Epiblog for Easter Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, both here in “Broadmoor” and at home. The summer has returned with a renewed mini-heatwave, which is great, don’t get me wrong, I just hope it’s not a precursor of the pattern recent summers have followed, of peaking too early then tailing off into a warm, dull drizzle for three months.

Monday brought a return to the world of normality – or what passes for it, these days – as opposed to the relative tranquility of the weekend. The prime manifestation of this was that the garage picked up the camper and took it off for assessment of the brake problem. By the end of the day, we knew exactly what the problem was – the vacuum pump had failed – and it was fixed, and we were £536.10 poorer, collectively. Ouch. The part itself was £291.00. How anyone can justify charging that much for a car part amazes me. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask. Of course, rather than have the brand spanking new Volkswagen approved part, we could have looked on Ebay or Justkampers, but then you have no guarantees.

John the garage man called in to see me to pick up the cheque (I have the cheque book here, in case of such emergencies) found his way to my room, and stayed for almost an hour chatting. He seemed genuinely concerned at my plight, repeating that it was “a shame” several times over. He asked me what I would do if I found I was stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I said that I had two choices, either to try and make the best of it, or to wheel myself over the edge of a very high cliff somewhere, and that, to be honest, I hadn’t decided which. His concern deepened, and he said on leaving that he would pray for me. Which was actually quite touching, if a little startling, a) because I had no idea he had any religious feelings and b) he is the spitting image of Father Jack Hackett, off Father Ted, so I get the impression any prayers would be garbled at best, and liberally sprinkled with invective. Still, if that’s what it takes to get God’s attention.

Earlier, Jo and Ann, my regular physios from HRI, called in to see how I was doing, and together with Lucy and Jane they all watched me walk in the hoist the length of the corridor and back. At the conclusion of this, after a quick huddle, Jo told me that if my walking hadn’t improved by the time I am turfed out of here on May 2nd, that would be taken as a sign that I had reached a plateau stage, and that in turn would mean I would be referred to Community Physio, the implication being that from then on, it would be coping strategies for the wheelchair, rather than expecting any more dramatic improvements. This was a bit of a sobering blow, to be honest, but I consoled myself with the thought that later in the week, Jan was coming back to demonstrate the Norwegian Hoist which had been so successful in other MD cases. I still had that up my sleeve.

Later on, one of the catering bods came round to do the next day’s menu, and we had the discussion once more about how I don’t eat fish. Largely by arrangement. I have promised not to eat them, if they promise not to eat me. “Oh, so you’re a strict vegetarian, then!” she exclaimed, making it sound as if, in between munching plates of lettuce, I tie people to the bed and then cane their knickers to shreds. [Actually, now you mention it…]

Tuesday was the hottest of the hot days so far, and passed in a welter of physio and exercises. Wednesday proved as hot, if not hotter, and by now I was really enjoying seeing the sun and also feeling it, either sitting on the seat outside the front entrance or basking in its magnified effect through the wide double glazed window of my room.

Heather the plumber arrived to fix the shower in my bathroom, and we fell to talking as she worked. I asked her the inevitable question, and she said she never had any particular affinity with plumbing, but she felt that if she learned a trade, it would always be there for her to fall back on, whatever else she did in life, and she was lucky enough to get an apprenticeship, and never looked back. Now she was maxed out with work and doing very well, lucky girl.

Wednesday also marked the day we started work on sit-to-stand in the parallel bars. I had last tried this in the gym at HRI, before I had even been moved to Calderdale, and it had been a dismal failure because at that time, my whole body strength had been so low I couldn’t raise myself a millimetre. So I wasn’t holding out any great hopes. Which is why I surprised myself all the more by managing to get my duff off the seat and hold myself by my arms and elbows for 7 seconds, on a couple of occasions. As I said to Lucy afterwards, it was the road back. It felt like a door, which had hitherto been slammed firmly shut in my face, was now open an inch or two again.

At teatime, Debbie came around and shoved me up the ramps and into the camper, and we went for a drive around. Tig was out, going “walkies” with Grandad, Zak and Freddie, although her participation these days reduces it to “amblies” rather than walkies. So I didn’t see her that day, nor did I see Kitty of course, who is by all accounts, enjoying lying out on the decking in the sun, purring aimlessly.

But I did see trees hung magically with blossom (“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now”) not only cherry, but also lilac, and some magnolia. The sights and sounds of the lush world were overwhelming. Two puffing Jack Russells, pulling their owner along on their leads, tongues lolling as they panted and snuffled on the hot pavement. An enormous, fat, ginger-and-white cat, lying in a driveway, that acknowledged our passing by blinking blearily, and giving a fishy yawn.

Out in the countryside, as we rumbled towards Holme Bridge, there were young lambs and quizzical sheep looking back at me over low stone walls, there were lapwings, there were bluebells, a fine haze, a water-colour wash of glazed azure over the greensward. We stopped in the car park at the top of Holme Moss, across the road from the transmitter mast. I did briefly pause to reflect that, being that close to it, at least we ought to be able to make a call on a mobile for once, and also that if we’d had the foresight to bring cheese and onion pasties we could probably have microwaved them simply by holding them out of the camper window, but other than the massive brooding presence of the radio mast, it was heaving with picnickers, motorcyclists, and people running down the side of Holme Moss and launching themselves into the air on a variety of flimsy parachutes.

We popped the side door and sat there basking, while I brewed a cup of tea. Several little wagtails, their heads white as bone china, came trotting and bobbing along the grass outside. Sadly, we had no crumbs to throw them, but their inquisitiveness was not deterred, I’m sure if we’d stayed long enough, they would have been inside the van, looking.

Maundy Thursday was – surprise surprise – warm and sunny, I could get used to this, I thought, as I cracked open the window of my room and sat inhaling the perfume of the various stocks and shrubs and bushes in the garden down below. There’s one, which I can’t identify, which must be more or less directly below my window, and it smells absolutely gorgeous as the early sun burns off the hazy dew. I must make a point of asking them, before I go, what it is, it would be good to get one for our garden. I knew that as I sat there, one of my very best friends would be undergoing surgery elsewhere in the NHS, and I tried to gather all of the sunshine and the blossom and the scent and the hope of Spring, and ping it mentally in their direction.

I was up and about “betimes” as Pepys would have said, because I knew I had two lots of physio and a hoist demo, and a lot of tedious officialdom to deal with as well. As a result, I only glimpsed the Maundy ceremony from Westminster Abbey in passing but I did hum along to Zadok the Priest, which was on the big widescreen TV in the lounge when I was heading out to do my sit-to-stands. Handel must have inspired me, because I pushed my personal best to 12 seconds.

