Epiblog for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Life goes on. The weather is still crap, to say it’s supposed to be high summer, cold at night and cool, cloudy, windy and showery by day.

Tig has taken against the cold and seems to spend every opportunity curled up in front of the halogen heater, which we are obliged to use in the evenings (and sometimes during the day) to keep ourselves warm. I guess it's her arthritic old bones playing up again, and it's too early for her current glucosamine tablets to have taken effect. We're going to have to bite the bullet and get her some of that green lipped mussel extract which has been suggested by one of the readers of these Epiblogs. Other than that she is cold and arthriticky, she's in good fettle for a 98 year old.

Kitty has acquired a new possession this week, in the form of a cat blanket, lovingly knitted/crocheted by her Auntie Maisie. I think it's knitting, but the difference between and betwixt the two is often lost on me, so I could be wrong. Either way, she loves it, and has been rarely off it all week, snuggling down on it all night. Actually, I describe it as a “cat blanket”, it has all the delicacy and fine workmanship of a christening shawl, and I can only hope that there isn't another acquaintance of Maisie somewhere who is today opening up a parcel intended for their new-born child even as we speak, and puzzling at the significance of the pattern of paw-prints and fish bones on the “shawl” within.

I have just re-read that last paragraph in the voice of Alan Bennett, for something to do, and it reminded me of how Pooterish my life has become. On Monday night, Deb had a load of learner profiles for one of her courses that needed two-hole punching, so she asked me if we had a big hole puncher upstairs in the office, one of those with the extending plastic arm that allows you to get the holes in the same place each time, and I said that I hadn't been upstairs since 7th July last year but yes, I could visualise one in the office upstairs, an orange one, so she said, yes, I think we have one as well, and went off and looked.

Anyway, she came back with a small grey one, saying she couldn't see the big orange one and I said come to think of it, maybe the one I was visualising was actually at the "office" office, not here, and she said that maybe the one she was visualising was actually at college, and I said isn't this good, we're both sitting here visualising hole punchers.

Oh how we laughed. From Pooters, to com-pooters. With the accent on the “poo”. Last week was the battle of the accounts, this week has been the battle of the machines, specifically the war with the computers, which at the moment, the computers are winning. On Tuesday my laptop finally decided to stop sending pictures to the big screen (which I have been using ever since Debbie clumsily kicked it over and broke the backlight) so it has been in laptop intensive care ever since. I am typing this on Debbie’s little netbook as we speak, and it is very tempting to drop kick it through the conservatory window, albeit that I am still stuck in this bloody wheelchair

Actually,it turns out not to have been the backlight, but something called the inverter, but the end result is that it’s still bust, whatever. And the earliest I can expect it back from the laptop hospital, fully cured, I hope, is Tuesday. Meanwhile I have had all the fun of installing Open Office and Mozilla on here, just so I can type something and read my email.

So, on the IT front, not a good week. Not much has been done on the great work of turning round the business, owing to lack of files, and generally it's been a period of make-do and mend, and muddle through. As mentioned above, I am typing this on Debbie's little netbook which she has kindly lent me in partial recompense for the destruction of my laptop screen, but it has such a minuscule keyboard and a mouse cursor that leaps around like a Mexican jumping bean on acid.

Speaking of acid, I am convinced that the council are also on drugs. I started my dealings with officialdom this week on a minor high note: the DWP finally caved in and paid me what they owe me, just when I was on the point of whittling a bamboo crutch and sending it to the Cambodian Orphans, then 'phoning up Look North to launch the Tragic Steve appeal. From then on, it was downhill all the way, though.

The surveyor rang about the ramp. I don't know if you are fully up to speed with the ramp. I have a large carrier bag filled with correspondence about the ramp, and even I find it difficult to remember everything. Anyway, new readers start here. They'd agreed to build a ramp up to the side door of “our” side of the house. The ramp will fit in the space available. We might have to move some wall-topping stones (actually, I would rather sell them than just stack them up somewhere else, stone (especially dressed stone) is very valuable in these parts. So I said fine, go ahead and build your ramp. Ah, they said, there's still the problem of the old camper. What problem, says I, because the ramp will fit in the space available without your having to move the camper. Yes, Mr Rudd, they said, but when the ramp is finished, the old camper will be blocking your straight access to the pavement. No problem, says I, we had planned to get rid of it and empty out all of the boxes of books and get them shelved up over the summer anyway. So, build your ramp, and who knows, by the time it's finished, we might have moved the old camper van. Oh no, Mr Rudd, says they, we won't even START building the ramp until you have moved the camper van. What, says I, even though it's not actually stopping you from building the ramp? Yes.

At this point my head started to swim, so I paused for breath. Hang on a minute, says I: I have an idea. The existing ramp doesn't take into account the problem of the remaining 50mm high lip of concrete to the side of where it lands, so we had agreed to pay extra ourselves, afterwards, to have another small bit of concrete laid to smooth out that lip and join up with the “official” ramp. Problem solved. I can come down the ramp in my wheelie, then veer sideways at the end onto the driveway. The old camper van is no longer an obstacle. Ah, but, Mr Rudd, that would count as a change of direction, and if you did that, there would have to be a level platform at least 1.2 metres square, to meet building regulations, and there isn't room for such a platform... without moving the camper!

So there you have it. Once the ramp is built, I don't see how they could stop us adding a bit to the side of it, to be honest, unless the council's budget runs to posting armed guards with orders to shoot anyone with a concrete mixer on sight. It's a bit like Palestine, except the exact opposite, the other way round, of course. I shouldn't have joked about that last week, should I?

So now I am faced with having to completely re-jig our plans and even then all the extra work of emptying out the boxes of books in the old camper van and then bringing them inside and putting them up on bookshelves which don't exist yet, in a room currently piled to the gunwales with furniture, all of which will need shifting, the floor sanding and sealing, and the walls plastering, I think I might as well resign myself to the fact that I am going to be a parcel for the rest of my days.

On the plus side, I did meet an intelligent plumber this week. Peter, his name is, and on this rock will I build my sink. In fact, it's already built, the sink is no longer leaning at 15mm out of true and threatening to dash itself to a million fragments of porcelain on the tiles below, we can turn the water back on again, and peace reigns in the kitchen. He also does handymanning and I am going to email him a list of other jobs that need doing so he can price them up. I wonder if he is any good at emptying out old camper vans and putting up cheap bookshelves? What was it Richard Bach said about “you are never handed a problem, without also being handed the means of its solution.” I may not have got the quotation 100% and I can't remember which of his books it's from. But anyway, there it is. Actually, vulgar curiosity overcame me, and I looked it up: it's actually

You are never given a wish without the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. and it's from Illusions.

Peter used to work in Marketing, has a degree in mechanical engineering, and was made redundant four years ago at the age of 52, downsized, and never looked back. In the week when I received “ye official letter” advising me of a similar fate, the sudden appearance of Peter, plucked at random from the pages of a little booklet that fell out of the free issue of the Examiner, was perhaps another instance of someone being sent to succour me. Oh Lord, thou pluckest me out.

