Epiblog for Whit Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. All week we have been counting down the hours to the half term holiday and, with it, the possibility of going off in the camper van so that Misty and Zak can climb some more Wainwrights, and of course when it finally got to Friday, the weather had broken and it was more like October than May. So our plans were temporarily thwarted, and for the last three days we’ve been watching the rain sheeting down outside and listening to it drumming on the conservatory roof.

This has, necessarily, curtailed Matilda’s excursions into the outside world. On the few occasions where she has actually ventured onto the decking, all she has done is to scuttle as fast as she can to the end where Deb has fixed a tarpaulin across to provide shelter and shade when she sits out there having her breakfast. From underneath this relatively weather-proof vantage point, Matilda then glares at the rain for a few minutes until she realises, reluctantly, that glowering is not going to make it fair up, before scuttling back equally quickly through the downpour to the conservatory door, and mewing loudly to be let back in.  She then spends the rest of the day asleep on her Maisie-blanket on her chair next to the TV, transferring at some point in the evening on to the settee next to the stove, via a stop-off at the food dish. No wonder she’s the size of a house-end.

I could have told her already that glowering at the bad weather changes nothing, because I have been doing it for years. Even Misty, who is normally impervious to weather, has thought twice about going down the steps on a morning to do her usual three mad circuits of the garden.  She is, however, still up for the more formal exercise of a proper “walkies”, and dashes madly from door to door as soon as Deb shows any signs of getting ready. She’s probably done about half a mile before she even sets off,  most days.

As for me, I too have been up and down like a dog at a fair this week, what with the press launch of Ghost Hunting With Peter Underwood, the imminent arrival of Blood in the Air: The Chronicles of Kari True, and an unexpected extra press release to do for Gez regarding the event he is doing at The Orangebox in Halifax on 30^th May (6pm-9pm, if you wanted to go along).  At least the man came from Clarks and fixed the housing of my wheelchair arm, so I no longer had to type everything at a 45 degree angle. If I needed any more obvious illustration of the inherently pointless nature of my existence, though, it can be summed up by two separate but linked events this week, for which I found myself inventing The Golden Graham awards for taking the biscuit.

The first was the BBC journalist who asked to be taken off our list for press releases. Forgive me for having the temerity to breathe, but I sort of thought the point of being a journalist was that you made yourself available for news of all sorts from all sources, on the offchance that there might be a story there. And if it’s not for you, or of no interest, just delete the sodding thing, it’s only an email, after all.

The second was the very famous lady novelist. As part of the press list for Ghost Hunting, the author gave us a list of his own contacts, including some famous names (last week, for instance, I was talking about writing a letter to Uri Geller) Also on the list was a very famous lady novelist who was apparently a slam-dunk to write a review of Ghost Hunting somewhere ... so a review copy and press pack duly went off to her.  In the post on Friday lunchtime came a very nice letter, saying that she very much admired the production and it was a lovely book, etc etc, and the author was a great personal friend etc etc, but she couldn't review it as she is far too busy and therefore "I'll just be stingy and keep this as my own personal copy..."  Thank you, very famous lady novelist, that will be £11.99.

On the same day, I was startled by a knock on the door and a man with a clipboard appearing in the lobby:

“Does Debbie Nunn live here?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, wearily, “what’s she done now?”

It turned out that he was a courier and some piece of survival kit for the proposed upcoming trip had arrived for Deb. It had been sent out by the people who’d supplied it with just Debbie’s name and surname, and Huddersfield, and the postcode, but fortunately the courier had been here before with other stuff for her, and was intelligent enough to remember the house and put two and two together. So there you go. At last! A thinking man’s courier. DFD, I think their name was.

Because her planned trip to try out all this gear has been thwarted by the weather, the desire to forage, which obviously burns strongly in her, has manifested itself in other ways. On Saturday she returned with Misty from their “walkies” bearing a huge chunk of fungus in a carrier bag. This was a lump of “Dryad’s Saddle”, which sounds rather like an embarrassing medical complaint, but is, in fact, allegedly edible.  Its Latin name is Polyporous Squamosus which is a fairly roundabout way of saying disgusting and inedible. We have subsequently discovered that you are only supposed to harvest the young ones, not the old hoary warty specimens that have survived many a winter gale, feeding off the dead hearts of trees.

Having washed it, in itself a considerable feat since it was the size of a dinner plate, and checked it for (non-vegan) maggots, I then tried to cut it up to shallow fry it. I trimmed off the stalk and the rind, which apparently you are supposed to do as a precaution and then – having switched to a bigger knife with a serrated edge, finally managed to cut it into strips and set about cooking them.  Half an hour later, it was still going.  I suggested to Deb that she might like to fish out a bit and try it, since all that seemed to be happening, as far as I could see, was that the outside bits were getting more crisp and burnt black, but it still seemed to have the same consistency as when it was raw.  An attempt by her to chew on half a slice confirmed this.  Sadly, her free breakfast was not to be. It was like chewing through a leather strap, albeit one sautéed in olive oil, seasoned with “Season-All” and basted in garlic.  So Deb ended up having Marmite on toast and the mushroom went out for the badger.  Let’s hope we don’t get back from our trip, if it ever happens, and find Brenda stretched out on the decking next to her bowl. 

So, it’s been a manky old week, weather-wise, and for that I blame UKIP, since God is obviously annoyed by their success in the local elections, and has sent it to punish us.  And as for UKIP’s success, It is the fault of the Labour party because they have consistently failed to challenge the false frame of reference put forward by all of these right-wing crypto-fascists, from the Tories to those parties who are two stops beyond Barking and well off the bus route.

Many people in Britain today think that "there's too many of 'em (brown people, though the party hierarchies are careful not to actually say this - except for UKIP, whose oeuvre consists of a series of unguarded moments) over here, taking our jobs and our resources, and that all you have to do is rock up at Dover docks to be handed the keys to a council house and entitlement to a full set of benefits.

Plus, people are filled with hatred for the corrupt and venal antics of existing MPs over pay and expenses. If you are waiting for a bus in the rain at 6.30AM to take you to some crappy, low-paid, zero hours contract job and you read in the paper that your MP has just claimed £6000 for a Swarkovski crystal duck feeder, you are (justifiably, in my view) livid.

And many people are fearful and distrustful of the EU political project and think that the idea of Europe has gone way too far beyond the original concept of an international trade agreement. Put them together and what do you get? Bippity Boppity Boo, a vote for UKIP.

Instead of saying about immigration "hang on, this is all bollocks, and the majority of legal immigrants are not a drag on the system, but provide positive economic benefits" and challenging the perception that all brown people come from Bongo Bongo Land, Labour has "apologised" for opening "the floodgates" when at the time they signed up to it, it was actually the right thing to do (read Jonathan Portas on the subject). So, that's one argument lost before we started.

On Europe, Labour have refused to even consider a referendum, which comes across to the people who have (admittedly misguided in come cases) concerns about the EU political project as Labour saying "there there, proles, we know best" and creates yet more sunshine for UKIP's haymaking. And finally, on policy, Labour has stuck so rigidly to its idea (I'm being charitable here, and assuming some thought went into it) of being the Tories but in slightly cheaper suits, that the public now views the entire Westminster community as being out of touch and mired up to their necks in sleaze. In the old Labour party, the structure of people coming up through the ranks from the Union movement at leased ensured that there was some connection and shared experience. I doubt that the skinny latte brigade who "advise" Ed Miliband have ever done a hands turn in their lives.

Coincidentally, largely because of a combination of Debbie being out late teaching, boredom, and nothing new worth watching on TV, during the week I re-watched a programme we’d recorded earlier last year, a documentary about Hitler’s rise to power.  We should not forget that Hitler used the democratic process to actually achieve power in Germany; it was only after he was elected that he pulled up the rope ladder after him, arrested all his opponents, and appointed himself as Fuhrer of a thousand-year Reich.

I was struck by the many congruencies between the approach of Hitler and the Nazis and UKIP’s campaign.  As the HistoryPlace web site succinctly puts it:

Hitler offered something to everyone: work to the unemployed; prosperity to failed business people; profits to industry; expansion to the Army; social harmony and an end of class distinctions to idealistic young students; and restoration of German glory to those in despair. He promised to bring order amid chaos; a feeling of unity to all and the chance to belong. He would make Germany strong again; end payment of war reparations to the Allies; tear up the treaty of Versailles; stamp out corruption; keep down Marxism; and deal harshly with the Jews.

The similarities are obvious.  Substitute ”Britain” for “Germany”, “Europe” for “war reparations” and “Muslims” for “Jews” and you’ve almost got the UKIP manifesto, such as it is. I’m not saying that Nigel Farage is Adolf Hitler, far from it. Nor am I saying that UKIP are even now compiling a list of disused and mothballed Army or RAF bases to be used as internment  camps. But I am saying, and I challenge anyone to deny it, that we are heading off down a road to right-wing repression, possibly even dictatorship, based on xenophobic and generally racist popular support, unless we are very careful about it. The genie was originally released from the bottle by the Junta trying to look tough on immigration and it isn’t going to go back in, any time soon. Because unless someone starts to challenge, and keeps on challenging, the shaky ethos on which UKIP’s support rests, the only other alternative is that the two major parties will try and leapfrog each other in a series of meaningless yet ever more reactionary lurches towards repression.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born…

There was a particularly chilling interview with a market trader in Rotherham (a town with a relatively high percentage of British Asians, where there have been flashpoint cases of “grooming” in recent years) about why he voted UKIP. He said words to the effect of “there are too many of the wrong sort of people coming over here and it’s time someone did something about it”.  He declined to elaborate on the “wrong” sort of people when asked by the interviewer, but it was obvious what he meant.