In the afternoon, Jan arrived, with Gordon the hoist man. We tried the hoist, and I have to say it gave me the best “standing experience” of all of the ones I had tried since the Sabina at Calderdale. So it looks like that is the one I will be getting – plus, the sling is simple enough to be able to put it on yourself, without help, if necessary. Jan gave me the customary presents, in this case a mini Easter Egg and a palm cross from her Church, which I put inside my prayerbook. I was struck by the symbolism of the hoist raising me up into what is almost a crucifixion position – the more so with the Sabina, where your arms are further out – the idea of being raised up on a cross to be saved was never far from my mind.

That evening, I was absolutely drained. Debbie brought all three dogs round in the camper and we all flopped out on and around the seat outside the entrance, looking like a seal colony. Debbie and I shared a bottle of Shepherd Neame Double Stout, and the dogs shared the general adulation and tumjack furfles of everyone passing in and out, accompanied by invariable expressions of “how cute” and similar. Mind you, they could have been referring to me, I suppose. Zak and Freddie are also loving this hot weather, and they all ended up flopped out asleep on the warm flags.

Friday was marked by some more welcome visitors in the form of Phillip and Maisie, the latter bearing an armful of Inspector Morse novels, so I shan’t be short of something to read during my remaining time here. They both looked fit and well, Phillip has been doing wonders with his gardening, it’s such a pity that his skill and knowledge lies under-utilised. Maisie, with her long dress and string of pearls, looked like one of Gandhi’s background companions in those black and white 1930s photos of him meeting various important people. And/or a Mitford girl, delete as appropriate.

So far, in Holy Week, I didn’t feel I had done anything particularly Holy. So I did make a point, that afternoon, of reading "Goodfriday 1613, Riding Westward", by John Donne. Something I try and do every Good Friday, as a devotional exercise.

I first read it when I was seventeen, and, like much of Donne’s religious oeuvre, it still sends shivers through me. I also love the intellectual complexity of the way he plays with the contrasts and paradoxes within the poem. He is being forced to ride Westwards, on a day when he should be looking Eastwards, towards the site of the Crucifixion. If he were to turn round and look, he would see a “Sun” (Son) “by rising set”, in other words, being put to death by being raised on a cross. He has had to turn his back on God, but this may be a good thing because whoever sees God’s face “must die”.

There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.

The whole poem deserves to be taken as one, not chopped up or extracted – its 42 masterful lines are an argument as beautifully executed and self-contained as any of the chunks of equations that underlie modern physics.

One day, I will find time to sit down and do an I. A. Richards-type line-by-line, word-by-word analysis of it, teasing out every meaning of every nuance. But, like Donne, I find myself being hurried along in the opposite direction, and forced to turn my back on what I think of from time to time as God.

By Easter Saturday, my “sit to stand” record had grown to 30 seconds, which may not seem like a lot to you, but I can tell you now, it really hurt. Physio victories are not cavalry charges, they are trench warfare, won inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre, grinding it out day after day, in the words of the REM song, “Pushing an Elephant Up The Stairs”

I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs
I'm tossing up punch lines that were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground

So, amongst all this elephant-shoving, with pianos crashing all around me, I have reached the eve of Easter Day, and I have started work on this Epiblog early, in case the weather is fine enough for a trip out in the camper to Walney tomorrow.

Considering it is Holy Week, the Archers Message Board, colloquially known as “Mustardland” seems to have had an outbreak of atheists with ants in their pants, starting various threads asking why God allows suffering in the world, and talking about “whingeing Christians”. At first I wondered whether this was some sort of deliberate campaign, orchestrated by Richard Dawkins, but in the end I think it is just one of those aberrations you put down to sunspots.

Quite what it is about the Christian faith in particular that seems to give people the formic frillies is lost on me. I have always thought that Christianity, especially Anglicanism, is rather more like a hobby than a religion, on the fundamentalist scale. They certainly wouldn’t dare post the same stuff about Islam, or Sikhism, or Hinduism. Or Judaism, come to that. Many of these posters focus on the bad things that have been done in the name of religion, which of course is a different thing to saying that religion in itself is bad, per se. I think there is an evil inside us which can be channeled via any conduit, should we choose to give it house-room, and religion is such a conduit. Politics is another.

True, there are some Christians whose uncompromising refusal to accept questioning of the fossil record, for instance, coupled with a desire to tell you the good news about Jesus whether you wanted to be saved or not, a tendency to decry gay people, and a tendency for damning you to hell, tends to get them attention. They remind me of the boy scout who saw the old lady across the road even though she didn’t want to go. But, at the end of the day, I suppose any religion has to be able to cope with people making fun of it. It’s a matter of faith, not proof, as I must have said on seventeen different occasions during the last week.

And God knows, I have made fun of the Old Testament often enough, bless it, though usually, I freely admit, from a standpoint of pure ignorance. All of which has set me thinking, this week, at this pivotal point of the Christian year, what it is I really believe.

For a start, I don’t think I am a “Bible believing Christian”. I’ve often said I don’t understand why many bits of the Old Testament are included in the canon at all. I don’t believe in Genesis literally, though I do believe in it, I suppose, as a sort of creation-myth. Darwin, of course, would have us believe it’s all about the dinosaurs, to which my reply would be, OK, Mr Clever-Pants, who created the dinosaurs? Who created the amoeba?

Though I think large parts of the OT are, frankly, gaga, and other bits are a desert survival manual written for and by the Children of Israel, if someone wants to believe in it literally as the word of God, to be honest, that’s no skin off my nose, and I would no more try and convert them off it, than convert them on to it. So I guess that means I don’t believe in evangelising. So what am I doing writing this every week? In answer to that, I can only really truly state that it represents a public working out of thoughts I have been having in private (or at least the “religious” bits of it do) and if anyone else finds it helpful, then good luck. I believe that every one of us has to find their own route to, and their own accommodation with, God.

Which brings me to morality. As a moral relativist, I have a major problem with absolute proclamations. Not so much the Ten Commandments, but some of the more arcane applications of absolute morality which are “backed up by the word of God” when in fact you could probably make the Bible (or indeed almost any religious text) mean what you want it to mean, given its chequered history and the fact that it’s a translation anyway. So that is a major area of conflict for me, and one of the reasons why I have never really attached to any formal denomination.

So, it’s not looking hopeful. I keep coming back to Jesus though. (Sorry, that sounded a bit “hallelujah, pass the snake, brethren!”) What I meant is this: there’s this bloke, allegedly born 2000 years or so ago. Wandered round the country, preaching love thy neighbour, suffered under Pilate and all that stuff, and “died” in relative obscurity aged 33 or thereabouts. 2000 years after his death, millions of people worldwide follow his teachings. There has to be something about this. That’s before you get to the stuff about him rising from the dead.

I’m assuming we’re all familiar with the theology of this (probably far more than I am!) and the central question raised again this week by the ant hill mob is why? Why did it have to be this way, with God sacrificing his only Son? I freely confess I don’t know the answer. God could have created himself a whole phalanx of sons if he had wanted to, or indeed could have scrapped the world and started again, the minute “Adam” screwed up. The answer to why the world is like it is, and all the other questions that flow from that, is known only to the mind of God, and you either believe that, or you don’t, and for you, life is random, meaningless, and pointless, in which case why bother with message boards?

