wipe my slate clean, with or without the aid of John the Baptist, or near offer. It's the baggage of fixed morality that comes with it, that is the problem for me. That, and the stuff about forgiving.

At least Jesus received a proper sign, my week has just been more of the same. A dove and a spooky voice would be very useful to me right now in determining a) how long I am going to be stuck in this wheelchair and b) what I am supposed to be doing with my life both now, and in the future. Last week, I was content to chop wood and carry water. This week, I have been making bubble and squeak, a laudable aim in itself, but I can’t believe that it is what Big G wants me to do with the rest of my life. I would be disappointed if that was the case, unless it was making enough bubble and squeak to end world hunger. That would be a different matter.

Anyway another week calls. Plough Monday. I won’t be blacking up, but do hope I will soon be ploughing my usual furrow, either that, or doing something completely different. I have got to the stage where I really don’t care, as long as I do something.

So I will be looking out for doves, and listening for spooky voices. Don’t disappoint me.

Epiblog for the Feast of Epiphany

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. With the slight change in temperature, the snow and ice at last receded, leaving the garden looking dull and bruised, as if it has been physically hurt by the burden of so much snow.

All over Christmas, the water in Colin’s side of the house had been frozen solid, while the temperature stubbornly refused to climb above freezing. We had assumed, naively perhaps, that once the temperature did just rise, the ice would thaw, and the water would flow as normal. Not so, sadly. Debbie heard the telltale sound of running water beneath the floorboards and decided that action was needed. Donning an old shirt and a pair of jeans, she wriggled down through the hatch into the space under the houses and saw that an “elbow” had been forced apart by the expansion of the water turning to ice, and therefore, now the water had turned from solid back to liquid, we had a leak. The only option was to turn off the stop tap, which she duly did.

So, throughout Christmas, which passed off quietly and peacefully otherwise, we had only one water supply, and not two, which was mildly inconvenient, but still one more water supply than say, a villager in the Sudan might have had. In the end, once everything started up again, a small honorarium changed hands to facilitate the purchase of parts from a plumbers’ merchant, and it got fixed. And the bloke who did it also fixed the dodgy tap in the bathroom at the same time, which was an unexpected bonus. In the meantime, we’d only had to carry water from one house to the next, when we needed it.

In the midst of all this turmoil, the animals have been enjoying their usual Christmas, which is to say, their usual life, since there is no difference in the amount of treats and spoiling they get, whether it’s Christmas or not. Kitty still hasn’t stirred far from the stove, apart from the odd cross-legged desperate dash into the garden to do her necessaries. Zak and Freddie packed their doggy bags on New Year’s Day and returned to the bosom of Granny (and other parts of her as well) on her return from her travels in Hampshire, visiting the furthest flung outposts of the extended family.

Tiggy plods on, meanwhile, having hesitantly agreed to go “walkies” with Grandad on at least two separate occasions, not that I am entirely sure that she was fully aware of what she was signing up to; these days, she reminds me more and more of one of those pensioners who joins hopefully on to the end of every queue, just on the offchance that it might turn out to be for a jumble sale. A few more years, and I’ll be joining her. Mind you, given Grandad’s increasingly bizarre running apparel (think Kelly Holmes crossed with any young offender of your choice) perhaps the jumble sale confusion is more understandable.

And so we came to New Year’s Eve, possibly the most loathsome night of the year. Apologies to any Scottish readers, but New Year’s Eve is all about loss. It’s all about sitting on your own and watching the old year out and the new year in, with a nip of Talisker, full of raw regrets and recriminations, and surrounded by the ghosts of people who you don’t see any more because they are gone; either dead, or they may as well be, because you have so monumentally screwed up your life (and probably theirs, too) that they are no longer amenable or available to talk to. As Henry Vaughan put it:

"They are all gone into the world of light
And I alone sit lingering here…"

Last year, 2010, of course, I might have joined them, parting the luminous curtain that stretches very thin between this world and the next, sometimes. I might have ended up being someone else’s regret (only in passing, though!) We acknowledged this fact at Christmas dinner, when I was talking to Grandad about it, as he was another one who might have been elsewhere this Christmas, had his pulmonary embolism not been dealt with so quickly when he keeled over. We both agreed that 2010 had been a lousy year (for me, easily the worst year since 1992, which still wins the platinum unflushed toilet award for the absolute rock bottom pits year of all time) and we can only look forward, in the hope that 2011 is better.

