Epiblog for the First Sunday After Trinity

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The promised “heatwave” kept us waiting, but I have to say, out of grudging respect to the weatherman, it has arrived at last, at least if the rest of Sunday remains as fine as it promises to be, as I sit here, with the conservatory door open to the garden, writing in my notebook with my Gillott “dipper”, and looking out onto what seems to be a canopy of a million sun-dappled green leaves, as “our” trees merge with the ones on the valley slope, falling away, down towards the river and Park Valley Mills. As Andrew Marvell put it, far better than I ever could:

“Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought, in a green shade”.

If this weather carries on for more than a day or two, I confidently predict the headlines will be “Phew what a scorcher!” and “Met Men Say There’s More To Come!” accompanied by the obligatory pictures of benighted fools frying eggs on the pavement in Trafalgar Square.

Up til today, though, it has still been dull, cold and rainy, a state of affairs which has frequently led to Kitty invading my bed at night, like a small, furry, heat-seeking missile. The Poles Apart must have taken to turfing Spidey out at night again, as well, as I have encountered him visiting us on two separate occasions this week, once when he had just come in through the cat-flap and he gave me a cursory glance when I said his name, prior to ignoring me and continuing upstairs to his little nest amongst the pile of my shirts in the spare room; and once when I had just transferred onto my wheelchair in the morning, and was, therefore, temporarily blocking his path to freedom, forcing him to wind sinuously between my wheels and legs, so close that, as on previous occasions, I could almost have reached down and stroked him.

I said to Debbie that maybe we should put a card through their door or something, telling them not to worry, and that he’s taken to sleeping in our house at night, and she replied that if they were that worried, they wouldn’t let him stay out in the first place, or at least they’d be out there looking for him.

Tig has had an uneventful week. Her lead has gone missing, it will no doubt turn up amongst the maelstrom of dogs and Granny, next time Freddie and Zak come to visit. They all tend to be interchangeable anyway, the dogs as well as the leads. Other than that, she has been snoozing on the new arthritis-friendly, fleecy dog bed (Tig, not Granny). It really does seem to give some comfort to her creaky old bones, and she sprawls on it with such a blissful expression sometimes that I have actually considered ordering the largest size (St Bernard/Great Dane) and putting it on my bed, for myself.

Looking back over the week, it seems to have been a catalogue of narrowly-avoided disasters and hasty repairs. Chief amongst these was my electric bed breaking down on Wednesday night. It had first showed signs of not being very well on Tuesday, when I was using the handset and trying to lower it, so that I could then slide onto it, using my banana board, employing the effect of gravity. The “foot” end of the bed resolutely refused to obey the handset, so the whole thing ended up sloping at 45 degrees. Clearly unacceptable. Even if I could have got onto it at that angle, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep on such a tilt, even “head-to-foot”. I shouted to Debbie and she came in and surveyed the problem. I admitted to her that I was at a loss what to do. She wasn’t. She drew herself back and then launched a flying, Jackie Chan-style kung-fu kick at the foot of the bedstead. I pressed the relevant button on the remote, and hey presto! The foot end responded and went down to its correct height. Result, I thought to myself, while making a mental note never to get in the way of one of those kicks, when Debbie is having a bad day.

However, the respite proved only temporary, and on Wednesday night it malfunctioned in exactly the same way, and this time, nothing would budge it. No kung-fu, not even unplugging it at the wall then plugging it in again, to re-set it. Nothing. I am a firm believer in the dictum that you only need two tools in life, Duct Tape and WD-40 “Rocket” Oil. If it moves, and it shouldn’t, you use the Duct Tape. If it doesn’t move, and it should, spray it with Rocket. Even this failed to shift it, though, so at 1.05AM I admitted defeat, gave up, and took the decision to sleep in my wheelchair. I ended up having about four hours of the worst sleep I have had since being in hospital.

Previously during the week (Sunday night, to be precise) Debbie had been fretting about getting her stuff prepared in time for her class on Monday, where she was due to have an “observation” by more senior staff, and it had got so late that she had ended up kipping downstairs on the sofa, as it wasn’t worth going to bed. I had asked her at the time how she had fared, and she had said it had been fine, apart from the birds, who she described as “bloody inconsiderate”, pattering about on the conservatory roof and cawing at each other very loudly at 3.30AM. They proved equally “inconsiderate” to me at dawn on Thursday, and so it transpired that I was awake and about early, and on the phone to my OT at 8AM.

Once more, however, the NHS proved itself to be the very model of efficiency and organisation, and by 10.30 there was an engineer on site and looking at it, and by 11AM it was fixed, and he was on his way to the next hapless soul in possession of an emergency. I can’t fault that. It turned out, in the end, to have been a problem with the handset, in fact, which is a sealed unit anyway, and not repairable, so no amount of Duct Tape or WD-40 would have helped. It still doesn’t explain the kung-fu kick, though.

The other major repair and renewal effected by Debbie this week was to the pouffe which she had bought, a rather fetching black leatherette plastic style object, on which she is wont to rest her feet while using her laptop. One of the legs had become loose, which meant it was leaning at a bit of a drunken angle, so she tried to straighten it by whacking it with a big hammer, but, owing to its overall gimcrack construction, this only made matters worse. So we now have a crazily-inclined black pouffe with one wonky leg, which ticks so many diversity and equality “boxes” I am surprised that Kirklees Council haven’t awarded us a grant for it on the spot.

The council has, though, sadly, been rather lacking in the grants department, and not at all munificent. They finally responded to the three-and-a-half page “stinker” I wrote them about the ramp, in the form of a phone call from yet another (different) surveyor, wanting this time to come around and survey all of the house to enumerate all of the “disabled-friendly” stuff that needs doing, including, once more, the ramp. I went through the story to date with him on the phone, because, as I was at pains to point out, I didn’t want to waste his time, and, more importantly, I didn’t want to waste my time. I asked him again how they had come to the conclusion that we were too rich to qualify for the ramp alone, and he said he didn’t know, but he did have a note of the figure that we would be expected to contribute to the overall cost of the works, so I asked him what it was, and he said £10,392.83.

What!?!? There was a moment’s stunned silence and then I said, when I had recovered my composure, that there were only two ways in which such a figure could be arrived at, either the “model” they used to calculate it didn’t take into account the many and varied debts I had enumerated in my letter, or there was an error somewhere in the calculations. Either way, it was clear there was no point in him coming round, I said, as even if I did by some miracle ever possess £10, 392.83, it would go straight to Barclays, as a significant step down the road to getting them off my back.