Did Jesus rise from the dead? Who knows? It could be meant to be literal, it could be meant to be a myth (I am familiar with James Frazer and "The Golden Bough", before anybody goes to the trouble of pointing out all the other cognate death and resurrection myths in history). Almost anybody who is everybody who has ever died is said to be going to come back one day, from King Arthur to Elvis Presley.

Jesus, though, allegedly did it. I can’t prove that. I can’t “prove” any of this, which makes it very easy for people to make snide comments about “imaginary friends”. I can tell you about my experience, when I went to Holy Cross Abbey in Ireland in 1998 and saw their “relic”, a supposed piece of the cross of Christ. I can’t prove that this splinter of wood inside its reliquary was a splinter of the true cross, or that it had ever been anywhere near Israel. All I can say is that as I stood there in front of it, that April day, the colours swam, the walls fell away, and my senses were assaulted with the glare of the Mediterranean sun and the blare of the market and the smells of the spices and the donkeys and camels and the push and bustle of the crowd. It was like sticking your fingers into a live socket. After a few seconds, maybe not even that, it faded. But I can still recall it. As Eliot said

“You are here to kneel, where prayer has been valid”

And it is moments like that one, that help me believe. I can believe in an all powerful all encompassing force that can create the cherry blossom and the lambs and the cats and the dogs and the lapwings and the bluebell haze and the lush green fields and the blue sky, I can see the hand of God in all these things. It is harder to see the hand of God in the gutters, in the diseased and the destitute, and the neglected, the hungry and the ill. But if there is always a failsafe in Jesus, and God is always everywhere, even in the darkest deepest pits of despair where there is next to no hope, then there is always the possibility that, maybe not literally, maybe not in any way that seems understandable, or rational, or “just”, these too, shall rise again, and the gardeners and the women will find an empty tomb. Something weird happened that morning. Mysterious white figures, moving between the Cypress trees. Huge rocks, rumbled aside as though made of polystyrene. Weeping, then joy, then weeping of joy. Something weird. Weird enough for people still to be talking about it, 2000 years later.

And as for me, next week, I am going to try and “rise again” in a much more prosaic way, on my parallel bars (wasn’t that a “Blondie “ album?) and on my hydraulic cross of hopefulness. Happy Easter, everyone. Including the atheists. In a society which has recently given us the Secular Bible, here’s a secular hymn of redemption, just for you. Rise again, rise up, spread your arms out, and give us all a big hug. You have nothing to lose but your ants.

Epiblog for Palm Sunday [The Sunday next before Easter, commonly called Palm Sunday]

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, for both Deb and for me, although we’ve been busy separately, because she is still keeping the home fires burning (not literally, the stove has finally been allowed to rest after what has been an epic winter) while I have been enjoying my second week in Oakmoor. I say “enjoying” because, although it’s tedious being stuck in a wheelchair, I can indeed see real improvement in my situation in the short time I have been here.

It’s not rocket science. Physio twice a day, instead of once a week, regular bed rest, and having some things (eg meal prep) done for me, all contributes to a combination of circumstances that has reduced my legs from tree-trunks to normal legs again, and meant I can sleep on my side in bed for the first time since last July (bliss!).

But by far the most significant factor has been the positive mental attitude of the staff. That is not to say that previous people looking after me didn’t have it, just that they have it here in spades redoubled. Funnily enough, I read Melanie Reid’s article in the Times Magazine about how she is coping with paralysis, one year on, and she said something very apposite, very akin to my thoughts, about the people who have looked after her

“I learnt that those who have the least to give often give the most. Among some of the poorest patients and some of the lowest paid NHS workers, I experienced an astounding generosity of spirit. Some people may only earn the minimum wage, but they have real class and soar above all the others – it’s as simple as that.”

Everyone from David Cameron downwards (if such a progression were possible) is queueing up to give the NHS a good kicking at the moment. They ought to think on, and think how lucky we are in this country.

I’m getting used to the routines and rhythms of the place as well. Christine, bless her, who has the room diagonally across the corridor from me, and who sees it as her mission in life to re-broadcast the BBC to the free world by turning the volume control on her TV up to max. I’ve tried telling her that there’s a 650 foot high TV mast on Emley Moor which does a much better job of this, but she won’t listen (or perhaps she can’t hear me).

The staff have been supplemented this week by some agency workers, one of whom is Polish and doesn’t have very good English. I startled her by bursting into the Polish National Anthem (which I learnt during my time in Calderdale, being nursed by Kasha, the Polish nurse from Batley) and we became instant friends when I helped her translate the menu, which she had to take round the other rooms to get everyone’s choices down. I say “translate”, but in fact it only entailed explaining what “mince and onions” was and that kippers were a kind of fish. The vegetarian choice was veggie burgers, which she had sort of sussed out already, though I did then hear her asking Marjorie next door (Marjorie is rather deaf, sadly, hence the need for my new-found Polish chum to bellow) if she wanted a “Veggie Bugger”.

Overheard conversations are quite common in the open door environment, and given that the corridor is a main thoroughfare. One morning this week I was awakened by two members of staff doing what was presumably some sort of induction, beside the door to the staircase just beyond my room. The newbie staff member listened patiently then asked “So is this a down staircase?” I can only assume they play a lot of snakes and ladders at home, in real life I have never encountered a staircase that you couldn’t go up as well as down. An escalator, yes, that’s a different matter, and there’s the additional trouble of finding a small dog to carry, but not stairs. Unless they have changed things in the last year, of course.

On Thursday morning, Maxine breezed in. She is a carer, not a physio (like the redoubtable Lucy) or Jane (my OT and “key worker” here.) Maxine is a small but deadly hurricane who gets you out of bed and into the bathroom whether you wanted to go or not while simultaneously throwing open the curtains and polishing the floor with her other leg. As least, that’s what it feels like. She regaled me with a tale of a little Robin who fluttered down and bobbed alongside her as she walked to work in the sunshine. Positive mental attitude. I like it. She is one of the many public sector workers that those in the government would have us believe are featherbedded and worthless, and I am telling you now, she is neither of those things. She, and her colleagues, have got more worth in their little fingers than the entire Lords and Commons of England, if you ask me.

Later, on Thursday morning, Jan my OT from home arrived, having arranged to meet Mike the hoist rep here to demo a new hoist that they are thinking of trying on me when I get back home again. Apparently it has had really good results with Muscular Dystrophy patients who have used it to get them upright, then unclipped themselves and walked away, so I was understandably interested.

The first things Jan did when she arrived was to hand me a prayer card with a quotation from the Venerable Bede, then read me a poem by George Herbert. She’s one of the people I regularly email these Epiblogs to, since I discovered our shared interest in Bede, Herbert, Little Gidding, and T S Eliot. So, in the context of our conversations, it was quite normal. God knows what Lucy made of it though (a hat? A brooch?) Anyway, we sat shooting the breeze and waiting for Mike, who had been delayed, and she gave me a book of stamps, bless her, which meant I could continue badgering people postally. So if you are one of those people, it’s her fault.

