Epiblog for the Second Sunday of Lent

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Unseasonably warm, as well, and maybe, just maybe, we’ve seen the back of winter. Though it may yet turn round and snarl at us over its shoulder, on the way out of the door. The daffodils are coming up alongside Russell’s grave in the garden (and his mosaic is covered in bright green moss, which I must get rid of, or at least get someone else to get rid of). “Faire daffadils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty”. The snowdrops are out in the front. Still no crocuses though.

The other day it was so mild and balmy that Kitty actually left the crocheted cat bed on the bin-bag of shredded paper on the hearth, where she has hibernated for most of the winter, and ventured outside onto the ramp with me, when I went to get some coal. She sniffed the air, had a look at the garden, then twinkled back inside as fast as her little leggies would go, back to the fire. I know what she means. Everywhere I look around outside, there are jobs which need doing, beds than need weeding, leaves and dead vegetation that need clearing, blown-down twigs and branches that need gathering for the stove. It makes me tired just thinking about it and planning it. This year I am going to grow herbs in pots on the decking, I have got as far as getting hold of the seeds.

We’re still no nearer getting another dog, though Zak and Freddie visit me quite often and are rewarded with treats and ear-furfles. I’ve identified one or two “possibles”, one of which is in Wales, but getting her from Wales to here is problematic, especially since I have no way of travelling independently of Debbie and I can’t really ask her to spend a weekend driving to Carmarthen and back when she only just survives a week of teaching, comes back and crashes out on the settee every Friday without fail.

Meanwhile, I finished my painting of Tiggy, and it’s hanging on the chimney breast as I type. It would have been her birthday on Wednesday 7th March, she would have been 16.

Debbie’s been majoring a detox and healthy living/eating programme of late, trying to do something about the toll which teaching extracts from her body and mind each week. The other morning, she announced to me that someone had told her that almonds were good for your memory, but she had forgotten who. Her latest “fad” is carrot juice, which she has decided is the answer to all the world’s problems. If only that were true. It doesn’t seem even to be the solution to all her problems, but she carries on resolutely glugging the stuff.

The first attempt we had at making it, using the food processor, was a considerable disaster. I had managed to successfully order 2 kilos of carrots online from Messrs Sainsbury, having circumvented the trap which had previously led to me only obtaining one sprout instead of one kilo of sprouts. However, feeding them through the Kenwood only produced a sort of undrinkable carrot slurry, which did, however, go quite well in the carrot mash and in the pakoras I made. So, this week, I simply added some carrot juice for her when I did the usual online weekly shopping order. The night before the order was due, Debbie arrived home toting a juicer from Argos, which had cost £29.99. So far, we haven’t tried it out, since she prefers the line of least resistance, and drinking the stuff which Sainsbury’s have already gone to the trouble of juicing for her.

Anyway, one way or another, it’s going to be a juicy spring. And somehow, I’ve already missed pancake Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, and we’re into Lent. “After the Christmasse, comes the crabbed Lentoun”. I’m not sure I’ve got anything left to give up, to be honest, apart from eating and sleeping, and at the moment I do precious little of those. Still, warmer – or, more pertinently, lighter – days mean I’ll be able to get outside and tackle some of the stuff which needs doing, the bits of it I can reach from a wheelchair, at least. I’ve still got a stack of tasks a yard long that need doing inside as well, from creating juice drinks for Debbie to organising another dog to editing books to doing the VAT return to cleaning out the fridge, which I am sure contains some Japanese soldiers who don’t know the war’s ended.

Oh, and on the pet front, I must mention the imaginary badger. At 2AM the other morning Deb was ploughing a lonely furrow on the sofa (not literally, obviously, ploughing and soft furnishings don’t mix) prepping for one of her classes, and she suddenly heard a clumping and a clattering out on the decking, so she went to the conservatory door and peered out into the darkness. A badger was methodically hoovering up all of the bread I had put out earlier for the birds. When it had done with the stuff at ground level, it reared up on its hind legs and used what Debbie described as “its arms” to sweep the stuff off the bird table and munch that, also. Then it looked around, made sure there was nothing more left to eat, and wombled off down the steps, back into the garden.

I call it an imaginary badger, simply because I have subsequently sat up til 2AM on successive mornings, hoping to see it myself, but so far, the badger and I remain unintroduced. I did put out some leftover cooked pasta for it, but it spurned that particular offering, which the birds polished off the following day. Perhaps, being a badger, it prefers good solid English grub, or – of course – good solid English grubs.

While I was sitting up by the conservatory window, waiting and looking for badgers in the middle of the night, the establishment, in the form of the City of London, aided and abetted by the establishment at prayer, the Church of England, was moving against the Occupy protestors outside St Pauls. I note from the TV pictures that, when the bailiffs did drag people out of the tents and away, and the police cordon kept supporters at bay, that there were indeed people inside the tents at night, so I hope that the gutter press will be swift to publish an apology for their previous disgraceful slur, that the protestors were only part-timers who went home each day. But I am saving my breath to cool my porridge.

I haven’t any kind words for the clergy of St Pauls. In fact, I have several very unkind words for them, which, if I used them here, would probably get this blog removed from Blogger for good. You expect the City of London to do its best to stamp out the first flourishings of a newer fairer more just society, especially one that has got completely under its skin, like the Occupy movement has, but not the Church of England. I’d like to say that “they tried their best in a difficult situation” but every time I do, it comes out as “they are a set of spineless wimps who should be set to work breaking rocks in a quarry until they repent of their sins of greed and avarice and their perversion of true Christian ideals.” Anyway, clergy of St Pauls, if you are looking for Jesus at any time, he’d have been with the guys in the tents.

So, because of this, I don’t actually care what the collect is for the second Sunday of Lent, and you can stuff the book of Common Prayer. When John Sentamu shuts up bleating about the word “marriage” and when the Bishop of London, whose name I forget, but who looks a bit like John Peel, personally leads an occupation of the Stock Exchange, and when the Church of England addresses itself once more to the real problems in our society, then I’ll start believing in the Church of England again.

And if God doesn’t like it, well, stuff Him too, we’ve not exactly been on speaking terms of late. A thunderbolt or two wouldn’t come amiss.

Yes, I am angry about this. How could you tell?

It’s St Basil’s day. Like anyone cares.