Epiblog for the Fourth Sunday After Easter

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Apart from a few minor “blips” in the form of April showers, spring continues to burgeon.  There are many things to like about spring – in fact, May is my favourite month of the whole year – but spring cleaning is not one of them. Unfortunately, this week has seen an outbreak of this pestilential scourge, although I think we have got it under control now.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy seeing the end result of spending half a day cleaning out the veg rack, it’s just the unutterable, mind-numbing tedium of having to actually do it. I try and get through it by reciting George Herbert, manically, on repeat:

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine

Who sweeps a room, as to thy laws

Makes that, and th’action fine

Usually, this works, but on days when the chores seem particularly pointless, more tedium than Te Deum, when I am scraping the residue of long dead vegetables off with a brillo pad, and I fall to thinking that in a hundred years’ time, I will be a long dead vegetable, and the veg rack and the brillo pad will both be landfill, it does sort of test your faith.

Still, as I am always fond of quoting, after enlightenment, the laundry, and into every life, a little rain must fall, it is necessary to suffer in order to be beautiful, yadda yadda et cetera, et cetera, as Yul Brynner would say if he were here right now.  The spring cleaning bug started with Debbie, actually, one morning when I came through into the kitchen and found the conservatory door wide open, and Debbie out on the decking, hoovering it.

Though this be madness, yet there was method in’t, to quote the Bard, but even so it looked pretty bizarre, and I found myself wondering whether, with a suitable extension lead, she could hoover the garden.  What she was actually doing, having first cleared off all the crap of the dead leaves and other winter detritus (and put them in a bin bag to mulch down, as requested by Monty Don) was hoovering up the bird seed which had been scattered by careless pigeons and squirrels, and I have to say that, as with any spring cleaning (see above) although enduring it was absolute hell, the end result was very pleasant.

Except for the squirrels.  During her whirlwind blitz attack on the disorder of nature, Deb had managed to move the metal dish with the bird food in it up to one end of the decking, much nearer than usual to the spot where Matilda customarily flops out and sleeps on sunny days – a particular patch of sunlight where there is just room for her, between a plastic planter and a stone pig.  So it was that, later that afternoon, Matilda was snoozing there, about nine inches from the dish, when a squirrel decided to sod it and take some food from the dish anyway. Matilda woke up, and for a few minutes, transfixed by the effrontery of the squirrel, while it was busy cramming as much as it could into its pouches, she did nothing but stare, saucer-eyed.  Eventually, though, I could see that the old hunter-predator genes were going to kick in. Somewhere deep within the recesses of Matilda’s crinkly little walnut of a brain, the notion stirred that she should really be doing something about this situation. By the time I got nearer the door, she’d assumed that crouching position cats adopt where they wiggle their bum and lash their tail, and then pounce.  I banged on the glass of the door and shouted, “Hey! Squirrel!” which sounds a bit feeble written down, but it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment.  The squirrel legged it, with Matilda in close pursuit, but it sensibly decided to forsake the horizontal for the vertical and it was off up the tree like Fred Dibnah on fast forward.

Matilda may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but even she can work out sitting under a tree. However, her plan was based on the mistaken assumption that what goes up, must come down, a fundamental law of nature which doesn’t apply to squirrels. I watched it doing its high-wire trapeze act from tree top to tree top, until I lost it in the green haze of the fresh new leaves.

So, that was what passed for excitement in Matilda’s life this week.  Misty and Zak have had a fairly pedestrian week, literally in the sense of yomping across the moors with Debbie, and, totting it all up, they must have done over fifty miles apiece.  In fact, Debbie seems to have had an energy transplant from somewhere, because the spring cleaning was not confined to vaccing the decking, but also encompassed grovelling under the table where she keeps all her college work to retrieve some books that had slid off and fallen down the back.

“Say one for me while you’re down there,” I suggested, “but you should know that Mecca is that way!”

“I’m praying that somebody will put a Thin-wa on you.”

How different from the home life of our own dear Queen.  Anyway, in terms of excitement, we have also had three visitors this week, two of whom were unexpected.  The first is a small black, possibly female, cat that has been seen hanging around the  garden on a more or less daily basis. My neighbour accosted me on Monday when I was outside doing a “spacewalk” down my wheelchair ramp to put the rubbish in the bin, to ask me if we’d got another cat. I told her no, not while Matilda lives and breathes, and we fell to discussing the potential feral, which it turns out that they’ve been feeding.  Matilda has seen this errant puss a couple of times through the glass of the conservatory door when it’s wandered across our decking, and immediately started “doing her pieces” at it, through the door, so I fear the chances of our adding it to the strength on garrison here are limited.  However, we can’t also ignore the possibility of having the garden teeming with feral kittens in a couple of months’ time, so I reluctantly rang the Cats’ Protection League and arranged to borrow a trap, which will be deployed next week. Of course, since then, I haven’t actually seen the bloody cat, so perhaps it is someone’s pet after all. Watch this space. Or this trap.