Mike eventually arrived, bearing a huge bag of different slings for the hoist. Jan asked him if he wanted a hand in with the hoist itself, and he said he’d been told it was already here. Oh dear, poor bloke, a wasted drive from Leeds. Anyway, they are going to have another go next week. He’s also hurt his back, and was in some considerable discomfort, so after he’d demo’d the slings, Jan gave him some free physio before he went back, for which he was very grateful. It involved her standing behind him with her head buried in his shoulders and one arm round the front, bracing the chest. She said she had once done the same exercise to a female colleague in her office, with exactly the same arm placement, unwisely facing the window, unwisely, as there was a gang of builders working on scaffolding opposite, several of whom nearly fell off while gawping at this unexpected entertainment.

As I said above, Deb’s been keeping the home fires burning, during her last punishing week of teaching before a well-deserved Easter break. The brakes on the camper have suddenly got much worse, as well, although apparently there is no visible leakage anywhere, but all week I have been praying very hard for her safe return and not to get one of those “honey, I shrunk the car” phone calls. The higher than average number of teaching hours has meant that she’s had to leave the animals to their own devices, and she got back at lunchtime on Tuesday to find that Tiggy had somehow managed to put herself back to bed on our bed, and that, as a further protest against neglect, Kitty had joined her, in fact was snuggled on top of her, sharing her body warmth and reprising the “cat lasagne” method of sleeping she used to employ with the dear, departed Dusty, RIP.

Deb let Tig out into the garden as per normal one night during the week and only noticed when they all went upstairs that Tiggy had come back in with a slug stuck to her head, which was duly liberated back into the great outdoors via the bedroom window. Gross. Bless.

Still, I guess God loves the slugs and the dogs with equal measure. Actually, my little hissy-fit last week about animal sacrifices brought me a much-deserved correction from one of my commentators, who said that the point of the passage that I had been grappling with was that Jesus had done a one-off sacrifice on behalf of everybody, so animal sacrifice was no longer needed. I have been ploughing on through Animal Theology, in odd moments, and Andrew Linzey comes to the same conclusion:

“Very few, if any, Christians, however, would find the practice of animal sacrifice acceptable at this present time. This is not because they would wish to deny its historical importance, or because they would necessarily find any interpretation of the practice indefensible, but because they believe that the sacrificial tradition has reached its ultimate point and climax in the sacrifice of Christ.”

Though he also goes on to say, in a later chapter:

“To opt for a vegetarian lifestyle is to take one practical step towards living in peace with the rest of Creation. One step towards reducing the rate of institutionalised killing in the world today. One less chicken eaten is one less chicken killed.”

I think, and the chickens agree with me, that he has a point, but I also think it’s wrong to proselytize like this, so I will shut up. People should make their own mind, and strike their own moral bargains with God. Whatever they perceive him, her, or it (or even, in some cases, them) to be.

I also heard from another recipient of the Epiblogs last week, Martin, the Chaplain of the Calderdale Royal Hospital, who is doing a bike ride for charity from Land’s End to John O’Groats at the end of this month. He’s looking for followers for his blog (which can be found at www.noahsarkcentre.org.uk). I wished him well. In fact, I wished I could join him, but even at 8.74 miles a day (out of the question with my current state of health and wheelchair) it would still take me a hundred days to do the 874 mile journey, and I can’t see the ESA being too impressed either. Although the corollary is of course, if I was fit enough to do it, I wouldn’t be in a wheelchair anyway, and I wouldn’t need ESA.

And so Friday came around, all too soon. The end of my second week here. On Friday evening, Bernard, one of my compatriots from the Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Club in Ward 10 at Calderdale came to see me. He’s up and about, and hale and hearty, walking on two sticks, and he looked very well. By contrast, I was feeling decidedly ropey, and in fact felt so ill after tea that I ended up asking the helpers to put me on (not in) my bed, and Bernard sat in the chair alongside, just like a “proper” hospital visit. If truth was told, I was very scared that the pains in my gut meant that something had come unstuck, and that I was going to get “blue-lighted” back to HRI and have to start the whole dreary cycle over again.

But I kept talking with Bernard, trying not to think about it, and we ended up setting the world to rights. Bernard looked at my Prayerbook, and we began discussing religion. Unlike me, he thinks that the universe is totally random and there is no guiding premise behind it. I said that certainly there was nothing you could do to argue it scientifically one way or another, it got to the point where it was just a question of faith, and I believed that he had been sent that particular night because I needed someone, I was scared, and, like a St Bernard, he came over the Gothard Pass to my rescue.

Having then slept for 14 hours straight after he left, on Saturday I woke feeling better, and I found further evidence of well, at least, serendipity at work in this article he left me from the Times Magazine. Melanie Reid fell off a horse in April 2010 and broke her neck and her back. She was diagnosed as category A, which is apparently the worst condition of its type, complete paralysis. A year later, she is walking, albeit aided, like me by a standing hoist (hers being a sooper dooper electronic version, and yes, I want one) and has been upgraded to category C, a remarkable and inspirational story of the triumph of her will and determination over a recalcitrant body.

And again, as I read this on Saturday morning, feeling much better, I could not but reflect that it had been put into my hands for a reason. From the way in which her experience mirrors my own (albeit her diagnosis and prognosis was much worse).

“For me, a year spent in hospital, courtesy of the NHS, was humbling and enlightening. It taught me tolerance and survival skills; the value of good headphones and gallows humour. As in prison, or in a maternity ward, you have to exist alongside people you would never normally spend time with – and that was just the lawyers, accountants, and those with a sense of humour bypass”.

She ends on a note which I, too, can sympathise and empathise with:

“The smells, the tastes, the sights denied to me during my lost year in hospital are overwhelming me. The sun is shining and the dog comes in, wriggling with life, smelling of fresh earth and dew, her nose covered in soil where she's been digging. All’s well in her world.”

And she even quotes a Masefield poem called (get this) An Epilogue, where he writes:

I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces
And the Gold Cup won by the worst horse at the races
So I trust, too.

Having been buoyed up by this wonderful piece of writing from a journalist I had not heard of (I would post a link, but sadly the evil Rupert Murdoch wants to make you pay to read the online version) and a hitherto unknown inspirational poem, which – let’s be kind to Bernard and say serendipity – has put into my hands, I finally turned to the Prayerbook, to see what this week had to offer.

The Collect from the Prayerbook asks, amongst other things, “that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection”, something which I have no quibble. But the Gospel, Matthew xxvii. 1., surprised me. I had expected it to be the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. But in fact, it is the story of the Crucifixion, a week early.