A couple of days later, I had another call, from a different bloke yet again. There may have been an error in the calculations, and they are coming round on Monday for a meeting to discuss it. I said fine, I am in all day and every day (with heavy emphasis) so we left it at that. Watch this space, as they say. In any event, Peter the handyman will be back off his hols in a week’s time, so we will at least be able to progress plan B.

In fact, despite my sarcasm on the phone, I have actually managed to escape the house once this week, for the first time since Bank Holiday Monday. By dint of Debbie dragging me out and down the temporary metal ramps then shoving me up them again, into the back of the camper, she managed to convey me to the pub at Salterhebble, which sells, surprisingly, a quite passable glass of Jennings’ Cumberland Ale. The occasion was a convivial meeting of the Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Club, with my comrades from Ward 7 at Calderale Royal, Bernard and Peter, and Peter’s partner Margaret. We naturally fell to reminiscing about what had happened to all the nurses and the other patients who had been in at the same time as we had.

Bernard, a level-headed and practical man, surprised me with quite a poetic analogy. He said he’d always pictured us, in our little enclave, as the crew of a Lancaster Bomber, flying on through the cold winter nights, looking always towards the end of our “tour” and our release. He himself was the flight engineer, I was apparently the navigator, because of my possession of the laptop, and Peter, who was nearest the door, was the tail-gunner. It was a natty, touching little simile, and one which neatly captured the shared plight and comradeship of our stay as guests of the NHS.

I was interrupted in my thoughts by a text from my sister, telling me that BB King was on TV at the moment, live from Glastonbury, on BBC 4. I texted her back to say that unfortunately, BB King had unerringly chosen for his performance a night when I was in the pub, and in any case, I could only receive BBC 4 when I was wearing Princess Beatrice’s fascinator. She texted me back to say that she was surprised to hear that I wasn’t wearing a fascinator, out to the pub.

Speaking of texts, I had intended to get ahead of the game by looking up today’s texts on Saturday, but in fact another convivial evening (two in a row!) at home ensued, and this prevented me from doing my Bible study. I cooked a meal, which consisted of Penne Pasta, over which we had a tomato based sauce containing chunks of chopped up vegan sausage and onions clarified in olive oil, to which I had added basil, rosemary, paprika and garlic. I also knocked up some garlic bread to go with it. While it was cooking, I divided off some of the pasta and mixed it up with Tig’s mixer in her bowl, along with some shredded strips of pork luncheon meat (bought at the cheap shop as dog treats, and needing using up) and four or five chopped hot dog sausages out of a tin I found in the fridge.

The cat had already been fed, and had a saucer of longlife UHT milk, which she stuck her face into and hoovered up, leaving a milky halo round her whiskers, the dog wolfed her tea down, and Deb and I shared the pasta and the garlic bread, a bottle of cheap vino collapso was opened, and a good time was had by all.

It sort of felt like a “count your blessings” evening, with Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium on the CD player, Tig snoring on her fleecy bed, and Kitty curled up and snoozing on her crocheted cat-shawl. So I did. I am still here, I thought.

Instead of looking up the Lectionary for the First Sunday After Trinity, and the start of that long haul for the Church through "common time" towards autumn, as it ploughs on for Christmas, I reflected instead on the fact that Midsummer has come and gone, and that in two or three weeks it will be a year since all this shit first hit me and knocked my old life sideways into a cocked hat. It seemed a good time to pause and reflect (and already, sad to admit, I have started to lay out these blogs, this period of my life, into another bloody book) – to reflect on how I got here, and where I go next.

Do I still believe in Big G, although all of my three seasons of desperate prayer to him/her/it, and to St Padre Pio, St Jude, and anyone else who would listen out for the rattle of my Rosary, has all proven fruitless, and I will, probably, never walk again?

Yes, I suppose I still do, although I must confess I am as much in the dark now as I ever was about his intentions for me, and my part in the greater scheme of things. As I sat there on Saturday evening, listening to Pace Mihi Domine, by the Hilliard Ensemble with Jan Garbarek, music so intensely, sublimely, plangently beautiful that I want it at my funeral, I could only fall back on those lines from the Desiderata:

“And whether or not it is clear to you
No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should”

Well, that’s as maybe. Maisie, reading last week’s Epiblog, commented that I am “obviously turning into a trendy vicar and need to take a B. D.” Discovering that this was a reference to a Bachelor of Divinity and not, as I had assumed, some sort of proprietary tonic powder, I actually looked it up, online, to find out the cost by distance learning, and the answer was “too much to even contemplate”. In any case, who would listen to me, and how much would it cost to build a ramp up to a pulpit! Still, Big G sometimes chooses strange messengers (that’s “strange” in the sense of “unexpected”, Maisie, if you are reading this week’s; I didn’t mean to imply you were strange in any other ways!)

But a trendy vicar wouldn’t neglect his Bible study, would he, bibbling wine instead, committing the sin of accidie and having to fill in with a recipe instead? Surely that sort of thing went out with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, or at least the 18th Century “Squarsons”?

Well, whatever lies ahead for me, and it is very unclear at the moment, it is clear at least that my old life is gone for good. We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. Though I have managed, so far, to hold on to the precious things and the precious people, both furry and non-furry. (If you are reading this, and you don’t know which category you fall into, a good acid test is whether or not you regularly bury your poo in the garden and whether you can lick your own bottom.)

So, I should be thankful for small mercies, grateful for my lot. It could be worse. I might be a one-legged Cambodian orphan. Close ranks, keep calm, and carry on. Or, as Padre Pio apparently was fond of saying, pray and don’t worry.

Epiblog for Trinity Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. I’ve officially given up on summer this year. There’s been no answer to the council ramp letter – perhaps they all died when they read it, it was certainly intended to have that effect. We’re now in touch instead with the handyman guy who did the plumbing fix, who is coming back on 5th July to have a look at the scale of the operation. Plan B is clicking in to place, but is now, sadly, delayed by the fact that he has to go on holiday for two weeks first. Sadly for us, obviously, not for him.