Of course, now that UKIP have actually been elected onto the council in some areas, people who voted for them (and people who didn’t) will see how useless they are, how they fail to get things done, and how their policies will lead to further cuts - and how, apart from on Europe, they have a policy vacuum, filled with largely sketchy fruitcake recipes scribbled down by Nigel Farage on the back of a beer mat. They won’t be able to get by on vague nebulous promises, and their local reputation might well suffer. Also, many people who voted UKIP probably didn’t even realise the difference between a European Election, a Local Election, and a General Election. Pretty much in the same way as they don’t know the difference between an asylum seeker, a legal immigrant, someone who was born British but has a different ethnic heritage, and an illegal.  So if they were hoping that their UKIP councillors will rise up en masse and take us out of the EU, and “send ‘em all home”, they will have a long wait.  The only way that UKIP could do that would be by winning at a General Election.  The best a UKIP councillor could do is object to twining with somewhere in Belgium!

However, we should remember that people originally laughed at Hitler and thought he was a buffoon. Not necessarily the German working class, but the intellectuals and the intelligentsia derided Hitler and poked fun at him, probably right up to the week they were arrested. As political blogger “Beastrabban” observed last weak, by the time you hear the jackboots on the stairs, it’s usually too late.

So, if there is a lesson, particularly for the Labour Party, out of all this, it is not to duck the argument on immigration. Labour CAN'T ignore immigration as an issue because, like it or not, and personally I HATE it, every white van man, racist granny and bigot in England thinks there's too many of  ‘em over ‘ere taking our jobs and houses. All that will happen if Labour ignores the issue is that they will lose even MORE heavily than they are currently set to do. What Labour has to do is TAKE CONTROL OF THE AGENDA and DISPEL THAT MYTH. Even down to things like finding immigrants who are making a positive contribution to society at the sharp end and highlighting these cases. A massive positive publicity blitz needed to correct misapprehensions. Then they need to set out their own sensible immigration agenda while NEVER CEASING TO POINT OUT THAT THE TORIES AND UKIP CANNOT BE ANY HARDER ON IMMIGRATION. however much they bang on about it, and are LYING if they say otherwise.

Apologies for shouting. but really, Labour seems to have a death wish right now. And they need a leader with the common touch who doesn't sound like a posh boy from a Tory school. Sorry to be brutal, but the alternative is five more years of Tory nuclear winter, or even worse Tory/UKIP nuclear winter, and I am not sure even now that it's not too late.

As it is, we’re heading back, or so it seems, at warp factor speed, to the 1930s, and once again, if you think I’m exaggerating, then consider this extract:

The ruling classes are vastly concerned to maintain the morale of the workers, perhaps because they fear that “Satan finds some evil work for idle hands to do”. The best way ever devised to maintain a man’s morale is to give him useful employment at a fair wage… That is not some Utopian dream of all sharing alike, but in every employed person getting a fairer share in the wealth he helps to produce, and humane provision for such as are unable to work, for any proper reason. There are innumerable tasks crying out to be done, which would absorb the greater number of the unemployed, directly or indirectly, and be of the utmost national value, and the plea that no money can be found to put them in hand is a deliberate untruth. Millions and millions of pounds are found annually to pay the most extravagantly rewarded ruling classes on Earth… There is never any difficulty in finding the millions for these privileges and absurdities, but if money is wanted to drain our rivers and prevent untold damage and loss by floods, or for reclaiming thousands of square miles of land that would support hundreds of thousands of workers, or finishing building ships that would win us back our maritime leadership, there is a different story! The money could not be found!

You might be forgiven for thinking this was about the Somerset Levels in winter 2013/2014, but in fact it is an extract from a letter to the Birkenhead Advertiser in 1933 and quoted in SOS: Talks On Unemployment by S. P. B. Mais in 1934.  Mais toured, and broadcast from, the worst areas of depression and unemployment in the early 1930s, but unlike the perhaps more realistic and cynical appraisals of his near contemporaries, Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier and J B Priestley in his English Journey, both of which appeared the same year, 1936, Mais is relentlessly cheerful and optimistic, especially about the many schemes being run to occupy the time of the unemployed and help them learn new skills, or feed themselves and their families by growing vegetables and allotments. This is another argument which still resonates down to the present day, of course, with zero-hours, workfare, internships, and government schemes designed to remove people from the official unemployment statistics.

Mais, in his effusions, fell foul of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, who argued, pretty much in the terms used by the Birkenhead correspondent above, that the schemes were ill-attended and useless, and that in some cases, (teaching cobbling and boot-repairing for instance) they actually damaged the prospects of the cobblers and shoe menders in the area who were still in work, by undercutting their trade, providing the same service for free.  They argued for large scale infrastructure projects to get Britain working again. The NUWM is actually quite an interesting movement – it disbanded itself voluntarily in 1943, when it was a case of all hands on deck to stop Hitler, but maybe, just maybe, it is an idea whose time has come again, especially given the dreary backdrop and prospects for politics in the UK today. Especially if it was the National Unemployed and UNDER-employed Workers’ Movement.

So, somehow, we’ve arrived at Sunday, in a country that, as the result of the last week, is slightly more fascist and considerably wetter.  I suppose in one sense we shouldn’t be surprised at the weather – it is, after all, a Bank Holiday weekend.  What used to be known as Whit Sunday, in fact, before its more boring modern nomenclature became attached. Although there is some debate on this – if you do the traditional thing of counting the Sundays from Easter, then it’s next Sunday, not this, but the idea of having Whitsun in any month other than May just seems…wrong to me, somehow.  Anyway, if we do disappear into the wild blue yonder in the camper next week, this Epiblog might have to serve as next week’s as well, at least until I can plug back into the internet.

I’ve written fairly extensively on the subject of the history and traditions of Whitsun before now, even on this blog, so I won’t bore you by repeating it verbatim.  One of the aspects of it which, traditionally, does appeal to me, however, is its community nature.  Back in the days when “community” meant something and we didn’t all shut ourselves away in our own little cells.  Especially in the North of England, Whitsun would be an opportunity for the local Wesleyans to put on a charabanc to the coast, and the same people who filled it would also have been in the chapel choir and the brass band and the cricket team, and probably all worked down the same mill together as well.  In this year of all years, perhaps we should also recall that they probably joined up together in the local Pals’ battalion, and probably all died together, as well.

The religious meaning of Whitsun is tied in with the idea of the Pentecost, when the gathering of Christ’s followers, including the Twelve Apostles, were filled with the Holy Spirit in (supposedly) the same “Upper Room” where the Last Supper had been celebrated.  Acts 2, 1-16 tells how:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

As with any of the miraculous events recounted in the Bible, you can either believe that something inexplicable, something supernatural, maybe even something Holy, happened, or you can dismiss it as a collective hallucination and mass hysteria. There is not proof, in the way a scientist would understand the term. It is simply a matter of faith. I would be more sceptical and cynical myself if I had not also experiences times in my life when I felt bathed in holy fire and full of the abilities to speak to all nations. 

That sounds incredibly grandiose, even hubristic, written down like that, but what I mean is that there have been times when I was so suffused with the idea (quoting Julian of Norwich) that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, that, at the time, I could have reached out my hand and done miracles.  One evening walking under the old Lebanese Cedars in the grounds of my college. One day driving back to Chichester from a book fair in London, in high summer, with the van window open, singing wordless scat songs of joy all the way down Halnaker Hill. One evening at Brough Haven, watching the tide ripple through the reeds and set the sunset glimmers dancing on the water. One day at Lochranza on the Isle of Arran when the sun picked out a particular sward of green grass behind a stand of trees. Watching the sun set over the Kintyre Peninsula, or over Loch Nevis from Inverie.  There have been others, less well documented, less well remembered.

Eliot incorporated the symbolism of Pentecost in the section in Four Quartets where he describes the air raids on London in the Blitz:

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

And suppose, in some senses, being filled with the Holy Spirit is terrifying, if it means a total change and re-alignment of everything you believed or thought up to that point.  In that manifestation, it is very like the Zen idea of Satori, the moment where the Zen Master realises his oneness with the universe. Yuelin Shiguan, (1143-1217) wrote a poem after he experienced his Satori:

A thunderclap under the clear blue sky

All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.