After some digging, I got to the bottom of this. Apologies if I now proceed to tell the religiously literate what they already know. Last week, someone asked me why I was using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and my answer was – naively – because I like it, and because I had – equally naively – assumed that whatever the modern Church of England was using was just the same as the 1662 Prayerbook, but in modern language. Not so, the Alternative Service Book Lectionary has a different set of readings for this Sunday, and they are indeed the story of Palm Sunday, as told, amongst others, in Mark xi.

And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples, And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither. And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him. And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt? And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him. And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down branches off the trees, and strawed them in the way. And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord:”

And there it is, playing out all over again, with the same tragic inevitability as the Zapruder film of Kennedy. One moment your smart black limousine is cruising along, and you are waving to the bystanders, the next, the shots ring out; one moment you are on horseback, taking the cheers of the crowd, the next you end up dumped, with a spine and a neck break. One moment you are cooking a stir-fry, the next you have peritonitis. One moment you are riding into Jerusalem on an unbroken colt, fulfilling ancient prophecy, the next the crowd has turned on you and “Crucify! Is all their cry”

Maybe Bernard is right, and everything is totally random. Except that I have seen flowers come in stony places. I have seen the indomitable nature of the human spirit coming through again and again. Spring always redeems. And so I trust. I don’t know why it has to be that way, except to say that everything goes in cycles and gyres, first there is a mountain then there is no mountain, then there is. But I can’t prove it for you, on a piece of paper. In another world, God maybe decided to do it another way, and Pontius Pilate was chiefly known as the unwitting progenitor of an exercise regime named after him, rather than anything more sinister. Who knows? No-one here in this twittering world.

Talking of pieces of paper, a small enigma remains: on a piece of paper, amongst the notes I made for this Epiblog, I find I have written “Jesus shall our pilot be”. It was definitely written by me, it is in my handwriting, and I have absolutely no recollection of when, or why, during the week I wrote it. Very odd. I have tried Googling for the phrase, and it comes up blank, the nearest thing I can find being a 1907 hymn, “Christ shall be our Pilot”. S P B Mais, in Caper Sauce, describes the Gospel choir from the church singing “Do you want a Pilot” on the beach in South Wales at the outbreak of the Second World War. But “Jesus shall our Pilot be” eludes me.

In a week when some strangely significant things have found their way into my hands, this is perhaps the strangest – its significance as yet unexplained. I am not a proponent of “automatic writing” but as I sail into next week, Jesus shall my Pilot be. Selah.

Epiblog for the 5th Sunday of Lent

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and yes, I am still in the Holme Valley, though not at home in the Holme Valley. As predicted, the call came, and I was admitted to the Oakmoor Intermediate Care Facility on Monday. The ambulance arrived to take me over an hour late, so for most of Monday morning there was just me and Kitty, sitting by the fire. I was surrounded by three bags of various possessions, and, at the time, only one of us was purring with contentment. It was a cold, blustery day, a combination of March winds and April showers, all at once, all served up on the same plate, or rather as a succession of “snacks”, as each successive belt of weather was driven over from the west by the strong wind.

Deb had already gone off teaching, in a futile attempt to beat the Ofsted inspectors to Horton House. Futile because, as it turns out, they said they were going to arrive at 11AM and turned up at 9.30AM, a tactic beloved of auditors the world over. Still, she managed to hand in her file without being accosted, observed, or asked any awkward questions, and beat the proverbial hasty retreat. I strongly suspect, as I said to her at the time, that despite her having to hastily concoct all this additional detail to satisfy the requirements of a potential audit, in fact, nobody will ever look at it, and it will just gather dust somewhere on someone’s shelves for a few years. Which is quite sad, because it was a promising work of fiction from a new author. It reminds me of when I re-wrote the ISO9000 operating procedures and at the end of each one I inserted the sentence, “please email me on receipt of this to tell me whether you prefer grey squirrels or red squirrels, together with your reasons.” Only one person, on a company-wide distribution list, sent me an email saying, “What’s all this about squirrels?”

Although it is only a mile or so from our house, Oakmoor felt much further. As the ambulance perambulated slowly up the road to Netherton, gradient and oncoming traffic permitting, I noticed that the stand of elms lining the western side of the road, already gnarled and twisted over the years into fantastical shapes, seemed to have taken one hell of a battering over the winter, with branches hanging off and a lot of dead wood on the ground. I meant to mention it to Debbie, she would be onto it like a rat down a drain, if she thought that there was free “kindling” for the stove. [Actually, such has been the unseasonably warm weather this week, that Deb has apparently let the stove go out, deliberately, at home, which means that Kitty has taken to joining her in bed, as a protest at no longer having a cosy hearth to curl up in, overnight.]

My first impression of Room 39 at Oakmoor, my current abode, was that it was like a Travelodge, but without the illicit sex. In terms of treatment, though, it is very rigorous, almost fundamentalist, which is good, because it’s what I need right now. I have been assessed, several times, poked and prodded by a very nice lady doctor, weighed, and generally logged, photographed and annotated. [I assume the photo is in case I escape, and will look good on a wanted poster, since it makes me look like a dangerous axe-murderer.] I have also had two demanding sessions of physio per day, and I have had my feet done.

The latter was a bit of a surprise, since I knew the podiatrist personally, as it turned out, back from my folk club days, although I had no idea of her calling or vocation til she walked through the door wearing the NHS uniform on Tuesday. I asked her how she got into foot-doctoring and she said that originally, as a teenager, she had wanted to be a vet, but had discovered she was – unfortunately – highly allergic to cats, dogs, and, strangely, "some types of goat". I tried to cheer her up by saying that at least in her present job she would never have to have any of her patients put to sleep. She smiled, wanly, and continued filing my toenail.

Wednesday was my birthday, which also involved physiotherapy (no time off for celebrations here) in that I was trussed up in a tight green corset with sheepskin-lined straps and hoisted up off the bed by a strange apparatus, and prior to that, I had had my leg muscles manipulated by two young ladies in tight-fitting uniforms. To be honest, that doesn’t happen every day, in fact, it doesn’t happen every birthday, so I was already on a high. Debbie came by later, bearing home-produced birthday card, complete with deliberate typo (Happy 65th Birthday! Very satirical!), and she also brought the dog and some wine. Because of the relaxed attitude to visiting here, we were able to spend a convivial evening in Room 39 watching Manchester United versus Chelsea, featuring the spud-faced nipper, Wayne Rooney, who missed a golden chance when he scored by not blowing a kiss into the same camera he had abused earlier in the week. Still, as I observed at the time, “Wayne Rooney” and “presence of mind” are seldom found together on the same page, let alone the same sentence.

For my birthday, Debbie bought me a tub of Mason's Dog Oil, as recommended to Jo my physio by the rough old miners up in Wakefield that she used to treat. This traditional Yorkshire remedy was originally developed to be rubbed onto greyhounds to make them go faster. They then started using it on themselves. I have been using it four five days now and I have to say it does seem to remove aches and pains almost instantly. If it carries on working well on me, eventually we will try it on Tiggy, which is the right way round for animal testing, as far as I am concerned.