The other unexpected visitor, on Wednesday night at about 10.30PM, was Brenda the Badger. Well, I say it was Brenda – it could have been another badger, I suppose, but we were all too gobsmacked by her reappearance to grab a camera or a phone or anything and record it.  I’ve watched eagerly ever since that night to see if she came back, but it looks like, once again, she’s had a better offer. The dry cat food I put out for either her, or the feral cat, or both, remains untouched.  This, of course, is an additional complication with regard to the feral cat trap now: if we’re really unlucky, or lucky, depending how you view it, we could open up one morning to find the cat trap contains Brenda, Matilda, the feral cat, three squirrels and a postman. So, it will have to be delicately managed.

Actually, in an outbreak of badger-related serendipity, Debbie nearly totalled the camper, a badger, and herself, last night, when returning after giving her mum a lift home at 11PM. She was coming back from Berry Brow and a badger decided to womble across the road, right in front of her. At least it proves that the brakes, repaired under the insurance vandalism claim, do actually work, but it would have been ironic in a way even Alanis Morrisette would understand, to have crashed the camper the week the insurance finally paid up for the claim, while avoiding a badger, on her way home to see if Brenda had turned up to be fed.  At least the insurance cheque on the doormat means that I can hang my battle-axe back up for the time being.

The other visitor (expected) was Owen, who made a lightning dash up from South Wales (as much as you can dash anywhere in a hired seven-and-a-half tonner) to help us move the stocks of printed books out of the old warehouse, and to their new home in Ammanford.  Once again, this was totally above and beyond the call of duty, and there’s no real way of demonstrating my gratitude for this, but without his help we would have been stuffed. We’re so far in his debt, with our overdraft on the bank of his kindness and help, that it makes Northern Rock look like a piggy bank.  I don’t really enjoy shuttling pallets of books around the country, and I’d much rather it wasn’t necessary, but I suppose it’s a bit like spring cleaning, absolute hell while it’s in progress, but it’ll look lovely when it’s finished. Eyes on the prize, Steve, eyes on the prize.

In her own way, Misty Muttkins is vaguely famous, with her Facebook page, “Misty Muttkins, the Borderline Collie”, but she would have to develop some hitherto unknown skills to be as notorious as Don the Sheepdog, who caused chaos this week on the M74 in Scotland when he somehow “assumed control” as the police put it, of a tractor that had been left parked on a slope, and managed to drive it through a hedge and across one carriageway of the motorway, before embedding it in the central reservation and gridlocking most of Dumfries and Galloway.  When I first heard the story, I didn’t know what breed of dog he was, but it’s a slam-dunk, really, when you see a headline that says “Dog crashes tractor on motorway”, you know, you just know, that there is going to be a Border Collie behind it, and lo, so it proved.

It’s been such a busy week – it really has, even by my standards – that I haven’t really been paying attention to the news. It’s now become an automatic reaction into switch over to The Simpsons whenever the news comes on.  The Tories’ secret weapon seems to be to try and frighten voters into thinking “Vote Labour, get Nicola Sturgeon” and if Miliband had any sense he’d be countering it with “Vote Tory, get Nigel Farage”, but he doesn’t, so that’s yet another wasted opportunity.

In any event, Scotland got a bum deal after the “no” vote in the referendum, with Cameron et al ratting on the desperate promises they made in the run up to the vote, so I hope that the SNP does do well in the elections, and sends a substantial block of MPs to Westminster to support a minority Miliband administration on an issue by issue basis. It can’t be any worse than five more years of soup kitchens, food banks and Jarrow marches, which is all the Junta have to offer (oh, and further dismantling of the NHS, almost forgot that because it’s not in their manifesto. Again.)

Personally, without wishing to go over old coals, I think that the version of “independence” that the Scots were asked to vote for last September was somewhere beyond la la land and keep right on till morning, and they had a lucky escape, considering they could have even now been trying to invent their own currency with the oil price tanking, but in some respects, what passes for the SNP’s heart is in what passes for the right place, and if they can rescue Miliband from the slough of his own ineptitude, and do some good in ridding Britain of the curse of “austerity”, so much the better.  I did end up writing my open letter to our prospective Conservative candidate, but there has been, unsurprisingly, no reply.  Perhaps they are waiting for the edited version from Grant Shapps. Or Contrib SX, if indeed they turn out to be two different people and not just manifestations of a pathological multiple personality disorder.

