Epiblog for the Feast of St Dwynwen

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The snow finally came, and the snow finally went away again, pretty quickly, actually, but for one day, Wednesday, we had the usual winter chaos that Britain does oh so well every year: college declared it a “snow day” (ten out of ten for observation there) and closed at noon, which meant that Deb got home six hours early and was able to catch up on some sorely-needed sleep. Ironically enough, by the time the college took their decision, the snow had more or less stopped falling and a slow thaw began to set in, but still, you have to find joy where you can, as Karine Polwart would no doubt say if she were here right now.

Matilda stuck her head out of the conservatory door on Wednesday morning, sniffed disdainfully, and then she, too, declared it a snow day, beating Kirklees College to the decision by a good three hours, and returning to the settee, where she curled up with her tail over her nose and promptly went to sleep. Misty is made of sterner stuff; it’s a combination of the collie dog genes and all that mountain training she’s undergone with Debbie, I think, but even then, she didn’t linger outside any more than was necessary for her to do her “necessaries”.  I hate snow, of course, it’s massively inconvenient for me, and it means things “gang oft agley” – in the case of this week, the dustmen didn’t come on their appointed day, so now we are in a dustman limbo, not knowing what day to put it out. But there is a certain beauty in the way it covers up the brown ugliness of the garden at his dead time of year, and also there’s a certain point on a “snow day” where you know you can justifiably bank up the fire, pull up the drawbridge, and go to sleep, without anyone objecting.

The indigenous inhabitants of the garden, that is to say the birds and squirrels, were very glad of the absence of Matilda, which coincided with me putting out some wild bird food, peanuts, a suet block, and some fat balls. We even got the huge, dark crows (that normally treat any of our offerings with contempt) coming swooping down into the garden to land briefly and pick up a stale bread crust.  The birds have been suddenly very much in evidence this week for some reason, so I was able to tell Debbie that I had seen some great tits in the garden, with predictable results.

The squirrels have had their interest stimulated by the arrival of not only food, but also bedding material, in the form of a jiffy bag of cat fur sent to me by one of my Facebook friends. It did contain other things as well – some artists’ materials that had belonged to one of her family, and which were no longer required, but she had used the collected fur from her several cats as “void filler”. I put it out on the decking and the squirrels have been going bananas over it, it’s like people buying flat screen TVs on Black Friday.  So much so that, on Thursday, a squirrel actually missed its footing and fell off the conservatory roof. I just happened to look up at exactly the right moment and saw it plummet past the window and land in a big pot of climbing honeysuckle which Deb is training up a piece of trellis. Apparently unharmed, it emerged, sort of shook itself, then plunged back into the queue for cat fur.

I have had stranger things delivered than a jiffy bag stuffed with cat fur, but not many. Actually, I meant to check the Royal Mail’s list of prohibited substances which you are not allowed to send by post to see if cat fur was on there. It used to be a source of endless amusement to me, that list (“filth” is on it, for instance).  I know that grey squirrels are, as I’ve said before, in effect, just rats with very good PR, but they are undeniably cute. My mother-in-law tells me that grey squirrels are apparently taking over Europe, which will be an interesting development. They can’t do any worse than the current omnishambles who are running things.  And if they upset the people of Greece, unlike Angela Merkel, they are very easy to make into a kebab.

Another area of unexpected challenge to the political status quo manifested itself this week around Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, and the comments he made on the publication of his new book, about the gross inequality in our society, after four years of “austerity”. Once again, we have a situation where the main opposition to our wonderful Junta seems to be The Church of England. I suppose at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who opposes the Blight Brigade, as long as someone does, but Ed Miliband should look to his laurels.  Dr Sentamu has that gift, also shared by Jose Mourinho, of being able to say, of course, this is not a criticism of [insert name of politician, or in Mourinho’s case, referee] and then going on to slide the knife deftly home and provide exactly the sort of criticism which this is not. It is a skill which the young lad Miliband, the Labour Party’s equivalent of Gussie Fink-Nottle, needs to learn, and learn quickly, though I fear it may already be too late.

There is plenty of scope for opposition, though nobody seems to be overly bothered about exploiting it.  With fifteen weeks to go, the zombie parliament is truly dead in the water, with nothing to do and nothing to be done. At least it stops them causing more trouble, I suppose.  All the parties are now in full-on election mode, which is very depressing, yet Labour seem to be bereft of any vision and inspirational ideas.  The unemployment figures, for instance, are a case in point.  The official line, promulgated by the Office For National Statistics, is that unemployment is at a record low: The official version is that they ask a lot of people – enough people to be able to make strong estimates for the whole economy – questions about their employment status. The results are then reported as the official numbers. They also include people taking part in workfare-style schemes and people who have been sanctioned off JSA.