Anyway, there may be a late flurry in the weather, who knows, this year; the sort of Autumn where the bees get fooled into thinking “warm days shall never cease” because “Summer has o’erbrimmed their clammy cells”, but I am not holding out any hopes. In fact, Maisie is already knitting Freddie a winter coat, which will be presented as part of Granny’s birthday celebrations on August 8th. Quite how come it works out that it’s Granny’s birthday, but Freddie who gets the present, is a mystery to me, but I guess it’s just another case of “sic biscuitus disintegrat”.

This coming week sees Midsummer day, of course, and back in January, when the days were struggling to get lighter, and I watched and charted Tiggy moving round the conservatory rug as the feeble patch of sunlight moved slightly each week, taking her with it, I speculated to myself where she might have reached by Midsummer day, but I had totally failed to factor in the effect of her new fleecy dog bed, specially designed to offer comfort to old, arthritic doggies, which has interrupted the normal motion of the heavens to such an extent that she now seeks it out in preference to any patch of sun, not that there have been many patches of sun to choose from, of late.

Kitty is a simpler, less complicated being in many ways; the changing seasons, for her, are simply a matter of being either warmer or colder, and adjusting by seeking out an appropriate niche somewhere in the house, in close proximity to a heat source, to while away her winter days, dreaming catty dreams. This coming winter, God willing, she will have the choice of both her cat bed in the hearth near to the stove, and her new crocheted cat blanket from her Auntie Maisie, so she should be, in the modern parlance, “well sorted”. Spidey has been conspicuous by his absence this week. I don’t know if the Poles Apart next door have finally realised the extend of his nocturnal ramblings and “grounded” him, but we did – at one point – hear the sound of pre-scrap caterwauling coming from down the bottom of the garden, one evening, so maybe that was him, squaring up either to the Interloper, or a passing fox. I actually thought Kitty was involved, and shouted to Deb, enjoining her to go and rescue our cat, until she wearily pointed out to me that Kitty was, in fact, at that precise moment, sprawled along the back of the conservatory armchair with all her legs dangling down, like a furry antimacassar.

Deb is another one who has been looking forward to the winter. “Looking forward” in the technical sense, rather than eagerly anticipating, because discussions have already been taking place about what she will teach next term. It looks like, if everything happens, and continues after the first crucial weeks, she will end up with about fifteen to nineteen hours’ work a week, at least to start with, which should help to maintain the separate locations for the wolf and the door, for a while, provided we can get through the fiscal drought of July and August. She’s now been given the two AQA-approved Oxford Anthologies from which apparently the texts (or some of them) are to be chosen, and I took great delight, on flipping through one of them, in informing her of the presence of Shelley’s Ozymandias, a poem which she loathes, from her days of having to study it herself at school. Oh well, says I, at least this is your chance to get your own back. Actually, I quote like it, as a poem, although it is a bit of a one-trick pony.

With the imminent ending of her various current courses, she’s been surprised to be the recipient of presents from two of them, who have clubbed together to buy her a necklace and earrings set (in one case) and a day’s paintballing (in another). I asked her if she’s going to take up the paintballing, and she said, “Only if I’m allowed live ammo”. So I left it at that. Still, it shows they hold her in high regard, though there was a certain irony in the accompanying card from her literacy class being inscribed “Thanks for all you’re help” [sic]. I said she should have put a big red ring round it and handed it back to them. That, or detention.

It has also been a week of further strange and more unexpected gifts. The unexpected came in the form of three packets of poppy seeds from Maisie, which I am hoping to persuade Debbie to plant around Russell’s mosaic and Nigel’s resting place in the garden, although of course poppies are another harbinger of autumn and a sign of summer’s fading. Even more unexpected was the revelation that someone has apparently left a suitcase full of magazines (content unspecified, so I don’t know whether it is The Entymological Journal or Danish Porn Vets On The Job) on Granny’s doorstep. She lives quite near to a busy bus stop, so it could be that someone was waiting for the bus, put the case down, because it was heavy, then absent-mindedly boarded the bus without it. Or that the magazines were meant for a neighbour, but the donor mistook the house, or any number of explanations. Anyway, I told her to put the contents and the case on Ebay. I rest my case.

My own week has been another one of slogging away on the phone. “Deceased equine flagellation”, is how I described it to one friend during an email. In between this mind-crushing, character-building, soul-destroying [delete as applicable] necessary groundwork for selling books, I have been deduping databases with my other leg and doing accounts in my sleep. In fact, I should be doing the VAT return even now, instead of writing this. Oh well.

Part of the necessary groundwork has also been the grasping of thorny old nettles which have been allowed to overgrow for too long. Specifically, the thorny old nettle of people who owe us money. I never enjoy being “Mr Nasty” in these circumstances, but the sad fact is that it has to be done, because there are some people, bookselling chains mainly, who will take the piss and never pay you for anything unless you get to the stage where you threaten to go nuclear and get medieval on their ass. Anyway, in amongst the sundry debtors was an outstanding sum for a literary festival, mentioning no names (coughcoughMorleycoughcough). I have had a go at getting this money back before, but the problem is that the only contact details we had are c/o the Town Hall. The books were actually supplied on sale or return anyway, and I have long suspected that the true answer to this conundrum lies in the presence, somewhere in a Town Hall cupboard, of a dusty box of unsold “returns” that somebody has forgotten to tell us about or arrange to be picked up. If that is the case, we would have them back like a shot, toot de sweet, and say no more about it, especially as the said box is likely to contain copies of titles that are now out of print and I could turn straight round and sell for ready money.

Anyway, I cobbled together what I thought was quite a reasonable letter, in the circumstances, given the vintage of the debt, and duly posted it off, together with a statement, to the only address we have, marked “please forward”. One day, during the week, in the midst of all my outbound phoning, I put the handset down and it rang, almost immediately. Eagerly, I seized it, anticipating a sale on the other end.

“Hello, this is PC ------------, from Morley Police Station here. We’ve been handed a suspicious letter, by the Morley Literature Festival. They said they got a similar letter this time last year, which they binned, and they think it’s some kind of scam.”

Momentarily taken aback, I refrained from asking him whether he thought I looked like a Nigerian with a trunk full of money, or indeed whether scammers had a habit of putting their real phone number on their letters. Instead, I filled him in on the details of the transaction, adding for good measure that I was glad to hear he had caught up with the scoundrels who had stolen our books, but that I wouldn’t be pressing charges, provided they either paid up and/or returned the “overs”. He chuckled at this, and speculated that their suspicions had apparently been aroused by the fact that my letter had not seemed “official” enough, so I enquired whether it would be “official” enough if I got my solicitor to write the next one, and he agreed to convey the substance of our exchange back to the Morley Literature Festival, and we parted as friends.

