Epiblog for Bastille Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and, inspired no doubt by Uncle Phil departing to return home to Darwin, NT, the temperatures here in the UK suddenly decided to try and compete with the steamy equatorial heat of Northern Australia. It’s been so good to wake up to a succession of warm, mainly sunny days, that I have been trying to wring every last little joy out of the experience, even bunking off to re-pot the odd herb, when I should really have been working on dreary things like accounts and marketing.  “Joy” is perhaps an odd word to use in the circumstances, but I really do feel as if I have earned this weather – we all have, in fact, when you think back to the dreariness of the cold and the ice and the snow that lasted for weeks and weeks back in March.

Misty and Matilda were both quite startled when everyone got up at 4.45AM on Tuesday morning to see Uncle Phil off. Mind you, so was I.  I attempted to go back to bed again, but couldn’t really get back to sleep, until I finally drifted off at around 7AM, just in time to be woken up again half an hour later by the morons down at Park Valley Mills, who are once again hellbent on causing as much noise and disruption as they can, as early as they can in the day.

Matilda really loves this warm weather, too. She’s taken to going outside first thing in the morning and staying out more or less all day, lounging around in the sun, usually round the corner on the bit of decking behind the garage, which has always been a bit of a sun-trap, it’s just that we never normally have enough sun to trap there. The wily sun hides away behind the clouds instead. Anyway, this week, it’s been well and truly trapped, to Matilda’s benefit. Habitually, around 7pm, she comes inside for something to eat from the magically-refilling food dish, then settles down and goes to sleep on the foot of my bed, occasionally re-appearing for a brief foray in time for News at Ten.

Actually, the magically-refilling food dish isn’t so magic these days, since the advent of Misty, who tends to go around and hoover up anything left by anybody. We were worried we weren’t feeding her enough of her proper dog food, and she was foraging because she was still hungry, but we double-checked with Barbara at the Border Collie sanctuary and no, we are right, we are feeding her the right amount, it’s just that she’s greedy, apparently!

Other than that, considering that she has every right to be withdrawn and angry at the human race for leaving her tied up at the side of a road, she’s a remarkably trusting and friendly little dog.  We’ve also noticed that the top corner of her right ear is missing – a clean cut, not a ragged one. We can only begin to imagine the things she might have been through, but she’s settled in remarkably quickly, especially when it comes to sitting on the settee next to Debbie.  There are still some occasional aberrations. She isn’t very good at “come here”, and every so often she seems to feel the need to explore the world at large, which has meant that Deb’s had to spend a considerable time blocking up all the little dog shaped holes in the garden and making it more secure, especially after Misty gave her the slip on Wednesday morning and managed to escape into next door’s garden; I opened the door, on my way out to see if she was round the front, to find my next-door neighbour’s daughter standing on my wheelchair ramp holding on to Misty by the collar. She was told off severely for being a bad girl and that she shouldn’t ever do it again. (Misty, I mean. I was extremely grateful to my neighbour’s daughter for catching her before she ended up back in Bradford!)

Misty’s learning “give paw”, and she knows several other commands already. Her ability to retrieve sticks from the River Holme seems to vary dramatically day by day. On Wednesday, in company with Deb’s Dad, and with Zak there to show her the ropes, Misty confidently fetched and retrieved the floating sticks which Debbie threw for her, like a good ‘un. The next day, without Zak, she stood on the bank and ignored them, looking puzzled.  Then Debbie threw a stick for her that she couldn't fiind, so she ended up bringing back another stick, then dropping that half-way.  

Deb has bought her a small, squeaky ball, and they were playing football with it in the conservatory the other evening (don’t ask!) All was going well until Debbie backheeled it instead of kicking it, and it went under a chair. Cue several minutes of confused searching by Misty, until Debbie got fed up and actually showed her where it was. I fear we may have re-homed a special needs collie. Eyes two different colours, and 1⅞ ears.  She’s also more than capable of pressing the “cuteness” button, though, especially when there might be a dog treat in the offing. Or indeed anything to her advantage. As Barbara remarked: “She knew what she was doing, the day she jumped up into the camper and cuddled up next to you!” She’s certainly a dog that, as the old saying goes, “won’t eat mutton when lamb’s in season”.

Maisie’s ferals, meanwhile, by contrast, remain un-re-homed, if that’s even a word. I am starting to feel like one of those little balls inside a pinball machine, especially as the Cats’ Protection League and the RSPCA, both massive organisations with large cash reserves and modern, well-appointed head offices with paid staff, have totally failed to respond in any meaningful way to my repeated requests to find a sanctuary somewhere in the UK with some space.  We can organise the traps, we can organise the transport, we just need somewhere willing to take on Bill and Sunshine, in return for a donation. I am definitely removing the donation to the CPL from my will, whatever happens, and I have sent a two-page letter to the chief executive of the RSPCA complaining about the Chinese Wall of Non-Communication which surrounds them. No reply! So, next week I am going to start tweeting them directly. When their phone starts pinging every 15 minutes, they might start taking notice.

The birds and squirrels have been notable by their absence, as indeed has Brenda the badger.  The only way to find out what or who is still eating the peanuts I occasionally leave out for her would be to stay up and mount an all-night vigil, but these days I am just too knackered to do this.