Which is again similar to Eliot’s “awful daring of a moment’s surrender”, from The Waste Land.  I don’t think I have ever managed to go that far down the road. Any experiences I have had of that nature have been entirely benevolent, and I have always wished I had enjoyed more of them.  Nor was I able to induce them at will, however much I prayed, like Yeats in Sailing to Byzantium:

O sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing masters of my soul

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is…

Such glimpses as I have been allowed have been more along the lines of  Philip Larkin and The Whitsun Weddings, where the significance of the moment which presumably sparked the poem is that it was shared by this random selection of travellers on the train, for all of whom it was at once both significant, being their wedding day, and mundane:

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

Eliot also picks up on this juxtaposition – that often, it is not the big things that we’ve psyched ourselves up for, or the moments we’ve been looking forward to, but instead it’s the times when quietude and attunement has allowed us to open some sort of portal

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

I could do with some more moments like that in my own life, to be honest. It sees a long time since I had one, although I suppose being in the forest clearing beside Coniston Water the other week probably came close.  As did seeing the crosses of the wind-farms poking out of the sea-fret off Walney. It would be nice to have a week where the significant portents, if any, are comforting rather than terrifying. As it is, I think that (pace Wordsworth) the world is too much with me, late and soon, getting and spending.  And if you are struggling similarly, I wish you the same, although maybe  in the form of the dove of peace rather than tongues of refining fire.

As it is, for me, I could, right now, almost reprise the moment in the draught church at smokefall, except for church, read kitchen: while I have been typing this, the coals on the stove have gone right down, so I need to mend it up again. And, as usual, I guess I’ll put the kettle on.

 

Epiblog for the Feast of St Elgiva of Shafestbury

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley.  Summer seems to have come to stay, at any rate, although still with the odd shower.  In fact, one way or another, I seem to have had to deal with quite a few "odd showers" this week, mentioning no names, cough cough Kirklees College cough cough.

Still, it’s been good to have some days when we could have the door open to the decking and let Zak and Misty wander in and out at will. It’s been so warm in the conservatory that Zak, in particular, has been flopped out in the shade, panting, barely able to summon the energy to flick an ear at a passing fly. Misty comes back from a 14-mile walk with her tongue lolling and empties the water-dish at one draught, then does that thing where they go round and round a few times before dropping down onto her bed like a sack of spuds. Mind you, so does Debbie.

Matilda’s been extending the time she spends outdoors, as well. Although this consists mainly of filling the time she spends out of doors doing the same things she used to do indoors, ie sleeping in a variety of improbable poses, depending how warm it gets. The coming of summer does seem, however, to have awakened some of the more residual cat instincts, buried deep in her DNA, in that, twice last week, she actually chased something – the first, a magpie, the second, a squirrel.  She hadn’t a prayer of catching either, both had long gone before she lumbered anywhere near them (the magpie up into the trees, where it chattered and chided her, and the squirrel up onto the fence, where it remained, flicking its tail and taunting her, in the same way they used to taunt Freddie) and the effect was comic rather than scary, like seeing a cow on the gad.  But she tried, bless her.  Then gave an enormous fishy yawn, and settled down again under the cool shade of Deb’s tarpaulin.

Brenda the badger, if indeed it is she, continues to call at random, although I haven’t seen her this year in the flesh (or the fur).  All I can say with any certainty is that someone ate the pakoras I put out the other night.  It could have been the neighbours for all I know.

So, we doddle on.  Thank God half term is looming again, and Deb will at least get a brief respite from all this crap about standardisation and grades and marking and all the other grunge that she has to do before she can actually teach anybody anything. There is talk of getting away in the camper van at half term, although this is dependant on me getting the garage to look at some of the minor snags on the garage list next week – fixing the driver’s window handle and tightening the fan belt, to name but two. It also depends on the weather, and, indeed, on whether Deb ends up being just too knackered to load the camper and go.

As for me, I have had the usual week of chipping away at the various millstones which hang around my neck. It becomes boring re-telling it after a while, so just take it as read.  If it ever changes, I’ll let you know.  We did have some cause to celebrate, albeit in a muted fashion, on Thursday, because it was Debbie’s birthday, and I cooked her a tofu and mushroom risotto and a salade Niçoise, albeit without the egg or the tuna, but any boisterous revelry was curtailed by the fact that she would have to go into College the following day.      

Friday was, therefore, largely stolen by Kirklees College, and Friday evening marred by the fact that the bolt on the arms of my wheelchair had gone yet again.  Not the bit that Owen fixed, that remains steady as a rock – but the actual socket where the arm itself seats in.  This is beyond my capacity to fix on-site, so it looks like I will have to call it in on Monday morning, and then wait around for them to come and mend it.

On Saturday, for once, I found myself watching the FA Cup final on TV. Normally, I don’t have a lot of time for premiership football.  There is far too much money lavished on the top echelons of the game, especially on the players, who, these days, have about as much loyalty to, and connection with, the team and the faithful fans who put them there as the local MP does with his or her constituents. Don’t get me started on what’s wrong with football in this country, or we will be here all night. Suffice it to say that I hope Roy Hodgson has saved the FA some money by booking 14-day economy return tickets.

But, nevertheless, the FA Cup final is an occasion, and all the more so this year because I had a horse in the race, or a dog in the fight, whatever metaphor you care to employ, because for the first time in their 110-year history, a team from my hometown, Hull City, the “Tigers”, so called because of their black and amber kit, were at Wembley, contesting for the trophy against the mighty Arsenal.  There was no denying that Hull City were the underdogs – Arsenal had already had a bus painted in their team colours for the victory parade, two days before the match. The ITV commentators were biased as hell in their match description, and, even before the end of extra time, with City trailing 2-3, the engraver was already putting Arsenal’s name on the trophy.

And yes, City did lose. Although they might have actually nicked it – they had a header nodded off the line, with the Arsenal goalie beaten, and late on, after another piece of suicidal goalkeeping, one of the Hull forwards flashed the ball just wide of a gaping open goal. When they went two goals ahead, right at the start of the game, setting a new record for a cup final in the process, I had my fears that it wouldn’t last.  I spent many thin Saturday afternoons in the 1970s standing on Bunkers Hill at Boothferry Park, watching them snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and, in the end, so it proved.  But in losing the match, they won a hell of a lot more. After yesterday, everybody knows where Hull is now. Never mind Tigers, they came out fighting like lions, and they gave Arsenal one hell of a scare. Maybe people will think twice now before they make snarty remarks about Hull being a fish dock at the end of a railway siding. The Crowle Street Kids are coming, ready or not.  And the first one up before the beak when the revolution comes will be Leona Lewis, for crimes against music, specifically murdering Abide With Me, with one case of God Save The Queen also taken into consideration.

Football aside, I have been trying to avoid news from the outside world.  The febrile political climate engendered by next Thursday’s EU and local elections has created what my father would undoubtedly have called a “silly buggers’ outing”.  UKIP continues to go from strength to strength, despite having completely untenable policies, a hypocritical buffoon for a leader, and an executive membership and prospective candidates composed entirely of people for whom the phrase “I’m not racist, but…” could have been invented.

People often make the mistake of labelling UKIP’s policies as racist, when in fact, technically, most of them are not.  The people who write the policies are very careful not to say exactly what they mean. It’s not the policies that are racist, it’s the membership, as often as not.  Fresh from being shredded on-air this week in an interview on LBC where he was quizzed about whether his dislike of hearing foreigners not speaking English extended to his German wife (an exchange which led to  his spin doctor bursting into the on-air studio, waving his arms in an attempt to end it) Farage has had to deal with the effusive UKIP candidate  Heino Vockrodt, who sent an email to the London council to which he wants to be elected, claiming a row of shops in his area “looked like Helmand Province now”  and referred to cases where “Muslims are grooming children to be sex slaves under the eyes of the authorities”.  With a name like Heino Vockrodt, he obviously has a long and distinguished English ethnicity, of course, and the fact that it sounds like the sort of name a Waffen-SS war criminal might have sported is,  probably, completely coincidental.

Sanya-Jeet Thandi, a young lady who was formerly prominent amongst the party’s UK Asian supporters, has left UKIP this week, claiming that the party is tapping into crude racism and xenophobia. Er, yes, correct.  Anyone who joins UKIP thinking otherwise is so dumb they should maybe consider booking in to Jonestown for a Kool-Aid convention.

Farage contends that these are all just “isolated incidents” and that his candidates are not actually racist, sexist and homophobic, but it happens so often, and with such frequency that you start to wonder whether the “isolated incident” would be to find someone who wasn’t.  As well as Godfrey Bloom with his pronouncements on fridge hygiene, the councillor who said that gay people cause localised flooding because God is angry, the prospective candidate in Kent who has a Nazi Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber tattooed on his arm and an email address that includes the word “stukaboy”, and the UKIP donor who said that women should wear skirts in order to give men erections, there was also John Sullivan, who wrote on Facebook in February:

'I rather wonder if we shot one 'poofter' (GBLT whatevers [sic]), whether the next 99 would decide on balance, that they weren't after-all? We might then conclude that it's not a matter of genetics, but rather more a matter of education.'

Apparently UKIP’s LGBTG wing were outraged by this! I was amazed to find that UKIP even has an LGBTG group. It’s a bit like discovering the Hitler Youth had a section devoted to Judaic Studies.

Despite this, however, and despite the fact that UKIP could only carry out their promise of withdrawal from Europe if they won an overall majority in a UK general election, hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, racist grannies and white van men who believe that all immigrants who rock up at Dover Docks are automatically handed the keys to a council house complete with plasma TV, will turn out and vote for this set of clowns on Thursday, because the Tories started the wave of xenophobic hate which UKIP is now surfing, and the Labour Party has done absolutely nothing to engage with it and turn it back.  It’s all very, very depressing.

