Weather-wise, we’ve all been suffering from this perishing cold. Winter is definitely biting now, and the local weather report says it’ll be even colder next week. Just when I need to organise a haircut. It’s been beautiful to see the frost on the trees and the grass down in the valley on the mornings when I’ve been awake early enough to see the sun come up over Berry Brow, but not so beautiful to go out there in it, and try and shovel coal out of a bag where it’s all stuck together with frost! I’ve seen a couple more beautiful dawns, as well, but overall I would still trade them for a winter in Majorca, I think. I could always look at pictures of a typical English winter dawn on the internet, and think myself lucky I wasn’t experiencing it for real.
Deb, too, has been feeling the effects of winter, particularly in those early mornings where she has to pour kettles of hot water on the windscreen of the camper and use an entire can of de-icer just be able to see out into the pre-dawn dark as she heads out to some godforsaken outreach centre in the back of beyond, or Birstall, as it is sometimes known. Because the heater in the van is so old and feeble, she’s also taken to making a hot water bottle first thing, and driving along with it stuffed between her and the seatbelt. In the medieval life we live, spring redeems, but winter punishes.
Matilda, too, dislikes the cold, and has spent most of the week on the bed by the hearth. No change there, then. We’ve discovered that, despite being an elderly cat of some nine years, she likes playing with old shoe laces and quite happily does star jumps to try and catch them. Strangely enough, she seems to prefer the shoelace on its own, to the shoelace with flat Eric, her catnip mouse, tied to the end of it. She’s still very reluctant to venture far outside, and like Debbie, she still growls and scuttles off upstairs whenever somebody she doesn’t like comes to the door.
The week started with a visit from Lucy, who had come to borrow some humane rat traps, which we have had hanging around for years, having acquired them at some point in the past when we feared (needlessly, as it turned out) an infestation by humane rats. While we are always glad to see her, we were especially so when she left us a jar of her home-made plum jam and her whisky marmalade, both of which I have subsequently tested for strength and taste, and to which I can award a five-star review.
Unfortunately, the week then plummeted to a new low when the coal thieves returned on Tuesday night and stole another two bags, this time out of the re-order I’d been forced to place on Monday. What had happened was that when the new coal arrived, I had managed to make space in the porch for five bags out of the re-order, but the other five had to go outside, although I asked the coalman to stack them right next to the porch wall, and we also slit the bags so that if any were picked up, coal would start to come out of them.
When I went back out later, and saw that two of the new bags were already missing, I lost it, and went totally batshit. I got on the phone to the police again and told them that somebody was obviously watching our house, for all I knew, they were out there now, and would be coming back for the rest, and that now my total losses in monetary terms for the two crimes were over £120.00 – not a great amount of money to some, but since we’re struggling for survival at the moment, quite a dint in our skimpy cash flow.
Then I went and got the axe, and sharpened it, and took that, and my mobile phone, and Debbie’s kayaking torch, the one with the 200 foot beam, and went and sat by the remaining sacks to guard them until the police came. I must admit, when I wrote last week about sticking out dark nights alone, I was thinking more metaphorically than literally. I didn’t feel very confident of my ability to inflict a lot of damage on them, if they came back, I was hoping that my presence alone would be a deterrent, though I did have a few practice swings with the axe, more to keep me warm than anything else, while metaphorically screaming the Fenwick war cry. I couldn’t do that for real, I was saving it for the moment when they came around the corner of the garage.
In the event, it was actually the police who came around the corner of the garage first, an hour and a quarter later, and found themselves coned in my torch-beam. So we all went inside and I went through the details with them, and before they left, they very kindly brought in the three remaining bags and re-stacked them with the ones in the porch, so I could still get by to the door, just. They also brought in my aluminium wheelchair ramps, the ones I use to get in and out of the camper, which had been out there as well.
Up until then, Tuesday had been a good day. Gez came round with the proofs of his new novel, Changes, and I had a quick chat with him about the amends and what needed doing. Just as we were finishing up, the bell outside dinged and I went to the door to find Mark, Carol and Scott from the Isle of Arran standing on the doorstep! They were down here visiting family, and called by for an all-too-brief meeting on their way back. They also introduced themselves to Freddie and Zak, who I was dog-sitting for the day. Freddie growled (his default greeting for everybody) and Zak looked nervous (his default setting for every social situation).
All this talk of dogs brings me to the latest development in the Elvis saga. In order to provide the necessary barrier to his escapist tendencies which the animal rescue people had specified, we’d settled on willow screening rather than a donking great wooden fence, primarily on the grounds of cost. Also, speed of erection was a consideration, and I make a point of mentioning that word specifically for the benefit of Google’s web-traffic bots. As indeed, I do with the word “bots”. Anyway, this was ordered on Thursday, and due on a next day delivery on Friday. I didn’t want to order it too far in advance in case the rolls of willow screening went the same way as the coal, there being no way I could store 24 yards of willow screening and seven 5’ 6” fence posts in the house anywhere.
