It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. To be honest, I didn’t expect to still be here today, writing this, on a Sunday teatime; I thought I would be away somewhere, on holiday by now. But getting everything together and organising things, with both of us in our current state of mental and physical exhaustion and apathy, has been such a massive and overwhelming task that, to be honest, as I sit here today, I’m not sure if we will even go, in the end. I’ve already said, more than once, in the preparation and run-up to our supposed departure, that if the only reason we’re contemplating going anywhere is solely for my benefit, then forget it. Whatever is on offer, if its not freely offered, then I don’t want it.
So much of the burden falls on Debbie’s shoulders these days, with me being a completely useless appendage in a wheelchair, that it would actually be much less hassle for her if we didn’t go at all. I will admit, I was looking forward to the idea of maybe seeing Arran again, though this will be the first time we have been there without a dog, if indeed we go. I also think, though, that despite her protestations (or at least misgivings) Deb would find herself wishing, come September and the start of term again, that she had gone, after all; but there comes a point where the hassle of getting everything together and actually organising it far outweighs the benefit of going on the holiday itself. What happens is you go on holiday exhausted and ratty, and by the time you’ve finally got all of the kinks out of your system and you’re just about feeling like enjoying yourself might one day be possible, it’s time to come home again! And, of course, coming home means getting on with the task of becoming exhausted and ratty once again. And so it goes…
So, we might not yet get away on holiday. Which will be good news for Kitty, who I am sure has managed, by some act of divination, some second-sight cat sorcery, that we were planning to send her to the special cat hotel, otherwise known as the c.a.t.t.e.r.y. We were having a discussion (in muted tones, in case she overheard us) about that self-same venerable institution, only the other day, because I couldn’t remember if their thing was that you paid in advance, or afterwards, when you picked your cat up. Deb said that she thought the latter made more sense because that way, if you didn’t pay, they could just keep your cat until you brassed up. It only occurred to me afterwards what a counter-productive strategy that could become, because of course they’d still have to feed the thing, and I did wonder if somewhere the cattery had a cobwebby cupboard, full of querulous moggies whose owners still had to settle their accounts, a sort of Feline equivalent of The Marshalsea Prison in Dickens.
I don’t blame Debbie, by the way, for not having the energy or the motivation to go. That last year of teaching, especially teaching GCSE, has really taken it out of her, and even if we had another dog, right now, I have to accept that, for all sorts of reasons apart from my own incarceration in this mobile birdcage, those old carefree days of just bundling ourselves into the car and going off to (eg) The Lakes for the day, are long, long, gone, and will come again no more. Anyone who thinks teaching is an easy job a cushy number, should try it sometime. They’d soon change their tune.
So no, I don’t blame Debbie. I do blame all sorts of other people, though, for my inability to go on holiday because we are both skint and knackered. I blame the plumbers who have cocked up fitting the new boiler and whose concept of “aftercare” is so howlingly abysmal that there are just no words to describe their utter, utter, cack-handed crapness. I blame the garage, who have taken thousands of pounds off us this year to keep the van on the road, and yet, somehow, unaccountably, we still have an oil-leak, and fuses blowing left right and centre. I blame my former colleagues (I use the word loosely) for rejecting me when I was ill and placing us in this parlous financial malaise. I blame Barclays Bank PLC for their unfailing unbending ungrateful greed, which constantly adds to the pressure. I blame Randstad PLC who are arguing the toss about paying Debbie for some study mentoring work she did back when I was in hospital, because she didn’t fill in some of their tedious paperwork at the time, because she was being run ragged by having to keep everything going single handed because I was in hospital almost dying, see above. I blame the bookselling chains who buy books in October but don’t bother paying for them until the following July. The list goes on; government agencies with their repetitive, meaningless, garbled, gobbledeygook forms, for instance, and on top of all that, we’ve got to endure the bloody Olympics!
In one sense, it will be a pity if we don’t go, because up until today, when the enormity of it all has daunted us, and crushed our spirits, I think she, too, was looking forward to it.
Anyway, I’m still here, still typing away, still plodding my furrow, just as I may be found for the remaining fifty weeks of the year. Although it’s been dominated by the preparations for our (so far) stillborn holiday, there have been other matters to attend to, brief chinks of reality piercing the gloom, although not all of them have been welcome, or have made much sense, to be honest.
This week has seen the anniversary (and therefore the closing) of the petition I started on the UK Government petitions web site, about using brownfield sites to build prefabricated housing. The idea eventually gained 34 signatories! Yet, surprisingly, it seems, I am not alone: Mary Dejevsky, writing in The Independent, is apparently a late convert to the idea: I’ve linked to the article, rather than quoting from it, and of course, in her article, she links it to The Olympics, because it’s obviously the law these days that anything you write anywhere about anything must contain statutory references to The Olympics (although be careful not to infringe the rights of the sponsors, or they will be after you quicker than you can say “rooftop missiles”.) Still, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, etc.