Tiggy seemed a little disorientated by seeing me in a strange context, but after a bit of wandering around, she managed to flake out on the floor and go to sleep for the duration of the match (she supports Wolves, naturally). Debbie also became disorientated by the strange context, later, when trying to leave and go home, getting herself and Tig stuck between two sets of automatic double doors, both of which locked automatically behind them, and having to summon the night staff with the “help” buzzer on the wall to let her out!

Since Wednesday I have had physio, physio and more physio, in between bouts of trying to write things like this, and mealtimes of course. Meals have been a little strange, I think they are fazed by the vegetarian thing again, which seems to scare the NHS. Last night at teatime I was given a buttered teacake in clingfilm which bore a label saying “vegetarian man” which makes me feel as if I should be zooming around in vest, tights, underpants and cape, with a big “V” on my chest.

Elsewhere in the big wide world of course, life goes on, we’re still bombing somebody, somewhere, delete as applicable, Portugal needs bailing out, and this of course has been eagerly seized upon as a reason why we must continue to endure the death of a thousand cuts, except they are saddled to the Euro, and we aren’t, but let’s not let facts get in the way of ideology.

This time of the year always gets me thinking about Englishness and England – we are running up to St George’s day, after all. I wonder what St George, or even King Arthur, come to that, would make of it all now? I was thinking these sorts of thoughts, sitting here in room 39, with the unaccustomed luxury of warm sunshine flooding through a large window onto a warm wooden floor, and I was wondering whether the NHS which we know and love, and which has been so good to me, would survive in anything like a recognisable form, the way poor old England is going.

I’ve been listening to Vin Garbutt a lot lately, and the lyric of “England, My England” sprang to mind:

To you that can listen, some lines I have made
Concerning the times and distress of the trade
The North is well used to the drifting of cash,
But now even London prepares for a crash;
The homeless are living out rough in the street
In houses of cardboard to keep off the sleet
They went there to better their lives, I am told
Now the pavements, their beds, are of concrete, not gold.

Vin is right, of course, and someone needs to do something about it. There are those who say, of course, that political activism and Christianity are incompatible. Because, especially, the Church of England is the establishment at prayer, so the theory goes, and when you pray for the Queen, you are praying for the status quo. I don’t necessarily subscribe to this in its entirety; while it may have been true in the 18th Century, when the Squire and the Parson were one and the same, I think you could equally say that many of the things that make the Church of England more like a hobby than a religion in many ways, also serve to curb its extremism and promote tolerance. I am sure that many – if not most – of its members believe just as strongly in a decent life for all before death, and a ticket to paradise for everyone thereafter. Nobody could accuse Bishop Bell of being in favour of the War Party. We are all going to heaven, and Kier Hardie is of the company.

And though religion has been used, undoubtedly, in the past, as an instrument of repression, at the same time, the nonconformist tradition in this country has indeed been a source of much social good, with its promotion of culture and self-education for the working classes.

There’s no doubt that we’re in a bad way, though. We can afford to bomb [insert name of this week’s misguided foreign adventure] but we can’t afford to keep the libraries open. We can afford to build schools in other countries (not that I am against building schools as such) but here at home, my wife was teaching adult literacy to kids in a converted railway-carriage!

The question is, whether it’s too far gone to get Old England back. From the unremitting bleakness of Vin Garbutt’s interpretation of England, (actually written about the previous crash and recession, believe it or not) I turned to Maggie Holland’s “A Place Called England”, which gave me a bit more of a much-needed boost, especially the ending. Although it starts out sounding pretty similar,

I saw town and I saw country
Motorway and sink estate
Rich man in his rolling acres
Poor man still outside the gate
Retail park and burger kingdom
Prairie field and factory farm
Run by men who think that England's
Only a place to park their car

But as the train pulled from the station
Through the wastelands of despair
From the corner of my eye
A brightness filled the filthy air
Someone's grown a patch of sunflowers
Though the soil is sooty black
Marigolds and a few tomatoes
Right beside the railway track

It ends on a much more defiant note:

England is not flag or Empire
It is not money it is not blood
It's limestone gorge and granite fell
It's Wealden clay and Severn mud
It's blackbird singing from the may-tree
Lark ascending through the scales
Robin watching from your spade
And English earth beneath your nails

So here's two cheers for a place called England
Badly used but not yet dead
A Mr. Harding sort of England
Hanging in there by a thread
Here's two cheers for the crazy Diggers
Now their hour shall come around
We can plant the seed they saved us
Common wealth and common ground

Yes! Bring it on. I am quoting this at length not just because I like it, but because I have decided to carry on with Rooftree. I don’t know where I am going to find the time, or the money come to that, Zen Internet, the unscrupulous,grasping ISP, having already taken payment from our account for another year despite the fact that I was still arguing the toss with them about the cost and why they were charging anything anyway, since we thought we had bought the domain (www.rooftree.org.uk) for two years. So that’s another lump of cash I’ll never see again, I might as well press on and see what we can achieve in another year, then take the site down next March. So I have uploaded all of the old pages again, and fully intend to make a nuisance of myself. Any crazy Diggers who want to come along for the journey are more than welcome.

They say you should never argue about politics and religion, so having already alienated at least 50% of my readership, I now turned to my trusty Book of Common Prayer in the hope of getting all four corners in this bout of controversy bingo.

The Collect for this week passed me by, I am afraid. I don’t know why, probably because I have never been formally instructed in how all this stuff fits together, being a self taught Anglican and a lapsed agnostic, but I just can’t see the point some days, and this week’s Collect is one of those days.

This week’s Epistle is Hebrews. 9. 11. This passage seems to be defining the right by which Jesus came to redeem mankind, and as such it mirrors the themes of this week’s Gospel as well. I assume that was the idea, anyway.

Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

Yes, that’s all very well. But, I feel a “but” coming on, and it is this: one, personally I don’t believe that the deliberate shedding of the blood of bulls and goats “sanctifieth” anything. If God really does count the life of every squirrel, every vole, every sparrow as valuable, and knows the hairs on their head and accounts for every feather, then how can it be right to ever kill one of them deliberately, either for food or for sacrifice? Andrew Linzey, in his challenging book Animal Theology (challenging in the sense that, Like Middlemarch, I have never got past page 58 in trying to read it straight through from cover to cover, though unlike Middlemarch, I do try again from time to time) says:

“if, as Christians have traditionally affirmed, in Christ God is truly reconciling the world through the power of love, should not our exercise of power towards creation be shaped and motivated by this example?”

To which I say yes, of course it should. He goes on to say:

“If full weight is given to the moral exemplar of Christ, then it can be validly held that the unique moral capacities of humans demand of them a loving and costly relationship with the natural world”.