The only other break in my relentless phone campaign this week was on Wednesday morning, when I was called in to the local Job Centre for a work-related interview in connection with my claim for ESA. Whereas many might have dreaded such a summons, I actually welcomed it, apart from the hassle of getting down there and back, because I had a page and a half of questions which I wanted to ask, around the issues of permitted work, self-employment, training and help, how Debbie’s hours might affect anything due to me, etc. In short, all the information I needed to make an informed decision about whether or not the course I am considering for our financial future is the right one.

It turned out that getting down there, and getting back, were the least of my worries. Because Debbie was out teaching, I had to get a taxi, and the taxi bloke, from Mount Taxis in Huddersfield, was a model of kindness and efficiency, and a credit to his firm. I would have no hesitation in recommending Mount Taxis to anyone on this basis. I hope that he receives some well-deserved recognition for being a true "gentleman of the road". Sadly, owing to the current financial situation, I couldn’t bestow the sort of pourboire his conduct deserved.

The ESA interview itself was a bit of a let down and an anti-climax. It turned out that the answer to all my questions was that I should ring the 0845 number (the solution to so many of the questions posed by modern life) and ask them, because the bloke “interviewing” me wasn’t trained to give such advice. He did, however, update my record on their system to the effect that I had attended the interview, and we corrected the obvious error that it said I did not have a driving licence. As far as the training goes, “everything was changing” and they would ring me in about a month’s time when details came through, but mostly it would be stuff about how to write your CV. I had asked about Sage Accounts. Were I uncharitably minded, I could observe that my hour amongst the pot plants, modern open plan desks and screaming toddlers was mainly for the benefit of ticking DWP boxes, rather than being any practical help. But we did establish that I could earn up to £95 per week without it materially affecting my situation, which is obviously the next step. To do that, of course, means upping turnover by £950 per week, at trade values, or £1900 a week at cover price. Ouch. Oh well, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

So, back at my desk, I resumed my “Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain” by ringing round the country, speaking that day mainly to librarians and schools, as it happens. As I dialled each number, my mind formed a mental picture of the place I was contacting, maybe those wide placid meadows between the M1 and the river Trent, where the black and white cows graze on, oblivious of the shadowy cooling-towers in the hazy distance; maybe the craggy coast of Cornwall, where King Arthur’s Tintagel perches on the cliff like an improbable stone eagle, a whole castle crouching ready to take flight in a Mervyn Peake fantasy; or that library in Leicester that looks like a pork pie, built on the rotunda principle, sitting in the middle of a roundabout in Melton Mowbray; a primary school tucked away amidst the grandeur of the Lakeland mountains; or ringing a primary school in Cheriton, as I did on Wednesday, where the Royalists and Parliamentarians clashed in 1644. Who knows but there might be two kids sitting in that school, in a class today, the best of friends, whose ancestors fought on separate sides that desperate day 367 years ago, when there was “hot action” with the musketeers in Cheriton woods, and the narrow Hampshire lanes proved too much for the Royalist heavy cavalry, the “London Lobsters”.

Increasingly, though, as I go about my diurnal round, these days, I can see two Englands. I See Two Englands is of course the title of a rather famous book (at least at the time it came out). In 1939, the writer H V Morton set out to record his impressions of England at the outbreak of the second World War. It was undoubtedly a dark time in our history, one of the darkest we have faced in the last couple of hundred years, comparable with the days in the early 1800s when Napoleon strode the cliffs of Boulougne, eyeing us up for his next conquest, as he blazed through Europe.

I’ve been thinking about England a lot this last week, and the title of Morton’s book keeps sticking in my mind. Because it seems to me that today more than ever we are at a similar crossroads. OK, we aren’t at war (well, we are, actually, in all but name) but it’s not just that. Well, that’s part of it, but we seem increasingly these days to be at a crossroads where we have a choice of two Englands.

We can either have an England where we have tolerance and freedom and justice, or we can have a narrow-minded, petty, penny-pinching shop-thy-neighbour England where you are only allowed to have thoughts if they are the same as those approved by Conservative Central Office. You can either have an England where we have freedom of speech, within the rule of law, however uncomfortable that might sometimes have to be, or you can have and England where some things are unsayable and taboo, where you are only allowed to agree with the narrow band of opinions held by the government and the tabloid press, only ever allowed to tick the box marked “yes”. It started with arresting people because of things they might do. It carries on with government agencies watching you to see if you deviate from the norm, and the ceaseless assault on people who are ill, disadvantaged, or unemployed, while for the rich and the governing classes, it is very much business as usual.

So, do we want an England where people live in a climate of fear, and England where you have to watch your Ps and Qs or you might be denounced by a neighbour via an anonymous government tip-off line, an England where unemployment is growing, where prices are rising to rip-off levels; an England where the soup kitchens are working full blast and they still can’t keep up with the demand; an England where homes are repossessed and jobs are lost, just to keep the banks and markets happy? Or do we want an England where people are valued for what they are worth as people, not as units of economic production, and valued as people, not according to their state of health or their economic circumstances? An England of shortages, unrest and riots, or an England of peace and prosperity under the common law, dating back to the days of the Witan? Well, I have decided which England I am working for, I just have to persuade others to continue struggling for it as well. I think it’s worth fighting for. You may say I am a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. The Archbishop of Canterbury agrees with me.

Which brings me neatly to religion. Today is Trinity Sunday, and as promised, despite my busy week, I have settled down today, with the suitably mindless backdrop of The Cowboy Junkies (The Trinity Sessions, how appropriate) on Spotify, to explain the mysteries of the Trinity. In 1873. a group of young men from the local Holy Trinity Church formed the Wakefield Trinity Rugby League club. One of the initial forces in the game, Trinity won the Yorkshire Cup four times in nine years and was one of the initial 22 clubs to form the Northern Union after the acrimonious split from the Rugby Football Union in 1895. It was beloved, latterly, of people such as Eddie Waring. Waring provided rich resource for impersonators like Mike Yarwood, who helped immortalise catchphrases such as "early bath", "up and under" and "poor lad" –the latter from his unforgettable commentary after Don Fox missed a last-minute conversion that would have won the 1968 Challenge Cup final for Wakefield Trinity, but handed the game to their opponents instead.

