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.