Epiblog for St Swithun's Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. And, of course, a rainy one, leading up to St Swithun’s Day, which is today. For the benefit of overseas readers, who may not be familiar with the cult of St Swithun, there is a tradition here in Olde Englande that whatever the weather is like on St Swithun’s day, it will remain in that vein for the next forty days. So, in a miserable pissing wet summer like this one, I’d be inclined to go online and order a snorkel and some flippers. The “real” St. Swithun was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester, back in the days when Kings all had names like “Aethelbarg” and “Eggbound the Unready”, and is credited with several miracles after his death, so much so that his body had been dug up from its original grave, where he had requested when he died, on 2 July 862AD, that he was not to be buried within the church, but outside in a “vile and unworthy place”, and moved to a new tomb inside Winchester Cathedral, in the year 971, even before the Norman Conquest. In an early example of Old English Franchise Marketing, the powers-that-be decided to spread the joy by detaching his head, which went to Canterbury, and an arm, which went to Peterborough, to be venerated as relics in each case.

St Swithun's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun's day if thou be fair
For forty days 'twill rain nae mair

Actually, having said that, St Swithun’s day so far has dawned both fine and fair, though it dulled over just as I started to type this week’s blog. Perhaps God is even now searching his cupboards for thunderbolts. Kitty, replete with several breakfasts, is curled up asleep in the sun, in Zak’s armchair in the conservatory; Zak himself is probably out with Grandad somewhere, lauping up Saddleworth Fell, with Freddie huffing and puffing along in the rear. We’ve not seen much of them since they joyfully greeted Granny on her return from Swithun-Land, aka Hampshire, on Thursday. To say they were pleased to see her is an understatement – Freddie did his usual “circus dog” act, tottering around on his hind legs and jumping up, all he needed was a cake-frill round his middle to complete the picture, and even Zak, not usually the most vocal of dogs, was jumping around and going “woof!” in a dark, baritone voice that surprised both us, and him.

Of the unofficial animals there hasn’t been much sign, and to be honest, since I am trying to conserve/build my energy levels and catch up on sleep in anticipation of setting off on holiday in a couple of weeks or so, I haven’t been inclined to sit up all night badger-watching. I did note though, that this week the High Court has (sadly and idiotically) thrown out the legal challenge by The Badger Trust to stop The Blight from culling badgers in a futile attempt to halt bovine TB. I sometimes think DEFRA will not be happy until every square inch of England’s green and pleasant land is concreted over, hosed down, and disinfected, and turned into a giant cow factory so that Tescos and their like can wallow in the profits from cut price milk while forcing small farmers out of business. This not only makes me want to carry on feeding Brenda, it makes me want to adopt her as my legal child.

The rest of the garden is teeming with squirrels and birds, all of which are ignored by Kitty as she slumbers on, regardless. She even slept through Spidey, next door’s cat, removing a catnip plant I’d planted out in a tub of herbs alongside the garage, and attempting to make off with it. I’ve re-planted it this morning (the herb, not the cat) and I think I probably need to move the tub to a more cat-proof location!

The garden transformation project continues apace; now that Debbie has almost finished teaching (her last class is on July 19th) she has been trying to spend more time out there. As well as the new little pond, we’ve planted out several alpines and other small plants in between the rocks which she placed in a circle (called, tentatively, Russ-Henge) around Russell’s mosaic, to mark Baggis Day last week. The project has gained impetus, also, because the Humax TV digital box (a pile of crap, don’t ever buy one) has now given up showing CBS Reality Channel, thus depriving her of her daily diet of shows about forensic science, CSI, Unsolved Mysteries, True Crime and Missing Persons. (If Debbie ever got around to advertising for a partner in lonely hearts, she’d be much more likely to put “GSR” than “GSOH” as a requirement.) The scenario reminds me more and more of that cartoon were the husband arrives home after work and says to his wife “The house looks very clean, darling, was the internet down today?”

Anyway, having checked out all of the obvious causes of loss of signal (fat pigeon sitting on the arm of the satellite dish) and waggling all the leads, then turning it off then on again at the wall, we have now reached the limits of my “fix-it” knowledge with the Humax box, the next step is to go hunting for the manual and try and read it. What’s the similarity between the Humax Manual and the Tower of Babel? God alone knows where it is, and it’s in 27 different languages.

Considering this week contained a Friday 13th, I approached it with some trepidation, but the actual day itself proved largely free of disasters and tragedies. Except we ran out of matches. It seems odd that, in the 21st century, something so primitive as fire should still play a part in our lives, but – foolishly – on Saturday morning, I let the stove go completely out overnight and had no means of re-lighting it. Idiot. That meant I had no means either of lighting the cooker, therefore no cup of coffee, til the Sainsbury’s man arrived to deliver the grocery order at 11AM. I even tried Debbie’s boy scout Ray Mears steel striker thingum, but even in a house as scruffy as ours, I couldn’t find any dried moss in the kitchen (there’s probably every other sort, though) to use for kindling.