Meanwhile, apparently we have what is called a “Zombie Parliament”, apparently. Given that the definition of a zombie is a terrifying undead creature who brings death and destruction and inspires fear and loathing, I would contend that actually, we’ve had a zombie parliament since at least 2010, and if it came to that, I’m not entirely sure that Blair actually appeared in any mirrors.  Anyway, this is a zombie parliament for another reason, apparently, in that they have run out of legislation.  By the time they get back from their extensive summer break, paid for by us, it will be the conference season, and then the state opening of parliament, followed six months later by the election. So in one sense, we should be glad the Junta aren’t actively seeking new ways to grind the faces of the poor, but sadly, we will still have at least twelve months of the same old same old – as a token of which, Iain Duncan Smith has once again come to the attention of the UK Statistics authority for basically lying and cherry-picking from government statistics to “prove” a hypothesis that is completely unconnected.

I noticed also that the idea that flooding is caused by gay people was once again given an airing this week, this time by the leader of the Christian Alliance, whatever that may be. It sounds a bit like a religious building society.  Once again, I despair. Let me ask the question one more time: do you really think that an infinite eternal being with the capacity to take on all the suffering of the world and somehow manage everything that is, was and shall be for ever and ever amen, is really concerned about what two gays get up to in a bed-and-breakfast in Berkhamsted?

Mention of God reminds me that this is supposed to be a religious or at least a spiritual blog, though these days, increasingly, I find myself raving in the wilderness like a hermit with the clap.  Anyway, eventually we reached Sunday, and the feast of St Elgiva of Shaftesbury, who died in 944AD.  She was yet another of these Saxon saints who was both holy, and a member of the nobility. Wife of Edmund the first, she was the mother of both Edwy, King of the Saxons, and Edgar, King of England.  She eventually became a Benedictine nun at Shaftesbury, a foundation originally begun by Alfred the Great and one to which her mother had also been greatly attached.

When she died, she was buried there, and almost immediately miracles at her tomb began to attract attention. Lantfred of Winchester, writing some thirty years after her death, in the 970s, told of a young man who travelled from Wiltshire to keep vigil at the tomb, in order to be cured of blindness. The implication being that by that time the location was already well-known as a place of potential healing.  Her cult as a saint continued to flourish and she crops up in mentions in pre-Conquest litanies and Calendars of Saints.  She is also described as a saint in at least one text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in 979AD her resting place at Shaftesbury was still so well known as to ensure that the remains of her murdered grandson Edward the Martyr were exhumed and also brought to Shaftesbury Abbey.

William of Malmesbury managed to confuse her, in a text on the Abbey’s early history, with Ethelgifu, King Alfred’s daughter, and the original Abbess, though this misinterpretation itself may be down to the fact that not all his writings on the subject have survived, so he may have meant something else anyway.  Despite its importance and, indeed, its Royal patronage, little remains of Shaftesbury Abbey today. The Saxon buildings gave way to Norman ones and even those today are in ruins, save for a walled garden and a museum. 

Isn’t that just the story of England, though? Generations pass and buildings rise and fall, and places that used to be massively important are now nothing more than a few humps of stone in a field beside a motorway. We’re back to East Coker again:

In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur, and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation

And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane

And to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots

And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

In my beginning is my end. Very true, and something that I think about a lot, notwithstanding that outside my window as I type, it’s a beautiful May evening and the cat is snoozing on the decking with not a care in her world, and Debbie is down with the dogs at the cricket field, and soon I’ll re-light the stove and put out the Badger’s tea, and feed the mutts, and feed us, then maybe settle down to some more painting.  It sounds idyllic, but like all paradises, it contains a serpent, the serpent of time, twisting away out of reach: in a month from now, it will be Midsummer.  And that will be half a year gone.  But hark my heart, like a soft drum, beats my approach, tells thee I come, said Henry King, and some days I know of what he speaks. The utterly terrifying thing is that, irrespective of the howling mess of chaos in my in-tray, some day there will not even be an in-tray; maybe not even a decking, not even a cricket field. And where will I be, then. I really must make my peace with Big G.

At times like these, all you can do is fall back on the knowledge that it’s not yet. Our lives are a succession of not yets, into which we need to pour as much heart and soul and spirit as we can.  Be like Hull City, and live every day as if you were a tiger.  And if there’s someone you care for, don’t wait until they’ve shut that door, tell them now, and then tell them some more, tell them how much you love them.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Gangulphus of Burgundy

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, but then you knew that already. It’s turned wet and rainy, as well.  Last week’s dappled sunlight in the Lakes seems a distant memory. Since we got back, the days have been dominated by playing catch-up, and by an even more sad and overriding consideration, the health of Freddie, Granny’s little terrier.  He’d not been well for weeks, well, months really, but, like the feisty little bugger that he always was, he seemed to be able to dig out some hidden reserves and find the strength to rally.  However, his age was against him, and there was, really, only ever going to be one outcome.  He was set to go back to the vets again last Thursday, we feared the worst, and, sadly, that is what came to pass.

So, little Freddie is no more – or at least the earthly version of little Freddie. I strongly believe that, on the other side of that bright portal called death, he is even now frolicking with Tig and Lucy, and getting up to all the old tricks he used to entertain us with down here.  He wasn’t just a mountain climbing dog – although we did actually start listing out the peaks he had conquered, and it was impressive for such a small fellow – he also knew how to do cute, and to get what he wanted out of life, including invading my sister’s sleeping bag one weekend while she was staying over, when she woke up to become aware that something small and furry was struggling to join her.

He’d been off with us on many trips when we were looking after him for Granny, he’d been to Arran twice, and accompanied Debbie along the towpath of much of the Lancaster Canal, when she kayaked it six or seven years ago.  He’d climbed Helvellyn via Striding Edge and Blencathra via Sharp Edge; he’d been up Fleetwith Pike, Haystacks, The Old Man of Coniston, Helm Crag, Cat Bells, Maiden Moor and High Spy; he’d climbed Mam Tor, Whernside, and possibly Kinder Scout as well.

I also thought of the many hours he’d spent with me in his more senior years, in the camper van, waiting for Debbie and Tig, or latterly, Debbie Zak and Misty, to come back late, wet and muddy, from some hare-brained adventure or other. A while ago now, I wrote about what I thought or imagined heaven must be like, and that is the sort of heaven that I’d like to think Freddie now inhabits, and since all joys are possible in heaven, and heaven holds no time, then he could even now be simultaneously chasing squirrels, scuttling off up a mountain somewhere, and/or lying replete on the rug in front of the fire, snoring, dream-twitching and farting in the way only tired, well-fed, warm and content doggies can.

I’ve also been pondering what heaven must be like. If we each create our own niche of heaven, the way that modern physicists tell us that we each create our own reality as we go along, on the hoof, and if the heavenly universe follows that pattern, I would imagine it as a large, rambling, English country house, full of interesting rooms stuffed with strange knicknacks, comfy armchairs, and old books. It’s always midsummer, of the sort we used to have, on a stifling June afternoon with the heady scent of stocks and wallflowers and the french windows from the library are open to the garden. Everything is underscored by the music of Handel, at ambient levels, drifting, coming and going on the soft breeze.

There’s a box maze and a herb garden, and girls with long hair wander round, barefoot, dressed in Laura Ashley dresses and carrying dulcimers. It’s always 3.45pm, and someone’s just brought in a tray of English Breakfast Tea and a delicious assortment of heavenly sandwiches and home-baked cakes, butter, jam, cream and scones. Paradoxically, there is always an open, full, bottle of red wine at your elbow, and a crazed crystal goblet from which to drink it. There’s the distant sound of church bells across a meadow as the ringers practice, and the click, clock and clack, and distant shouts, of cricket being played on the green. You are looking forward to communal feasting in the great hall tonight, where there will be a fire of woodsmoke and incense, with candlelight on the portraits, music, poetry, and song. In the meantime, your favourite cats are always within reach, plump, sleek and contented, and there are dogs snoozing on the rug.

Freddie may well have only been a small dog, but he went through life thinking he was a timber-wolf. Small or not, he’ll leave a massive hole in all our lives, especially Granny’s, as she’ll miss his little presence trotting to heel, his chocolate-button nose questing, and sniffing the air.  Sleep well, little dog.

The other animals have been, largely, unaffected by Freddie’s passing; one of the few compensations for losing them after such a short period of tie is that we know they must have little or no conception of the presence of death, living every moment in the present.  As Yeats wrote:

Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;

Matilda has been continuing her daily round, although her routine has been disrupted somewhat by the showery weather; you are quite likely to let her out on to the decking in bright sunshine, then hear the drumming of the rain on the conservatory roof and look up to see her standing on her hind legs outside the glass door, mewing to be let in… now! She then washes herself thoroughly and, if no-one else has claimed it, bags the corner of the settee nearest the stove, where she sleeps on her Maisie-blanket every night.