The other story that has been relatively sidelined in the media this week (although perhaps this is one where we should be grateful to the Olympics) is the sad, sad death of Tia Sharpe. It is very easy, if you aren’t actually involved in a dysfunctional family, one which has social problems, to be judgemental about these situations, but nobody stops to ask why people like (for example) Karen Matthews end up like they do in the first place.
I’ve used the example of Karen Matthews, a case which has been over and done with and through the legal system and everything, rather than talking about the Tia Sharpe, because I am anxious not to comment on a case which is currently developing, for fear of committing contempt of court or similar.
This concern was foremost in my mind when I saw that groups had been formed on Facebook to hunt down and string up Tia’s supposed killer. One of the accused in the Rochdale “grooming” trial is currently appealing (although I must say “appealing” is not the word for him that immediately springs to mind) because he claims that the jury discussion over his original conviction was compromised because (his legal team claim) one of the jurors must have been feeding details of their deliberations to Nick Griffin, no less, who then “tweeted” them on Twitter. Apparently, the sentencing in the Joanna Yeates trial was also made more difficult because of comments which had been posted on Facebook.
Now, what do you think our protagonist did, dear reader? Did he say, “Oh well, someone else’s problem!” or did he see a potential problem with the administration of justice and (despite his complete lack of interest – in any sense of the word – in the case) jump in with both wheels? It must have been the wonky genes in my body, thrumming with the Fenwick war cry and the creed of the Rudds:
And this shall be our creed - as I will say to you
For faint cries in the distance
to a cause that needs assistance
against all wrong that needs resistance
we shall stand forward
and do all that we can do.
So I stood forward, and did what I could do. It was a similar act of blundering, well-meaning self-damage to the time I tried to explain the Wars of the Roses to two drunk blokes in the bar at the Regis Centre in Bognor Regis who’d been arguing about whether “the English Rose” as they called it, was red or white. As Marlene Dietrich might say, when will he ever learn, when will he e-ever learn? That time, I was rescued by the folk band on stage striking up “Lamorna”
“It was down in Albert Square,
I never will forget
Her eyes they shone like diamonds
And the evening it was wet, wet, wet” [no, not Marty Pellow]
Anyway, I posted a brief message to the effect that by posting such things as “they have caught her murderer” and “string up the [asterisked out profanity]” on Facebook, these people were making justice for Tia Sharpe much less likely, because these sort of comments could be used by an unscrupulous defence legal team (whoever heard of such a thing, eh) to get the defendant’s sentence mitigated or reduced on appeal, and in extreme cases, may even prejudice a trial.
I pretty soon wished I hadn’t. Even allowing for the fact that some of the people on the Facebook pages were perhaps neighbours of the missing girl or people who’d helped in the search, the sheer force of the vitriol and hostility to my attempt to warn them that their action was probably less likely to achieve justice for Tia Sharp, that it would have exactly the opposite effect to that expressed in the emotion of their postings, was breathtaking.
Among the less extreme reactions were things like “fruitcake” and “bollocks”. “How would you feel if it was your daughter?” someone asked, missing the point by a cubic mile. Eventually I gave up, and left them to their pitchforks and fiery torches. Today, I have been through my spam email folder (where my Facebook notifications go automatically these days) and deleted 161 messages notifying me that various would-be “pedo burners” [sic] had called me everything from a rather silly chap to an asterisked out profanity-ing female part. There were rather more of the latter sort. I really think people who are going to post on Facebook should have to pass a simple test first, aimed at identifying and excluding those who were abandoned at sea by their birth parents and brought up instead by plankton.
What with the baying mob on Facebook wanting to lynch the “murderer” of Tia Sharpe before anyone had been arrested or charged, let alone tried and convicted, and the constant stream of compulsory “patriotism” being pumped out by the media and The Blight over the Olympics, it’s been a pretty depressing week.
One of the most sickening things about the Olympics is of course the hypocrisy of the politicians of all parties who are attempting to appropriate the Olympic bandwagon and steer it in their own direction. Sometimes this is merely obvious, crass, goonish waffle, such as John Prescott’s suggestion of painting the Humber Bridge gold to mark Luke Campbell’s victory in the boxing, or politicians queuing up to be seen congratulating the likes of Mo Farah – Muslims are fine, apparently, when they are running the 10,000 metres, wrapped in the Union Jack, but if they’re running in another direction, away from tyranny and war, running to jump on the back of a lorry outside Sangatte, they are not so fine, then they somehow morph into the hated “asylum seekers” who seem to exercise the Daily Mail’s collective addled brain cell on a regular basis. Talking of exercise, sometimes political meddling is more insidious, as in Boris Johnson and Cameron trying to vault over each other with increasingly tedious suggestions about whether it should be two hours of compulsory sport per week or two per day, larded with pejorative references to “Indian dancing”. It can only be a matter of time before The Blight makes it compulsory to practice archery for an hour a day, as they used to have to do in the middle ages. You will, I am sure, be familiar with the statute of Edward III and his declaration of 1363:
"Whereas the people of our realm, rich and poor alike, were accustomed formerly in their games to practise archery – whence by God's help, it is well known that high honour and profit came to our realm, and no small advantage to ourselves in our warlike enterprises... that every man in the same country, if he be able-bodied, shall, upon holidays, make use, in his games, of bows and arrows... and so learn and practise archery."