Saturday, as a day, turned out like one of those dreams where you have to do something important, but every time you try and do it, something else trivial happens to stop you, in this case feeding the cat, putting away the shopping, and lighting the fire, to name but three. By the time I had finished, I was in such a waggledance that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find I’d lit the shopping, fed the fire, and put away the cat. The “something important” was sorting out Debbie’s pay claims for the courses she’s been teaching, and trying to work out her holiday pay, which is calculated by a labyrinthine mechanism that makes the Duckworth-Lewis method look like a primary-school maths lesson. You calculate the total number of hours, multiply that by 19.49 and then multiply the result of that calculation by 21.43%. Or something. Then you take away the number you first thought of, and the answer’s a lemming.

St Swithun’s day is, of course, a significant anniversary for me, in that it is precisely two years to the day since the two burly ambulance men picked me up and carted me off in their ice cream van with the pretty blue lights, en route to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, and all which that entailed. Two years! Where have they gone? Perhaps even more scary, it is a whole year now, since we called in at Mossburn Farm on our way up to Ayr to get the kayak rack fixed, the first significant long trip for me in the camper since I have been in the wheelchair, and the first time I had seen the mountains of Arran (albeit in the distance, from Dunure on the Heads of Ayr) since I fell ill. A year has gone since that day when we all sat around Juanita’s table, carousing and drinking wine, while the dogs snoozed under our feet. Tiggy and Oliver are no longer with us, though I like to think they still run free, in the constellation of Sirius, which is where doggy heaven is located, as eny fule kno.

So, of course, this has been a bittersweet week for me, and once again one which has found me, for the second week running, pondering on what I have gained (if anything) and what I have lost (much), and also where I’m going, where we’re all going. I’m not going to list out all the things I used to do that I can no longer do. Some of them, I hope to eventually regain. In some ways, almost dying has had a good effect – on my writing, for instance. So much so, that Debbie frequently says I should do it more often.

The country, as I wrote last week (and probably the week before) is another week deeper into the mire. The scary thing now is that there seems to be a complete consensus amongst the political classes that the expectation that things will continue to improve for the majority of ordinary people is a thing of the past, and we’re ultimately heading back to squatting round bonfires and guarding our own potato crops from marauding bands of brigands. That is the logical conclusion of a process which begins with “government by abdication of responsibility”, which is what we are currently being forced to endure. Everything bad is “not their fault” say the politicians, and they are powerless to prevent the worst excesses of its impact. Not that they ever tried very hard, or cared.

Reading again, this week, A. N. Wilson’s biography of Hilaire Belloc, I have been struck, time and time again, by the parallels between the state of England now and in the run up to the 1906 general election that produced the “Liberal landslide”. [This was for the Liberal Party, back in the days when the liberals were good guys and had some principles, unlike the lickspittles, poodles and bag-carriers that make up the present party.] Belloc said, in one of his campaign speeches for he South Salford constituency:

“England is at a turning point. Society is trembling with a desire to produce a new and better England. But it cannot be done without raising great sums of money and without putting burdens on the rich … You are either going to push the great weight of social reform and democracy over the edge and send it down on the other side, or you are going to allow it to slip back on yourselves and crush you!”

Belloc later became disillusioned with the horse-trading and political fudge and compromise over (guess what) reform of the House of Lords, and eventually ended up not standing again, partly out of disgust that the “opposition” was nothing of the sort. (Although his ideas of how the Lords should have been reformed were equally as wacky as the status quo, and he did, in his later years, become a fan of Mussolini, as indeed was Miss Jean Brodie!)

“Balfour and Asquith have come to an understanding which the country in general may not be told, but which is now fairly generally known. By this understanding all real attack on the House of Lords will be prevented.”

Plus ca change.

There comes a time when you have to turn and face your demons, though, and do something about it, a time to move on, to step forward, to do what you can do; possibly, we may be going to Scotland, and one day, we might have another dog. If we went to Scotland, with another dog, we wouldn’t ever forget Tiggy, or all that she meant to us, of course. Turn again, Whittington; turn, turn turn. There is a time for every season under heaven. A time to cry, and a time to refrain from mourning. A time to reap, and (importantly) a time to sow.

That is why I bought some bluebell seeds as an act of faith, this week. It’s sort of a miniature version of St Swithun or one of these other medieval bishops starting to build a cathedral. Bluebells flourish in the spring, of course, so by buying them now, when we’re almost at the fag-end of summer, to be followed no doubt by a dismal dank autumn and a dark cold winter of discontent, I’m showing my faith that they will come up, that there will be a spring. If you like, that they will come up, that there will still be a garden for them to come up in, and someone will enjoy them, even if I myself am not around to see it, for whatever reason.

An act of faith. At the end of it, that’s all that you can do. The faith of Freddie, waiting at the door for Granny’s return. The faith of the despairing, who nevertheless say “it’ll be alright”, even though it patently won’t. The faith of the English, who “mustn’t grumble” about the weather. The faith that the Blight may be lifted and dispersed. The faith that there might just, somehow, be some sort of hidden sense behind the jumble and the muddle. Or as W H Auden said in “September 1939”, on the eve of war:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Amen to that. Show an affirming flame. Now where did I put those matches?