It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. It really has, believe me. Which is why I am starting to write this at twenty five minutes to midnight on Sunday night. All sorts of things have happened this week, some good, some bad, some thrilling, some tedious. The weather seems to have picked up a bit, anyway. I still refuse to believe it’s really summer, though, although there have been some days during the week when it has stopped raining for about 45 minutes, and then yesterday and today, it hardly rained at all.
Which is just as well, really, because some of the tubs of herbs and marigolds which I planted out over the last two weekends have become more like bowls of soup than tubs of herbs. However, the warmer weather this weekend has finally meant that we’ve been not only planning to sit out on the decking of an evening, but we actually achieved it once, of which more later.
The imminent prospect of sitting-out had meant that Debbie spent a considerable amount of time sweeping down the decking and putting out T lights in little holders, so that when we did sit out there of an evening, we could be surrounded by a fairyland of twinklings. So she was considerably miffed when she came back into the conservatory, turned round, looked out, and saw a grey squirrel making off with one of the aforementioned T lights with it in its jaws, as it disappeared up the trunk of one of the major trees. Either the squirrel was taking it home to feed the family, or there’s a little drey there somewhere that’s got T lights and probably some joss sticks, and one of those white round paper and wire lampshades, with lots of squirrels lying around a bong and going “Wow, man”, like Neil off The Young Ones.
This of course was on a day when Freddie wasn’t here, or he would have been barking himself into a paroxysm at the effrontery of the T light theft, at the conservatory door. Having said that, either Freddie’s losing his power, or the squirrels have realised that, as long as he’s shut in, he can’t reach them, because this week, when one of them was on the decking taunting him, instead of skedaddling when he rushed over there to bark at it, it stood its ground and even came nearer to the door, which baffled him somewhat. I don’t know whether this was a particularly gung-ho squirrel or what, but Freddie’s barking became even higher and more frantic and querulous, as though he was saying to the squirrel, “Please run off up the tree, just to humour me, please…” while Zak broke his chairborne slumbers for just long enough to cast a pitying look in his direction.
Kitty’s been inhabiting Zak’s chair more or less continuously whenever he’s not been here, because it’s in a nice warm sunny spot in the conservatory, although as I type this, she is once more curled up into a tight ball of cat, nose in her tail, on the sofa next to the stove.
The garden’s coming on, though there’s still a long way to go with the various projects, and some of them are going to need outside help. The rain that has turned the pots and tubs into quagmires has actually benefited some other plants, Rain is not universally bad for gardens, not by a long chalk. The Comfrey plant, for instance, that has been standing out in the garden still in its pot, waiting to be planted in, ever since we bought it, has almost doubled in size through constant watering from heaven above. Similarly the Great Mullein (aka Aaron’s Rod, for all you D H Lawrence fans out there) is also sprouting, triffid-like, despite Debbie’s attempts to kill it.
My bluebell seeds have arrived, but the time for planting them isn’t right at the moment, so they are stored in a safe place. The other stuff which I ordered at the same time also arrived, so this week I’ve planted out wild garlic, broom, and foxglove seeds, none of which interested Debbie till I told her that foxgloves were poisonous because of their containing digitalis, at which point she made a mental note to use it to finish me off.
The same place also does things like Meadow Cranesbills and Devil’s Bit Scabrous, which is a plant worth growing merely for its very silly name alone, before you get around to its multifarious benefits both to humans and butterflies alike. Apparently it has a very short root or something and the story is that the Devil got so jealous of the plant’s many uses and healing properties that he took a huge chunk off its roots by biting it. And if you believe that, how do you feel about the Liberal Democrat manifesto?
Those were some of the pleasant things in the week. The unpleasant ones included, but were not necessarily limited to, the door handle coming off in my hand. This was the outside door, onto my ramp, which has been horribly swollen by the pissing deluge that has passed for a miserable summer so far. While other people might have seen this as merely a minor technical hiccup, for me it was a major problem, because once more I was back to not being able to get in or out under my own steam.
I found myself manically humming (Bob, not Thomas) Dylan’s lines from Desolation Row:
Yes I got your letter
About the time the doorknob broke
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke
As Debbie and I spent a morning not only looking for the relevant tools but then also using them to dismantle the plate on the other side so we could work out how it all fitted together again. The little spring (a sort of tensioned, clover-leaf affair) that goes around the inside of the handle and actually holds it in place, was the worst bit. It’s the sort of job that would be a cinch if the human body was actually equipped with three hands, but it’s an absolute bugger when you’ve only got two, and you have to try and hold the whole assembly steady with your left hand while attempting to coax the spring over it with the screwdriver held in your right. After about 35 minutes of cursing I managed it, but I’d got one of the bits inside the handle the wrong way round, so the handle went up, not down, and I had to take it all apart and start again. After about another hour, we had the handle re-assembled and screwed back into place, hey presto, the door worked, and it hasn’t malfunctioned since. It was, however, a morning of my life I will never get back
Usually, at times like this when we’re feeling really low, Bernard turns up on the doorstep, and this week was no exception. Bernard is an 87 year old demon king/fairy wizard who turns up in a puff of smoke like a Deus Ex Machina whenever we most need him, usually bearing gifts – this time it was 1.1KG of blackcurrants from his farm. I subsequently stewed these in a big pan with some sugar and then put them in Kilmer jars, and tonight I had some, mixed with three huge dollops of Greek yoghurt and honey, and they were truly Elysian in concept. Truly Olympic blackcurrants, except I expect McDonalds have probably copyrighted those words. Wonderfully tart.