Also due on Friday was the “new” cooker. New to us, that is, a result of one of Debbie’s forays on Ebay. We’d had to get rid of the old range cooker which we’ve had for about twelve years, because it’s just too large for the kitchen, especially as I now need more space with my wheelchair and everything, and in any case, about the only time it ever got used to its full capacity was when I cooked Christmas dinner on it. The rest of the meals through the year, I could probably have done with a baby Belling, to be honest.
The gas fitter had been round on Thursday night to disconnect the old range, so our evening meal on Thursday consisted of crumpets toasted on the fire. I was slightly disconcerted that the people who had said they were coming for the old range from Freecycle had not turned up, but they emailed me to say they’d be there at 9.30 on Friday morning, so I thought nothing of it. I was more disconcerted that Debbie said that when she’d coasted into the driveway, the camper van engine had died on her, and no amount of coaxing would get it to start again. It had come to rest in a place that would make it at least inconvenient, if not downright bloody impossible, to squeeze through carrying a range cooker. Oh, soddit.
So began Friday, a day of battle that will remain forever etched in my heart. On the one side, ranged against me, were the dark forces of evil and chaos that swirled all around us. I had to make sure I got rid of the old cooker before the new one came. I had to get the gas fitter to come back and connect the new one. I had to take delivery of several rolls of willow screening and seven large fence posts, and I had to get someone to come and move the camper van and rescue it up to the garage for further investigation. At least two of those had to be done before the new cooker arrived or the old one went. On my side, I had me, with a mobile phone, a laptop and a landline, plus Debbie, plus Matilda for a while, at least until the first person knocked on the door, at which point I knew that she would flee the field of battle, growling to herself as she went.
The first problem was the camper, but we had a stroke of luck there. Debbie tried it again, on spec, and the engine fired, and caught, so she managed to back it out of the driveway and more or less park it at the kerbside on the road, before it died again, this time for good. At least it was out of the way of the cookers.
The next problem was that the people from Freecycle hadn’t turned up, and it was over an hour past the time they’d specified. Sadly, I didn’t have a mobile number for them, despite having asked for it twice in previous emails, so I began a series of increasingly desperate emails telling them in effect to get their arses down here if they still wanted it. At noon, I gave up, and offered it to the second person on the list, who gratefully accepted it, on behalf of his daughter. Unfortunately though, he was in Stockport, and there was no way, he thought, that he could make it before the new cooker arrived.
By now, I had hit upon a cunning plan. But before I had time to implement it or do anything to inform Debbie, the willow screening arrived. I went out to find the courier gleefully stacking it on my wheelchair ramp. I explained to him my predicament, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind just carrying it through the kitchen and out onto the decking, a journey of some half a dozen steps. “Can’t do that, mate, it’s only supposed to be door to door”. Eventually, we compromised, and he stacked it in the porch, already crammed to the gills with bags of coal, a process which took him longer, and caused him more hassle, than if he’d just done what I asked in the first place.
Making a mental note never to order from that place again, I trundled back in and, when she came in from the garden, told Debbie what had happened. As you can imagine, she was most impressed at having to move the stuff herself.
No sooner was that diversion out of the way, than the garage came to pick up the van, and we were left contemplating the wreckage in a sort of “now, where were we..” sort of way. Debbie was trying, ineffectually, to clean the area behind the old range, which was still plugged in, and she must have happened to touch an especially frayed bit of the old flex, because the next minute she let out a huge scream, sprang upwards, and landed flat on her back beside me, as a result of getting a brief taste of 240 volts AC. I had no idea what had happened at first, until she had recovered enough to tell me, but between us we managed to unplug it at the mains and I phoned the guy who was on his way from Stockport to tell him about the frayed flex problem just in case it made a difference It didn’t, thankfully.
By now, the arrival of Pickfords was imminent, and there was no time to tell Debbie my idea, so I just got her to hide out of the way until after they had gone. When they knocked on the door, a few minutes later, I invited them in and showed them the old range. Putting on my best, Oscar nominated “tragic cripple Steve” performance, I explained that I’d been let down by the people who should have moved it out of the way, and was there any chance, even the minutest, that they might feel sorry enough for me to shift this one first?
After my previous experience with Tuffnells Parcel Express over the willow screening, I wasn’t hopeful, but as it turned out they said “Yeah, no worries, mate”, bent down and picked up the range as lightly as if it had been a cardboard box, and bore it out of the house shoulder-high, just like a coffin. Two minutes later they were back with the new one, plonked it down, and hey presto, sign here. Now all I had to do was get the gasfitter to come back.
