It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The fragile spring is still holding, and, as I type this, on the first day of April, I kid you not, the morning is crisp, fresh and sunny, and the daffodils are out in the garden. I have given up on the crocuses, I think something, either the frost, or the badger, or both, must have got at them. Phil’s home-grown garlic that he gave us is also thriving, out on the decking, and I must get my own herbs sown into pots today, I’ve put it off far too long. Of course, with the Easter break having finally arrived for Debbie, the long-range forecasters are now threatening snow on high ground over the Easter weekend. Great start to the summer. The cherry tree in the garden of The Lodge, over the road, already looks like it’s covered in snow, a dazzling, shocking, profusion of exploding blossom. So I have been reciting, in turn and turn about, this week:
`Faire daffadils we weep to see ye haste away so soon’
and
`Loveliest of trees, the cherry now’.
Kitty’s been ranging further and wider with the coming of the warmer weather, venturing outside and also spending lots of time on the sunny conservatory window that only she can access, even using Zak’s head as a stepping stone to get up there, while he was sleeping soundly on the fleecy dog-bed he inherited from Tiglet. I have been thinking of Tiggy more and more, this week, how much she loved this time of year, when the sun warmed her tired old bones, and how I prayed when I was ill, and then again when she was ill, that she’d be granted just one more spring. Alas, it was not to be, and we came through the winter with 25% of our household depleted.
Depleted, and likely to remain so. I wrote last week that my efforts to adopt another dog had stalled for a variety of reasons, mainly owing to the distance between us, and the sanctuary where I’d found her, on the internet, in West Wales. The result of my piece was that two Mustardlanders contacted me separately, both offering help to transport Pepper the dog from Carmarthen to Huddersfield. Choking back real tears of gratitude, I gratefully accepted both offers in principle. It now all hinged on whether the dog sanctuary would waive their rule which says that prospective owners had to visit the sanctuary in person.
Eagerly, I emailed them that very question, only to receive the crushing news that Pepper had already been rehomed, elsewhere. I was slightly miffed that, given that they already knew we were interested in her, they hadn’t contacted me when the alternative offer came up, but ultimately I suppose that if it’s a choice between someone near at hand who’s willing to take the dog on the normal basis, and someone far away who wants to do something weird, odd, strange and out of the ordinary, they chose the easy route. But it was a bitter disappointment, nevertheless, and something I never expected, coming out of `left field’, as they say over in the Colonies.
Freddie and Zak are completely useless as guard dogs. They would have much to learn from the geese of ancient Rome. On Saturday night, while they were both within ten feet of the door, the feeding dish outside on the decking was visited in fairly quick succession by the fox, then the badger, then the fox again, coming back to see what, if anything, had been left by the badger (he was out of luck, the badger doesn’t `do’ leftovers!). Freddie and Zak snoozed on, oblivious by the fire, their heads across their paws, replete with Beefy Chub and `Chomping Chicken’ dog treats, twitching their paws and dreaming of dog stuff. Probably of foxes and badgers.
As we now have temporary custody of the family doglets, Debbie and her dad will share the dog exercising duties until Granny returns from her diamond jubilee progress to the shores of the shining Solent in sixteen days’ time, and yesterday he’d been given a lift by one of his old running mates to see a road race in Liverpool, of all things, so it fell to Debbie to take them. She also took a bag with her, it being her intention to gather fallen branches to use as kindling for the fire during her meanderings. There’s always loads of naturally fallen wood around the garden and in the woods out back, down the valley towards the River Holme, and I’ve often thought that given enough time and energy, we could cut the coal bill considerably. The trouble is the time it would take to collect it all would probably negate any saving in monetary terms. See also under `carrot juice’.
She got as far as the cricket field in Armitage Bridge, and she was doing really well on the wood gathering front, when she spied what would have been, as she described it, `the perfect stick for the fire’. She was just about to add it to her hoard of twigs and branches (Zak and Freddie were happily elsewhere, snuffling in the undergrowth) when what she also described as `a meaty-looking Rottweiler’ appeared out of nowhere and beat her to it. She briefly considered wrestling the stick from its jaws, and it too seemed inclined to play, but the sudden appearance of its equally meaty-looking owner meant she had second thoughts, unusually for Debbie, finally concluding that it was undignified for a woman in her mid-40s to be seen grappling in public with a Rottweiler over a stick, so she was reduced to having to watch, seething silently, while the Rotty trotted off obediently with its prize.
Of course you couldn’t have a stick without a carrot, and yesterday, as well as turning the remains of Friday night’s risotto into pakoras, by the addition of gram flour, chillies, minced ginger, and curry spices, then shallow frying them in a smittick of oil in a big cast-iron skillet, I also juiced two and a half kilos of carrots to provide two and a half bottles of carrot juice, an occupation of such quixotic pointlessness that I would only consider undertaking it for those I cared about most deeply. So, if I ever serve you carrot juice, or any juice for that matter, especially `elephant juice’ which apparently looks just like `I love you’ when you say it to a lip-reader, then you’ll know you have a special place in my heart, dear reader.