Because Granny has had so much extra hassle in terms of ferrying Freddie back and forth to the vets, and the general uncertainty over him, Zak’s been staying with us on a more or less permanent basis this week to ease the burden.  Misty seems to accept him quite philosophically – in fact, in many ways, I think she almost enjoys having another dog in the house. Apparently his presence makes her better behaved on walks as well, so generally he comes under the heading of a good thing. 

As far as the human denizens of the household are concerned, we’ve both, to a certain extent, been using work as a means of distraction this week.  None of the intractable problems has been solved, but then neither did I expect them to be.  Debbie is counting off the hours to the end of term, and I’ve been editing, formatting, writing, laying out, and doing accounts like there was no tomorrow. I’ve not kept my eye on the doings, comings and goings of the outside world, though we do now have a full set of election leaflets now, courtesy of the faithful postman. No doubt the Tories are still waging class war, the Lib Dims are helping them do it, and Labour are doing their best not to oppose it, while UKIP are probably complaining about brown people who don’t clean behind the fridge and the Greens are cooking up some lentils.  Actually, I did have to smile at the UKIP candidate who apparently said that Lenny Henry should go back to “a black country”, especially as Henry was born in Dudley – not so much “a black country” as the Black Country!

And so, after a painful and bruising week, we arrive at the feast of St Gangulphus of Burgundy. Crazy name, crazy guy.  Actually, crazy name notwithstanding, be seems to have had rather an unfair hand dealt to him, although I suppose the events of his martyrdom are what made him a saint.  I wonder how many martyrs, offered a second chance, would still make the same choices?  He is also known as St Gangolph, which is getting perilously close to Gandalf.  Gangolph goolie goolie goolie goolie watch-ah, as Lord Baden Powell might have said, if he were here right now.

Saint Gangulphus, who died 11^th May 760AD, is often pictured as a Burgundian knight, with a fountain springing under his sword.  He usually holds a shield with a cross, and may occasionally be found holding the spear with which he was murdered. He seems to have copped for an unusually heavy load on the patron saint front, being responsible for unhappily-married husbands, tanners, shoemakers, children and horses, and being invoked against knee pains, sicknesses involving the eyes and skin, marital difficulties, and adultery. Not much left after that, apart from lesbians, cats and wheelybins. Actually, reading through that list, I’m surprised how many of them apply to me. Not all of them, I’m glad to say. 

His actual historical existence rests entirely on a single mention in a deed written by Pepin the Short, dated to 762AD. I love these names like Pepin the Short and Charles the Bald. The one that always cracks me up is “Ashot the Carniverous”- considering he lived in an age generally when meat-eating generally was the norm and vegans were unknown, he must have been a truly prodigious consumer of flesh, in whose presence no meat pie was safe, to have earned such a monicker.  Despite the short (see what I did there?) mention by Pepin, nevertheless, legends a-plenty have grown up around St Gangulphus.

A Burgundian courter, said to have been born into one of the most famous families of the area, Gangulphus was raised a Christian by his parents.  In youth, he was known for his chastity, honesty and propriety, and he visited churches and read religious texts.  In due course he became a landowner in his own right, being known as a model of fairness and making provision for gifts to churches and the poor.  Unfortunately, his blind spot  and ultimately his downfall turned out to be his unwise choice of a marriage partner.

As a nobleman, he was expected to take part in wars, but he also spent time in Frisia, preaching the Gospel.  He was journeying back to Burgundy when he found a property at Bassigny which had a fountain that took his fancy, and he settled there. In an outbreak of fountain-envy, which must have been a serious problem in 8^th-Century Burgundy, his friends apparently mocked the fountain as being a bit inadequate, at which point Gandulphus thrust a pole into the soil. The next day, when he ordered his servant to pull it out again, fresh water gushed from the hole and soon became another, larger fountain. Yorkshire Water, please note.

All was not “well”, however, with his marriage. While he had been away, his wife had committed adultery, with a priest.  She claimed to be innocent, but Gangulphus wished her to be judged by God, and made her dip her hand into his new fountain. Predictably, her hand was scalded by the water.  Faced with the results of this trial by water-feature,  Gangulphus exiled the priest and banned his wife from the marriage bed, withdrawing to his castle at Avallon and occupying his time with penance and charitable acts.

Sadly for him, his wife soon arranged for the return of her lover, who decided to eliminate the main obstacle to their joint future together, by decapitating Gangulphus as he slept.  He must have been a singularly inept assassin, however, because he missed and hit Gangulphus in the thigh, which, given the standards of infection control in 8^th-Century Burgundy, was still enough to finish him off – he lingered, then died, having had the last rites.

The priest  and Mrs Gangulphus didn’t enjoy their new-found freedom for long,  -- despite having fled the country, soon both sickened and died. Meanwhile, miracles were reported to have taken place at Gangulphus' tomb. Gangulphus' relics were translated to Varennes-sur-Amance in the diocese of Langres, where his cult developed, and later distributed to various places in France, Germany, the Low Countries and Switzerland.  Some of his relics, consisting of part of his head, can be found at the Gangolfskirche in Bamberg.

So, there you have the legend of St Gangulphus, and much good may it do you. I suppose the chief lessons we can take from his life are to choose your marriage partner wisely and not to leave it to persons of restricted stature to safeguard and spread your posthumous reputation.

As for me, I think the events off this week have probably prompted a long-overdue review of who I am and what I believe. I write about Freddie being in dog heaven – or even just heaven – in the full knowledge that theologians would quibble, would tell me that animals have no souls, and to believe in a paradise for animals, or even better, one where we see them all again the other side of the trembling veil and once more enjoy their love and comfort for all eternity, would in the past have been viewed as at least risible and maybe even heretical.

Yet to me, it follows naturally; in the same way as I simply can’t believe that all of the intricate magnificence of the universe, and all of the love that is possible, and the brilliant achievements of mankind, came about by accident. Even if they evolved, something set them evolving in the first place.

Of course, set against all that intricate magnificence and those brilliant achievements are their opposites, the horrors of war, death, suffering, famine, and man’s inhumanity to man and to animals. Even worse, some of this has actually been done in the name of “religion”.

So, clearly, wherever paradise is and whatever it contains, it isn’t here on Earth, or at least if it is, it co-exists in a way win which we can’t normally see it, although we may perhaps be allowed glimpses from time to time.  And I suppose the gap between our expectations and reality could be put forward as evidence of a universe, an existence which has “fallen” from a previous, more perfect state. As Raymond Chandler wrote in Playback:

"There are grave difficulties about the afterlife. I don't think I should really enjoy a heaven in which I shared lodgings with a Congo pygmy or a Chinese coolie or a Levantine rug peddler or even a Hollywood producer. I'm a snob, I suppose, and the remark is in bad taste. Nor can I imagine a heaven presided over by a benevolent character in a long white beard locally known as God. These are foolish conceptions of very immature minds. But you may not question a man's religious beliefs however idiotic they may be. Of course I have no right to assume that I shall go to heaven. Sounds rather dull, as a matter of fact.

On the other hand how can I imagine a hell in which a baby that died before baptism occupies the same degraded position as a hired killer or a Nazi death-camp commandant or a member of the Politburo? How strange it is that man's finest aspirations, dirty little animal that he is, his finest actions also, his great and unselfish heroism, his constant daily courage in a harsh world — how strange that these things should be so much finer than his fate on this earth. That has to be somehow made reasonable.

Don't tell me that honour is merely a chemical reaction or that a man who deliberately gives his life for another is merely following a behaviour pattern. Is God happy with the poisoned cat dying alone in convulsions behind the billboard? Is God happy that life is cruel and that only the fittest survive? The fittest for what? Oh no, far from it. If God were omnipotent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn't have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium. Is it blasphemy to suggest that God has his bad days when nothing goes right? And that God's days are very very long?

 

My self-catechising, however, doesn’t extend to an unquestioning belief that God made the world, Adam and Eve screwed it up and God had to turn a bit of himself into Jesus (in a way I struggle to comprehend, begotten not created) to come down to Earth and sort it out.  Even if this was true, and I believed  it verbatim, I couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess as to why God, with a blank canvas and all options available to him, chose to do it that particular way.

Nor do I believe, sadly, that the Bible is, in its entirety, the literal revealed world of God. Some parts of it are plainly gaga, while much of it is open to all sorts of ambiguous interpretations.  This is why I have such a problem with the Bible being used as the basis of organised morality, especially when coupled with threats of punishment and perdition, damnation and hell fire.  I’ve long believed that all morality is relative. And finally, of course, signing up to the baggage of the organised church also involves, at least in the form of the Church of England, praying for the Queen and the government. While I am sure her Majesty does a wonderful job, I draw the line at the latter, though I have often prayed that 10 Downing Street would be struck by lightning, irrespective of the occupants at the time.

So, that is why I don’t go to church, much as I admire some of the institutional good points and the inspirational buildings it possesses; these days, my church is the forest, often enough. I just fall back on the notion that whatever heaven is it must be so incomprehensible to our present state that we can’t begin to describe the joy and the mystery of it.  Heaven knows no time, so everything is possible and joy lasts eternally; I think also that from time to time, if we’re attuned, we can catch a fleeting glimpse of what it must be like, and that it also encompasses the idea of those we love (which for me, includes animals as well as people) being all around us in a sort of cloud of love that we can’t see because it’s on another plane or dimension, but they are still there, somehow, somewhere. All everywhere at once.  All things are possible in the heaven that surrounds us unseen everywhere. I have been thinking a lot about heaven lately, having added another year to my own earthly span, and if heaven exists, then this is the only interpretation of it that makes sense to me.