Only kidding. Even I can’t shoehorn a theological treatise out of a history of Wakefield Trinity RLFC, though it would be fun to try. Instead, I open up the Lectionary, looking as always for something to make me feel better, understand Big G’s plans for me, and/or explain why, six months later, I am still stuck in this bloody wheelchair.

The selection of texts for today surprised me, to be honest. It starts with Ye Bible, page 1. The creation of everything. Genesis 1:1-2:4a:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

I was going to cut that down, and edit it, but to be honest, you have to really let it flow on to appreciate the full magisterial glory of its prose. Clearly I don’t believe, like Soapy Sam, that the world was created one Tuesday afternoon in 4004 BC. But equally, I don’t see that this text is necessarily antagonistic to our modern scientific view of the origins of the universe. The separating of the light and dark, for instance, for me, has connotations of the differentiation of matter and anti-matter, something that still keeps modern physicists awake at night. I can see in that passage, a shorthand description of the process of evolution. And, although some have chosen to interpret the term “dominion” over the animals to include a licence to kill, God seems quite emphatic that man is intended to be a fructivore. Of course, that’s where all the trouble starts, but nevertheless it’s nice to know that vegetarianism is a Neo-Platonic ideal which we can aspire back to. Oh, and God (or whoever took dictation from him) is obsessed with bloody whales, but then we knew that from last week’s reading.

So why do we start at the very beginning, apart from the fact that Julie Andrews says it’s a very good place to start? I think maybe because that “the beginning” and “the end” are both portals to eternity, and may be only concepts that have any specific meaning from our own temporary standpoint. If I carry on developing this theme, this Epiblog will grow into a book, and it will incorporate Schrodinger’s Kittens by John Gribben crossed with T S Eliot in Four Quartets, so maybe you had just better cut out the middleman and read them, instead. Then we can all have some crumpets at teatime, instead of one o’clock in the morning. It’s something to do with the idea (which my mind struggles to encompass) of God simultaneously including all the different aspects of God. The Hebrew Kabbalah also attempts to codify this phenomenon, going as far as to draw a diagrammatic representation of all of the different aspects of God, descending from the ultimate Godhead “Ain Soph Aour”, or limitless light, down to the physical world, which we inhabit. People spend their entire lives studying this staggeringly simple mind-map of the universe, and I am not pretending to have any special knowledge of it, which puts me a little lower than Madonna, if not a little lower than the Angels. See below.

Psalm 8 continues and amplifies the same theme of the relation of God, man and nature. And I quote it again, also, because it reminds us where we are supposed to sit – a little lower than the angels. Maybe we should be trying to live up to that, when framing political policy that shapes the future of our country.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

2 Corinthians 13:11-13, the third text, is St Paul signing off, and laying down his quill (or stylus?) at last, and the Corinthian Post Office cancelling their planned Christmas overtime. Whereas the last of the four, Matthew 28:16-20 is another signoff, but this time from Jesus himself:

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

So there we have it. The beginning and the end. The Alpha and Omega, in one neatly bookended selection. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. I “get” the general concept of the Holy Trinity, although “three in one” always sounds to me rather like a proprietary cleaning product, a sort of sanctified Cillit Bang, and as I have said before, when I start to think about eternity for long enough, my head hurts and I feel like a dying star being dragged into a black hole. For ever and ever, amen. The dying stars flame the brightest, the bright stars flame the briefest.

I guess my duty, my mission, should I choose to accept it, which will, inevitably, one day self-destruct, is to make the most of every fleeting minute, then, as the heavens turn and the sun reaches its height only to decline then rise again, for ever and ever amen, winter and summer, as a slightly-lower-than-misguided Angel, until the day my light joins once more with the limitless.

Epiblog for Pentecost

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The weathermen have decided that (largely because of the dry spring) some parts of the country are now officially suffering from a drought. A fact I reflected on several times during the week, in an increasingly mordant frame of mind, as I listened to the rain drumming ceaselessly on the conservatory roof. We now seem to be locked permanently into a pattern of cold, nasty winters followed by cool rainy summers. Anyone who still doubts that something strange is happening to the weather, call it climate change, call it what you will, is either a wilful denier or bind, deaf, and mad.

Tig has been feeling the cold to such an extent that, twice this week, she lay so close to the halogen heater that her fur started to singe. This was only evident, the first time she did it, when Debbie suddenly bellowed “NO!” and sprang up from the sofa to drag Tiggy away from the source of the heat. She had actually seen the smoke start to rise from Tig’s hind-quarters, and acted accordingly. The house was filled with the pong of burnt dog-fur for hours afterwards.

To try and mitigate any discomfort that Tig must have been feeling, I’ve put two dog-rugs (each sort of a fleecy square, imprinted with a pattern of paw-prints) one on top of the other, on the conservatory floor, and she has taken to lying on these, but with her back end actually under the conservatory armchair. Three times now, in total, she has actually got herself stuck under there, and I have had to bool over in my wheelchair, grab her by the collar or the scruff of her neck, and pull, to help her extract herself and stand up.

Kitty is bemused and bored by all this. At least when she can be bothered. Her usual reaction to the unseasonal cold has been to curl up in a tight ball on the crocheted cat blanket that her Auntie Maisie made her, and go to sleep. Meanwhile, Spidey’s nonchalant usage of our house as a cat pied-a-terre and bed and breakfast continues. The other morning, I was sitting on the edge of my bed getting dressed when he came strolling through, completely unconcerned, and exited via Kitty’s cat flap. I actually called his name, and not unkindly, but he completely ignored me, in the way that only cats can.

Debbie and her mother have been preoccupied with the preparations for my brother-in-law’s looming wedding, in July. Debbie, who normally buys her clothes from Ebay or Oxfam, was dragged out round the shops by her Mum to look for wedding clothes (fruitlessly, as it turned out). When they returned, weary and footsore, four hours later, my innocent enquiry as to whether she had opted to go for the traditional hat or the more daring fascinator, was met with the traditional two-fingered response. I was telling Debbie’s mother about the ferret kits advertised on Freecycle, and she, too, assumed that the “kit” element was some sort of self-assembly option, oblivious to the fact that if Ikea did make flat-pack ferrets, the instructions would be incomprehensible, and you would end up with a spare leg left over at the end, that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. The ferrets, bless them, make a much better job of it, aided by the unknowable marvel of the creation of new life, of course.