You couldn’t have a carrot without a donkey, either, and of course today’s Palm Sunday, when Jesus is supposed to have ridden in triumph into Jerusalem on a donkey. Again, in my current phase of trying not to take the Bible too literally, at mild peril to my immortal soul and any passing kittens, I haven’t bothered quoting the chapter and verse, but it’s all there in the Bible, go and look if you want to.
Talking of kittens in mild peril, as far as I am aware, the Archdiocese of New York has met with the feral cat groups over the imbroglio surrounding the feral cat colony at St James’s Church (see last week’s Epiblog) but I haven’t heard of the outcome yet, so we’re not out of the woods by any means. Meanwhile, I have had a fundraising email, from the feral cat group, asking for donations and promising to teach me how to bottle-feed a kitten. Unfortunately for them, such is the financial situation at present that I, like Yeats, have nothing to offer but my dreams, and I doubt in any case they would pay for me to fly to New York to learn something I already know how to do (although in fairness, it’s usually me that gets sustenance from a bottle, these days).
Other events in the wider world still occasionally filter through to me here in my semi-rural incarceration. Hard on the heels of mugging old Grannies, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, God bless his addled little bonce and may he have an epiphany soon before he does too much more damage, has put VAT on hot pasties now, the take-away staple of many a white-van-man’s lunch. So, the hard-pressed working man’s meal costs more, while the millionaires are invited to dine at 10 Downing Street (in return for more substantial donations, which ensure that government policy is influenced in their favour). That’s always assuming the hard-pressed working man can afford, or even find, the petrol to put in his car to go to work in the first place. Or find the work, for that matter. I don’t know how we have the cheek sometimes to try and export `democracy’ to the rest of the world, when we don’t even live in one.
Then as well as the great fuel shortage that wasn’t, and the eye-watering increase in the cost of postage stamps as Royal Mail was finally allowed to charge a realistic market price for the universal delivery obligation, to make up for the decades of underinvestment and plundering by successive governments and the stripping away of its most lucrative markets in a botched attempt at part-privatisation. Sometimes when I look at the world at large these days, it seems more and more that every day is April Fools’ day, and the jesters have taken over the court.
So, on this quiet, sunny, Palm Sunday, I’ve tried to do a bit of withdrawal and contemplation. I can get back to grappling with the accounts tomorrow, a meaty Rottweiler of a problem if ever there was one, and I might have a look later on for another dog. Back to the drawing board, or, more appropriately, since it will be an online search, back to the message board. But just for now I have been having another go at getting to the essence of what Palm Sunday is all about. Betrayal is a subject I am, sadly, familiar with. I have been, in my time, both the betrayer and the betrayed, and neither are experiences I would care to repeat, at least in their worst incarnations. But there are degrees of betrayal, as there are degrees of love, and sometimes there is even the concept of a necessary betrayal, where a good person does some bad things for a good outcome.
I am not saying that you should do whatever needs doing by any means necessary, and that anything goes, because that way lies complete amorality. Rather I am saying that in some situations, the good and right thing to do at the time is different to what it might be in a similar situation at another time or in another place. This is completely different to amorality, in fact it is quite an awesome responsibility, to have to decide morality for yourself, with the guidance of the good inside of you, on a situation by situation basis. Some people would say that is precociously taking the mantle of God upon yourself, I say it is being guided by the hand of God as you go about your business. The Church says you should always do the same thing, irrespective of the situation, which is one reason why I don’t go to Church anymore.
In the world of moral relativism, perhaps Judas is a necessary betrayer, and as such, should be congratulated for bringing about the Resurrection and all that springs from it. Always assuming that you accept a) that Jesus actually lived and b) that he died for your sins, as your personal saviour, something with which I still find it difficult to grapple. Perhaps, like the Rottweiler, I get the wrong end of the stick. Some days I expect things to be easy, I get tripped up at every step of the way (only metaphorically, sadly!) the people I thought I could rely on turn on me and let me down. And I let others down, in turn, sometimes, to my shame, out of casual laziness.
But isn’t that just life anyway? The dog you thought you could count on has already been re-homed elsewhere, the stick you were eyeing up to burn on the fire is snaffled from under your nose by a passing Rottweiler? Multiply that up the chain of “what might have been”, and there you have life writ large. The people you thought were your best friends shop you to the authorities or cast you out, and the crowd turns on you and you end up being crucified. Betrayal and disappointment are all part of the cycle, cogs in the cosmic machine, unpleasant as they are, but they are necessary for us to have forgiveness and fulfilment, in the same way as the cherry tree in the garden of the cemetery lodge is blazing with a heart-stoppingly beautiful effusion of incandescent pink blossom nourished by the bones of the dead.
So maybe I need to stop nursing the hatred of my various betrayals, put down the burden of my sorrow for those betrayals I myself am responsible for, and enjoy the blossom while it lasts. It’ll be a long time gone. The summer is coming, dogs or no dogs, the open road is calling, and all the Lakes and all Scotland lies spread out before us, like precious treasures arrayed on a green and blue quilt.
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