Which sort of brings me back to Juliana of Norwich, and, coincidentally, Freddie died on her feast day.  I realised that, some 700 years after she said it, I am probably saying the same thing – that, despite my not being able to prove a word of it, nevertheless, I believe that ultimately, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.  Although sometimes, as in the last few days, God makes it damn hard for us to see what he is up to.

So, we go into next week with one less in the wolf pack. We close ranks, and we carry on. It’s too early to speculate whether Freddie will have a successor or not: he’ll certainly never have a replacement. But even now there might be some scared little dog that’s been turned out of house and home and ended up frightened and alone in a shelter somewhere, that might, at some point in the medium term future, find himself or herself introduced to a life of warm beds, dog treats, walkies and mountaineering. Who knows? God knows, I suppose, but as usual, he ain’t telling. 

Meanwhile, I think I’m going to have to start saying “why not?” more often.  So, starting from tomorrow, I’m going to question it when people tell me things can’t be done, rather than just accepting things. I don’t quite know where the idea popped up from – maybe something to do with the randomness of Freddie’s loss has spurred me on, coupled with the fact that “At my back, I always hear/Time’s winged chariot, hurrying near”.

“Why not?” is what Barnes Wallis is alleged to have said when they told him he couldn’t build a bouncing bomb. I’m not anticipating anything quite so explosive, but on the other hand, maybe it’s a question we should all be asking whenever we see things that should be better, but aren’t.  The hungry can’t be fed – why not? The homeless can’t be housed – why not? Abandoned animals can’t be saved – why not?  “Why not?” is such a great answer that I think I’m going to spend the rest of the day, while I’m potting out my marigolds, thinking of some more questions for it.  And watching out of the corner of my eye for a little brown and black presence scuttling somewhere just out of sight. Why not?

Epiblog for the Feast of St Ethelred of Bardsey

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Summer seems to be arriving in instalments this year, some days better than others.  We got back from the trip to the Lakes over Easter to find that, of course, at the start of the week, just when we were both still in holiday mode, and not feeling at all like tackling the huge mountain of tasks which awaited us, the weather turned bright and sunny, making the unutterable tedium of some of the things I had to accomplish even more unutterably tedious.

The animals, at least, were free to wander in and out at will, onto the decking, and lie in the sun if they wanted, even though I wasn’t.  Not that I particularly want to lie on the decking, unless it’s voluntary, and there’s someone to pick me up afterwards and put me back in my wheelchair, but it’s the principle of the thing.  Misty and Zak flopped out on various rugs at various angles, and Matilda prowled around, in and out of the flower tubs, seeking whom she may devour.  Zak is staying with us at the moment to ease the burden on Granny while Freddie is ill, but even little Fred seemed to take heart from the upturn in the weather, and rallied a bit, possibly with the aid of his change of medication from the vet.

Debbie has plunged back into the regime of teaching, as it’s all hands on deck, or feet off the pedals, or insert any other metaphor of your choice, from now on until the end of term, and the exam season is looming large, as it does tend to at this time of year.  Meanwhile, Kirklees College continue to argue the toss and pass me from pillar to post in an attempt to avoid paying Debbie what she is due, on the day she is due it. In any other walk of life, this would result in a letter before action, threatening a summons, costs and interest, and I have actually contemplated this, several times, except that of course then Debbie might get identified as one of the “awkward squad” (simply for asking for what is rightfully due and which should already have been paid, but for the crap, inefficient system that makes the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit look like an MBA model of business efficiency.)

I have also toyed with the idea of a Freedom of information Act request to the College, asking how many part-time hourly-paid lecturers are in arrears with their due pay, and how much money in total this means they are lending to Kirklees College on a month by month basis. I wonder if it’s enough for a Winding-Up Order and a Class Action? Mr Cat, may I introduce you to Mr Pigeon? Don’t think I won’t do it. There comes a point where the lack of money outweighs the residual goodwill and desire to be considered for any hours going next term, and the Samson Agonistes defence kicks in.

Other than that, the contemplative, quiet, peaceful mood of the previous week vanished with a bang and a flap, to be replaced by endless screeds of words and figures.  The outside world was also, sadly, much in evidence.  We go away for ten days and the country drifts even further towards Hades, in a hand-basket, Lady Bracknell notwithstanding.

According to George Osborne, the economy has been growing by a whole 0.8% and therefore we should all be dancing the Shepherd’s Hey in the streets and waving our hankies in ecstatic jubilation.  However, as Aditya Chakrabortty (crazy name, crazy guy!) pointed out in a piece for the Guardian,

Down is up. Sick is healthy. The RMS Titanic is seaworthy. Topsy-turvy logic is a speciality of the austerity brigade, and here they come dishing up a third helping. First, in 2010-11, they pledged that making historic cuts amid a global slump would definitely, absolutely secure a strong recovery. Then things went predictably belly-up, forcing Cameron and Osborne to dump their deficit-reduction plans and the eurocrats to make more bailouts. Yet these reversals were, naturally, "sticking to the course". Now things don't look quite as awful as they did a couple of years ago – and this somehow gets chalked up as a miraculous rebound. Only a prude would expect their politicians not to exaggerate. But getting to such upside-down conclusions requires more than that: it requires fictionalising and even lying.

Quite so. And he goes on to provide the solution to the conundrum of “if the economy is recovering, how come everyone still feels so brassic and hard done by?” The answer is that the recovery is measured against the GDP, not the GDP per head.  We may be producing 0.8% more (hardly a figure to write home about in any case) but it’s taking many more people to do it. Chakrabortty again:

Yet while our national income is almost back to where it was before the crisis (rejoice!), our GDP per head remains almost 7% below where it was at the start of 2008. The Britons of 2014 are as poor as they were in 2005. Whether in Westminster or the media, Cameron or Paxman, you don't hear much about that measure of GDP per head, yet earlier this month the Office for National Statistics said this: "If GDP increases, but the population producing it rises by the same percentage, there would be no reason to suppose the well-being of individuals would have increased."

No, indeed, there wouldn’t. But once again the Junta is employing smoke and mirrors, selective cherry picking of statistics, and hoping against hope that the patchy and sector-specific “recovery” it has fostered by abandoning austerity and turning to a Keynesian solution in the private housing market, will see them safely home past election day 2015, after which we can all go to hell again. In a hand-basket.

The trouble is, trying to get that message across. Even the BBC, even the fearless attack Rottweilers of the media can’t seem to lay a glove on Osborne, and as for the Labour Party, they have absolutely no chance.  As I have said before, they have already tacitly conceded 2015, which is very bad news for anyone old, ill, poor, disadvantaged or (given the rise of UKIP) a bit brownish-looking. I got criticised last week online for saying this, in response to Miliband’s proposals on Rent Controls.  My actual comment was:

In any case, Labour has already fled the battlefield without firing a shot and let the Tory Junta scum dictate the terms of the argument as far as the key "issues" of the 2015 election are concerned: benefits, "scroungers" and immigration. Miliband has been a disaster for the Labour party and a disaster for the poor, the ill, and the disadvantaged.

Which was in turn derided by various Labour supporters as talking down the party’s chances!  As I went on to say:

My father was a lifelong member of the AUEW under Hugh Scanlon, and voting Labour was in my blood. The last time I voted Labour was 1997.  I have watched in growing horror since 2010, the Labour Party, which seems to have forgotten the meaning of the word "opposition" totally failing to counter the war being waged by this unelected Junta on the poor, the sick, the ill, the unemployed, the disadvantaged. The very people they should be standing up for.

On issue after issue, be it benefits capping, or Rachel bloody Reeves saying she is going to be more Tory than the Tories, or Simon Danczug saying its OK for people to have to wait two weeks longer for a fresh claim, on and on and on...

Plus, we have seen Miliband apologising for things that weren't even Labour's fault, implying that there was some iota of truth in the Tory lies that Labour caused the credit crunch crash and that Labour "opened the floodgates" on immigration. This is what I mean when I say they have unquestioningly accepted the Tory frame of reference, the terms of the argument. Oh to hear Miliband say, just for once, "I entirely reject that premise, now sod off." As it is, at the moment you can guess that the Labour policy on any given thing will be a few millimetres to the left of the Tory policy.

The next election will be fought on xenophobic lies and slurs about immigration, begun by the Junta and picked up by the likes of UKIP and the BNP. Whether you like it or not (and personally, I hate seeing what my country has become) there are millions of white van men and racist pensioners in the UK who have had four years of the Junta saying "there's too many of em over here taking our jobs and houses" and they will vote based on that. These are the people Labour needs to be reaching, but Miliband has washed his hands of the whole issue, especially on Europe, instead of challenging and debunking the falsehoods on which the premise is based.

That is why Labour will lose in 2015, consigning us to another five years of Tory nuclear winter, and yes, I blame Ed Miliband - or his advisors - or both. 