My own week has been, at best, mixed. I have spent much of it on the phone, trying to drum up business for books. If the books are to be my sole source of income, I need to do some serious work. The target is a two-step one; firstly to build it up to the point where it can not only repay Barclays but also give me the permitted amount that I am allowed to earn each week, to supplement my patchy and irregular benefits. Then to build it up to the stage where it replaces the benefits, by paying a proper living wage, comparable to what I earned from my other directorship before it was made redundant. I say “it”, but, of course, we all know they really mean “me”. The latter will be a tough call, because until July 2012, Barclays still have first call on any spare cash, to repay the last of the overdraft facility they capriciously took away from us in July 2005.

It still mattered, but it didn’t matter as much, while I was previously earning money from my other job, because at a pinch, if push came to shove, and the orders for the books didn’t quite cover it, out of that money we could just have found enough for Barclays each month. Now that money has vanished and dried up, it’s left a big gaping hole in the finances through which a cold wind howls daily, and which I spend almost every waking hour trying to plug, by my renewed efforts to sell more books.

Hence my rising and continued anger when Kirklees decided this week finally, that, because of my assets (which are more like millstones than assets, in any meaningful sense of the word) I didn’t actually qualify for a grant for the ramp, and therefore, after six months of farting about, they wouldn’t be building it.

The annals of humankind are littered with many examples of crass stupidity. Virgin Media’s customer services department, for instance, daily elevate the concept of “stupid” to the level of an art form. The generals at Balaclava, with their vague and woolly orders (and their vague and woolly cardigans with Raglan sleeves) were stupid in ordering the Light Brigade to charge the Russian guns. But this week, their calculation of my “assets” means, in effect, Kirklees has wasted six months of my life and kept me confined under house-arrest by false pretences. It is possibly the single most stupid act I have witnessed this year.

They have miscalculated the hours Debbie works, totally missing the point I made to them that her earnings are in term time only. They have based to value of our property on a totally spurious guesstimate, and ignored the fact that, even if we were able to release any equity in it, this would go straight to Barclays, because of the personal guarantee they made me sign in 2005. I have written them a three-page stinker, pointing out these and other errors. We will have to see what comes of it. The other stupidity, of course, is that if the application for the ramp had been submitted and taken in conjunction with all the other works that need doing to the house in order to make it “disabled-friendly”, then we would more than qualify; I only opted to progress the ramp application first, because I wanted it to be dealt with quickly, so I didn’t miss yet another summer. [Although I am not missing that much at the moment, and was tempted to put the word “summer” in quotation marks.] And so that Debbie no longer has to struggle and hurt her back, heaving me like a sack of spuds, teetering along the temporary ramps. Idiots.

Also this week, I was formally handed over to the Community Physio Team, and it became clear, from the tenor of the meeting, that they have now officially given up any hope of me standing up again, and my life from now on is in a wheelchair. They’ll come back and monitor me from time to time. When I think about this for long enough, the sense of being trapped is so strong, I have to wrench myself away and do something – anything – to take my mind off it. So near, but yet so far. I’d like to say I still haven’t given up, I’d like to invoke Douglas Bader and St Padre Pio and all the rest of them, but I am not sure I have the strength. And I don’t particularly like the person it has turned me into, an old, nasty man with an angry temper, who spends too much of his time clinging on to old dreams.

The only small good thing which has happened this week is that I have discovered a web site that sells calligraphy supplies. Including facsimiles of Victorian Steel nibs as originally manufactured by Joseph Gillott. In fact, I am sitting writing this in the conservatory, watching the rain fall on the garden (again) and using a “dipper” with a faux-Gillott nib. I like writing with a dipper, it makes me feel as if I am Dickens or Thackeray or someone with actual talent. There used to be a very funny Victorian joke about Joseph Gillott, that went:

“Why is Mr Gillott a wicked man?”
“Because he makes people steel pens, and tells them they do write!”

I guess you had to be there.

This has also been the week when Church and State collided in rather spectacular fashion. Rowan Williams’s tour d’horizon of the current political landscape was widely reported as the Archbishop attacking the Government, although he was equally questioning about Labour’s efforts to provide a credible alternative. Needless to say, my Mother-in-Law and I profoundly disagreed on the effect of the Government’s policies and the legitimacy of their mandate, but then she thinks it’s possible to glue together bits of a ferret. Notwithstanding, Rowan Williams has a perfect right to speak out, as a moral leader, about the fear and paranoia engendered by the Government’s slash-and-burn, divide-and-rule tactics.

And it does show up the current Labour opposition in a very poor light, when the man who is currently asking the most cogent and searching questions about Government policy and its effect on the poor, the needy and the disabled, is the Archbishop of Canterbury. If he keeps this up, I might have to start going to church again. More power to his crozier.

So, this week, the contemplative life has been headline news, as the Government, stung by legitimate criticism, went into full attack-dog rebuttal mode. But what should I have been reading, instead of cheering on Archbishop Rowan? What should I have been bending my attention towards, this rainy Sunday, which once more finds me woefully unprepared?

Well, it is Whitsun today, Whit Monday tomorrow, by rights, but we already did Whitsun. Nevertheless, the readings today are all on the theme of people being filled with the Holy Spirit in one way or another.

Acts 2.1 – 21, is the actual description of the disruption of the meeting of the disciples by the experience of something totally outside of their experience.

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?

Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.

But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; 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:

And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

I’ve quoted that in extenso because it’s such a wonderfully vivid passage. First the sound of the mighty rushing wind, and the flames – as Eliot describes it, in another context

“The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror”

And “incandescent terror” is a great way of summing up what they must have felt. Assuming you believe of course, that this actually happened, but I come back to the idea that, as with Easter, that something must have happened, to make it worthwhile writing it down, and it lasting for 2000 years. It wouldn’t be the King James Bible, of course, without the long list of people who could all hear the words of the Apostles in their own language. And the rather po-faced rebuttal by Peter of the accusation of drunkeness. I can think of many people who have been eight sheets in the wind at the third hour of the day, and occasionally, I have been one of them.

Young men shall see visions, and old men shall dream, eh? That was very much in my mind when I read the second recommended text, Psalm 104:24-34, which starts:

O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein. These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season.