Once more, the real world, the world of telegrams and anger, as E M Forster called it, has prevented anything in the way of contemplation this week. I have also got confused over Whitsun. Whitsun, as a holiday, has not existed in this country since 1967. Whit Monday should be seven weeks after Easter Monday, which, because Easter was late this year, makes it June 13th, and this weekend is just a secular bank holiday. But it feels like Whitsun, so much so, that I have been manically humming the traditional “Whitsuntide Carol” as computers blew up and burst into flames all around me this week.

Now Whitsuntide is come, you very well do know
Come serve the Lord we must, before we do go
Come serve him truly, with all your mind and heart
And then from Heaven your soul may never depart.

How do we know, how long we have to live?
Oh when we die, Oh then what would we give
For to be sure of our last resting place,
When we have run a wretched, sinful race”

Stirring stuff. Like I said last week, about the Rapture, the readiness is all. Whitsun has several associations for me. Round these parts, Whitsun was the start of the time that led up to the traditional “Wakes Week” in July when all the mills shut and the workers all went off to the seaside for the same week every year. It was different in different places across the North, though, in Lancashire it was July, by ancient tradition. Whit Friday is the name given to the first Friday after Whitsun in areas of northeast Cheshire, southeast Lancashire and the western fringes of Yorkshire. The day has a cultural significance in places such as Stalybridge as the date on which the annual Whit Walks were traditionally held. It was also the day on which the traditional annual Whit Friday brass band contests were held. Wakes Weeks were originally religious festivals that commemorated church dedications. Particularly important was the Rushcart festival associated with Rogationtide. During the Industrial Revolution the tradition of the wakes was adapted into a regular summer break in the mill towns of Lancashire, where each locality would nominate a wakes week during which the cotton mills would all close at the same time, and eventually for holidays where the mill workers would go to the seaside, eventually on the newly developing railways.

It was probably some vestigial remembrance of this tradition that drove my Dad to go to Bridlington on the train every Whit Monday, for a day out by the sea. Actually, he was not alone in this, thousands of people from Hull used to make the same pilgrimage, indeed, not only from Hull, but from Leeds and other parts of the West Riding as well. Other members of the family would go as well, and it was not uncommon for them to bump into each other on the Prom. Uncle George once took his then lady-friend, Mrs Dosdale, to Brid for the day. She felt the need to visit the subterranean ladies, and made him promise faithfully to keep station at the entrance and not to wander off, so he would be there when she emerged. All would have been well, had she not emerged from a different set of steps to those which she had descended, cursed his faithlessness, and wandered off into the crowd. It took him an hour to realise, apparently, that something was amiss.

Bridlington is, of course, also the haunt of Jim Eldon, the Brid Fiddler, who plays on the pleasure boats, the Flamborean and the Yorkshire Belle, that ply the bay. His own take on Bridlington is redolent of inside knowledge:

Now if you come to Bridlington
Be sure that you will see
Our brave and gallant fishermen
That never go to sea
And all the fish they've caught today
It wouldn't feed a mouse
For the place they do their fishing is
The Londesborough Public House.

All that casual Edwardian elegance of the workers, dressed up to the nines, for their Whit Walks and Wakes Weeks, is all gone now. Some of it didn't survive the First World War. I have a picture, which came from Granny Welgate, of The Welton Wesleyans in their charabanc on a Whit outing, all straw boaters, stiff collars and formal dresses. I wonder how many of the men came back from Flanders to marry their sweethearts.

This has also been on my mind because this week Deb has been gearing up to teach GCSE in the autumn and looking for suitable texts (or as she puts it, “nice thin books”) to teach, and has hit upon the poetry of the First World War. So it looks like our winter will be one of mud, gas, rats, sudden danger, and unspeakable privation. And that's just at home. The conjunction of this with Whitsun (or at least my idea of Whitsun) has reminded me of the Tim Hart and Maddy Prior song, “Dancing at Whitsun”

Down from the green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons
There's a fine roll of honour where the maypole once stood
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun

I also associate Whitsun with Pentecost, and this is of course, neither, but it doesn't stop my mind working on it. This week's Biblical offerings
are apparently Acts 8:5-8, 14-17, Psalm 66: 1-7, 16, 2 1 Peter 3:15-18
and John 14:15-21. The passage from Acts has encouraging resonances with matters Pentecostal, with plenty of casting out of evil spirits, the halt and the lame walking (always a good sign in my book) and people being filled with the Holy Spirit. That's what made Whitsun great, that is.

Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed. And there was great joy in that city. Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

Having digested that, I quickly turned to get my kicks, from Psalm 66:

Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands: Sing forth the honour of his name: make his praise glorious. Say unto God, How terrible art thou in thy works! through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee. All the earth shall worship thee, and shall sing unto thee; they shall sing to thy name. Selah.
 
I like the “Selah”. I have written the ramp people a letter, telling them not to be so bloody stupid, and I so wish I had ended it “Selah”. I am not so keen, however, on the verse that goes:

I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings, with the incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats. Selah.

There should be an old Testament for vegetarians.Selah.

By now, the combination of trying to type with the stupid and unresponsive mouse and the minuscule keyboard and deal with the idosyncracies of the pile of crap that is Open Office was getting to me, so I am afraid I skipped and went straight to John 14:15-21 (King James Version)

If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him

Another famous passage, of course. I love the way the King James version rumbles round inside your head, each word reverberating as it rolls past. In my embattled state, this week, I found it strangely comforting, a bit like hearing thunder but knowing that it’s only a shower and soon the sun will be out again and you can go out into the garden and smell all that wet freshness that comes just after a storm.

It will be a while before I can do that, of course, courtesy of Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council, but at least I have remembered that I am never given a problem without also being given the key to its solution, and I am never given a wish without the means to make it come true. But I may have to work for it. OK then, bring it on. Selah.

Epiblog for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Trying to turn round the supertanker which was once a publishing business, before it goes down with all hands, following six months of neglect while I was ill last year, is proving to be hard work, involving prolonged phone calls to the likes of Paypal customer services, about why the web shop doesn’t work properly. You probably get the picture. Given that it’s still not sorted out, and there’s the prospect of yet more moronic conversations of a Kafkaesque nature next week about “configuration buttons” and “account settings”, I almost wish I’d been raptured!

I’ve been so busy I have hardly had time to notice the weather, but my recollection is that it remains cool and showery, with occasional fleeting glimpses of the sun. That means it’s shaping up to be like it was last summer (not that I recall much of last summer) and the summer before, where we had a burst of hot weather in April then drizzle til October. Whatever, the summer is already passing by at an alarming rate. The wind and rain are already knocking the petals off the clematis, and four weeks from today it will be Midsummer.

The reason for all this flurry of activity is that it’s now looking increasingly likely that my other job, “the office”, my career in the digital personalised print industry, is going to make me redundant, or rather, make my post redundant, a fine distinction which they were anxious to draw, for obvious reasons, which are not unconnected with unfair dismissal. I know very little about employment law, and I care even less, to be honest. If they don’t want me, then stuff them, it’s their loss and their funeral, and they can sink or swim. It’s mildly sad that, after 21 years, I really don’t care any more about people who I used to think were friends of mine as well as colleagues, but it’s a consequence of their decision not to care about me, and they have to live by it. In the greater scheme of things, and in context of all the other stuff that’s happened to me since last July, like nearly dying, it’s a fly-speck on the mirror of eternity. Though it stung a bit at the time. Being no longer a block in their building.