Where was the Labour comment on the people in Derby who will be forced to give up their assistance dogs when moved into smaller, non-pet-friendly accommodation because of the Bedroom Tax? Where was the Labour condemnation of the case of Linda Wootton, who received a letter from Atos saying she was fit for work while she was lying in a hospital bed after a heart and lung transplant, and died nine days later? Where was the Labour protest about the case of Aderonke Apata, a lesbian asylum seeker fleeing death threats and or imprisonment under anti-gay laws in Nigeria, who is currently under threat of deportation from the UK back there, to face an unknown fate?  Where, come to that, was the Labour party condemnation of the disgraceful remarks by Katie Hopkins, failed TV reality show contestant, that the long-term unemployed should be made to wear “some sort of uniform”? It was left to people like me to reply that I’d be quite happy to do so, provided Katie Hopkins, in return, wore a uniform with a label that said “vacuous, attention-seeking, rent-a-gob media whore.” Labour probably think it’s a good idea, but to differentiate their policy, if they follow previous form, they might suggest a slightly different colour, other than yellow, for the stars.

Talking of vacuous media whores and xenophobic lies and slurs about immigration, my campaign leaflet for the local council elections arrived from UKIP this week. It’s a slick production. All that’s missing is the free dog-whistle sellotaped to the cover, and it presses all of the buttons that will get the white van men and racist grannies trundling out n droves to vote for Farage and his band of merry men. Men who believe that women should wear skirts and clean behind the fridge because that is more likely to give a man an erection, or something. UKIP, in their leaflet, are very, very careful, unlike that buffoon Jeremy Clarkson, to accidentally say the very word they are striving to avoid.  In fact, they don’t even mention the woodpile. But it’s all in there. “We can deport foreign criminals (even if they have a cat)” they say, referring to a case where the judge actually ruled that the fact that the accused has a girlfriend a place to stay, and a pet was overall evidence of a settled life in the UK. But the people who will read this leaflet and act on it won’t remember that fine detail, because they are people whose lips tend to move even when they are not reading.  They are also a bit short on detail: apparently we should not fear withdrawing from the EU because “we’re one of France and Germany’s biggest customers, and they sell us … £50 billion more than we sell them every year” – So a balance of payments crisis is a good thing, then?  And the cost of imported goods wouldn’t rise outside of a common market? Two pages further on we’re being told that “Only by being outside the EU can we negotiate our own global trade agreements” -  and this would make British exports grow how, exactly? The fact is, the only good thing about Europe is the Common Market, which is what I thought we had first joined.

UKIP’s detailed policies are clearly bollocks, but that doesn’t matter, because the current of suppressed, aggrieved racism they tap into, coupled with people’s dissatisfaction with the “established parties” and their snouts-in-trough approach, will be enough to ensure a massive protest vote in their favour in two weeks’ time. In his unashamed nationalist posturing and his willingness to surf a hidden rip-tide of casual racism, Nigel Farage is the English Alex Salmond.  And I blame the following people for creating him: the Tory Junta for their anti immigrant black propaganda, no pun intended, which they have been pumping out since 2010 and which has now, under the law of unintended consequences, turned round to bite them on the bum as it is actually fuelling support for UKIP, and yes, once again, the Labour Party, for failing to engage with the issue, ignoring it, ignoring their white core working class supporters, and creating a political vacuum to be filled by UKIP, instead of providing a balanced, nuanced and believable alternative debate to the problems of immigration and the EU political project.

So, it’s been pretty grim news everywhere you looked this week, and none grimmer than the very sad death last Monday of teacher Ann (or Anne, the media can’t quite seem to decide) Maguire, who was stabbed to death by one of her 15 year old pupils in front of her class, at a school in Leeds. The Daily Mail printed several hagiographic articles about this poor lady, and it is, indeed,  a tragedy that this should happen to anyone, let alone so dedicated and caring a teacher who had devoted her life to education and who was on the eve of retirement. We should remember, though, that this was the same Daily Mail that regularly puts the boot in when teachers strike against the theft of their pensions, or the latest lunatic attempts by government to impose yet more paperwork, targets, free Bibles or other unworkable garbage issuing in torrents from one of Mr Gove’s offices, or do I mean orifices?

Sadly, teaching is the one job where everybody from Mr Gove downwards believes that they can do it better than the teachers. You wouldn’t stand over the heart surgeon who was operating on your auntie, nudge his elbow and say, “I think that bit there needs a stitch”, yet teachers have to put up with precisely that sort of interference every day, from a wide spectrum of sources.

This was a point very well made in a letter widely circulated on social media during the week, an open letter from Alison Utting to Michael Gove. Mrs Utting’s husband, Gareth, has very recently died of a heart attack, aged only 37. The entire letter is a dignified and stately debunking of everything Gove has inflicted on the profession, and is all the more powerful for that. I admire Mrs Utting’s restraint. If something similar happened to Debbie, which heaven forfend, I would be carving my version of such a letter with a dagger straight into Mr Gove’s desk. Or even straight into Mr Gove.  She says:

Gareth died at the age of 37 of a massive heart attack. There were a few contributory factors to his death, but looming large was the word ‘stress’. He leaves me a widow with three children, aged fourteen, four and one.

She discusses the need for performance measurement:

I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the changes that have hit teachers in the last few years. I qualified as a teacher myself but have been at home raising our young children, so have not been directly involved. But I can tell you what I see around me.

Teachers like Gareth have changed. Their hopes for the young people in their care have not changed. Neither has their willingness to go the extra mile to help those young people to succeed. But the work-load that they struggle under and the pressures that are applied to them from above have greatly increased. If this led to better education for our children, then I would be supporting these changes. But I don’t see better education. I see good teachers breaking under the load. I see good teachers embittered and weary. I see good teachers leaving the profession. I see good teachers never even entering the profession, for fear of what lies ahead. I see pupils indoctrinated with achievement targets, who are afraid to veer from the curriculum in case it affects their next assessment; pupils for whom ‘knowledge’ is defined by a pass mark and their position within a cohort.

 

Something which I can attest to as well, having seen the sheer amount of bumph that clutters up the professional life of my nearest and dearest. Finally, towards the end of her letter, Alison Utting says something which I have also often thought:

Here’s an interesting theory of mine that I was discussing recently with my husband. If you took away all external inspection and supervision, all targets and reviews, if teachers were left to themselves to teach what they wanted to teach, the way they wanted to teach it, what do you think would happen?

This is what I think: Every teacher that I know cares deeply about their subject and their students. They would teach marvellously. They would share knowledge and encourage each other. They would deal with problems (including less-than-perfect pupils and teachers) with the professionalism that they possess in spades.

Of course we cannot remove all monitoring of teachers and schools. But it seems to me that you have forgotten this basic fact: Teachers love to teach, and they want to do it well.

Which of course is how I was taught when I was at school, by a type of committed caring teacher who would undoubtedly, these days, be hounded out of the profession.  So, the next time you feel the need to comment on how cushy a number teachers have, and to make some smart comment about six weeks’ holiday every summer, pause to reflect that Ann/Anne Maguire and Gareth Utting won’t be spending any extended time abroad this August, if indeed they ever did.

By Friday, the advent of the potential Bank Holiday and the even more potential good weather had sparked in us a desire to get away from it all once again, not surprisingly, in view of the depressing news from the world at large.  Much of Friday was spent looking up and printing out potential routes, mountain weather forecasts and the like, completing urgent things that couldn’t be left, and sweeping the rest into a heap till Tuesday, and briefing Granny to feed Matilda and water the plants, or vice versa.  By 11.30 on Saturday morning, we were loaded and ready for the off – mainly because most of the stuff was still on the camper from two weeks ago!  We duly trundled through town and joined the M62, the dogs snoozing in the back, blissfully unaware that Debbie had decided that they were all going to “bag” some more “Wainwrights”.

We arrived in the Lakes at an awkward time of day, however; too late in the day (1.30pm) to consider embarking on a long walk that day, but too early just to go straight to our usual spot on Walney and park up. Debbie sought to fill this gap by going shopping in Ambleside, which boasts a plethora of camping shops all rammed to the gills with shiny things, all of which are positively begging to be looked at twice. The only problem being that, before she could embark on this much-needed retail therapy, she would have to find somewhere to park the camper.  There was space in both the major car parks, that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that we didn’t have enough change for the meter and they charge even for disabled blue-badge holders (as do several other of the more grasping and heartless local authorities in the Lakes).  Debbie decided to try the side streets, and in the course of the next fruitless half-hour, we discovered that the double yellow lines extend way, way out into the countryside. We didn’t follow it in its entirety to check, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the whole Kirkstone Pass was double-yellows, all the way to Ullswater!

Clearly a change of tactics was called for, and I remembered that there was a little car park at Loughrigg, on the way to Grasmere, where an ice-cream van customarily plied its trade. We went there and this proved to be true, especially with it being bank holiday. In the space of one short transaction, Debbie was the proud possessor of a stack of pound coins and I was the proud possessor of the first ice-cream I have eaten since I came out of hospital in 2010.  I think it’s referred to as a win-win. Not that I’m a particular fan of ice cream, though I suspect Debbie was harbouring suspicions that I had in fact engineered the whole situation somehow, yellow lines and all, just with that end in mind. Back into Ambleside, back to the car park we went, with Debbie leaving us parked up in a nice shady green bay with cooling trees all around. The dogs had some water and some treats (start as you mean to go on) and settled down to snooze, while I read H. V. Morton (and settled down to snooze).