Talking of food, some enterprising soul has started a "Rice and Noodles" takeaway in Huddersfield, and pushed a menu through our door during the week. Delights on offer include the “Tung Tong Golden Basket”, which consists, apparently, of "crispy purses filled with water chestnuts, corn, slithers [sic] of chicken and coriander." If it’s all the same to you, dear, if I was wanting to eat lumps of dead chicken, I would prefer it if it just lay there, actually, and didn't slither. Great “slivering” serpents! Does nobody proof-read these things?

It’s been a week tinged with a degree of sadness, too, despite all this jollity. I realised that it must be coming up to the time to renew the rental on the memorial plaque attached to the tree planted in memory of my parents, plus Auntie Maud and Granny Fenwick, in the grounds of the Chanterlands Crematorium in Hull.  For those of you unfamiliar with the process, the council doesn’t guarantee to maintain a memorial to your dead relatives for ever. You rent it in 10-year blocks.  This is, of course, a racket. Not so much because they charge at all – their defence is that, if they didn’t, the Crematorium grounds would be cluttered with memorials that were no longer relevant, or something. Personally, I don’t mind that concept – I’ve written before about what peaceful and thoughtful places overgrown cemeteries can be, but you can’t fight City Hall. No, the racketeering lies in the amount they want you to pay, and, of course, they play on the fact that nobody wants to be seen to be skimping on the memories of their deceased loved ones, so people pay up without a murmur.  I have no doubt, personally, that each and every one of the four people whose ashes are interred under that tree would say, “Don’t be daft, spend the money on the living, not the dead.”

In passing, I noted that the little disclaimer at the foot of the Hull City Council Crematorium email said that they endeavour (not promise, mind) to answer all correspondence within ten working days. I was sorely tempted to send them another email back, asking if, in view of the hot weather, they could possibly hurry it up a bit, as my Auntie has died and she won’t fit in the fridge-freezer.

Term has finally ended, in Debbie’s case with a number of meetings and visits to college to hand stuff in, none of which she will get paid for. She has five hours of definite teaching per week from September, with the possibility of upping that, by providing cover for other people. It’s a hefty drop from what she was doing last year (the College has to pay for its shiny new £74million building with no car park somehow) but that may be no bad thing, in that the hours she was doing last year damn near killed her, with all of the additional preparation and travelling.  Monetarily, of course, it’s a different matter. We’ll just have to see how it pans out.

So, theoretically, no more twelve-hour days. Deb has been celebrating by sitting in the sun in a deckchair, on the decking, appropriately enough, and reading her Ray Mears survival books. As I said to her the other morning, when I handed her out three slices of Marmite on toast through the conservatory door, she would have no trouble at all surviving in the wild, as long as I was around to make breakfast.

I was casting around to find a suitable saint for this week’s Epiblog, and to be honest, all of the ones I researched were, frankly, a bit boring.  But it is certainly a memorable secular anniversary, of course, because it is Bastille Day.  And several things which have come up in the news this week have made it actually quite apposite to remember the French Revolution, even though it did all end in tears – as most revolutions seem to.  Still, a little revolutionary zeal would do no harm, in a week when the Junta announced the privatisation of Royal Mail (what page of the manifesto was that on, then?) and the possibility of an 11% pay rise for MPs from 2015. Not to mention the clashes at Prime Minister’s Question Time over the funding of political parties. David Cameron's justification for rejecting a £5000 cap on individual donations to political parties is apparently that if it was implemented, there would have to be some sort of taxpayer-funded element to make up the difference.

Er, excuse me? What do they need all this money for anyway? Sorry, but no. NOT A PENNY OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY should go to funding the propaganda machines of political parties. Make do with what donations you can get.  You might get more people joining your parties if you were a bit more representative, for instance, and a little less cocooned from reality.

As far as the Royal Mail goes, I said more or less everything I have to say about this on my other blog, in December 2008. It’s very depressing to think that we have to keep resurrecting these old reasons why privatising the Royal Mail is a bad idea, every time Vince Cable rises like a zombie and totters to the despatch box in Parliament. Anyway, for anyone who still cares about the public services in this country, this is why it’s a bad idea to privatise Royal Mail.  It will end up in a worse service to the general public, at a higher price. See also under railways.

As to the MPs, I really don’t have anything to add to this,

http://bolshyparty.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/an-urgent-appeal-by-disasters-emergency.html

except to say that I would ban MPs from having any additional employment while sitting as an MP, that they should have to live in a constituency for three years before being allowed to represent it; that they should have one house, in the constituency, which they pay for; and that they should not be allowed to “pair” with members of the opposite bench. Make the buggers turn up and vote in person.

As I wrote in December 2009:

If they have the brass nuts to try and claim for moat cleaning, duck houses, and bell tower repair on the public purse, they deserve EVERYTHING coming their way. If they want respect, they should shut up and earn respect, instead of whinging about "having to live on rations". As to their pay, a) most of them have several other jobs and b) if they don't like it, they can shove off and join the poor unloved bankers who are going to throw their teddy out the pram and all move to New York or Geneva. I'll do their job. I'll be an MP, for that money. Three times what I earned last year, before tax. Yes please. While there is still ONE homeless person in Britain these cold nights, I would REQUISITION MPs' second homes for emergency accommodation, and make them sleep on cardboard boxes in a sleeping bag under Westminster Bridge, until they do something to end it.