What it does mean, though, is that the Press will have to become my prime source of income, taking over from my non-existent benefits (£327.25 in arrears and still counting, DWP) if we are to have any hope of battling out of this storm. And/or I can try and get another job, at 56 years old, in a wheelchair, in the teeth of a howling recession. That, and selling stuff. I am organising a huge “triage” of the house into four categories: keep, skip, freecycle, ebay. I have a handmade guitar which I will take £500 for, and a Rapido Folding Caravan which is going for £250, buyer collects in both cases. That would keep Barclays at bay for two months. So, money has been on my mind this week. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” as Wordsworth said, in other circumstances – “The world is too much with us”.

The animals are completely oblivious of all this economic turmoil raging round them, of course; their lives remain as placid and pseudo-bucolic as they ever did. Mind you, Kitty has troubles of her own, in the form of unwanted nocturnal visitors. One night last week, or rather, very early one morning, I disturbed in my sleep to note the hind quarters of a cat, as the said beast transited my room en route for the cat flap. My sleep-fuddled brain then registered that the said hindquarters of the said feline beast were tabby, and not sh/h/b&w, as it says on Kitty’s vet bills. So that was Spidey, next door’s cat, going home, no doubt after nesting for the night in the office upstairs.

The next night brought round two of the cat wars, featuring (in the blue corner) Kitty, against (in the red corner) The Interloper. Two falls, two submissions, or a knockout, as Kent Walton used to say. Surprisingly, I discovered, as the yowling and growling woke me yet again, that Kitty was the surprising victor, and The Interloper, which must be twice her size and a full Tom to boot, was headed out through the cat flap in one bound. I praised Kitty for seeing him off. Her tail was the size of a bog-brush. She scowled at me, saucer-eyed, and padded away, back in search of the warmth of the hearth, from which I concluded that the stove must still be in in the kitchen, the other side of my wall.

Tiggy, of course, has chosen to rise above all this, or rather to sleep through it. I wish I could do the same. But then she is the equivalent of 98 in human years, and stone deaf. Debbie also slept through it all, apparently, but she has the equally valid excuse of being dog-tired, utterly exhausted after another week of Herculean efforts to instil literacy into Dewsbury, the town that education forgot. So much so that she fell asleep during the act of eating her tea on Friday, while we were in the middle of arguing about the interpretation of poetry. Still, I suppose it makes a change from arguing about how we’re going to pay the mortgage.

In a week when it has been, to be honest, fairly unremitting hard grind, it was pleasant to see my fellow member of the Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Club, Bernard, again. I’m becoming convinced that he pops up like a talisman whenever I am at my lowest. It was on Wednesday afternoon, this time, after I had just undertaken a singularly uninspiring and unrewarding series of telephone calls, that I heard the outside door go, and then Bernard’s voice shouting was I in. So he ambled over to the sofa, budged Kitty up, sat down, and we talked for an hour and a half, a peaceful oasis while the maelstrom of commerce raged all round me.

He told me that, at the age of 89, he had just achieved another one of his lifetime’s ambitions. As a retired engineer, he had been to the Manchester Science Museum and seen a “hot air engine”. Apparently the heat source heats the air, which expands and pushes the piston, which in turn drives the flywheel. We’d previously been talking about the amount of packaging in modern life, most of it unnecessary. Suddenly, a light bulb came on over my head.

“So if you had an incinerator in a house that could burn household rubbish to provide a heat source for a hot air engine, that could drive a flywheel and produce electricity?”

He thought for a while and then said, in theory, yes. So that’s another component of my Rooftree house sorted out, then. And it would stop the waste going into landfill, converting it into energy that could heat the house and produce some of its energy needs on site. Thanks, Bernard. As many readers of this blog will know, I have a special affinity for hot air and rubbish, so maybe I am the person uniquely placed to see their potential applications.

One good thing about all the “busyness” of trying to revive a semi-dormant business, is that it has stopped me brooding too much this week on the lack of progress in other areas. Every situation has its good and bad points, I suppose. The good point is, this computer allows you to hear the music exactly as the original artist intended, the bad point is, the original artist in question is Dr Dre. You see what I mean. Actually, there has been progress, albeit limited. I have seen and approved the drawing for the ramp, and the new standing hoist was delivered last Monday, but I haven’t used it yet, because my OT and my physio can’t come and see me until tomorrow morning. Still, give me enough bricks and I will build you a cathedral. Eventually.

A metaphor which brings me neatly back to matters religious. Once again, it’s been a week when I have been busy rendering unto Caesar, so my spiritual life, such as it is, has had to take a back seat. I could not avoid, however, the fervent speculation about the rapture, especially online. Various threads on various message boards asked questions such as “what would you like to do before the world ends?”, “Who will feed your cat if you are raptured?” and “what music would you like to be raptured to?” [Not, in my case, Doctor Dre.] Anyway, in any event, it never happened, so the questions never arose. But it did set me thinking, what would I do if I knew I only had 45 minutes to go, or something. Is it possible, when you are happy, to be any happier, without the moment passing? Half the time, we don’t realise we are happy anyway until we look back on it afterwards. So, in the end, rather than trying frantically to gather everyone around you for one last, false party, as the sky splits in twain and the seas boil, perhaps it’s better to just carry on, as before, and put the kettle on for a nice cuppa. So when the Almighty comes to rapture me, I am sitting here with the cat on my knee, Deb is on the sofa, and the dog is stretched out in front of the fire. And if they can’t come with me, then I don’t want to be raptured. A heaven without cats and dogs is unthinkable, however much I might want to see my mother and father again, not to mention Auntie Maud.

The readiness is all. I guess the real trick is to try and live every minute as if you are going to be raptured. As Blind Willie McTell said:

“Could be tomorrow, you never know the minute or the hour”.

Still, as someone memorably said when the rapture failed to happen, it’s not the end of the world, is it? And so, not having been raptured, I decided to have a quick look at the lectionary for today, to see if in my absence last week, Big G had left me any Easter Eggs.

The first text, Acts 7:55-60 (King James Version) seems to be about the martyrdom of St Stephen.

But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Martyrdom is a minefield, of course. Many of the people who commit some of the worst outrages in the name of political causes think themselves martyrs. And before anyone thinks I am having a go at Muslims in particular, in the week when the Queen visited Ireland, we can remind ourselves that we had our own extremist religious maniacs, on both sides, a lot nearer home. I suppose the difference with the early Christian Martyrs is that they had martyrdom done to them, rather than deciding to become “martyrs” themselves in the course of murdering other innocent people. Perhaps that is a distinction we would all do well to remember. Anyway, I don’t think Big G is telling me to actually be a martyr, however much I might feel like one, these days.

So I turned to Psalm 31

In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness. Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily: be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me. For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name's sake lead me, and guide me. Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength. Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth.

This speaks more directly to my experience, at least this week. Pull me out of the net they have laid privily for me. Pull me up with the standing hoist, and pull me out of this financial mess, which is a net laid privily if ever there was one. The third text, 1 Peter 2:2-10 (King James Version)

As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner.