But as Alex Little pointed out in his blog this week, the findings of the Oxford University/London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine report suggest a situation where people who are sanctioned off benefits are being driven out of the system altogether, and therefore out of any figures. For a long time now I have been suspicious of the various official statistics, and there is certainly something about the matrix of figures surrounding unemployment, benefits, and the jobs market that just doesn’t stack up. The Labour Party should be exploiting this and using it as a stick with which to beat Mr Cameron. But for some reason, they aren’t, presumably because they are hoping, cynically, to use the same tactics if they find themselves in office.

Despite the fact that people on benefits (or rather, people no longer on benefits) seem to be leaching out of the figures, and a seemingly ever-growing number of people are giving up altogether trying to claim what is theirs, that’s still not enough for some people. Lynton Yates, the prospective UKIP candidate for Charnwood, Leicestershire, in the general election, thinks that Motability is a waste of money and that disabled people should have their cars taken away and be forced to catch the bus. I can see where he’s coming from: a disabled person in a wheelchair trying to catch the bus to the job centre might find that they can’t get on it, because the “disabled” space is taken up by a pushchair that the driver has no powers to remove. Then they’ll have to catch the next bus, be late for their appointment, and have their benefits sanctioned. Result.  With thinking like that, Lynton Yates is sure to find a cosy billet at the DWP in any forthcoming Tory/UKIP coalition.  He’s actually been suspended as a UKIP candidate, but sadly, not by a tender extremity. Where do they find these turnips?

I’m not denying that there are some areas where job recruitment is not only possible, but actually necessary. One of these is in the NHS, where there is a desperate shortage of GPs, for one thing.  Which made it somewhat of a surprise this week when I heard of the impending deportation of Dr Nadar Abood, a medic based in Lancashire.  Nadar Abood is  originally from Sudan.  She made herself unpopular with the Sudanese government when she supplied medicine to civilians in desperate need in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people are lacking humanitarian assistance because of the government’s blockade. I haven’t had time to research this fully, this week, having been preoccupied in distributing my own form of humanitarian aid to the squirrels, in the form of cat fur, but it looks to be another one of these cases where the Home Office is trying to appease the mad colonels in Gloucestershire who read The Daily Telegraph and believe every word of it, and other people who live two stops beyond Barking and well off the bus route, in the same way as Harley Miller, also a respected NHS employee was targeted.  Given the criminal stupidity of deporting a doctor when we are crying out for them at the moment, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Junta is trying to dismantle the NHS from both ends.

It would be funny, almost, were it not for the fact that Dr Abood is currently sitting at Yarls Wood detention centre while the Home Office tries to stick her on a plane back to face at least persecution, and possibly torture or worse. The Sudanese government has a disgraceful track record of cracking down on any dissent, and then there is also the fact that Dr Abood’s ethnic origin stems from the Berti tribe, a minority which is already discriminated against in Sudan on racial grounds.  As I type these words, I have just discovered that the scheduled deportation flight on which she was due to be expelled tomorrow has been cancelled, but there is no doubt that the Home Office will keep trying, which means that people will need to continue signing the petition for her release. https://www.change.org/p/james-brokenshire-stop-deportation-of-dr-nadar-abood

Anyway, somehow, we seem to have staggered through to Sunday teatime yet again, and yet again I am sitting here with two hot water bottles in the wheelchair behind me, trying to keep warm until I finish this blog. Actually, it was almost spring-like this morning, when I took the rubbish to the bin, first thing, but it’s gone downhill again since then. We’re not out of the proverbial winter woods yet.  Today is (as well as being Burns Night, of course) the feast of St Dwynwen, whose most famous saying is, apparently, “Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness”, which probably means she was one of those bright, chirpy, jolly-hockey-sticks women who become so annoying over a period of time that they often end up disappearing in mysterious circumstances.

St Dwynwen’s own circumstances are mildly mysterious, given the vast gulf of time which separates the fifth century and today, but we do know that she is the patron saint of lovers in Wales, and also of sick animals (easy on the sheep jokes, please, I’ve already been there.)  She was apparently a member of the family of Brychan of Brecknock, or King Brychan Brycheiniog, for those of you who like your music played on period instruments by the original musicians. The power base was on the island of Anglesey, where her name survives in fragmentary form in place names such as Llanddwyn, and Porthddwyn.

The legend of her life is that she fell in love with a man called Maelon, but somehow she felt she must reject his advances and prevent the relationship from continuing.  Variations of the tale have her either being raped by Maelon and then praying for assistance, or, alternatively, her father forbids the marriage and she prays to forget Maelon. Either way, up pops a friendly angel and hands Dwynwen a potion, which she gives to Maelon. He drinks it, and turns to ice.  Dwynwen then prays for three requests, which are that Maelon is released, that God will look after all true lovers, and that she will remain unmarried.  From then on, she became a hermit on the island of Llanddwyn, off the coast of Anglesey, until her death in about 460AD. In some versions of the story, it is Dwynwen who drinks the potion, although it is still Maelon who turns to ice.