A rather under-reported, but nevertheless significant, news event this week was the recording of a verdict of unlawful killing in the case of Jimmy Mubenga.  I first wrote about the case in 2010. On 12th October that year, on board BA Flight 77 from the UK to Luanda, Angola, Jimmy Mubenga, a 46-year-old who had been in Britain for 16 years and had lost a long series of appeals, and who was being forcibly detained by Group 4 Security, working on behalf of the UK Borders Agency, died. Several witness statements speak of him complaining and undergoing breathing difficulties while under restraint. Anyway, this week, a coroner finally decided he was unlawfully killed. It remains to be seen what, if anything, will happen now.

Jimmy Mubenga was no saint. He was being deported at the end of a two year jail sentence for assault.  But once again, as I have said before, this only serves to point up that deporting someone after they have already served a jail sentence is actually punishing them twice for the same crime. I’d like to think that the Great Britain I know and love would do either/or, but not both.  However, that’s beside the point. Whatever their legal status, people should not die in custody because of inept or inappropriate restraint by ham-fisted security guards. This is what I wrote about the case in 2009.

It won't bring him back, but perhaps 12 October every year could be remembered as Jimmy Mubenga day, until the UK Borders Agency is no more, disbanded for good, and Group 4 once more recognises that its true level of competence is in losing, or occasionally delivering, overnight parcels (or knocking on the door and leaving a card, even though you were in the house at the time). They were crap at that, but at least they didn't kill anyone.

Well, the UK Borders Agency is no more, but the astonishing level of incompetence at G4S as they are called these days, continues to infest the public services. And yet, unaccountably, somehow, we allow them to continue living and breathing. Unlike Jimmy Mubenga.

The BBC, another seriously-flawed institution, seems to be on a crusade at the moment to monster the poorest in society. This week they had a programme called "we pay your benefits" or something like that which "confronted" three people on benefits with three people who were hard-working "strivers". Never mind that there are some people in work who are also on benefits, or that it's perfectly possible to be a hard working striver on July 15th, keel over on July 16^th, almost die, and end up on benefits after 6 months in hospital. No siree, in the BBC's world it's either/or. The deserving and the "undeserving"

And then there was the programme about families living on a breadline food budget - the chef was sent out to shop with the family’s normal amount to spend on food and immediately topped it up by buying an £11.00 side of fresh salmon! Idiot. Now every white van man who happened to be watching BBC1 that night is firmly convinced that the most disadvantaged in our society dine nightly on smoked salmon. Well done, the BBC!

So, we don’t really have a saint to finish off with today, and, to be honest, I am in a very “aux barricades” mood right now.  In a situation where the Labour Party have pulled the rug from underneath the poor, the disadvantaged and the ill by prematurely conceding all the arguments on the economy, benefits and immigration, ahead of the 2015 election, there’s not a lot to look forward to.  Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the white flag flying here.  Maybe storming the Bastille is the answer after all. When the best that the effete, pampered ruling class can come up with is “Let them eat cake!” maybe it is actually time the tumbrels started rolling.

Tomorrow, of course, is the Feast of St Swithun, which we have celebrated many times before. Three years ago, I “celebrated” it by being carted off in an ambulance for a bowel resection. Nice. Two years ago, however, in a comeback Elvis would have been proud of, I celebrated it by sitting round a table at Mossburn Animal Centre with Debbie, Juanita, and Kate McLaren, while Tiggy and Oliver sprawled underneath the table, as we sang “The 51^st Highland Division’s Farewell to Sicily”, and caroused into the early hours. Ah, happy days. 

If the weather holds, it looks like, this year, St Swithun’s day might be worth celebrating again. 40 days and 40 nights of sweltering weather would set me up just right for another nithering winter. Although this year, it will mark the start of us packing the camper to depart on holiday. As usual, we don’t know where we are going, and we have made no plans, but if there’s no Epiblog next Sunday, that’s why. I will be taking the netbook, but the hairy-arsed regions of the North are sometimes lacking in free wi-fi (though Tesco’s car park in Dumfries is a “hotspot”).

I have mixed feelings about going on holiday. Mainly surrounding Matilda and her welfare while we are away. We have already organised for her to be fed and watered by a combination of The Doggy Nanny and Granny, in principle at any rate, but given what happened last year, I have very grave reservations about leaving her at all.  On the other hand, in the same way as I feel I have earned this summer weather, Debbie has surely earned the right to go kayaking in return for all those dreary hours getting up before dawn and driving through the snowdrifts in freeing winter conditions to some Godforsaken outreach centre in Stalybridge to teach people literacy for a college hierarchy that didn’t care if she lived or died.  So we probably will end up going. Somewhere, at any rate.