I’m aware that on one level, the reference to the stone which the builders rejected having become the cornerstone refers to the Jews having rejected Christ, but I also take from it the sense that we all have a part to play, no matter how useless and ill-formed, all these different stones have to fit together to make the Cathedral, each stone in its correct place, and there is always the capacity for any of us to become the keystone in our own particular arch. Each of us holds something together. So there is hope for me yet, I suppose. Somewhere, some enterprise, is lacking this particular dumb stone.

Finally, completing the building metaphor, comes John 14:1-4 (King James Version)

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Back to buildings again. Am I building something here? Am I part of it? A key part of it? If so, we’re building it brick by brick, stone by stone, and I only hope it’s worth the effort. One of my favourite books is William Golding’s The Spire, and I wrote before in Here Endeth The Epilogue about the faith of people who started building a cathedral, knowing that they would never live to see it finished. And, bizarrely enough, one of the tasks which will need to be accomplished before the ramp can be built is the moving of two rows of wall-topping stones which have been stacked in the driveway ever since we demolished a bit of garden wall to enable us to get both vehicles off the road, back in the day when there were two vehicles.

As TS Eliot says, in East Coker:

“In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,”

It doesn’t particularly feel like a time of building, it still feels in many ways like things are crashing to the ground all around me. But I suppose there comes a point where anything that can fall off has fallen off, and it’s time to start picking up the pieces and putting them back together again. As Mr Kipling said, in between making exceedingly good cakes,

“If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools”

The question is, of course, do I have the strength to do it?

Epiblog for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, though not necessarily in the way I might have wanted. Still no sign of any word from the Community Physio Team, into whose care I have been handed, apparently, and meanwhile I sit here losing all the advantage I gained in Oakmoor. I am not normally given to criticise the NHS. As I have said before, when it’s good, it’s very very good, but it does have odd moments where it behaves like your old senile Uncle who forgets your birthday, or when he does remember, sends you an out of date Woolworths voucher for a Kylie Minogue cassette tape, addressed wrongly by name to your elder sibling, and enclosing the receipt as well, by mistake. This has been one such week.

I know there’s always someone worse off than yourself, and I should try and remember that, but I was left with a distinct impression that (with certain glowing exceptions who have never given up on me, and who know who they are) the rest of the NHS was playing pass-the-parcel. I did, however, have a call from the Accessible Homes team about the ramp. They are posting me the drawing for the Alternative #2 solution, a ramp to the side door of number 111. “There is corn in Egypt yet”, though it could have been speeded up if Pharaoh had possessed a scanner and an email account. Still, I will listen for the postman with a quickening heartbeat.

The weather seems to have broken itself as well. Cooler, and cloudy, with the unaccustomed sound of rain falling on the conservatory roof like a million ball-bearings being dropped onto a sheet of steel. So on Monday I reluctantly reversed my sartorial progress towards fewer clothes for Summer, and added a t-shirt to what mountaineers call my “base layer”. I didn’t look at it particularly, just picked the first one off the clean pile, it was only when I was pulling it over my head that I realised it was a Jack Wolfskin one with a pair of boots on the front and the legend “I’d rather be walking” emblazoned across the back. Amen to that, brother, amen to that.

Because it is nominally summer, and especially in view of the fact that it was so hot in April, we have let the coal stock run down to half a bag, which means that when we have lit the stove, we’ve been burning mainly fallen logs and branches that Debbie has gathered in and around the garden and out and about on her walks with Tig. We’ve also been using one of those little halogen heaters, just for the convenience of being able to set it up first thing in a morning and bang on all four bars and get the place warmed up. For some reason, Tig really likes the halogen heater, and makes a bee-line for it every time we turn it on. One day during the week, her head was so close to it, I could have sworn I smelt singeing dog-fur, but she seemed unperturbed. I think maybe there is something about the focused nature of the heat it gives off that seems to bring warmth, cheer and comfort to her old rickety bones.

Kitty has taken to clambering over everything I am doing and jumping up to join me in the wheelchair again, as a consequence of the colder weather. I am not fooled by this cupboard-love, as my Granny used to call it. I know that if there was an alternative heat-source, and she could open the fridge herself and work the tin opener, I wouldn’t see her arse for dust. That, I am afraid, is cats for you. Because we inherited her from Colin, (RIP) we don’t even have a receipt to threaten her with. When I got the late, great, Sylvester from the Cat’s Protection League, you had to give a donation in return, to prove you were serious about cats, and they gave you a receipt. I kept it in my wallet (in fact, I think I have still got it somewhere) and whenever he did anything particularly bad, such as yikking up a furball onto some artwork or something, I would solemnly produce the receipt and flourish it at him, telling him to remember he could always go back.

For some reason, this week, I have seen quite a lot of Granny, too. Probably because we’ve been dogsitting Freddie and Zak, and I also helped her print out some colour photos of little Adam and various other family members, to send to Nicole, her French pen friend. What Nicole made of them, I know not. (A hat or a brooch for Papa, probably.) Granny has the habit (in fact all Debbie’s family do) of starting a conversation in the middle, or resuming a conversation you were last having two weeks ago, as if the intervening two weeks had not happened, and you were still carrying on from where you left off.

“I’ll tell you someone else who is in a wheelchair. Richard Attenborough!”

Me: “Really? That must make chasing lemurs rather inconvenient!”

Obviously it’s not just the NHS that gets the wrong sibling.

Other than these high spots of humour (yes, I know, the long winter evenings must just fly by, but you really had to be there) I have spent a dreary week doing accounts, and trying to work out exactly at what point on the graph everything will go critical and melt down, and we will have to sell Colin’s half of the house. I was very amused to see someone on the Mustardland Board use the phrase “welfare junkies” to describe people on benefits. I would really love for some of these mad colonels in Gloucestershire and appallingly dreadful middle England tricoteuse women who think that the whole country is fraudulently and effortlessly claiming money that it’s not entitled to, to have a go at crowbarring ESA out of the DWP. Currently, they owe me £252 which they are withholding payment of for no good reason that I can see, and that sum is increasing by £9.35 a day. Still, it all helps the government cash flow, I suppose, and if they can delay paying this “welfare junkie” for long enough, well, he’ll be out on the street, and someone else’s problem!

But, there is always someone worse off than yourself, and they wrote to me this week, in the form of a charity appeal from the one-legged Cambodian orphans, enclosing a tiny little miniature crutch, which they had personally whittled from bamboo, just for me. I realise that in these hard times, charities are having to resort to ever more desperate measures to attract donations, but at the time I received it, I thought the miniature bamboo crutch was probably a step too far. If it’s a joke, then Big G has temporarily lost touch with his audience, though as usual, I can’t fault his timing. I briefly considered writing back to the one-legged Cambodian orphans, asking them if they had any spare cash, and debating with them whether one functioning leg was better than two useless ones. I guess that if they want to get out of their own house, they can just hop through the door, unlike me. Eventually, though, reason prevailed, the red mist cleared, and I added it to the growing pile of charity appeals to be reconsidered one
day, if we ever have any real spare change again, if ever.