After the retail Gods had been propitiated with due reverence, we rumbled on across the face of the  land, pausing briefly at Ulverston where Deb took the dogs up through the park to the obelisk on the hills overlooking the town, then quickly nipped into Booths supermarket before it closed for a couple of things we’d forgotten, and, eventually, quicker than I expected, we were parking up beside the beach on Walney, the dogs were having a last game of “stones” on the sands prior to retiring, and I was cooking supper. It had been a long hot tiring day and once everybody had been fed and watered to an elegant sufficiency, we all fell into a deep, dreamless, and surprisingly comfortable sleep.

Sunday, the feast of St Ethelred, brought us an early start. Indeed, the rain beating on the windows and the wind which had sprung up overnight roused me better than any alarm clock.  While waiting for the kettle to boil, I busied myself thinking of alternatives to Debbie’s planned route for the day, in case it closed in still further. At the same time, I was mentally crossing my fingers and hoping that Granny Fenwick’s old adage would prove true: rain before seven, fine before eleven. By the time we were all up, dressed, breakfasted, and everything else-ed, and all the sleeping bags and bedding had been stowed away, it was indeed brightening.  The dogs seemed to expect a game of “stones” so Debbie gave in for about ten minutes and then we were rolling gently along the A590 once more. Coniston, Torver, Ambleside, and finally, Grasmere were circumvented, and we found ourselves looking for Ghyll Foot, the start of the walk. The contrast to yesterday, in terms of population density, was marked. Whereas Ambleside had been an absolute anthill, the very epitome of the problem I’ve written about before, where a tourist destination becomes so popular it actually starts to impact on and erode the things that made people want to go there in the first place, today there was hardly a soul about, as we crept along little lanes in the shadow of Helm Crag.

The first setback was that the designated starting point in the book, a companion to the Wainwrights which Deb had acquired a while ago, was no longer available. The space where the author suggested leaving your vehicle was festooned with “private” notices and “residents only”.  Fortunately, the enterprising farmer at Town Head Farm, just up the lane, which is, it turns out, also a B&B, has had the nous to offer all day parking on a field at one side of his yard for the princely sum of £1.00, so we settled for that.

Nobody seemed particularly anxious to collect the money, and time was knocking on, so I suggested to Debbie that she get herself and Zak and Misty ready, and leave me to deal with the financial aspects, since I’d be sitting in the van and painting the view anyway.  Her route today was to take her up Steel Fell, across to Calf Crag, which is described on the internet as “part of the High Raise massif”, bringing to mind an unfortunate mental image of Wainwright and his “posse” all climbing Striding Edge in shades and baseball caps.  Then she was supposed to make her way on over to High Raise itself, retrace her steps slightly, then down the ridge over Gibson Knott and onto Helm Crag itself, descending off Helm Crag via Easedale Tarn, back to ground level in Grasmere and home via the lanes. The cloud had lifted a lot, and while there was a degree of wispy mist about, it was nothing tragic.  The walk was 10.5 miles in all, and they set off, finally, about 3pm.

I settled down to paint, and eventually the farmer’s son appeared, a young lad of perhaps eight or nine on a mountain bike, so I duly paid him my £1.00 and settled down to do a preliminary sketch of the landscape before me. I had long completed that painting, and one other, and several other sketches, read most of H. V. Morton and done half the Sudoku in the paper before Deb and the dogs returned – at twenty-five to ten. The first part of the plan had gone very well, and Steel Fell proved no obstacle. Unable to locate Calf Crag from the instructions on the printout she’d take n with her, Deb had detoured and climbed what she thought was Calf Crag, only to find, a mile or so further on, another rocky outcrop.  So as to be sure of “bagging” it she detoured and climbed that one as well, a process which was repeated apparently a couple more times with two other candidates for the title along the way, which resulted in her missing the turn for the path up to the summit of High Raise.

Eventually, she found herself on a summit which she was pretty sure she could identify, as being Sergeant Man, which is a Wainwright, but not one of the ones she’d planned on visiting in that particular walk. She retraced her steps for a few miles, the dogs at her heels, and eventually did pick up the path along the ridge to Helm Crag, via Gibson Knott.  She then decided she could see a better and more direct path down from Helm Crag than the one in her original itinerary, and set off down it, only to find that a) it soon petered out and b) although it did take you more directly to the foot of Helm Crag, there was then no direct way across the fields back to the starting point, so she still had to do the extra couple of miles round the little lanes to get back to the van, after all.

Since it was so late we decided to feed and water the dogs there and then, before we set off trying to find somewhere to spend the night a course of action which proved very popular as they hoovered it up, jumped on the bed, curled round and promptly fell fast asleep, taking no further part in the proceedings. In fact they had to be picked up and bodily moved, when we actually decided to go to bed.

While Deb and the dogs had been off on their adventure, I had been making friends with our host. The farmer’s son was obviously a bright kid, tall strong and sturdy, with already the beginnings of the sort of thousand-yard stare that can pick out a sheep in difficulties half way up the opposite side of the valley. I showed him my finished painting which he declared to be “really good” and which he borrowed off me to go and show his mum.  I had actually intended to give them it as we left, but Debbie’s late return kyboshed that, so I will have to post it to them.

This just left the problem of where to camp up for the night. Clearly driving all the way back to Walney was a non-starter, and in the end we just dumped the camper in a D-shaped layby off the main road that goes up Dunmail Raise. It was an interesting night’s sleep, especially because of the incipient slope. If you forgot to dig in your fingernails and toenails as you slept, through the night you found yourself sliding inexorably down the bed. What was really needed was to drive in a spike and a carabiner, like those idiots who bivouac on ledges one foot six wide, half way up the Zugspitze. Still, by that time, we were past caring. It was surprisingly quiet overnight (and/or we were spectacularly knackered) but I woke to a pleasant green shade coming in at all the windows from the overarching trees, and the quiet sounds of the early bank holiday traffic.  Breakfast and ablutions over, Debbie declared herself, surprisingly in view of yesterday’s shenanigans, match-fit, and we made an early start. We needed one quick Wainwright to bag before setting off home, and I had chosen Castle Crag, in Borrowdale.  We parked up in Grange and the intrepid trio set off on their mission. They were back by three, having crossed it off their list, so I packed up my painting gear and we set off, via a brief pit stop in Keswick, for home.

While we’d been parked in Grange village I’d noticed that the people deficit of yesterday had been more than rectified.  Debbie confirmed on her return that she had stopped off on the way back to dunk the pooches in the river, and it was, in her words “a complete dog-fest down there”. Just then, a hiker strolled by, leading an enormous, shaggy German Shepherd (dog, I mean, not Herr Schafschaegger of Wuppertal) and bearing on his back a huge pack like a British Army “Bergen”.

“What the hell does he need such a big pack for?” asked Deb, querulously.

“Judging from the size of his dog, it’s probably full of Winalot,” I replied.

It was a strain to leave Borrowdale – the fresh greenness on the oaks, the candles nodding on the great horse-chestnuts by the way, and the full throated singing of the birds interspersed with the dulcet, yearning notes of the cuckoo, calling men to travel to lands far away, the first time I’ve heard them this year. We arrived home feeling slightly deflated, to a wet Huddersfield, a cold house, and a cold, hungry, and pissed-off cat.  An hour later, the fire was going, and cat, dogs and wife had had some food, and it felt strangely like déjà vu from the last trip, even down to the soft bed suddenly beckoning my tired bones. During the trip, poor old St Ethelred went un-celebrated.  He was, apparently, the King of Mercia who resigned his throne to become a Benedictine monk at Bardney, in Lincolnshire, and eventually became Abbot there. His story is long and complicated and this is already, to be honest, a long Epiblog. So I think we’ll probably leave him there. Bardney has only ever figured in my life once, and I have probably already told the story of the disastrous weekend I spent there at a pop festival in 1971, in a rain-lashed field full of bullock-high stinging nettles, thistles, and stoned hippies. On the plus side, I did get to sleep in a tent which had been at Woodstock, on the minus side, I caught a head-cold that lasted a fortnight.

So, my spiritual development is still at best, stalled, and the year is slipping by. We’ve had the festival of Beltane during the last week, which always makes me think of Marc Bolan and Ride a White Swan (see under stoned hippies, above) and we are now into May, my favourite month of the whole year, and it’s already a quarter gone.

May is Mary’s month, and I

Pause at this and wonder why

Says Gerard Manley Hopkins, whom I much prefer to Katie and who generally talks more sense.  So, without more ado, I am off to contribute my own little bit to the lush green canopy of England, and water in bedding plants.  Tomorrow is going to be a doozie of a day. An early start, and a to-do list which already stands at 31 things.  But for now, like the Seafarer in the Anglo-Saxon poem of that name, I can take some comfort in the fact that “the groves assume blossoms” and that I have heard the cuckoo, “the sentinel of Summer”.