It may well be good for me to have a break from churning out all this bile and vitriol, as well. I’ve come to the conclusion that God is busy elsewhere at the moment, and is not listening to my prayers. Bill and Sunshine alone are testimony to that.  If there is a God, and my prayers are answered, the Houses of Parliament will be struck by lightning; we’ll see.  It’s beginning to look like we’re on our own, though, chaps. I suppose even God deserves a holiday, we shouldn’t begrudge the old codger, but some days I think that those bits of life’s beach where there was just one set of footprints really was just me.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Ethelburga

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley.  The weather continues to be largely hot and dull, but at least we have been able to let the stove go out (finally). When I can get around to girding my “lions” to do it, I will clean it out good and proper, and give it a much-needed makeover. It’s done some sterling work during the winter, but it’s suffered a bit from being lit constantly through most of the ice and snow.  The front bit that stops the coal coming out is bent and manked up, and needs replacing. The middle “post” of it has completely burnt away. The crumbled and broken firebrick inside needs replacing (we already have a new one, propped up and ready to go in) the baffle plate has a hole in it, according to Owen, when he took it apart on his last-but-one visit, oh, and the chimney probably needs sweeping.  Apart from that, it’s ticketty-boo.

Despite the warm weather, life, sadly has to go on. Good weather -  or at least, prolonged spells of good weather – is so rare in this country now, that I’ve often said there should be some kind of facility for declaring a national holiday when certain meteorological conditions are met. Meanwhile, in the absence of any such enlightened legislation, we bash on.  Monday found me dogsitting Freddie and Zak. It was already warm in the conservatory, and at that point, the stove was still in from the day before, though it was winding down.  Anyway, Zak must’ve got too hot, because he suddenly jumped off his chair and was spectacularly sick on the kitchen tiles.

At precisely the same moment, a row of six tomato plants on the conservatory windowsill decided to keel over, one by one, like dominoes, and fall onto the floor. It was my own fault, of course, because I’d been too busy to water them properly, and they had dried out to the stage where the plants were heavier than the soil base they were planted in, and over they went.

By the time I’d let Zak out into the garden, cleared up the vile green froth which had issued from him, swept up all of the loose soil and re-potted it, soaked the plants and replaced them on the windowsill in such a way as to prevent a repeat performance, that was another hour out of my life that I won’t get back.

Matilda has had her usual uneventful week, apart from the fact she gained a little sister – or a big sister, depending how you look at it.  There have been no confirmed sightings of Brenda, though one or two jays have been coming down for bread and peanuts.  I haven’t seen any squirrels for a few weeks now – perhaps they’re all on holiday.

Anyway, Wednesday came, and with it Misty, the new dog. New to us, that is.  She’s a rescue collie, as I wrote last week, and came from a national sanctuary for border collies at a place between Bingley and Baildon, though she was actually rescued, and handed in, from the Newcastle area, where she'd been found tied up by the side of a busy road, alone and frightened.  On the way there, we passed through Shipley which, according to the signs, is twinned with the German town of Hamm. I can’t help but feel that the Burgermeister of Hamm missed a great twinning opportunity with the Isle of Eigg.  

It was a beautiful summer day – they have much better weather in Bradford than they do in Huddersfield, it’s probably something to do with the Gulfstream, or the Jetstream, whichever one of those isn’t an executive jet. The trees were hung with heavy thick shade, and the hedgerows were full of tall, lush greenery.  When we parked up, and Debbie and her Dad went to find Barbara, who runs the place, for the purposes of intellectual diversion, I decided to try and identify all of the species in the grass verge in front of me (in addition to grass, of course). There was cow-parsley (also known as keck, or Queen Anne’s Lace, depending if you are a yokel or a toff), docks, sorrel, celandines, campion, dandelions, plantains, nettles, thistles, and several others that I knew what they were but couldn’t remember their names, if you see what I mean.

Barbara was nothing like she sounded on the phone. Actually, I find that this is often the case, but – possibly because of her name, which in a dog context is always linked with "Woodhouse" – I had envisaged a stern, tweedy lady, with grey hair and severe glasses. Possibly she would be wearing green Hunters and a Husky – or maybe a waxed Barbour.  In fact, she was cheerful, funny, matter of fact, and spent a long time chatting with us, despite the fact she was obviously very busy, with her mobile going off left right and centre with messages.  I stand in awe and admiration at the dedication of the people who run these animal rescues. How they can see some of the truly awful sights they see, and hear some of the truly awful stories, and still continue to have faith in humanity and carry on doing the work they do, is totally beyond me. I would revive my order of secular sainthood just for them.  Well not just for them, but they are indeed all secular saints, to a man and woman.

Misty was unsettled and skittish the first night, which is only to be expected. She spent a lot of time pacing from one door to the other, then back again, then to the bifold doors, then back again. She looked just like Debbie when she’s getting ready for work, with a similar level of manic forgetful energy.

To check if she really is a North-East, Geordie doggie, I played her the small-pipe tune, Sir John Fenwick’s the floor amang them, on Youtube, and she sat, quizzically, listening, with her head on one side and her ears up, looking like the original HMV dog. I thought it really looked like she was listening to the music, but Debbie’s take on events was that Misty probably just couldn’t believe the incredible shite I listen to (quote, unquote)

By Saturday, Misty was settling in reasonably well.  She has definitely decided she is going to be Debbie’s dog, but she tolerates my presence in the pack as a source of food, so that’s pretty much what the pecking order was with Tiggy.  On Friday, Debbie and Uncle Phil took Misty out for the day and they all went to Edale and climbed Kinder Scout, doing an 8-mile circular walk.  From this, and from some previous observations, we can deduce the following facts about Misty.