Then the next afternoon, a bloke cold-called me, when I was in the middle of reconciling the bank statement, to offer me a free gym membership. “Oh, boy, have you got the wrong man!” was my first reaction, but he was unfazed and said that the gym was wheelchair accessible. In the end, more in recognition of his refusal to give up than anything else (maybe I recognized a kindred spirit) I grudgingly agreed to have a look at their web site. Except it turns out, they didn’t have one, a crucial omission in an era when even the Look North weather man has his own Twitter feed! So we compromised, and I said I would ask my wife to have a look at his gym, next time she was driving past, to see if it would be suitable for me. So we parted friends, and he got off lightly, considering that in one of my (many) phone calls with Virgin Media this week I told them that if they didn’t make my mobile phone work properly, I would throw it in the garden pond right after this call, and there will be a new phone company on Monday.

Another key person in my life who has been conspicuous by their absence this week has been the plumber, so we are still having to turn the water off overnight to prevent the bowl, placed strategically under the sink to catch the drips, from overflowing. I don’t know what I have done to upset the plumber. Actually, I do – it’s called “not having enough money”. Whatever, he’s been busy elsewhere, and so when I came through this morning and went to fill the kettle for that first, life-giving, corpse-reviving, plasma-enhancing cup of tea, there was no water, and I was forced to recycle the water from last night’s hot water bottle. Therefore, the tea had rather a rubbery tang to it (reminding me of the joke about the man in the Chinese Restaurant who said “Waiter, this chicken is rubbery!” and the waiter replied “Ah, thank you, sir!”) Well, having offended the Cambodians, I thought I would go for the set and match. If the Chinese can’t take a joke, then they should stop attracting attention to themselves by arresting dissident sculptors, and get the hell out of Tibet.

And so we somehow got to Saturday, and the Cup Final. Being neither a particular fan of Manchester City or of Stoke, I didn’t really have a horse in this race, though my natural inclination is always toward the underdog. But sadly, big money prevailed, and Manchester City bought the trophy this year. After I had been looking forward to it, it seemed a rather lacklustre occasion, actually. Even Abide With Me, which is normally a massive flood-tide of emotion for me, seemed to pass me by.

Normally, it makes me think of all those people following their team, every week, rain or shine, win or lose, for richer, for poorer, standing in the grey Northern rain on the terraces, like me and John Taylor used to do, to watch Hull City, taking the place of people who had stood on those same terraces in previous generations, wearing flat caps and raincoats, and smoking woodbines, back in the days when Raich Carter was our very own Wizard of Dribble, and who were still all around us, in ghostly form, soundlessly cheering on the likes of Ken Wagstaffe and Chris Chilton from another dimension. A flowing tide of flat caps, bobbing along towards the ground on match days, disgorged by trams and trolley-buses. Rattles, scarves, and bobble-hats, and a cup of Bovril at half-time. Goalposts for jumpers. That’s what the FA Cup should mean, but like a lot of things in my life these days, it’s not what it used to be. Especially in the year since my last birthday.

Birthdays have been on my mind this week, because this Sunday marks Debbie’s. These days, we can only afford token presents, so she got a T-shirt. And if you think she was hard done by, it cost over three times as much as the tub of Mason’s Dog Oil that I got for my birthday. Anyway, in case she didn’t like it, I kept the receipt. Poor Deb, another year older, and she’s stuck with me. She didn’t sign up for this. In fact, when I think of the crap she has had to wade through in the last year, since all this descended on us, combined with her new career (which involves staying up til 4AM to prepare lessons teaching the land that education forgot – a.k.a. Dewsbury – about subject/verb agreement) and minor diversions such as crashing the car, to end up, ironically, with a hubby on wheels, I bet she wishes she had kept the receipt. I told her, of course, that if the Muscular Dystrophy did turn out to be the sort that reduced me to the physical and mental capacity of a “kneaded clod”, that she was free to bail out at any time. And yet she has stuck with me, as well as being stuck with me. Through thin and thin, for poorer and poorer. But there’s no sense at all in two people’s lives being ruined when she is still young enough and fit enough to find someone else to take her kayaking and climb mountains with. Maybe her birthday would be a good opportunity to tell her again.

I haven’t actually consulted the Lectionary, or the Book of Common Prayer this week. Deliberately, this time. I am trying not to look for non-existent messages from God, twisting the words of what I read to seek self-invented reassurances that I will ever walk again. Because if I carry on doing that, and I never do walk again, then I will feel that God has let me down, betrayed me, that St Jude and St Padre Pio and all the other entities I prayed to in my desperation will all have turned their backs. Also [and this is the point I reached with the Epilogues last time, though for different reasons] it’s hypocritical of me to try and interpret something else for people when I don’t necessarily believe it, or even understand it, myself.

It’s probably more honest to say that if Big G was leaving messages for me this week, it was in the letter from the Cambodian orphans and the call from the guy at the gym. Maybe there is always someone worse off than me, at least I haven’t been reduced to whittling bamboo crutches to beg for financial help yet (though if the Department of Work and Pensions are reading this, thanks to your lack of effort and support, I soon will be) and I can still get food from the shop, and sometimes (plumber permitting) clean water from the tap.

And maybe I should join the gym, if it really is free (though my experience of life is that usually, when something sounds too good to be true, it is) after all, it’s the nearest thing to physio that’s going to come my way.

Anyway, I am giving the Bible-bashing a rest for a week, to see what happens. I want to come back to it and read up around Whitsun, so I haven’t given up on it altogether, yet, just temporarily suspended my frantic search for hidden Cabalistic clues about Muscular Dystrophy concealed in muscular Christianity.

"God helps those who help themselves", is what the Victorians used to say, in between covering up the legs of the piano, so as not to inflame the servants and the lower orders. If it is the will of Big G, though God knows why, that I am now stuck in this wheelchair, and destined to be one of the ironsides forever, then maybe I should follow Cromwell’s dictum, and "trust in God, but keep my powder dry."

Epiblog for the Third Sunday of Easter

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Another week in my life as a parcel. Back at home in the Holme Valley. Home, home and deranged, as the old song says. Back in the old routine. Back in what the church would probably call “Common Time”.

In the end, my leave-taking of “Broadmoor” was a surprisingly low-key affair. After I posted last week’s Epiblog, I turned off the laptop and unplugged everything, then packed up all of my kit into about half a dozen large carrier bags (it’s amazing how you seem to accumulate stuff, even after just four weeks) and only then did I wonder how I was going to get it all downstairs and to the front door in time for Debbie’s arrival in the camper.

As it turned out, it became a self-solving problem, with the materialisation in my doorway of a very able young carer called (rather improbably, for Huddersfield) Natasha, who had come to see if I needed a hand. In the twinkling of an inkling, she had assessed the problem and magicked a patient transfer wheelchair (not a self-propel jobby, one of those with the four little wheels) loaded all my carriers onto it, and it was time to bid farewell to Room 39, and we were trundling down the corridor in convoy, through the dining room, round the corner towards the lift, pausing only briefly to say goodbye to Vince and Clive, my erstwhile dining companions at mealtimes, and down to the front lobby, to sign me out and to pay for my phone calls (a massive 69p) then out through the automatic doors and into the car park.