In fact, talking of the middle ages, I sometimes think that England, my England, is falling back eight hundred years through time and becoming an ugly, dysfunctional, lawless, medieval country, peopled by baying mobs of vigilantes, where bad things happen, power is exercised without responsibility and with arbitrary outcomes, and no-one cares. It’s like the Reformation and the Enlightenment never happened, some days. We’ve still got dog-fighting and if The Blight have their way, fox-hunting will be legalised again. Next stop, witch-burning, bear baiting and trial by ordeal. I’m sure Cameron would have it in the manifesto if he thought there were enough votes in it.
And you can also forget the argument that apparently the “success” of the likes of Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah is somehow a validation of, a green light for multiculturalism, and one in the eye for the likes of the BNP, UKIP and the EDL, because the sort of people who support those organisations don’t regard “mixed race” Britons as “British” anyway. They also have difficulty distinguishing them from economic migrants and/or asylum seekers.
But never mind! The Olympics has been a “success”, apparently. Obviously I am glad for all the athletes and amateur hobbyists whose long hours of training and effort have been, in their own terms, validated on some sort of international forum – they come out of it very well in comparison with professional footballers, for instance; what I object to, and have objected to all along, is the mob mentality that forces compulsory patriotism on people and treats with derision those who raise questions about (for instance) what all this is costing, in an age of austerity, what the implications are for security, and whether the whole thing is just a massive distraction from things we should really be concentrating on, and what the hell are we going to do with all these stadiums now? I suppose they will give Cameron and Boris Johnson somewhere to herd all the dissenters if things go really badly. But we should remember that “success” is a relative term, it does not come free of any price tags, and the pressure to conform, to cheer on “Team GB” (or “Our Boys”, who were forcibly drafted in to help them) brings with it a mob mentality disturbingly similar to the Tia Sharpe forums.
I should really never have started typing this Epiblog. When I am angry about potentially missing out on a holiday, and angry about the mess the country has become, I am not a nice person to know. Some would say I never am. In fact, more and more I experience life in general, the more I feel completely disconnected from the rest of the world at large, and I sometimes wonder if it might be possible to achieve an even greater degree of detachment – if not physically, by moving to some godforsaken place at the arse end of nowhere and then pulling up the drawbridge after me, and/or mentally, spiritually, by practising the Zen maxim of “let it go with both hands”, whether “it” is the memory of carefree days in the Lakes with Deb and Tiggy, or the idea of going on holiday in the camper, or even, in extremis, on days like today, life itself.
Today, for what it’s worth, is St Morwenna’s day. Little is known of St Morwenna, though she is responsible for the place name of Morwenstow in Cornwall (= Morwenna’s place) and she was one of the daughters of Brychan of Brycheiniog. She must’ve been rather homesick, as Saints go, because one of the few things she is known/famous for is for asking her brother, St Nectan, to lift her up on her deathbed so that she could see her Welsh homeland. She also had a holy well, one of many in the British Isles of course, though the majority of them are usually dedicated to St Bridget (St Bride) or St Helen. The holy well at Morwenstow is rather inaccessible, I hear, despite being owned by the National Trust. And it no longer has water in it. Apart from that, though…
Morwenna is also associated with Lamorran and Lamorna, other places in Cornwall, one of them being the inspiration for the song which saved me from a duffing-up in Bognor Regis. She’s also known for teaching children to read, and being a virgin. I guess they had them in Cornwall in those days. Actually, Lamorna is quite a “bookish” place, because apart from being a centre of some of the Newlyn group of artists, Minack, nearby, was the home of Derek Tangye, who wrote dozens of books about living there, in his little cottage, up on the cliffs, with ducks, cats and donkeys, not to mention his wife, Jeannie. I especially like the story of Monty the cat, who started out being only allowed in the kitchen and ended up sleeping on the bed. Now doesn’t that just sound like every cat you’ve ever known?
Anyway, unlike the late Derek Tangye, and much as I feel like going to one right now, I’m unlikely to find myself the proud possessor of a Cornish cottage without electricity, and with only earth floors, or, indeed a donkey any time soon, so I will just have to carry on writing my usual drivel from here. I know very little about Cornwall, actually, when it comes to Cornwall, in the words of Lee Harvey Oswald, “I’m just a pasty”. Please feel free to correct. I do like the Lamorna song, though.
So, goodnight, America, wherever you are. This time tomorrow, I might be on holiday. Or not. Who knows?
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