Although she is a sheepdog, she completely ignored the sheep. Things she is good at include being patted on the head and told she is “cute” by passing strangers – oddly enough, that, too, is something that always used to happen to Tiggy.  She is good at getting tangled up in her own lead, not so good at getting through stiles, and quite good at thinking that her reflection in the conservatory door is another dog, and growling at it.  She knows “Up-up-up” “stay” “beddies” and “stop/no/ah-ah” but she seems a bit slow on “sit”, and we’re still working on “give paw”

We also know that she is wary – well, terrified - of sticks, and that she doesn’t really like the wheelchair, or understand why I am in it. Actually, I am right with her on those last two. I don’t, either.  I discovered this on Thursday when I tried to trundle over to the door, fix her on her lead, and then let her out onto the decking. She was wary of the wheelchair, and kept lying down behind it. I thought once I got the lead clipped on, if I opened the door, she would just go out. I had wrapped the lead round one of the arms of the wheelchair just in case she bolted and pulled it out of my hand, but I was totally unprepared for what happened next.

Normally, to open and shut the conservatory door, I use Grandad Walker’s old walking-stick, which is left hanging from the door handle for that very purpose.  As soon as I picked it up, she leapt back in fear, yanking the lead across the top of the tray fixed to the front of my chair. Unfortunately, the laptop was on the tray, and got flipped up into the air, turned a somersault, and landed (closing its lid in the process) with a slap! Upside-down on the conservatory floor. It is a testament to the robust nature of Acer laptops that it worked straight away again when I picked it up and opened it. Just as well, otherwise it would have created lots of tedious paperwork, although doing the drawing of what happened for the insurance claims form would have been mildly amusing.

I sat her down and gave her a talking-to. I told her she was Tiggy’s successor, not Tiggy’s replacement, and what we needed was for her to be as good a dog in her own way, as Tiggy had been in hers. She sat and listened with her head on one side.

On Saturday, summer finally broke out, all over the garden and also in other parts of Huddersfield, if reliable reports are to be believed.  My tomato plants marked the occasion by attempting mass suicide in a lemming impression again, so once more I spent an hour out of my life I wasn’t expecting, sweeping up soil, re-potting them, and extending the canes holding them up by clipping two canes together. Misty and Debbie sat peacefully in the garden in the sun, until Misty got her lead tangled round the wheelbarrow full of grass sods and garden clippings which Debbie had collected together, and tipped  it over. This caused Misty’s vocabulary to be enlarged by several well-chosen swear words. Thank God she’s a border collie and not a parrot, otherwise we’d never dare invite the vicar round to tea! Meanwhile, my French cheese (Pie d’Angloys, known forever in our house as “Pied D’Anglepoise”) got left out of the fridge by mistake, so, a bit like George Mikes in “How To Be An Alien”, I had a glass of cheese for breakfast.

But, it’s July, and it’s summer – as T. H. White wrote, in The Once and Future King:

It was July, and real July weather, such they had in Old England. Everybody went bright brown, like Red Indians, with startling teeth and flashing eyes. The dogs moved about with their tongues hanging out, or lay panting in bits of shade, while the farm horses sweated through their coats and flicked their tails and tried to kick the horse-flies off their bellies with great hind hoofs. In the pasture field, the cows were on the gad, and could be seen galloping around with their tails in the air.

In other news, Thursday was of course also the last day of term for Debbie. It still remains uncertain whether or not she will have a job in September, or at least a teaching job. The way things are going, she could be stacking shelves at Lidl. She has been doing a little booklet with her literacy students at the Birstall outreach, featuring some of their work, and I was helping her lay it out and turn it into a PDF this week, preparatory to printing. One of the learners had written a piece about the joys of studying literacy under Debbie, citing the correct use of punctuation, including “comas” [sic]. As I said to Deb, it’s probably a coded message about how interesting the lessons were.

I noted this week that the College, which is not renewing contracts left right and centre, in an effort to pay for its grandiose new £74million building that they forgot to design a car park for, is still advertising for a digital marketing manager. Salary £21,896, which seems a tad low low, to be honest.  Still, things must be on the up if they are sacking teachers and recruiting direct marketers, eh? Isn’t that just education all over?

Maisie’s ferals are still living in her garden. By having a mass email blitz, we’ve managed to get them on the waiting list for abut half a dozen shelters in South and West Yorkshire, and all we need now is for a couple of places to come up. Failing that, if anyone knows a farmer who wants a couple of good outdoorsy-type cats to keep the rodents in their barns under control, please get in touch urgently. We have people standing by to put the mechanism in place to trap the cats and transport them, all that is missing is someone who is willing to give little Bill and Sunshine a home. Anyone. Get in touch.

I would have thought that a major, wealthy, animal charity such as the RSPCA would be able to find room for these two cats somewhere in its nationwide network of shelters and with its vans, inspectors etc. It should not be left to one increasingly frail elderly woman with limited resources and one bloke in a wheelchair to organise this, but it seems that there is a Chinese Wall of non-communication when it comes to getting in touch with the RSPCA and getting them to do something about a situation which may actually, if the story told by my friend’s new neighbours is true, be a by-product of the RSPCA’s actions anyway.  But whaddoiknow, eh? Whaddoiknow?