I’d like to say I symbolically walked out of there, but I didn’t. Like the parcel that I have become, I was handed over to Deb, who then pushed me up the ramps and into the camper. I made a brief fuss of Tig, who was snoozing on the camper bed, before sliding across from my wheelchair onto the passenger seat, the engine started, I belted up, and we were rumbling home in the bright May sunlight.

The remaining days of this week have been taken up relentlessly with picking up the threads I left dangling when I went into Oakmoor, and trying to effect the repair of things which have gone wrong in my absence.

The garden has undergone an amazing transformation in the four weeks I was away. Actually, I say “amazing”, but it happens every year, I suppose. I don’t know why I should be any more amazed this year, except that this year I’ve had it presented to me as a finished piece, rather than seeing it as a daily work in progress. The tracery of bare branches that crisscrossed my bedroom window all those cold winter mornings is now a lush, waving, nodding, sea of green leaves, ruffling in the breeze and reflecting in the sun. The squirrels (and “beasties smal of gentyl kinde”) are busy too, but these days I no longer see them skittering about doing their high-wire act, I merely hear them scampering, rustling and bustling somewhere up high in the leafy canopy.

Debbie’s work in the garden has been mainly concerned with clearance, so far, though we have briefly discussed what we could do about altering it to make it more parcel-friendly, if we decide to go down that route, and if I ever get out of the house under my own steam again. Russell’s mosaic has acquired a patina of moss, that will need grubbing away before it gets a hold in the grouting, and, sadly, Nigel’s memorial stone, which we brought back all the way from Arran in 2009 to mark his resting-place, and which I painstakingly painted with acrylics and then varnished, with an effigy of him and suitable Latin inscription, has been wiped clean by the mighty hand of the last epic winter. The stone remains – it’s probably already a few million years old, and it will take the frosts of a few million more to reduce it to sand – but the iconography is gone. So I made a sketch of a design for a putative mosaic for him, too, though it will have to wait until I can afford the smalti.

The animals (the domestic ones, I mean) have largely ignored my homecoming. To be fair, though, in this hot sunny weather, Tig has been taking advantage and sprawling out on the decking at every opportunity, where of course I cannot follow her or venture. Kitty, having ignored the existence of my downstairs bed all winter, and having had to be virtually crowbar-ed out of her little nest in the hearth, has now, paradoxically, since we’ve let the stove go out, apart from a couple of nights when we burnt a few logs just to take the chill off, taken to coming and sleeping with me, so that on a couple of occasions I have woken in a panic thinking I have totally lost the use of my legs, when in fact the problem has been caused by a heat-seeking cat who has managed to swiss-roll herself up in the duvet in the early hours, and who, despite what my physio calls my “increased bed mobility” I don’t have the strength to shove out of the way. In fact, shoving only makes her purr all the louder.

In amongst all the plumbers, couriers, wheelchair bods, postmen and would-be ramp builders this week (don’t ask about the ramp, there is more chance of the two-state solution being enacted in Palestine than there is of Kirklees building a ramp, right now) one of my other visitors was Jo, my physio from HRI. She confirmed more or less what I suspected, that despite my improvements in Oakmoor, I was now going to be referred to the Community Physio Team. Basically, we’re talking about preparing for the possibility that I might be a permanent parcel, fit only for the “Tragic Steve Appeal” on Look North. True, I will still have the self-administered standing hoist, when it comes (there seems to be an issue with the sling for it having gone AWOL) and Jo is going to look into the possibility of getting me some bars, but basically, the onus is now on me to use those things to get strong again, or at least to get strong-er, to the extent that I could then, eventually, be referred back to them for physio.

If I don’t do this, of course, or if (a more likely scenario) the many, varied, and myriad distractions of trying to correct the errors of the DWP, organise the plumbers, feed the cat, feed the dog, feed Debbie (now that Summer term is going full blast, and she’s teaching every day) and write, edit and sell books, all conspire against me, then I will quickly lose what muscle tone I gained in Broadmoor, and be right back where I started from, or worse. Use it, or lose it.

So, it’s a pretty grim prospect. Jo asked me how my bottom was holding up (I kid you not – they have to ask, in case you are developing sores or anything – it’s called a Waterlow assessment, for reasons which are unclear) and I was able to assure her that, physically, my bottom was in fine fettle, despite the promised pressure cushion never having materialised from Wheelchair Services. I told her not to worry, that I was far more likely to break down mentally rather than physically. Which is very true.

I have never seriously contemplated suicide before, no matter how bad things got, and I don’t suppose I “seriously” contemplated it this week. But the stark fact remains, that is the ultimate choice left to me. Accept the fact that I have to spend the rest of my life as a parcel, an unclaimed one, overlooked, gradually gathering dust in the great courier depot of irrelevance, or unwrap myself and post myself to the great beyond.

Often, in the past, I’ve taken solace from Karine Polwart’s song about “The Sun’s Coming Over The Hill”, but this week I’ve been thinking more about the line where she sings (split infinitive notwithstanding)

“You get what you’re given and then it’s all gone
And you are lucky if you are sufficiently strong
To daily decide not to die”

So far, I have been sufficiently strong, but as Yeats once memorably observed, “too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart”.

As far as my religious life is concerned, this week has been such a jumble of miscellaneous crap I have hardly had time for a shit or a shave, let alone anything as contemplative as reading or prayer. So I must admit I gazed with blank and largely uncomprehending eyes on this week’s offerings as decided by the Lectionary, and only today for the first time. Much of it, to be frank, passed me by. I suppose it must have been strangely thrilling to have been part of Christianity when it was still new and radical, a bit edgy, a bit “underground”, but at the time it probably just felt, well, dangerous. Often, with these things, it’s only afterwards that you look back and say with a quiet satisfaction that you were in there at the start. These days, it would be like being one of the first people to follow Jesus on twitter, a sort of @jesus hash tag, or whatever the terminology is.

The only bit of the scriptures for this week that did lodge in my brain for longer than the time it takes to read it, was the Apostles on the Road to Emmaus, in Luke 24:13-35

And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.

And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.

I quoted it at length because I like the story, and because I am hoping it’s strangely apposite. I’m hoping that I haven’t gone and done what I said I mustn’t do in my last Epiblog, that is to nail my faith (such as it is) to the idea of getting up and being able to walk again. I’m hoping it’s not lost altogether, it’s just that as I travel through the courier system of life, God is my router, my PDA my track’n’trace, and my bar code. Jesus was here, but he just left. Or Jesus is here, but I didn’t recognise him. Then he vanished again. We attempted to nourish your soul, but you were out, so we took it back to the depot.

If I am to be a parcel, I can only hope he carries me through my downs as well as my ups – or, given the extended metaphor, should that be my UPS? I can only hope so. Deliver me, Oh Lord.

And that, even if my intended final destination isn’t available, I will at least get left in a place of safety, and not out on the doorstep in the rain.

Epiblog for the Second Sunday of Easter

It has been a busy week in The Holme Valley. After the high-water mark of Easter Sunday last week, and my introspective navel-gazing and stocktaking about what I really believe, this week, my final week in “Broadmoor” has been (with one notable exception) a case of “back to the grind”, to try and wring every last ounce of advantage out of me being here.