The church on Llanddwyn became an important site for pilgrimages in the Middle Ages, especially at her holy well, where lovers attempted to divine their likely fate by studying the movements of the fish in it. [This has echoes of the beliefs of the Druids, and of course Anglesey was a significant centre for the Druids, prior to the Roam Conquest.]  As with many other medieval shrines, worship there was suppressed after the Reformation, and the site began to be taken over by the relentless march of the sand dunes, falling into disrepair. Two crosses were erected on the site much later, one in 1879 and another in 1903, of a Celtic pattern, and the site is now part of a nature reserve, so at least St Dwynwen is fulfilling some of her duty of patronage towards animals!

St Dwynwen never made it into the official liturgies of the Catholic or the Anglican churches, but during the 1960s, a Bangor student, Vera Williams, began making and selling St Dwynwen’s day cards, along the lines of Valentine’s day, but specifically for Welsh people. The idea caught on, so much so that by 2004, the event had been officially recognised by Gwynedd County Council, no less.

I derive no spiritual knowledge whatsoever from the life of St Dwynwen, but it’s a nice story, an appropriate legend maybe for a time when spring might be just about to be sprung, and both the snowdrops, and Maisie’s indestructible daffodils, are poking blindly through the earth, waiting to burst into flower.  I am told, too, that there are crocuses in West Sussex. It won’t be long now.  And soon it will indeed be St Valentine’s day, when birds do sing, hey ding-a-ding ding, sweet lovers love the spring, and all that jazz.

But, like I said, we’re not out of the woods yet.  And, as it’s Burns night, it is perhaps appropriate to recall the Selkirk Grace:

Some hae meat and cannae eat,

While some can eat, but want it;

But we hae meat, and we can eat,

So let the Lord be thankit.

I won’t be cooking haggis, tatties and neeps tonight, but if Sainsburys deliver the vegan haggises (hagii?) tomorrow, then I might. Either way, I’m lucky to have it, in a world where so many people are struggling and have to go to food banks, so I will be making an attempt to cherish what I have, that being one of my resolutions.

Other than that, a heavy week of work lies ahead.  I must make a point of not getting involved in tedious online debates about “religion” this week, or rather about what other people perceive “religion” to be or to mean, which is very different from my idea anyway.  This comes back yet again to the issue of not holding any one person responsible for the actions of an entire religion or belief system. I’m not responsible for the actions of the Spanish Inquisition (I bet you didn’t expect that) or the Albigensian Crusade. Neither can I claim credit for the mission hospitals and the heroic fight against diseases such as Ebola. My religion is something I have struggled with for many years now, and I still have to keep reminding myself what I believe.

Do I believe that every word in the Bible is true, and is the word of God revealed to man? Probably not. Some parts of the Old Testament are clearly gaga. Do I believe Jesus existed? Yes, probably. Do I believe he was the Son of God, sent to redeem our sins by dying for us? I’d like to think so, but I do have massive problems with the theology of that one, and also Big G’s motives for doing it that way in the first place. Do I believe that the Church (any church) should impose a one-size-fits-all morality on its adherents on pain of judgement and perpetual damnation for disobedience? No, but that doesn’t mean that you should not try and live a good, kind, ethical life. Can I account for the pain, suffering, and evil in the world? No, only by observing that God’s view of these things must be very, very different to our own.

When you set it down like that, it all looks pretty flat and meaningless, but you can’t set out a belief-system like a prospectus or an instruction manual; sometimes, as I said last week, you just know.  Faith flies in the face of reason. Although some of the things we find most perplexing about religion and spiritual matters generally (such as is there a heaven, and if so where is it?) can potentially be explained, or will be, one day, by modern particle physics. Back in October 2014, a team headed up by Professor Howard Wiseman and consisting of people from Griffiths University and the University of California suggested that the “many worlds” theory of parallel universes meant that you could have a situation where nearby “worlds” influence each other in some way.

The Many Worlds theory was proposed by Hugh Everett, who said that the ability of quantum particles to occupy two states simultaneously could be explained by both states co-existing in different universes. This would get around many of the weird events which have been observed in quantum mechanics, which even seem to violate our concepts of cause and effect on occasion. The theory could also go some way, if you applied it to the idea of Big G, towards answering the “why is there suffering and pain in this world” question: it exists here, but is cancelled out in any number of other worlds where the bad thing, whatever it was, didn’t happen.  And likewise, they had the bad version of our good things.  Across an infinite number of universes, all subtly different.

When you start to look at it like that, you are starting to get close to the idea of (in one place) a fallen universe, full of suffering, and in another, different place, an infinite universe of joy and celebration, an idea which not only makes my head hurt, but which sounds spookily like heaven.

So, anyway, we’re not out of the woods yet, but it’s coming, sooner than you think: meanwhile, another long week stretches ahead, at least in this universe, and we have work to do yet, this evening, here. But first, as I usually do when I finish writing this, I’m going to feed the cat, feed the dog, and prepare a meal for us, and give thanks, although I am never quite sure to whom, and/or if anyone’s listening or God is on voicemail, that we have enough of everything. May the Lord be thankit. Enough food, enough milk, tea and coffee, enough coal for the stove, and, indeed, more than enough cat fur.