Epiblog for Quinquagesima Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, another week in my life as a parcel, passed from pillar to post, heaved in and out of the house like a sack of spuds, and signed for at either end. The indolent burghers of Kirklees still refuse to sign off the cost of the concrete ramp which would give me some degree of independence, with the result that I seem to have taken over from Aung San Suu Kyi as the world’s longest running case of house arrest. I am winding up to unleashing a new salvo at Kirklees, and when I do, this time they will feel the bang in Reykjavik.

I am utterly fed up of not being able to get out of my own house. Various people have offered to put up various sorts of temporary ramps, but, to be honest, why should they? Why should I have to organise my Sister to come from Northampton and go and buy a load of decking and stuff that will then only have to be dismantled at some later point when Kirklees get around to doing what they said they would do back in December? Especially as we have paid council tax at an exorbitant rate for 14 years and all we get is potholes and having to negotiate with the bin-men about the glass recycling? Just sign off the ramp.

So yes, I am not happy. Or should that be no? I am not happy anyway. It’s been another cold, nasty week, weather-wise, only redeemed by some feeble pale sun this morning, as I sit typing this with the cat on my knee, performing her usual valuable function as a hot water bottle, Tiggy snoozing in a patch of sunlight on the rug in the conservatory (she gets up and moves around during the day as the sunlight moves across the floor!) Zak dozing on the armchair, also in the conservatory, and Freddie curled up asleep next to Debbie on the sofa. Give it an hour, with the stove ticking away and eating up the anthracite, and I reckon I will be the only one still awake.

The reason we have got Freddie and Zak is that Mike (Debbie’s dad) is going down to Papworth Hospital tomorrow for his heart appointment, so Granny brought them over late last night, together with their little overnight bags, food and bowls, to stay for a couple of days. Mike has gradually been working his way up the NHS hospital system with treatment for his heart condition following his near-death from a pulmonary embolism the other year, and I guess with Papworth, he’s now reached the pinnacle. It’s like Oxford or Cambridge in the University world. I just hope they can do him some good.

The last time they tried to travel down to Cambridge for the appointment, they came back on an AA low loader, because the suspension collapsed on the A1 at Sutton-on-Trent, so I hope they have better luck there, as well, this time around. The car destruction fairy seems to have lighted on us instead, this week. Following on from her initial exploratory foray into the demolition of what remains of my life, with the laptop, last week, Debbie topped it off when she ran into the back of a parked car in Leeds on Tuesday night and managed to write off Fifi, the Citroen Berlingo.

So, at the moment, even if I could get out of the house, all I would be able to do is to trundle down the drive and look at the space where my car used to be. Fifi the Faithful, who always got me home and never left me stranded, even when she herself was on her last legs. Once, it broke down just as I turned into the driveway, having got me home through thirty miles of snowdrifts and black ice. The odometer read 189,000 miles at her last MOT, and many of those were up windy little lanes bordered with dry stone walls, through places like High Flatts and Birds Edge, en route to my daily transit of the Stocksbridge Bypass and being buzzed by would-be organ donors on the way to work for not going fast enough. It had towed our tin tent of a collapsible caravan round Arran, it had been to the Lake District so often it could probably have found its own way there and back, it had been round London, to Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, to Oxford, to Cheltenham, to Little Gidding, and nearly to Burnt Norton, had I not been too stupid to read a map properly. Many’s the mile we’d travelled together. No more. Never again. Farwell, old companion.

Still, it could have been worse, much worse. Debbie, thank God, is OK, if a little shaken by the experience. And it’s always possible to get another car, provided you are willing to throw enough time and money at the problem. Already the thicket of official forms has started growing and sprouting out of all control, and I look forward to days, if not weeks, of wrangling about the value of their offer and the state of the vehicle. The mangled remains of it will be collected from the garage tomorrow, and that will be that. It’s just down to money and paperwork from then on. Like so much else in life. But the fact remains, I now have one less potential avenue of freedom.

I was reminded, by my reminiscing about the car, of some of the other vehicles that have occupied significant places in my life. For some reason, I was thinking specifically about my Dad’s old Reliant, XAT 540. You can tell how old it was by the registration, but this was, of course, back in the 1960s, when we lived just off Crowle Street, behind Alexandra Dock, in Hull. Because he had a full motorbike licence which allowed him to drive a “combination” (as the MOT rather quaintly calls a motorbike-and-sidecar) he was also able, by a loophole which I am sure has since been closed, to drive a Reliant three-wheeler, which was referred to even more prosaically on its log book as a “tricycle”. I don’t have a picture of XAT 540, but I do have some grainy 1960s snaps (inherited in a biscuit tin) of my time as a street urchin in the slums, and in one of them, a precursor of XAT 540 is to be seen, parked on the waste ground in Alexandra Terrace where we used to play on the bomb site. This gives you some idea of what it looked like.

