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.
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