For some reason, the line about “there go the ships” had me seeing visions like a young man, and dreaming like an old one, thinking of the times when I used to sit on the end of the slipway at Brough Haven and watch the coasters, the colliers and the barges, plying their way up and down the Humber. At one end lay Hull, Saltend, Spurn and the open sea. At the other end, Goole, where the river was still wide, muddy and brown, wide enough and deep enough for a substantial ship to tie up at some remote jetty and for the kids to come down on their bikes and look at it and hear the crew speaking to each other in Russian, German or Norwegian as they flung heavy ropes to each other, and the tang of tar and wet timber was sharp in your nostrils. The sun would glint on the water as if the Humber was the Adriatic or the Hellespont; the reeds and bulrushes; the cries of the seabirds, the rough, tussocky grass, I could have reached down and touched it.

For a long while I was back there, still aged ten, eleven or twelve, maybe with my Dad beside me, as we would sit for hours, occasionally passing the field-glasses back and forth as something worthy of a frame of 35mm slide film progressed across our view in a stately manner at under ten knots. When I finally jerked myself out of my reverie, it was to notice some more wonderful King James-isms further down the psalm:

The glory of the LORD shall endure for ever: the LORD shall rejoice in his works. He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke.

Holy smoke, indeed. 1 Corinthians 12:3-13 seems to be about the universality of the Holy Spirit

For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

I’ll drink to that. Cheers! Pass the new wine.

The final two readings are John 20.19 – 23, where Jesus appears again to the Apostles and breathes the Holy Spirit on them (note how I refrained from jokes about mouthwash)

Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the LORD. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

And John 7:37-39, which seems to be mainly about the effects of Furosemide.

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

I’d like to say that reading these extracts from the Bible filled me with the Holy Spirit and made me speak in tongues, but I’m afraid it didn’t happen. After the week I’ve had, the flesh is weak, and the spirit is unwilling. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the idea of the Holy Spirit. I wish I could feel it. I yearn to be infused with something that would give me the strength to stand up, so I could tell Kirklees to sod off, get a job and earn some money. The next time I see anyone from the Council, you can bet I will certainly practice my speaking in tongues on them.

But something moved those men, in an upstairs room in Galilee. Something happened, something weird. And something moves us from time to time, usually at the moments when we least expect it. Which would make a dull Sunday teatime, when I am dreaming of the person I once was, and seeing him in my mind's eye, sitting in the sun, young, free, innocent, and mobile, dreaming and watching the coasters sailing off into the sunset, the ideal time for it to take me. There go the ships. So, big G, over to you.

Epiblog for (Possibly) Ascension Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. I have come to the sobering realisation this week that, despite the weather, it is now only three weeks to Midsummer, when the balance changes and starts to tip us down the slope towards shorter days, cold weather, winter and darkness. At the moment, the thought is no larger than the proverbial cloud on the horizon, the size of a man’s hand, but I have acknowledged it, nevertheless.

The thought of a forthcoming winter would be much better borne of course, if there had been anything approaching a summer. It’s been warm occasionally this week, but still dull. I want to see and feel the sunshine that I pined for all last winter. Where is it?

To take my mind off these potentially depressing topics, I have – truly – been busy this week. Busy trying to get some momentum going for the press, since theoretically we are launching a new book (Revudeville, by Deborah Tyler-Bennett, which I laid out while incarcerated in “Broadmoor”) at the Lowdham Festival in 25 days’ time and I’ve been struggling to catch up since the laptop disaster was resolved. Busy trying to come to terms with the formal letter of redundancy from my other directorship, and drafting and subsequently tearing up replies ranging from the bitter to the angry to the wistfully sad. Busy scanning job applications. Busy filling in forms and supplying additional information for the application for the grant for the still-non-existent ramp, and busy waiting for the council to reply to my letter of last week telling them not to be so bloody silly about moving the old camper van. Busy waiting for the community physiotherapists to get their arse in gear and contact me, since I am now sitting here wasting muscle tone day after day, apart from what little exercises I can do myself. We’ve also been starting to think about a possible trip to Arran this summer, and what would actually be involved, logistically, in getting me there. Just don’t send me by Parcelforce, or I might end up in Truro.

In the face of such busy-ness, the animals have been keeping out of the way and getting on with their little lives. Kitty loves her new cat blanket (which is crocheted, I have discovered) and is rarely off it except to eat, drink, or be merry in the garden doing her necessaries. Spidey, the cat from next door seems to be exercising his squatters’ rights, because Debbie found him nonchalantly curled up on one of my shirts in the little bedroom, the other morning. Apparently he acknowledged her presence in the doorway by opening one sleepy, bleary eye, then settling down for a renewed snooze. She didn’t have the heart to turf him off, so for all I know, he’s up there still. Of the Interloper, there has been no sign.

Tig doesn’t like the heat so much and lies around panting when it’s really hot, so a cool, cloudy summer would suit her just fine, whatever the rest of us think about it. She’s not been doing much this week, just wandering around, sitting out in the garden with Debbie, snoozing, and generally mooching like the pooch she is. The other night she had an elderly and confused moment and tried to put herself to bed in my downstairs bedroom instead of following Debbie aloft, as normal. I said later that it was just like being back in hospital, where elderly and confused people trying to get in your bed was often the norm rather than the exception.

Even though it has been half term, Debbie still had teaching stuff to do, but rather than do a little bit every day she chose to give herself some days completely off and then work right through on others. So it was that on Wednesday evening we were able for the first time (for me) since last year, to eat our evening meal out on the decking beside the chiminea. Getting me over the threshold from the conservatory proved an interesting struggle for her, because I only just fitted through the door, and could do nothing to aid proceedings except sit still, and keep my arms in. Still, the parcel was duly delivered, and very glad I was too.

Wednesday evening was the closest I have come for a long time to forgetting I was in a wheelchair. Partly of course it was the two bottles of wine we consumed between us that helped, partly it was the fun of keeping the chiminea going with conti-board offcuts from the plumber’s efforts, twigs, and a few barbecue charcoal briquettes, and partly it was the feeling of reclaiming an experience I had thought was going to be denied me, sitting out there, watching the purple twilight steal over the garden, looking up between the interlacing branches into the still-bright sky, the afterglow of sunset, in the hope of catching the flitting silhouette of an early-evening bat. A good time was had by all, as it used to say in newspaper reports of Sunday School picnics, and we laid plans to hold a repeat performance the following night, but of course, as so often in the English summer, the weather let us down.