Anyway, once Freddie had finished hurling himself at the window in a paroxysm of fury at the fireworks, it was time to go to bed and wake up to a new dawn. January, the Monday morning of the year. Time to sweep out the ashes and re-light the fire. Sermons and soda-water, the day after, as Byron would have said. January, the month when all the unwanted pets are turned out of doors and left to starve, and the homeless are once more on their own. Time soon enough for a year’s worth of work to call the hands, and God speed the plough.

January means, also, for me, time to take and implement all those decisions which were put off over Christmas. I have got slightly out of kilter with Christmas, because technically, according to the calendar of the Church, we haven’t even had Epiphany yet, and I already talked about the journey of the Magi, or at least T. S. Eliot’s interpretation of it, in last week’s Epiblog. I quite like the word Epiphany. I once knew a girl whose birthday was 6th January who had narrowly avoided being Christened “Epiphiana”, which sounds very Elizabethan, but would probably have led to bullying, and quickly been shortened to “Pippa”. We have to wait until January 19th for the Eastern Orthodox churches to have their Epiphany, though, as I have said before, given their wacky calendar and their costumes, they are about as “orthodox” as ZZ Top.

“Epiphany” can mean more than just that one visit of the Wise Men to Jesus, of course: as a word more generally used, it has come to mean a sudden realisation that you have the last piece of the puzzle in your hand, and that what you have been looking at all along is in fact the answer. In that sense, I think I need an Epiphany, or at least, as Paul Simon sings, in “Call Me Al”

“I need a shot of redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard...”

I love that song. “Why am I soft in the middle, when the rest of my life is so hard” – a question I could justifiably ask, as well. I’ve been asking that, and similar questions, in the continuing struggle with the wheelchair, which seems to have adopted the dual role of friend and foe, and I have been trying to re-read some of my books on Zen, preparatory to finishing off the text of “Zen and the Art of Nurdling” in order to get it off to press before the cricket season starts.

It is all too easy to satirise the gnomic, enigmatic sayings of the Zen masters, as in the Zen monk ordering a pizza, and saying to the pizza parlour “make me one with everything”. But nevertheless I did find some brutally apposite remarks in the volumes I was consulting, and I have to conclude that God speaks in many voices, and many ways, while I wait for my Epiphany, whatever it is. "The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step". Now that is very true, and I will make sure I share it with the physiotherapist next Thursday.

I also found the perfect answer to my continual wittering searches for messages from Big G:

“If you understand, things are just as they are: if you don’t understand, things are just as they are.”

So, that told me. Or, as I found the same sentiment, only slightly less bluntly expressed:

“A flower falls even though we love it and a weed grows even though we do not love it. The peach blossom still smells gorgeous, whether we are there to smell it or not.”

Which I take to mean, be grateful that you are still around this year to smell the peach blossom, Steve, and stop bothering me, I will get to you in due course. So, I may have to accept that I am currently # 47 on Big G’s to-do list, just below “Learn Portuguese”. As Eliot said:

“Teach us to care and not to care; teach us to sit still”.

There is still work to be done, though, in 2011, and while I wait for my next chance to see the mountains, whether there is "not a mountain" or there is, I am forced to remember that other saying of the Zen masters –

“Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water:
After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment, the laundry."

After enlightenment the laundry. After New Year’s Eve, the ashes. After the feasting, the work. After the Lord Mayor’s parade, the dust-cart. Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are, even if it’s only one water supply as opposed to two. When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole universe belongs to you. Now, Steve, there is wood to chop, so it will fit in the stove, and, probably, water to carry.