I haven’t really been paying the attention I should have been paying to the news from the outside world this week. I know I should make more of an effort, but since the events they report are inevitably the doings of stupid, corrupt and venal politicians who mean us ill, it tends to do very bad things to my blood pressure.

The story which was impossible to ignore was the unrest in Egypt, of course.  Again, I am not really up to speed with the story. I’m unsure at the moment whether it’s our set of unprincipled murdering bastards which has just been ousted, or theirs.  Either way, it’s all going triffically well, and I daresay we’ll soon be arming both sides, in the interests of peacekeeping, before you can say “Jihadi Suicide Bomber.” One thing I did learn, unbelievably, is that the Egyptian Army has a Facebook Page. It mentioned on the BBC news that they had posted their “48 hours” ultimatum on their Facebook Page.  “Like this page, or we fire into the crowd!  LOL!”. Probably complete with pictures of smiling protestors (tagged “enemy of the state”) being tear-gassed.

I actually had a look at the page, because I couldn’t believe what I had just heard on the BBC, but it was true – it did indeed exist, but it was all in Arabic. Uncle Phil from Australia, who had, it has to be said, been down the pub and “taken drink”, as the court reports sometimes phrase it, dared me to post “Speak English, Gungha Din!” but I didn’t, wuss that I am.  Plus, I didn’t want to wake up the next day and find a tank in the front garden.

It never ceases to amaze me that we are quite happy to meddle in the affairs of other countries – often disastrously, and at great detriment to our own armed forces and security (it is, after all, the anniversary of 7/7, lest we forget that the evil we visit on others is likely to rebound on innocent people) – yet our own version of “democracy” looks more and more like fascism every day. Certainly our own Junta could teach the Egyptians a thing or two about “divide and rule”.

Lord Freud, bless him, has been pontificating about food banks, as part of The Blight’s ceaseless attack on the poor.  I had thought, when I first heard about his remarks, that he was a Liberal Democrat peer with a £1.9M house in Highgate, but it turns out that he is in fact a Tory peer with a £1.9M house in Highgate. It’s so difficult to tell them apart these days. I discovered his party allegiance by searching for him on “Theyworkforyou.com” where the search engine asked me “Did you mean Lord Fraud?”  Maybe they know something we don’t.

Lord Freud was actually speaking in a debate in the House of Lords, so at least he was there earning his coin for once, although it’s hardly grafting in the sense that, for instance my father would have understood the term. Anyway, the debate had been prompted by a technical question about whether anyone was monitoring the issue of food bank vouchers by Benefit Office staff. This was news to me – I wasn’t actually aware that this was going on.  And the admission that it is, is surely tacit acknowledgement of the link between the Junta’s economically illiterate pursuit of austerity at all costs, and the rise in poverty and the use of food banks. An official link, no less.  But no!

“It is not the job of the DWP to monitor this provision, which is done on a charitable basis.”

Unbelievable! It’s like the captain of the Titanic saying “The White Star Line has charitably provided you with all this additional ice for your martini. What you do with it is up to you. Every man for himself!”

When challenged further, by the Bishop of Truro, no less, once more proving that the real opposition these days is The Church of England, Lord Fraud, sorry, Freud, replied:

"It is difficult to know which came first, the supply or the demand … Food from a food bank – the supply – is a free good, and by definition there is an almost infinite demand for a free good."

Well, Lord Fraud, personally, I would rather live in a country where there is no need for food banks, but given that inept, venal and corrupt politicians seem unable to produce that basic humanitarian concept, I for one am quite content if ten people get a tin of beans they’re not really “entitled” to as long as one “truly” needy person gets fed. Although I utterly reject your party’s continuing attempts to divide the people trashed by your policies into the entitled and the unentitled. 

This theorising by Lord Fraud reminds me of that argument that the soup runs to the homeless should be banned because it only encourages people to become homeless in the first place.  Well, let’s face it, if you are sitting there in your comfortable house in Droitwich, there’s nothing like the siren call of a can of Campbell’s condensed tomato to lure you away, to go and sleep in a cardboard box underneath a viaduct in Hackney, just for the free sandwiches and a chance to queue up at the food bank, is there?

Another, much better-known, essayist has summed up the situation when he wrote:

Internally, England is still the rich man's Paradise. All talk of "equality of sacrifice" is nonsense. At the same time as factory-workers are asked to put up with longer hours, advertisements for "Butler. One in family, eight in staff" are appearing in the press. The bombed-out populations of the East End go hungry and homeless while wealthier victims simply step into their cars and flee to comfortable country houses.

Yes, that was George Orwell, in The Lion and the Unicorn, in 1940. Plus ça change.

The prize (if indeed it can be termed a prize) for the most breath-takingly buttock-clenching, puke-making political performance of the week came when Simon Danczuk MP debated with leftier-than-thou idol Owen Jones on daytime TV about his (Danczuk’s) support for the idea that people should have to wait a few more days before they receive their first benefit, after they have signed on with a fresh claim. Jones pointed out that this would “benefit“ nobody but the loan sharks, and would increase people’s use of things such as food banks.  Danczuk countered that he wanted people to be more “self-reliant”. So that’s it!  Unemployment is character-building, a bit like cold showers and the Duke of Edinburgh award.  Actually, I wouldn’t quibble with the idea of people being self-reliant as an abstract concept, but self-reliance alone is not the answer to massive economic difficulties caused during the mindless pursuit of economic death by idiot politicians.