In an idle moment, I was scanning the local Freecycle group’s email round-robin newsletter for items of interest, and I noted that someone was offering Ferret Kits, ready at the end of August. So I asked Deb if she thought she would like a Ferret Kit. A wonderful cross-porpoises conversation then ensued, whereby it became plain that she thought that a Ferret Kit was some kind of self-assembly job that came flat-packed in a box complete with a tube of glue and an Allen key. I was able to assure her that Mr and Mrs Ferret had already done all the necessary preparatory work, and no further assembly was necessary. But she still said no. I said I supposed that the trouble with things like Kits is they are young and cute when you first get them, but they change as they get older and may develop nasty habits and unpleasant personality traits. She gave me a funny look, and agreed.

Once again, in all this welter of activity and Ferret-discussions, the contemplative life has had to take rather a back seat. As discussed, last week I wasn’t even sure what liturgical week it was, the Common Prayer equivalent of Tiggy trying to get in the wrong bedroom, I guess. I think this week is the 7th Sunday of Easter, nothing special, winding up towards Pentecost or “real” Whitsun, next week. Since I did Whitsun last week, simply because it felt like it, I now find myself painted into a corner. Oh well, press on regardless, it’ll all come right in the end.

I felt slightly fraudulent, as well, for not spending my time on more important things than work or frivolity this week. I don't seem to be much use to anybody in any other way, not in any way that really matters, and I know I have let people down who may reply on me. A family member has been in hospital (I did manage to send off a card) and a dear friend of mine is still grieving over the loss of her Dad, two years ago, and I managed scarcely a word of comfort. I still need to get past this preoccupation with my own predicament, I guess, one way or another. Either stand up and walk, or shut up about it. Stand up, and be counted, I guess. Anyway. The Bible. Yes...

I think the texts for this week are supposed to be Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; and John 17:1-11. Blimey, that is a serious chunk of Bible to read there, I thought, better get down to it. We’ve had the wine and music, joy and laughter, now it’s time for the “sermons and soda-water, the day after”.
So I turned first to Acts 1:6-14 in the King James Version and found to my surprise (approaching as I did from a standpoint of pure ignorance) that it was an account of the Ascension. This sent me back to the Holy Google, and after much ferreting in the marsh, I found that Thursday was apparently Ascension Day, but by tradition it is usually celebrated on the following Sunday, today, which is a Holy Day of Obligation, no less, when you are supposed to attend Mass (difficult, with no ramp, this will have to do) and refrain from servile work, so the washing up will have to wait until tomorrow. Sadly, I had already vacc-ed the rug before I read it, otherwise I could have skived off that, as well.

When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

I never think of the Ascension (when I think of it at all) without picturing the painting of it by the Cavalier D’Arpino in the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. Painted on a wood panel in the early 17th Century, its colours never cease to amaze me with their brightness and freshness, especially when you think it is half a millennium old. D’Arpino’s real name was Giuseppe Cesari, and he apparently taught Caravaggio. I wish I could find a full size, high-res image of it to share with you, but sadly, the whole internet seems to contain one tiny thumbnail of it. It is a few years now since I stood in front of the original and tried to copy, in a faithful pencil sketch, every fold and pleat of the Apostles’ robes. It is an interesting mental exercise in concentration, you should try it next time you have a day to spare, it is the nearest thing to meditation I have done in a long while. And God bless old Ferens, for endowing the Gallery in the first place, so that a kid like me from the slums of Hull can look upon the fine work of an Italian craftsman from five hundred years ago.

Another shock awaited me – albeit a pleasant one – when I turned to Psalm 68:

Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him. A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land. O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness; Selah:

So, that’s where Handel got his lyrics from! Two favourites in two hits, the Cesari Ascension and Handel’s Chandos Anthem. I don’t know whether the Duke of Chandos particularly liked this Psalm, or he just got what he was given. I rather get the impression that you didn’t argue with Handel. I recommend the whole Psalm actually, it is full of wonderful Old Testament loopiness, especially in the King James version, talking about God splitting “the hairy scalp of he that still trespasses”, and it’s liberally sprinkled with Selahs as well. I also recommend the music. The way in which Handel syncopates the word "scattered" is two hundred years ahead of its time. But then the man was a genius.

This was turning out to be one of the more pleasant Biblical excursions of recent times, albeit I still have no idea whether Big G is trying to tell me something, or what his purpose is for me in the long term. It’s comforting to touch old touchstones, though, and the next verses contained another: 1 Peter 5:6-11, King James Version contains the lines about:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

Which I am pretty sure also crops up in the Service of Compline – and a quick check online also confirmed my suspicions. I spent a long time (I don’t really know why) reading the whole of the Order of Service for Compline, and letting the words of the Authorised Version roll round and round in all their sonorous beauty.

I did, however, find the reading of John 17 more problematic. I suppose it would have been too much to hope for, finding four bits of the Bible on the trot which I could relate to and which carried resonances for me. I guess it will turn out to be something to do with fulfilling ancient prophecy, it usually does, but the bit that stumped me was the verse about:

I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

I don’t know where Jesus got the idea that he was finished, because presumably there’s still the trifling matter of the Second Coming, and all that tedious judging of the quick and the dead, and stuff like that. Presumably when he appeared at God's right hand, Big G turned round and said "How come you are back so early?" This is starting to get into territory of advanced theology that I don’t understand. Even thinking about the concept of the Holy Trinity makes my head hurt. I know more about Wakefield Trinity than the Holy Trinity, and it’s apparently Trinity Sunday next Sunday.

Anyway, I daresay I will go back and re-read John, and try and tease out the knotted threads of interpretation. I could always try one of the online Bible commentaries, I guess, but who’s to say they have any more idea than me?

So, at the end, I remained slightly foxed by it all. Not a bad week, if you discount being in a wheelchair. The Titanic wasn’t a bad ship, really, discounting the iceberg. Summer’s slipping through my fingers, like the precious silver sands of Kildonan Beach, though. I am still not resigned to my fate, either. Nevertheless, bits and bats, here and there, mutatis mutandis, and savour it while you can, I guess. Joy in small things, like rediscovering a lost painting or listening to a Handel track you haven’t heard for a while. And there’s still three weeks of “summer” left. Oh well.