Sadly, I had to report to Bernard that one of the tubs of herbs he left behind for us on his previous visit, the sage, had indeed succumbed to mildew and was no more. Sage is basically a Mediterranean plant that likes hot, sunny weather, such as you get in, for instance, the Mediterranean; which makes it well-nigh impossible to grow in Huddersfield, in an October summer like the one we’ve just had. It’s one of the two high-profile casualties of the weather, the other being the strawberry plant. I even tried spraying the sage with a solution of baking powder, which is supposed to be an all-purpose natural remedy against mildew spores. It isn’t.
Apart from these infrequent islands of calm and tranquility, the remainder of the week has been uniformly bloody, and many, many times I have been murmuring Eliot’s lines from East Coker about:
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.
He muss’ be reading’ ma mail. Finally, on Saturday, we decided we’d have a meal then just sit out on the decking and chill out, maybe light the chiminea, light the T lights, apart from the ones stolen by the squirrels, and just generally appreciate a balmy summer’s night. But before then, we had but one final gardening task to accomplish, putting together the lightweight modular polythene covered greenhouse which Debbie had bought at B & Q for £9.95 on special offer. This is supposedly where we are putting our tomatoes when they finally grow large enough to be allowed outside on their own.
However, because it was £9.95, reduced from something very silly, we weren’t sure that all of the bits were there. One crucial bit which was definitely missing when we unpacked it all, was the instructions. Anyway, we did the best we could, with me cursing B and Q, because it definitely seemed to be short of some connectors and one green tubular bit. By dint of me modifying the design as we went along, we did actually manage to put it together, after a fashion. As we were congratulating ourselves on this triumph over adversity, Debbie finally unrolled the zip-up polythene cover that goes over the whole thing, and there, tucked inside it, were the instructions, which told us that we’d done the whole bloody thing wrong and so we had to break it all down and start again. See also under door handles.
Anyway, we did eventually get it put together, and we did then have tea, and we did then sit out on the decking, with the chiminea whiffing away burning the leftover barbecue charcoal from last year’s summer holiday, waste not, want not. It was quite warm, and with the influence of a bottle of wine which cost all of £3.65 (or approximately one-third of a greenhouse) we were officially feeling no pain. Outwardly, at least. In my case I was still in a fairly sombre and reflective mood because it was two years to the day since my life-saving operation at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, in the safe hands of Mr Subramamian; the operation after which he came and told me “Mr Rudd, you are a very lucky man.”
I didn’t feel much like a lucky man on that bittersweet Saturday night as we sat there. Lucky compared with someone who is unlucky enough to be dead, I guess, but not as lucky as someone who can still walk. Lucky to be still sitting out on the decking, but unlucky no longer to be sharing it with Tiggy. And so it goes. Nobody is ever truly lucky or unlucky, without some leavening speck of the opposite condition, I guess, just as nobody truly knows they’re being happy till the moment is passed and they reflect on it from the perspective of relative sadness. In the circumstances, I did what I hope any sane person would do. I drank my wine and enjoyed the fire and the T lights. I had half-hoped that, as darkness fell, Brenda would come bumbling up the steps from the garden to join us, but alas it was not to be.
The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo, as the Bard so truly commented, and today dawned bright and early for me, with my having promised to clear out The Cupboard Under The Sink. This is because the plumbers are coming (we hope) on Tuesday (we hope) to fix the boiler (we hope) so we can once more have hot water in the kitchen sink without having to boil a kettle first. Clearing out The Cupboard Under The Sink was my contribution to the enterprise, since I am useless at DIY, but on the plus side, since being in the wheelchair I am more or less the right height for clearing out low cupboards. The Cupboard Under The Sink proved to be every bit as terrifying as its capitalised description suggests; three hours later I was covered in spiders (dead) and dust (probably alive, eeeewww) and I had discovered two interesting things about The Cupboard Under The Sink - these being that a) despite being like Dr Who’s Tardis and being a lot bigger inside than it looks, it is still very boring and b) we currently own 25 unused light bulbs, mainly because every time Debbie finds herself in the hardware shop, a little light bulb comes on over her head and she buys some light bulbs. As completer-finishers go, she is the ideal person to write the History of the Galapagos Islands, turtle by turtle. While I agree that there is a certain virtue in stockpiling, there comes a point where having all your working capital tied up in lightbulbs becomes counter-productive. Mind you, with The Blight attempting daily to usher us back into an era of universal darkness, they may yet come in handy.