I was dialling his number, when he walked in the door. He’d remembered that I’d told him the delivery time, and had turned up on spec, slightly early, but had gone to sleep in his van for 20 minutes and woke up when he saw the Pickfords lorry. In ten minutes, the new cooker was connected and in place.
Just as the gasfitter was leaving, Brian from Stockport arrived for the old range, and John the gasman helped him get it into the back of his people-carrier. Result!
By the end of Friday I was drained, though, and although I had envisaged cooking a vast celebratory feast for us on the new stove, it turned out in the end to be chip butties, which was about all we were up to. And Saturday was still to come.
Saturday morning saw the arrival of Andrew and Dave from the Danewalk Kennels who had been sent by Kerrie to put up the Elvis-fence. With Debbie helping where she could, and me manning the teapot, they grafted for four hours in the freezing cold, and also overcame the massive underestimation of the number of fence posts needed, by improvisation. I will need at some future point to order another five fence posts, preferably before the next load of gales hits us, but nevertheless, we now have an Elvis-proof fence. Elvis himself, sadly, is under the weather a bit at the moment, having suffered a tinge of kennel-cough and having to go back on to anti-biotics, so we’ve agreed with the kennels to leave him in their care until he’s completed that treatment. Strangely enough, it’s now looking as if he might arrive almost exactly on the anniversary of Tig’s death. Maybe it’s her influence, from up there in doggy heaven, that’s arranged this neatness of timing, that the successor dog arrives a year after her death. It’s usually a year and a day, in folk songs and nursery rhymes, isn’t it.
The camper van news was not so good. Another massive bill, because the problem is that the alternator relay had burnt itself out (almost catching fire on its way to the garage) and that in turn had knackered the alternator. Ouch. Just when I thought we might be getting in front a bit, this happens. Oh well, one step forward, two steps back, as the Italian army says.
So it came to Sunday, the second Sunday in advent, no less. Advent is all supposed to be about looking forward to Christmas, and I haven’t really given it a thought, as yet. As a child, I always looked forward to Christmas, especially Christmas Eve, for some reason, which was always more magical, for me, than the day itself. This year, when I think about Christmas, all I can think of are those people who aren’t looking forward to Christmas. The lonely, the suicidal, and the homeless, out in the cold; the animals in the shelters and pounds; the feral cats, out in the cold, and the turkeys in the turkey-sheds. One can only hope that the latter have no inkling of how their short, unhappy lives will soon be brutally ended.
Some of these categories, the homeless and the abandoned animals, for instance, are, of course, almost a direct consequence of the economic policies being followed by our so-called “Leaders” another tranche of which was unveiled last Wednesday. Their answer to the fact that the economy is holed below the water-line, and sinking fast, is to steer straight for the iceberg, full speed ahead, while jettisoning the weak, the poor and the needy in order to keep those in first class happy.
What a sad, nasty country we have become, when we’re already looking at what budgets at home can be chopped so we can fire missiles at Syria next year, and the elections show that the government’s dog-whistle pronouncements on immigration have been so successful that UKIP is now off the leash, off over the horizon in full cry, and refusing to come back to heel. The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable, as was once said of another similarly unpleasant spectacle. This Junta, this blight, is another reason why I can’t ever be a proper Christian. How can you forgive a raging hypocrite like George Osborne? You are supposed to start by “hating the sin, but loving the sinner”, but how do you do that when, in his case, the sin and the sinner are indivisible?
So I can’t say I am looking forward to Christmas, nor indeed to 2013, particularly. I find myself these days living more and more back in the days when I was what passed for happy. I haven’t read my Bible or my Book of Common Prayer for a while now, but in the absence of any particularly wacky saints to celebrate today, I turned to the Collect for today to see what it was that I was supposed to be reading and hearing.
Amongst the various prayers, Psalms and readings is 2 Peter 3: 11-14;
Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
Or, as I prefer it, from the full-fat, high-tar King James version:
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.
I could certainly do with some fervent heat right now, not only the spiritual kind, but also the actual! But I take this to mean that while (according to the Bible anyway) it is not impossible that one day we will wake up and find the sky on fire, God on his throne hurling thunderbolts hither and yon, and demons with horns, red tights and pitchforks prodding George Osborne in the backside as they usher him towards the burning lake, nevertheless, we should not cease striving to make things better here, in the meantime. We shall not cease, from mental strife, nor shall our swords sleep in our hands, and all that. So with that in mind, instead of my usual vaguely appropriate piece of music from Youtube, I’ve attached instead a small quelquechose, a harmless maggot of a piece that I put together in what is laughingly described as my spare time, to try and help RAIN Rescue.
God alone knows what next week will bring, but at least right now,
on Sunday teatime I’m not out in the cold with the abandoned animals and the homeless people, and I thank him for that small mercy.
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