“Loving”, and “costly” go together here of course, as anyone who has ever lost a well-loved pet will tell you. Yet it need not be costly in economic terms, the grain used to feed and grow one beef animal to be made into hamburgers would feed far more people than the resulting hamburgers ever will.

I realise of course that the author of Hebrews was writing of the customs and traditions of his time, and that it is stupid trying to twit historical figures for not measuring up to modern mores. But it does raise the question, for me, of exactly how literally the Bible should be taken.

The Gospel, New Testament passage for this Sunday is St. John 8. 46. which sees Jesus once more causing trouble and consternation amongst the population at large, having what is known in this part of the world as a “barney” with a group who accuse him of being “a Samaritan with a devil”

Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?

Jesus answers once again that his authority comes from God, and the crowd are still unconvinced. They just aren’t getting this eternity/out of time idea.

Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.

As Michelle Shocked once memorably observed, “the secret to a long life is knowing when it’s time to go”, although in this case, I find myself wondering why Jesus felt the need to hide, when he could presumably have stopped the stones in mid-air, had he chosen to do so. This is a major problem I have with the story of the crucifixion, as well; why does Jesus allow these things to happen to him, when with one bound he could have been free? Even allowing for the fact that mankind needed to be saved, why did it have to be done in this particular manner? I freely admit that this is something I don’t understand. The essential “why” of Christianity. Why God, with a blank canvas, decided that it had to be this way?

Of course, once you get to this point, you are back in familiar territory, or at least I am. Standing on the edge of a vast cliff, looking out, but all I can see is fog. Somewhere in that fog, is the understanding of the mind of God, but it is not graspable, not tangible, to me, while I still stand this side of the cliff-edge. As Donne said “On a huge hill, cragg’d and steep, truth stands”. There comes a point where you believe that there is something on the other side of the fog, or you don’t believe. It's as simple as that. If you are lucky, you might see the flash of a lighthouse, or hear a distant bell, but without the sun to drive it away, the mist remains, and even with the sun, “mysteries are like the sunne it selfe, dazzling, yet plaine to see.”

So, that’s been this week. I’ve been prodded into action. I seem to have rediscovered some of my mojo, as well as working some other muscles I haven’t used in a while (not now, Ethel!) And I am going to get to grips with this, and grab what chance I have of standing up, and standing up for what I believe in, whoever’s nose it gets up. Forward, the armoured brigade!

Epiblog for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, with some progress on some fronts. On Monday afternoon, my phone rang, It was the intermediate care team. As predicted, Oakmoor, aka Broadmoor, had re-opened now the biddies were no longer vomiting, and there was a bed available. Did I want to go that afternoon?

Completely taken aback, I tried to convey that actually, I’d been told there would be two or three days warning, and, as I had a stack if things a yard and a half long to do, which I couldn’t in all fairness just lump on to Deb, even if she wasn’t teaching all week, covering classes for people who were off on adoption leave (a new one on me) and preparing for an Ofsted visit, could I go in, say, on Thursday instead?

To be fair, once I’d explained all this, they were both sweetness and light about it, and agreed. Of course, no problem. About half an hour later, they rang me back and said actually, er, you know when we said “no problem”, erm, well, there is a problem, because the physio goes on rotation from Thursday, so you might as well wait and come in on Monday, the day the new physio starts.

OK, I said, no problem for me, we’re only looking at missing one, maybe two days (depending what time on Monday I get picked up) and it would take the pressure off, even more. So, Monday it was, then. The next day, they rang up and said could I do Thursday after all.

By then, I had arranged stuff to fill in up until at least Monday, I didn’t want to lose the bed, but on the other hand… so, in the end, after much discussion, Monday it still was, for which I earned a flea in the ear from my physio, who asked me in a pained way if I realised how lucky I was, that they had moved heaven and earth to get me in there, and that it would have served me right if they had given my bed to someone else. So that told me. Unfortunately, yet another manifestation of the ever present tension between fiscal health and physical health. It seems you can have one, but only at the expense of the other. Still, at least the census form, which I filled in weeks ago on the assumption that I would be here, then realised I probably wouldn’t when this Broadmoor thing came up, was in fact right after all, and I really was here on that night. Pity, in a way, I was looking forward to confusing genealogists of the future by being on the 2011 census twice, to balance my complete absence from the 1981 one, because my then landlady forgot to add my details!

This was the week when what passes for Spring finally arrived, or at least, April did. “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droght of Mersh hath perced to the roote..” as Chaucer said. In fact, all of the cliches about April were present in the garden this week, not only April showers, but all the stuff which, according to Robert Gravy-Browning, is happening, in England, now. Of course, April is also the cruellest month, if we believe T S Eliot, when our expectations and hopes are stirred and raised, only to then remain unfulfilled.

Perhaps both versions of April are true – at least for me at the moment. At this juncture, at this time of the year, I certainly do feel like one of Chaucer’s pilgrims, at the outset of an adventure, a pilgrimage, one that does hold a degree of hope and salvation for me, in that these few weeks will determine if I ever walk again. At the same time, I remain acutely aware of the possibility that it could all end in failure. All I can do, all anyone can ever do, in fact, is to give it my best shot, and, if I do go down, to go down fighting.

The animals have had a good week. Tiggy has been making good use of the patch of sunshine on the rug. She’s gradually moving round the whole of the rug, as the sun and the earth slowly gyrate, a bit like a motif or a constellation, mirroring the movement of Sirius in the heavens, perhaps, as the orbits of the universe wheel incessantly. Kitty has been going out onto the decking and just sitting there, having a good look round. I watched her the other day and realised she was actually preening, she too had found a patch of warm April sunlight and was enjoying feeling its unaccustomed warmth on her back, as she sat there, purring for no particular reason, giving off a general air of contentment. Other than that, she’s been her usual self, eating the cat food, then eating the dog food, then sitting in her cat bed on the hearth and smearing the remains and the gravy all over her whiskers and her head in an elaborately messy wash with her front paw. Again, human mealtimes would be greatly enlivened if we all adopted this particular manifestation of cat etiquette.

Freddie has been unusually well behaved. The other day he stayed resolutely snoozing on the settee, only emitting a brief cursory growl at the spectacle of a grey squirrel scampering across the decking, up on to the bird table, and sitting there boldly helping itself to the last remnants of the old Christmas pudding that has also been sustaining the thrushes. Normally, such squirrel-impertinence would have Freddie hurling himself at the double-glazing in a paroxysm of barking, but for once I was glad it didn’t, because it gave me a chance to study the squirrel in more detail, as it sat just outside the window, its little jaws munching furiously, the tightly bunched muscles of its legs and arms, and the feathery glory of its bushy tail, flecked with golden fur amongst the silver. Its wary little eyes were like hard, tiny nuts themselves, or small beads of shining jet. I know, of course, and I have said so before, here, that grey squirrels are just cute rats with good P.R., but nevertheless, this one was a heartstoppingly beautiful example of the breed, just for that moment.