Looking back on those photos, it seems amazing now that we used to play on a bomb site, which was the result of a Luftwaffe bomb-aimer in 1941 missing the dock and hitting a row of terraced houses instead. If kids today said to their Mummy, “Mummy mummy, can I go and play on the bomb site?” their mother would probably insist on driving them there in a 4 x 4.

Anyway, I digress. XAT 540. Yes. A wonderful vehicle. The engine sump once overheated and set fire to the passenger seat on Ferriby High Road when my dad was coming back from Blackburn’s and he had to stop, throw the cushions out into the road, and stamp on them to put it out. Fortunately for his passengers, on that occasion, he didn’t have any. Fire always seemed to be likely, or at least a risk, in a vehicle which always smelt strongly of petrol and castor oil, and which had a sort of rubberised canvas soft top, which must have meant, thinking about it, that it was possible to run it as a convertible, with the top down, though in Yorkshire, in the 1960s, we never did.

Getting into it was like (I imagine, because I’ve never done it) it must have been clambering into the cockpit of a World War Two aircraft. And often, with my Dad, setting off on a mission to try and drive to Withernsea, Aldbrough, Spurn Head, or elsewhere along the East Yorkshire coast, and back, it carried a similar degree of uncertainty about whether you would return, especially in those days before roadside recovery, when the only options if it broke down were to fix it yourself, or to call out a local garage, of which there are very few in Holderness. Especially on a Sunday. Conversation was limited by the roar of the engine, and it would actually have been easier if we had had leather flying helmets, goggles, and an intercom.
But they were happy days and now I understand at last why he was so sad when XAT 540 went to the happy hunting grounds, to be replaced by the more modern, sleeker, “plastic Rat” type of Reliant, the ones with a fibreglass body. This week, I think I have just had my “XAT 540 moment”.

So, given that I am stuck here, for yet another day when the sun will be glinting off the scree slopes of Helm Crag, and I am not there to see it, I decided that I may as well look at the appointed Scriptures for the day and see what I can make of them. (A hat? A brooch?) Why I bother, though, I do not know. If God really existed, and really cared for me, there would be an enormous “Shazam!” the clouds would part, and a fiery cement mixer would descend from the heavens, together with Elijah and the children of Israel, and they would get on with mixing concrete. So far, it hasn’t happened.

I also have a bit of a dilemma. Amongst the books recovered when Debbie and her mother emptied out the car yesterday was my copy of The Book of Common Prayer. Oh good, I thought, this will save me hours of googling, I will just turn to the texts for today in the Prayerbook, instead. Problem. The Prayerbook seems to think today is “Quinquagesima Sunday” and also that I have missed Sexagesima and Septuagesima Sundays as well. Argh! But the internet tells me that I am now in something called “Ordinary Time”, and gives an entirely different set of readings. I have to observe, that if the Lord God Almighty doesn’t know what bloody day it is, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I must admit, I like the word “Quinquagesima”, even though it does sound a bit like a disease of the upper respiratory tract. If it really is “Quinquagesima” then the text is the famous bit from Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, in its entirety. This is the bit that starts “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal…” and I have said before, that, notwithstanding Paul’s single handed patronage of the entire postal system of the Eastern Mediterranean, nevertheless, this is one of the most haunting, evocative, and beautiful passages of the Bible, especially in the full fat, high tar King James version, and I want it read at my funeral. I’ve quoted it at length a few weeks ago on here, so I won’t do so again, it’s there to look up if you want it. If there is a lesson for me, I suppose it is in the bit about

“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.”

The fact is, my faith is not strong enough to move mountains. It’s not even strong enough to move me to the mountains, rather than vice versa. If I had a strong enough faith, perhaps I would somehow be in the Lake District right now, watching the white spring rainclouds scudding over Derwentwater in the fresh breeze. (Actually, the word “rain” in that sentence is superfluous. All clouds in the Lake District are rain clouds.)

The New Testament Reading is Luke 18, verses 31 onwards, where Jesus warns the Disciples of his impending trial and crucifixion, and, in passing, cures a blind man, begging at the side of the road to Jericho. All pretty mainstream stuff, and it’s good to see Jesus gainfully employed at what he does best, Saviouring and Miracles. I wonder if he also does concreting?