The disaster of the Mediterranean boat people rumbles on. At least the politicians are now talking about the problem. Shame it took the deaths of 800 people to get it to the top of the hassle pile. There is talk of Katie Hopkins being prosecuted for incitement to hatred, because of the article she wrote in The Sun comparing refugees to vermin and cockroaches. I really hope it happens, but I suspect the Murdoch empire had her copy checked before actually setting it up in type, to make sure it was just the legal side of the fine line between frothing and rabid.  The media have also been excelling themselves over the Nepalese earthquake, in a sort of “thousands die but British backpackers and climbers saved” mode. I am always reminded of the Aberdeen local paper headline in April 1912: Titanic sinks on maiden voyage – Aberdeen man survives.

Anyway, after another week where it feels like I have spent some considerable time being shot-blasted in a tumble drier, we have arrived at the tranquil haven of Sunday, and a sunny and bright one, to boot, after yesterday’s temporary dip in the weather.  I turned to the calendar of saints, but sadly, my eager anticipation was dashed.

Today I could have had the choice of St Cletus, who sounds vaguely obscene, St Anacletus, who is presumably the anti-cletus, St Paschasius Radbertus, crazy name, crazy guy, St Peter of Rates (now replaced by the Council Tax) or St Trudpert, but despite their inordinately silly names, none of them inspires me with any confidence.

So I am sticking with the Fourth Sunday After Easter, as it seems to be referred to in the Lectionary. The readings for today are apparently Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23;  1 John 3:11-24, and  John 10:7-18.

Psalm 23 is of course the famous “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I wish I had thought of it when I was cleaning the veg rack and having gloomy premonitions about the Valley of Death.  Acts 4 is all about the Sanhedrin questioning Peter and John for healing in the name of Jesus, and deciding to let them off with a caution.  Peter’s retort is “This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.” 1 John 3: 11-24 is a homily on Cain and Abel and how we should not overlook our brethren in need: “Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” A question which could well be asked on the politicians who are standing at the next election on a platform of increased “austerity” and more food banks. I love the King James language about shutting up the bowels of compassion, as well. I will leave you to insert your own scatological jokes at this point.

The final reading, John 10: 7-18, is back on the sheep theme again.

Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.  I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.  But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.  I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.  And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

I must confess to being a fan of the pastoral imagery of the New Testament, especially as expressed in the rolling prose of the King James version, which remains my favourite, despite the occasional foray into bowels. I am also a great fan of sheep, which I probably get in my genes from my ancestor Thomas Thornhill, a shepherd, of Gainsborough, Lincs.  One of the things I miss in my current predicament is the drive to the office on spring mornings, when I used to see the lambs in the fields, and watch the lapwings, either sitting on their nests or taking to the air in that peculiar side-slipping, flip-flopping defence flight that is meant to scare off intruders.  The “hireling shepherd” referred to is where Holman Hunt got the title for his famous Pre-Raphaelite painting, where the shepherd lad is too busy chatting up the fair shepherdess to notice that the sheep are wandering off, unheeded.

There are those, of course, who would immediately point to the description of the followers of Jesus as a “flock” as being evidence of the blind, unquestioning acceptance of everything that is done in the name of “religion”.  It is true that a strength which is unquestioningly over-applied is a weakness, and zeal is the obverse of faith, but there is also the concept of care and faith here. The sheep have faith that the shepherd will protect them and feed them, and come looking for them when they wander off. Even today, shepherds go up on the fells and dig their sheep out of snowdrifts every winter.

What am I to make of today’s readings? Well, apart from a hat, or possibly a brooch, I don’t know, because once again I’m in a quandary of indecision. Should I be even attempting to bother to square the circle of a loving shepherd of his sheep with a God who can let people drown in the Mediterranean or crush thousands in an earthquake in Nepal.  Maybe, as Raymond Chandler said in that quotation from Playback, where he puts this speech into the mouth of the character Henry Clarendon IV:

"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?"

No success where there is no possibility of failure. Or to put it another way, you have to undergo the chaos of spring cleaning, in this case spring cleaning the soul, before you can enjoy the end result.  The shepherd would not be so proud of his flock if he hadn’t dug half of them out of snowdrifts or sat up all night when they were lambing. Maybe that’s what has happened to me in these recent weeks, I’ve just been spring cleaning my soul. I must admit, though, it would be good if Big G popped in now and again, in his cassock and army boots, and gave the floor a scrub, like Father Vincent McNabb used to do for his parishioners.