Anyway, Danczuk’s attitude is typical of so many heartless Tory backbenchers who had a compassion bypass at birth, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised in the wider scheme of things. Hang on though… I have a feeling he may actually be a Labour MP, for a town – Rochdale – which regularly has 2500 people using food banks. Those buggers just won’t learn self-reliance, will they?

When he started losing the argument, Danczuk blustered that he wouldn’t take any lessons from Owen Jones, because he came from the posh part of Stockport, or words to that effect! Well, Mr Danczuk, if it’s judgement by your peers you are looking for, I came from the slums of East Hull, and I am happy to call you a dick head. A prize, steaming, double-dyed, copper-bottomed, nit-witted dickhead, in fact. Since you appear to argue merely by trading insults, stick that in your expenses and file it.

Here’s George Orwell again, this time on the Labour Party, also from The Lion and The Unicorn.

A Socialist Party which genuinely wished to achieve anything would have started by facing several facts which to this day are considered unmentionable in left-wing circles. It would have recognised that England is more united than most countries, that the British workers have a great deal to lose besides their chains, and that the differences in outlook and habits between class and class are rapidly diminishing. In general, it would have recognised that the old-fashioned "proletarian revolution" is an impossibility. But all through the between-war years no Socialist programme that was both revolutionary and workable ever appeared; basically, no doubt, because no one genuinely wanted any major change to happen.

The Labour leaders wanted to go on and on, drawing their salaries and periodically swapping jobs with the Conservatives. The Communists wanted to go on and on, suffering a comfortable martyrdom, meeting with endless defeats and afterwards putting the blame on other people. The left-wing intelligentsia wanted to go on and on, sniggering at the Blimps, sapping away at middle-class morale, but still keeping their favoured position as hangers-on of the dividend-drawers. Labour Party politics had become a variant of Conservatism, "revolutionary" politics had become a game of make-believe.

I apologise for the length of my extract, as I said to the au pair this morning, but if I could, I would actually cut and paste the entire book into this blog, then give up writing altogether, because basically, he has nailed it.

This premature concession by Labour of the 2015 election to the Tories, two years in advance, also has serious constitutional implications. As we have seen in Egypt, those who do not feel they have a vote or a voice tend to express their preferences in other ways.  Actually, we don’t need to look at Tahrir Square for an example of this – we have Trafalgar Square, in 1990, and the anti-poll tax riots. Also, as I have written before, although they contained a lot of opportunist criminality and were sparked initially by racial rather than political tensions, the Tottenham Riots, and the copycat ones elsewhere, also had a political dimension.  Similarly with the Occupy Movement, although that didn’t tip over into violence in this country, and most of the damage on their demos was caused by either Black Bloc or by MI5/Special Branch agents provocateur. When politicians divorce themselves and cocoon themselves from the gritty, shitty, grim and grey lives the rest of us lead, and when you can’t tell one from the other, then the pressure-cooker of democracy is building up a dangerous head of steam that will only escape when something goes bang, you mark my words.

This is my last dip into Orwell, otherwise Sonia will be round for the royalties. This is Homage to Catalonia:

Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don't worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen — all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.

Sadly, with our current Labour leadership, it’s more like “Homage to Catatonia”.

In another “WTF?” moment, Tory MP Peter Bone stood up in Parliament and tried to get a motion passed that the August Bank Holiday should henceforth be known as “Margaret Thatcher Day”. I would have thought that Hallowe’en (or possibly Walpurgisnacht) might be a more suitable date, if we are obliged to remember the blight she visited on our country – as if we were likely to forget! If you live in Grimethorpe, or Goldthorpe, sadly, every day is “Thatcher Day”.

This is why I seldom listen to the news these days.  The more I see of politicians, the more I like my cat.  But Labour’s supine capitulation, its abject failure to counter any of the Junta’s arguments, and its attempt to steal their clothes is a sad, sad day for the old, the ill, and the unemployed. Their last hope has been extinguished by an opposition that has forgotten the very meaning of the word.

And so we came to Sunday, which is not only Uncle Phil’s birthday, but the feast of St Ethelburga. St Ethelburga of July 7 fame is not to be confused with the other St Ethelburga, St Ethelburga of Barking, who was also one of the Wuffingas (I kid you not!) and the sister of St Audrey and St Sexburga. Nor is she to be confused with St Ethelburga of Lyming, wife of Edwin of Northumbria. Got that? Good.

The July 7th St Ethelburga died in 664AD and was the English abbess of Farmoutiers­-en-Brie, France, and the daughter of Anna, King of the East Angles, sometimes called Aubierge.  That also made her a Wuffing, and actually also half-sister to St Sexburga, of whom, more anon. Ethelburga accom­panied her half sister, Sethrida, to France, to become a nun under the direction of St. Burgundofara, or Fara. If your father insists on calling himself “Anna”, even if it’s only at the weekends and in the privacy of his own chamber, a nunnery must begin to look like a viable option.  Ethelburga began work on a church in honour of the twelve apostles, which was left unfinished at her death in 664. At her request she was buried in the church. After seven years a decision was made to move her bones to the nearby church of St Stephen and her body was found to be uncorrupted. Hence the sainthood, I guess.  Faremoutiers Abbey still stands – or rather, a building called Faremoutiers Abbey still stands, as the picture at the top off this blog attests.