The "notable exception" was Easter Monday. We had been watching the weather forecast over the Bank Holiday weekend and we’d decided that if we were going to go to Walney Island in the camper, then Easter Monday would be our best bet. And so it proved. Debbie told me to be ready and waiting outside by 10AM, so I made a special effort to get out of bed at 7.30AM and get sorted. At 10.10 I pushed myself breathlessly out into the sunlit car park, and sat there in my wheelchair, surrounded by a carrier bag of art gear and my fleece, until 11AM, when she finally turned up. It transpired that Butch, next door’s unruly dog, had chased Kitty up a tree and Debbie had been delayed trying to a) chase off Butch and get him out of our garden and b) entice Kitty down out of the tree. Since neither animal seemed particularly anxious to do what she wanted, in the end she had reluctantly left them to it, but not before first encountering Butch’s owner and unburdening herself of a few pithy observations.

We wasted no more time, and she shoved me up the ramps and in to the camper, then I transferred onto the passenger seat, which rotates. This is how it’s going to be if we get away to Arran, in all probability, I thought. Deb had put the bed up in the back of the camper and it was squarely occupied by Zak, Freddie and Tig, none of whom allowed my entrance to disturb their slumbers. Soon we were bowling along the M62 in bright sunshine, heading for the M61 and thence the M6 and the Lakes. I found myself with very mixed feelings. I welled up with emotion, on the one hand, because I had seriously thought I might never see the Lakes, or Walney, again. On the other hand, happy as I was to be going back, I was equally conscious that it wasn’t me doing the driving, and once more all of the work was falling on Deb. Exactly the same, but different.

The dogs loved it. Zak ran in and out of the sea, Freddie barked his little head off and ran round and round, even Tiggy found a sprightliness – no doubt induced by the bracing ozone – that had hitherto been absent from her gait. On the way through, we had stopped off in Ulverston at Booth’s Supermarket, and purchased a variety of yummy things to eat, so I had a lunch of crusty bread with tzatziki and roast aubergine tapenade. Then I got my painting gear out and painted a very unremarkable watercolour of the beach and the sea and the headland and breakwater. But, foul as it was, it was an important landmark for me, the first time I had painted anything for almost a year. All too soon, it was time to start on the long road back, but before we took our leave, Deb drove the camper up and round onto the headland, facing out to sea, so we could watch the sun going down. There was hardly anyone about, the wind had dropped from earlier, there was just the shushing of the sea as the waves went in and out hypnotically. Deb knocked the top off a bottle of Bateman’s Victory Ale (6.0%) and handed it to me, and I basked equally in its nutty, hoppy flavours in my mouth and the feel of the warm sun through the windscreen on my face.

Tuesday was the day I suffered for it all, of course. I don’t know if I had unwittingly exposed myself to a draught (ooer, missus!) but my shoulder was aching like mad when I woke up, which didn’t bode well for physiotherapy. It couldn’t have been the beer. That was bottled, not draught. By mid-morning, and following a liberal application of Dog Oil, I was feeling a bit more like it, and the post arrived, bringing a "get well" card from Maisie’s friend Pippa, and her tortoise, Jub-Jub. It is the first time I have ever had a get well card from a tortoise. And it was sweet of Pippa to send it. It never ceases to amaze me that these wrinkly old beasts manage to sleep through the whole winter, seemingly live for hundreds of years, despite being totally gaga, and manage to wake up every spring and somehow find their way to the nearest radiator. Then there’s the tortoise!

Anyway, the time came for physio, and this was my cue to have another go in the parallel bars. My previous record had been 30 seconds. Could I beat it? Yes I could! 45 seconds later I flopped back into the wheelchair, thinking “next stop, one minute!” But that was it for the day. I had to wait until Wednesday to beat my sit-to-stand record, which I did with two separate “stands” of 60 seconds. We also experimented (the physios and I) with getting me further upright by taking the wheelchair away when I was standing and substituting a “perch stool” as they called it, so that when I sat back down, I was starting next time from a higher “perch”. I could, at this point, shoehorn in the joke about anyone who can’t afford to buy a parrot outright being able to get one on higher perches, but I won’t. Oh. I just did.

The progress I had made in just a few days from only being able to hold it for 7 seconds to being able to hang there for over a minute was very heartening to me. Lucy, my physio, did make a point which was very valid, though, which was that it would be difficult for me to replicate this particular exercise and carry on when I went home. True, I ruefully observed, while making a mental note to look up parallel bars on Ebay.

Thursday was the day when Granny was returning from her royal progress to Southampton to see the various offspring, so Debbie came up in the afternoon instead of the evening, to allow her time to go to the station later and meet her Mum’s train. We sat outside on the seat in the sun again, and discussed what we would have to do in the way of modifying the camper if indeed we were going to make the effort and try to get to Arran again this summer.

I asked her what she was having for tea. (One of my perennial worries while I am in here is that she doesn’t feed herself properly. She, in turn, maintains that I have a secret plan to fatten up all those around me, so that I don’t stand out so much.) She said,

“I don’t know, but I am going to give up buying crisps because I only end up eating them.”

I was still trying to work that one out, when a large bird flapped slowly overhead.

“Is that a heron, or is it just a bird?”

Deb had also brought some stuff I had ordered online. On Easter Monday my rosary beads had fallen out of the pocket of my fleece somewhere in the camper, and were now in that annoying state of being “mislaid”. I knew that they could only be in a couple of places in the camper, but these were equally inaccessible and might as well have been lost. I was slightly miffed at this, because they had seen me all through my time in hospital and all through this epic winter. So I ordered a replacement set from the Walsingham Pilgrim Shop, in this case with a medal of St Padre Pio. I’ve been neglecting old Padre Pio lately, in fact I have been neglecting praying generally. I must make more of an effort, especially as the “How To Pray The Rosary” booklet that came with St P P tells me I have been doing it wrong all these years!

I’d also ordered a replica medieval pilgrim badge of St James, to remind me that one of the outstanding things on my “bucket list” from hospital was still outstanding, namely to go to Santiago de Compostella. [I made two important lists while I was in hospital; one of all the things I intended to do when I got out, before I finally kick the bucket, and one of the hymns and readings for my funeral, in case plan A didn’t work out!]

Later on, after tea, Lucy from the Archers’ web site called in briefly to visit, en route to Manchester. I hadn’t seen her since the night of my “leaving party” in Calderdale Royal, and was asking her about her new job, new car, new life, more or less, in fact. As she is a leading light in the local cat rescue circuit, I also asked her if she’d scout around outside and have a brief look on her way out for a small black and white cat (the one that taunted Freddie the other week) which I’d seen hanging around outside, and which I thought might be a stray. Sadly, however, although Lucy made the effort, the cat failed to appear.

The powers that be at “Broadmoor” had decreed that there should be a Royal Wedding Quiz, which we all filled in after dinner, in my case, I suspect, more ironically than most. The quiz was based on predicting what would happen on the day itself, and the penultimate question was “will there be a flyover [sic] at Buckingham Palace?” My answer was “only if they can get planning permission.”

I had assumed that was more or less the end of Thursday, but Angie, the Therapy Assistant stuck her head round the door and asked if I fancied another go on the parallel bars. I said I did, but sadly I was unable to emulate my previous feats. I was feeling a bit tired and past it, and could only manage two stands of 25 seconds and one of 30.