So, having covered off the possibility that it might be Quinquagesima, I now return to ordinary time (I am starting to sound a bit like Dr Who here) and look at the stuff lined up for the Ninth Sunday of Epiphany. Actually, time at the moment is anything but “ordinary” – as I remarked to my physiotherapist on Thursday, with all this shit going on in my life, I am currently suffering from “Vuja De!” I have never been here before, and I have no bloody idea what is going to happen next.

The Old Testament text seems to be Deutronomy 5, 12-15, including

“But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work--you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.”

I can’t speak for the male and female slave, because we don’t have any, or the resident aliens – actually, I think Polish plumbers do sometimes work on a Sunday, but I guess they go to Mass beforehand, so that’s OK. Anyway, the rest of it checks out. As predicted, none of our livestock is doing any work today, they are now all snoozing, and Freddie’s little grumbling snores sound like someone sawing wood in a distant room.

The psalm for today is Psalm 81, which includes the verses:

“Raise a song, sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our festal day.”

I am not so sure about the tambourine, though bearing in mind Great Aunt Alice’s connections with the Sally Army, I guess I ought to be all for it. I have to say that, as an instrument, its most stimulating exponent in recent years, has been one Michael Jagger, who belongs firmly in the camp of Satan. The trumpets, however, have given me an idea for this week’s music clip, another bit of my funeral service. (Cheerful, moi?)

The next bit is Paul again, still wearing out his Parker 61 and working his way down a stack of Basildon Bond to give the Corinthians the benefit of his opinion. The selected passage, 2 Corinthians 4, 5-12, tries to explain the rationale of the human condition as being something precious, but contained in a clay pot, and therefore vulnerable.

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”

Strangely, that does quite sum up how I feel this week. Hard-pressed on every side, check, struck down, but not destroyed, check. I could really do, though, God, if you are listening and you really do exist and you really are John Wayne, I could really, really do with the sight of the 7th Cavalry galloping over the hill to my rescue. Soon. Not Calvary, but Cavalry, is what I need right now. As that well-known contemporary theologian Grandmaster Flash once wrote, “don’t push me, ‘cause I’m close to the edge, I’m tryin’ not to lose my head.”

The New Testament passage is Mark 2:23-3:6, with Jesus and his disciples harvesting grain on the Sabbath and generally getting up the noses of the Pharisees. This time, the Pharisees are trying to suggest to Jesus that he shouldn’t do anything on the Sabbath, even if it involves good, such as restoring someone’s withered hand. This seems to contradict the admonition in Deutronomy, to keep the Sabbath day “holy” Is it “holy” to break the rules to do something good on a day which is supposed to be holy by virtue of inaction? I guess that the meaning of this passage is probably intended to be that rules, while not exactly made to be broken, can only take you so far, and what really counts is the wisdom to know when to make a new rule, which is fine as long as you are Jesus, because you obviously have that wisdom, but as the example of the EU shows, sometimes the rest of us are “earthen vessels”. So, is Jesus saying “apply the law selectively” here, or is he just advocating good old common sense?

The key seems to be that Jesus was “grieved at the hardness of their hearts”. Perhaps the acid test for any rule is, does it act in favour of, or against, a compassionate outcome? If the latter is the case, perhaps it’s time to look at whether we need to vote in some new rules. Often, the original purpose of rules gets forgotten, and they end up working against what it was they were initially intended to promote. The Data Protection Act is a prosaic, but apt, illustration of this.

These days, of course, Sunday has gone too far the other way. Unless you make an effort to not shave, and keep the blinds closed, and unplug the TV, it’s just like any other day. Maybe life was more peaceful, and yet, strangely, slightly more risky and interesting, when we were buzzing through the grainfields of East Yorkshire in XAT 540, and the AA man didn’t work on the Sabbath.

So, there you have it. Next week will be Ash Wednesday, and then we will be into Lent. “After the Christmas, comes the crabbed Lentoun,” as the Gawain-Poet put it. At least we’ll know what the Sundays will be then. Sermons and soda-water. Ash Wednesday of course always brings to mind Eliot’s famous lines about:

“Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still”

While I appreciate the sentiment, right now I have been sitting still for far too long. And while I know what Eliot means about cultivating detachment, which I agree, is probably what I need to do – “sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself” as the Zen saying has it – nevertheless, I do care. I care that I am stuck here in chokey, and I may have to start digging a tunnel. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Or in my case, a single ramp. All concrete proposals welcomed. In the meantime, on this sprightly hautboy play!