It’s such a pity that this Epiblog didn’t fall a day earlier, because then it would have been the feast day of another of the splendidly-named Wuffingas Saxon royal clan of East Anglia, St Sexburga.  What with Ethelburga and Sexburga, it’s beginning to look like a branch of McDonalds in here.

We met Sexburga a couple of weeks ago, actually – she was the sister of St Audrey, and arranged the reburial of the uncorrupted remains of St Audrey in a white Roman sarcophagus found in Grantchester. In that Epiblog, we used the more contemporary Saxon orthography of her name, Seaxburh, but this week I decided to use the alternative version of her name, because I thought, what the hell, we all need a cheap laugh.

So, there you have it.  St Sexburga. And I think you will agree that I have shown admirable restraint in getting thus far without mentioning bacon sandwiches or asking if you want fries with that.

The big news of the week in the saint world, however, was St Karol Wojtyla, better known to you and I as Pope John Paul II. He’s officially logged his second attributable miracle, and therefore he’s made the grade. Pope Francis just has to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s, (in Latin, of course) and the job’s a good ‘un, as they say round here.  It’s not every day there’s a new saint on the block, but I have to say, it was not entirely unexpected.  On 3^rd April 2005, I wrote, in Here Endeth The Epilogue:

One of the things I like about the Catholic church is its clearly defined promotion path for dead people, if they work hard enough, to eventually become saints. You settle into eternity, you get to know the ropes, you perform the odd intervention here and there, you save a life or two, you stop something going wrong, and before you know it, you are officially a “blessed”. Next stop, sainthood. Saint Karol Wojtyla. You heard it here first.

My own spiritual development is a car-crash these days. I do still pray, sometimes, though I am no longer sure if anyone is listening.  I wouldn’t say I am losing my faith, because the miracles and marvels of the universe and of science and particularly of the new physics and its perceptions of “reality” make it clear to me that there is a “something else” behind all of this. But whether you can call an entity that is capable of containing everything for all eternity (a concept I can’t even start to think about without my head reeling) a sentient being in any sense of the words that we would understand, I just don’t know, I just don’t know.  And as for the motives and motivations of such a being, including allowing evil in the world, and all that fall-and-redemption stuff, I don’t know about that, either.  Also discount the dispensing of “one size fits all” morality and what are you left with? A vague feeling that there’s something out there, which is why these days, if asked, I tend to say I am a lapsed agnostic, strict chapel of rest.

It’s July, the whole country is blooming, Wimbledon is thocking and grunting away on the television, just asking to be ignored for another year (Come on, Tim!) I may be going off on holiday soon, and the sun is finally shining outside. We’ve got a cat. We’ve got another dog. I should be happy. But I don’t think I have ever been as downcast, miserable, tired and angry as I feel these days.

Why am I miserable and angry? I’m miserable and angry about the animals in the pounds; I’m miserable and angry about the animals not in the pounds, the ones still roaming neglected and unloved or tied up by the side of a road; I’m miserable and angry – more angry than miserable – about the stupidity of our politicians and the supine failure of the Labour Party, which many people were relying on to bring about at least a temporary ceasefire in this endless war on the poor, the ill and the disadvantaged; I’m miserable and angry because my own life looks set to end in failure, and there’s no time to start again, or change tack, or do anything differently other than just trundle along this ever-narrowing furrow of illness to that point where the perspective lines all meet on the horizon, and I cease to be able to do anything, however ineffective.  My biggest remaining ambition is to pay off my debts before I die.

It was three years ago this week that I ate the fatal stir-fry of doom – although in fact the violent pains and the slipping in and out of consciousness were, it turned out, not food poisoning, but actually peritonitis. Three years since I last walked upright, unaided and on my own.  Three years during which I have seen my country trashed by a gang of buffoons, and all I can do about it is sit here and rail on like some turbulent priest.  Three years during which we have lost Kitty and then Tig, the last links with the old days, when I could still do stuff on my own. I honestly don’t know where this disease is taking me: well, actually, I do, I know exactly where it’s taking me, but I don’t know how fast, and I don’t really want to know. I’ve got the slow-burning version of it, and I have, so far, foregone the option of looking it up in more detail on any of the many web sites devoted to it.  The last time I had any serious discussion about it, with the specialist in MD, they asked my age and when I told her, she said, “Oh well, in all probability something else will get you before the MD does!”

So. Time may be short or long, who knows. In the meantime, I’ll trundle on, into next week, like Don Quixote, in my faithful old wheelchair, Rocinante, tilting at windmills, at the head of my rag-tag band of waifs and strays, for whom I am somehow responsible: Debbie, Matilda, Brenda, various birds and squirrels as applicable, Zak, Freddie (though he’s a bit doddery these days, and often forgets who and where he is) and now Misty. Not forgetting Bill and Sunshine. And half-a dozen suicidal tomato plants. God bless little Bill and Sunshine, and God bless all of us. And God bless England. Now that Labour has given up the ghost, I have a feeling we’re going to need it.