Friday was yet another bright day, weather-wise, only cooler. It was impossible to avoid the Royal Wedding, of course, as not only was it on the big widescreen TV in the patients’ lounge, but several of the old ducks had it on their own TVs, with the volume up to pain threshold level, so the overall effect was one of surroundsound. There’s a few seconds lag between the analogue sets and the digital ones though, so when they were singing the hymns, you got a sort of FA Cup Final “Abide With Me” effect of some people being half a bar ahead.

I’ve posted on the Royal Wedding in my other blog, so it would be futile to repeat it all here, except to say I hope he avoids the mistakes his mother made and I hope he’s allowed the space to do so. The News of The World probably left him a good luck message on his voicemail, anyway.

Meanwhile, for me, Friday became increasingly dominated by a problem with my wheelchair, specifically the flatness of one of the tyres. I didn’t think it was a puncture, I thought it was just that the air had got knocked out of it over time, in the way that it does with any pneumatic tyre. Various solutions were proposed, but unfortunately, I happened to fall foul of someone who “knew about bikes” and appeared bearing a bike pump and adapter. Bless him, he was only trying to help, but in effect, since the adapter had a split in it, he only succeeded in letting the air out of the tyre instead of adding additional air in! To make matters worse, he did it to the tyre that wasn’t flat to start with, so I was well and truly buggered now, with one soft tyre and one completely flat.

The people from Oakmoor managed to find another old wheelchair in a cupboard somewhere, and I transferred into that. However, it also had a flat tyre, so my movement was restricted, to say the least. My attention was diverted briefly from my wheelchair woes by the visit of Peter, another member of the Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Club from Ward 10 in Calderdale, and his partner Margaret, and we spent a pleasant couple of hours sitting in the sun, drinking tea and setting the world to rights.

I woke up on Saturday depressed at the thought that I now had one borrowed wheelchair (old and clanky, one flat tyre) and one “owned” wheelchair (new and clanky, two flat tyres). It felt for a moment like I had had my legs cut off, then I got a grip and steeled myself for the unpleasantness ahead. I knew that the wheelchair services people had refused to come out to look at it until Wednesday, and I had no intention of sitting here until then, unable to move more than a few feet across the room without the tyre coming off. So I knew, predictably, with a heavy heart, that I would have to do what you now have to do to get any sort of attention from officialdom these days, basically get on the phone and act shouty barmy until you have made yourself such a pain in the arse that they agree to do what you want, just to get rid of you. If only there was some other way.

As it turned out, there was. It was all to do with being in a state of Grace. Grace, in this case, turned out to be one of the helpers who was on duty that Saturday. As soon as she saw the wreckage of my wheelchair she said “Do you want a hand with that?” Slightly wary of “helpful” people I said “Do you know how to fix it, then?” and it turned out she did, - as part of her training she had covered wheelchair repairs 101. To cut a long story short, between us, using an old kitchen knife as a tyre lever, we got the inner tube back in place, the tyre on the rim, and she then hefted the wheelchair up and carried it down to the car park, where she had a plug-in compressor and tyre inflator which worked off her car battery, and duly pumped it up. In half an hour, I was sitting back in “my” wheelchair again, with two fully inflated tyres.

You may think, of course, well, that’s what she was paid to do. It isn’t, actually. She was supposed to be making beds and doing coffees and cleaning bathrooms and completing her paperwork. She didn’t have to help me out. She didn’t have to carry my dead wheelchair all the way along the corridor, down in the lift, outside and round to the car park, and use her own petrol in running the car engine to drive the compressor. She didn’t have to do any of this stuff. But she did. And those who decry public sector workers like Grace should think on, and think twice, before dismissing them as lazy, uncaring and inefficient. As I have said before, they are, in my experience, none of those things.

So, there but for the Grace of God (or something) went I. I spent Saturday afternoon packing up some of my stuff, and Deb and her Mum called by at teatime and took it home. For it has come to pass, that my four weeks here is nearly up. In fact, technically, it is up on Monday, but Lucy the physio said that I could go any time after my last session on Saturday, if it helped. Next week, I will be back at home, with all that entails. I am sitting here in the sunlight streaming in through the big window of my room at Broadmoor, but tonight, by the time you read this, probably, I will be at home with the cat on my knee, and will sleep under my own rooftree. I don’t know, in all honesty, where we go from here. I will have the new standing hoist at some point during the week. I won’t have any parallel bars. I will have a meeting with the ramp people about what they are planning to do on Tuesday. I will have a meeting with Jo my physio on Thursday, and she might well say that the NHS has thrown everything it can at me, and that I am stuck in a wheelchair for ever and ever, amen. We’ll see about that, but if she does, it will be a bitter blow after all the progress I have made here.

All this frantic activity hasn’t left me much time for my duty as a self appointed religious commentator! Actually, I love that phrase, “religious commentator” – they always describe Clifford Longley as a "religious commentator" on "Thought for the Day" and it invariably makes me think of someone reading the Bible in the voice of Eddie Waring. (Well, er, here’s Goliath, he’s a big lad, but his mother loves him…) All I’ve had time to do is to give a brief glance over the appointed texts from the Lectionary, while trying to bear in mind that, when you speak to God, it’s prayer, when God speaks to you, it could be schizophrenia. So, here’s my brief roundup of what I have found in this week’s readings, which may or may not be any use to anyone else.

Acts 2:14a, 22–32 seems mainly to be concerned with prophesying what the “Last Days” will be like, but it does contain – once again – some of my favourite King James bits, which, to my shame, I hadn’t known the source of, until today.

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:

Old men shall dream dreams. I will go along with that, speaking as an old man with many dreams, as yet unrealised. I only hope I have the time, and the faith to turn them into reality, not least of which being the dream of walking once again.

1 Peter 1:3–9 is more concerned with the fact that the Apostles – and anyone who followed Jesus – is going to have to rely heavily on their belief, their faith, now that the bodily Jesus has left them:

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:

The final text, John 20:19–31, is about Jesus appearing in person to the disciples, including Doubting Thomas, who refused to believe it until he had seen it with his own eyes:

The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the LORD. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

If there is a common theme coming out to me from all this, some kind of “message” I guess that it’s not to lose faith. We had last weekend, with the great triumph of Easter, and for me, with the great triumph of almost standing up, but now we’re back to the grind, back to the daily routine, the life of small things, and what sustains us is the faith that things might get better, if I believe strongly enough. But, as Hemingway once said, "If you're looking for a message, try Western Union!"

The future has once more become unclear. That door I wrote about is still open, but it hasn’t opened any wider. Padre Pio believed strongly enough in the wounds of Christ to begin exhibiting signs of them on his own body: I am not saying I want to go that far. In fact, I must be careful of pinning together what little faith I have and the idea of walking again, because if the walking again doesn’t happen, for whatever, reason, it could take my weakling faith down with it. So, like Doubting Thomas, I am back to asking for a sign. But if I don’t get one, instead of refusing to believe, I need the strength to hang on, metaphorically, to the parallel bars of God. With the wind in the willows, and the birds in the sky, and a bright sun to warm me, wherever I lie.