Zak has developed a new game, grandmother’s footsteps. Actually, that, in itself, is quite an old game, we used to pay it in the playground when I was a kid, but it’s new to him, and Zak’s unique take on it involves cat food, as do so many other facets of his existence, in fact. He knows that there is some left over cat food in the dish just inside the kitchen door, but to get to it, he has to pass me, in my position where I usually sit in my wheelchair, writing. So he waits til all is quiet, then slowly slides off his chair in the conservatory, taking a couple of tentative tiptoeing steps in my direction.

As soon as I look up at him, he stops dead in his tracks, in mid-stride, and holds the position like a “pointer”, until I bend my attention back down to my reporters’ notebook and resume scribbling, then he sets off again, until he is almost level with me. I look up, and he stops again. It’s got to the stage now where I can play head games with him by looking down then immediately looking up again, really quickly, so that he has to go stop-start-stop. Eventually, I give in, and pretend to have a long period of looking down and concentrating on my work, allowing him to slink past, belly low to the ground, and polish off what remains in Kitty’s dish.

I was briefly left on my own in charge of all the animals on Thursday afternoon, as Debbie had already set off for teaching and Granny was out doing her errands, so I took the opportunity of addressing them en masse, Tiglet on the rug, Zak in his armchair, Freddie on the settee, and Kitty in her bed on the hearth. I felt a bit like George VI, broadcasting to the Empire, but I told them that Daddy would have to go away again for a time, and that while I was gone, they must all be good animals, not play Mummy up, do what they were told, come when they were called, and not go missing or get hurt or injured in any way, and that I would see them all again soon. I don’t know how much of it sunk in, but it made me feel better.

Deb has been out and about, teaching the teachers at one point this week. I got up early with her on Thursday morning and, while she was bustling around getting her stuff ready, I logged on to the internet briefly. When she asked me what I was doing I said I was checking whether Dewsbury had been obliterated overnight in a retaliatory air raid by Libya, in which case there would be no point in her setting off, and she replied that I shouldn’t bother, because even if it had, no-one would notice the difference. By the time she had gone and I had got my own stuff together, the ambulance men arrived for me, to take me down to HRI for my physio , and once more I was carted out of the house by two huffing and puffing ambulance persons, though I was in part able to reassure them that there will at least be a survey for a concrete ramp next week, if not actually the ramp itself.

Following physio, I had my appointment with the consultant to discuss my follow up scan, which took all of five minutes, I am glad to say, and the remaining twenty five were taken up with talking about cricket and England’s unseemly exit from the World Cup. Having found that he used to be a member at Old Trafford during my previous visit, I’d sent him a copy of Zen and the Art of Nurdling in the interim, and he thanked me for it and described it as “obviously a labour of love” which I am not sure was entirely a vote of confidence, as it’s the sort of noncommittal thing you say about people who make models of the west front of Wells Cathedral out of used matchsticks and ear wax. On the way home, the ambulance went through Longroyd Bridge and I noticed once again that D & S Supplies had the blackboard outside advertising invisible nails, so they must have had a fresh delivery – but how did they know?

And so we came to the weekend, and the end of my last week of freedom, for a while. Once more, uncertainty awaits, so while I can, I might as well turn to my trusty Book of Common Prayer and see what the words of wisdom are for people like me who are feeling bereft and trepidacious, this first Sunday of April?

The Collect is the usual up-and-down stuff about us deserving to be punished for our evil deeds. I have to say that, while there are undoubtedly some people who deserve to be punished for their evil deeds, I query at my inclusion in that number, at least last week. I can’t recall having done anything particularly evil. It does go on to ask,though, that we should be relieved by the comfort of grace, which I suppose is the actual point of the prayer, and I will go along with that.

The Epistle is Galatians 4, 21-end, which I have to say I find completely incomprehensible. I know that it is probably my fault, and that if I cared to www.googleforit, I could probably find out what all this stuff about Abraham having two children, one of a free woman and one of a bondmaid was all about, and all this stuff about Mount Sinai, which is Agar, and the unhealthy preoccupation with “bondage” which people like me with a puerile sense of humour find so amusing. Right now, though, I am not in the mood for obscure Old Testament allegory. I am in the mood for screwing my courage to the sticking place, pinning on my scallop badge and taking up my staff, and “goon on pilgrimages”, as Chaucer might have said. Although emotionally, I am more like the poet a few hundred years earlier, who wrote, in the Anglo Saxon epic The Seafarer, where the anonymous bard knows that the coming of Summer marks a sad time when he must leave for the uncertainty of what the Saxons called the “whale-road”

he always has a longing
he who strives on the waves.
Groves take on blossoms,
the cities grow fair,
the fields are comely,
the world seems new:
all these things urge on
the eager of spirit,
the mind to travel,
in one who so thinks
to travel far
on the paths of the sea.
So the cuckoo warns
with a sad voice;
the guardian of summer sings,
bodes a sorrow
grievous in the soul.

So I turn to the New Testament text and find that it is John 6, 1-14, and coincidentally also about the sea, in that it is the famous story of the feeding of the five thousand.

After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him, There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.

I hadn’t actually sat down and read this for ages, probably not since I was at school, and reading it again today I was immediately struck by why Jesus should have felt that the catering arrangements were down to him, after all it wasn’t as if these 5000 spectators had been invited, with a card that said RSVP and promised wine and nibbles. But then it seems to be some sort of test of Philip, who doesn’t exactly pass with flying colours. I love, also the description of the “lad”. I have this vision of Simon Peter or someone saying, “Lord, there’s a lad here who says he’ll go to t’chippy for us” and Jesus replying, “OK, here’s 20 shekels, tell him to get haddock and chips 5000 times.” But then I have an overactive imagination and I am easily amused. I do know there wouldn’t have been twelve baskets of leftovers if Zak had been around that day, anyway.

Obviously the real importance is the description of the miracle. This isn’t really the time, nor do I have the patience, right now, for a detailed exposition of the theory of miracles, whether or not it is possible to cause a real physical change in what we call reality by a conscious application and effort of the mind, based on a strong enough belief. I hope it is. I am very interested in miracles right now, for obvious reasons, and my Novenas are stacking up in St Jude’s in-tray. If this was email, I would definitely be in his spam folder. After I finish typing this, I am going to start assembling my stuff for tomorrow’s pilgrimage, and set off in my frail two-wheeled barque, over the wide and trackless seas of the unknown future, hoping to find safe harbour, and return one day maybe under my own steam. I feel like the singer of the traditional Scottish song, “Farewell to Tarwathie” where he sings

“The birds here sing sweetly, on mountain and dale,
But there’s never a birdie, to sing to the whale…”

So, hoist the Blue Peter, weigh the anchor (14 tons would be my guess) cast off on both needles, splice the mainbrace, walk the plank, and tap the Admiral. One more night by my own hearth, then down to the harbour to take ship for Outremer, and wherever the tide will bear me. There is a tide, in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood… and if Jesus can walk on water, could I just walk, please?