After lunch, I gave in to sybaritic pleasures again, which is why this Epiblog is late: I sat outside in the sun and copied out a massive family tree pedigree going back to 1679 for one of my cousins. I promised her I would do it, and I thought if I didn’t make the effort before we set off on holiday to Scotland, then it would vanish back into the morass of crap on my desk, never to re-surface for many a week. So I set up with my pens and my bottle of ink, sharp pencil and eraser, and ruler, and set to work. The original was done on a dye-line copier (as used for “blueprints”) back in 1980, and has had other annotations added to it over time by me. It’s far too big to photocopy, so the simplest thing seemed to be to just reproduce the section she wanted. Not for the first time, I found myself reflecting how easy Kitty’s life is, compared to mine – her family tree would consist of a single line with “Cuddles” at the top and “Kitty” at the bottom. More than that is not known. Actually, if you gave Kitty a family tree she would probably just climb up and live in it, a bit like people in South Yorkshire.
So, of course, there hasn’t been much time for spiritual reflection, as you can see. “Excellently tart”, as a description, could equally be applied to St Mary Magdalene, whose saint's day it is, apparently, today – at least in her early days. I haven’t had chance to check today’s date in the Lectionary to see what other observances are due beside this, but I sort of became interested in the Mary Magdelene cult and got sidetracked by the internet, as you do. Among the little-known facts about my previous life is that I once made a pair of notice boards for St Mary Magdalene’s Church in Brighton, back in the prehistoric days when I used to be able to do such things. Me and St Mary go back a long way. And she’s still around – just up the road from us is an old lane called “Magdale”.
Actually, the depiction of St Mary Magdalene as a “tart with a heart” was largely the invention of Pope Gregory in AD591 when he decided, in the course of a homily on the Gospel of Luke, that she was obviously a prostitute. Hmm. Who’s the person dressing up in skirts and surrounding themselves with hunky young priests, Gregory? Anyway, since then, she’s suffered even further at the hands of people such as Martin Scorsese and even Dan Brown, who more or less decided that she was Jesus’s girlfriend. Later, in Ireland, the “Magdalene Laundries” were used by the Catholic church in one of its less impressive manifestations, for the rehabilitation, or more likely incarceration, of “fallen women”.
The people of Medieval Provence decided that the “wilderness” where St Mary Magdalene supposedly spent many years living as a hermit following the Ascension of Christ was in the South of France, for some reason. The veneration of her relics also got mixed up with the Cathar heresy (in Medieval Provence, what didn’t?) and there’s even a tradition that she is buried in a cave on Iona. The area around La Sainte Baume has been especially prominent in the display of relics pertaining to St Mary Magdalene, including her skull, in a golden reliquary, which is processed through the town of St. Maximin on the saint’s day - and it has even diversified into touring relics, something the Catholic church seems to go in for these days, and she could certainly teach St Swithun (see last week) a thing or two about travelling, according to the La Sainte Baume web site:
August 2009 The relics go on pilgrimage for evangelization with the new travel reliquary (the folded size fits airline carry-on dimensions) to various cities in the Diocese as well as Toulouse, Lyon and Paris before returning to La Sainte Baume.
The idea of the folding travel reliquary (suitable for airline carry-on luggage) definitely belongs in, or may even stem from, an episode of “Father Ted”.
Oddly enough, I was thinking about the way in which people’s personae are adapted and distorted, even appropriated, throughout history (and how they change according to who is doing the writing and recording) while I was copying out the pedigree for Cousin Joyce. With a quasi-religious figure such as St Mary Magdalene, of course, there is much more likelihood of this taking place; nobody is going to venerate the relics of my ancestors (though, if you are interested, we’ve got plenty of them in our loft) or get aereated about the precise details of their lives, or whether they even existed or not, or indeed try and trace my bloodline back to King Dagobert. But nevertheless, history is written by the victors, and the rich people are – by and large – the ones who got remembered. For most of the people in that family tree pedigree, there are three bare dates: birth (or baptism) marriage, and death (or burial). Sometimes, the middle one is omitted. There’s nothing like a family tree stuffed with agricultural labourers, blacksmiths and fishermen to make you feel at once that you are an insignificant cog in a long mechanism of history, and also that you are nowhere near as useful, productive, or able as they were. All I know about them is their names and their dates, and in some cases an occupation. I do, however, feel their combined weight, in tiers above me, pressing me down into the earth from time to time.
And I wonder whether some future historian or genealogist might look at my dates on a family tree and, if so, what they will think of my life and its rather questionable achievements. Not much, I imagine.
Anyway, these thoughts seem to have led me down a rather melancholy alley, so perhaps it would be best to turn around re-trace my steps. Tomorrow a new week beckons, with all sorts of nasty things that need sorting out before I can even go on holiday. The fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again. You can’t choose your family, and you can’t choose your ancestors. As Thomas Grey said:
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
So, come on, all you Colins and Hobbinols, nameless carrot-crunchers and swede bashers; you gave me these genes. Plod beside me now and tomorrow, as I plough my narrow furrow towards the horizon.
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