Today is also the twenty-third anniversary of the death of my father. Where have those years gone? Well, they were the years of my life, I guess. That, too, was a time when I seemed to be going through some of the same trials and tribulations in what passes for my spiritual life. If there is a kind and a loving God, loving shepherd of his sheep and all that stuff, why did my dad have to die from cancer? I’m typing that as if it was a rhetorical question, as if I was now going to give you the answer, hey presto, like a rabbit out of a hat, but in truth, 23 years later, I’m none the wiser, though the hurt has faded. About the only thing I have learned in that time, apart from how to grow old disgracefully, is the difference between knowledge and faith.  Empirical science will never prove that God exists, though theoretical physics is having a good go in recent years.  Knowledge and faith are two different things. I might as well read a technical manual to a dolphin. The technical manual explains things – it says if you do this, then this, then this will happen. But the dolphin isn’t interested, it wants to be off, skimming the sunlit waves in the bay. Knowledge derives from experience, faith derives from instinct. It’s taken me 23 years to learn that lesson, and there are still days when I forget it. Science believes that knowledge and experience trumps faith and instinct every time. But in fact, they are two completely different things. You might as well say that a cricket ball is better than an orange. Only if you want to play cricket.

So, what do we expect next week? Well, it’s going to be another of the same, I guess, as they used to say in auction catalogues. One thing I must do, urgently, is ring up the wheelchair repair service, as I can’t put it off any longer. The front left-hand “bogie” wheel tried to unscrew itself again during the week, and I had to do the trick with the allen key once again while sitting on the commode with the wheelchair tipped up in front of me. No bowels of compassion were opened, I can assure you.  But the other, worse, potential problem is that the front right-hand bogie wheel now has a split in the solid rubber wheel itself, which can only get worse if left to its own devices. So, to avoid being tipped out like a sack of spuds, I will have to get on the case.  Sadly, the wheelchair repairers come whenever they damn well feel like, and they are the one organisation where you can’t claim preferential treatment by saying “I’m in a wheelchair”, because all their clients are in the same boat, or at least in the same (metaphorical) wheelchair.

Other than that, more book moving, more book editing, more accounts, more postage, more spring cleaning, more of the same old dreary same old, in fact.  Can I rely on big G, the supernatural shepherd, to keep the wolf from the door, and catch me when I fall? I don’t know, I really don’t. Anyway, those are tomorrow’s problems. Right now, while Misty is off with Deb, over hills and mountains high, I am off outside, to paint two plastic planters with white gloss, while the weather holds, and to see if Matilda’s still sprawled out on the decking in the sun, with her legs going off in all directions, looking like an abandoned set of bagpipes. And, if feral Beryl puts in an appearance, probably sounding like one, too.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Alphege

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley.  But at least we’ve had nice weather for it, by and large.  We’ve even had the conservatory door open, on occasion, which saves having to let Matilda specifically in or out. And, just as they did last April, the catkins have begun to fall on the decking, the Rowan is in bud, and there are even some little green shoots on the climbing clematis.

The squirrels have been busier than ever, and once again I’ve observed them throwing crusts of mouldy bread out of the dish I put out for the birds, in order to get at the sunflower seeds underneath, the cheeky little sods. Long-standing readers of this blog (who should, perhaps, take the weight off their feet and have a cup of tea) will recall that, a couple of years ago, Wheelchair Services, who are based in Park Valley Mills, down in the valley bottom and overlooked by our back garden, actually named all the squirrels that came regularly to the bird-feeders they had placed outside their offices, and one of those thus named was “Wilbert White-Ear” who sounds like a Viking chieftain but was, in reality, a squirrel with one white ear. The clue is in the name.

Anyway, this week I am certain I have seen Wilbert White-Ear, or another squirrel with one albino ear – it’s always possible there is more than one. The reason I particularly noted him was that his career as a squirrel almost came to a premature and nasty end, because he chose to come and riffle though the nuts looking for the tasty ones at a time when the door was not only open, but Matilda was sitting just inside it.  My heart was beating fast, because the last thing I want is for Matilda to start slaughtering hapless wildlife, even though it is in a cat’s nature to do so. It was my own fault, because by putting out crusts regularly for the birds, I have also – to a certain extent – tamed the squirrels and, as Antoine de Saint-Exuperay says, you are responsible for what you tame.

Inititally, Matilda was transfixed by the effrontery of the squirrel, but then some vague, vestigial cat-nature stirred within her, and she disappeared round the door with a lash of her tail and a wiggle of her bum. Wilbert, however, had seen her coming, and by the time she had lumbered half-way across the decking, he was more than half way up the ivy-covered tree, and metaphorically thumbing his nose at her. The final result was 1. Wilbert, 2. Matilda and several lengths separated 1. and 2.

Compared to Matilda, Misty’s had a quiet week, with only the odd 13-mile daily yomp over the moors to alleviate her relative canine boredom.  Now that the fireworks seem to have stopped for a few weeks, she’s also been allowed off lead again, and trots along in convoy with Zak at Debbie’s heels like a good ‘un. In fact, the one least likely to come back from a walk is now Debbie, who this week decided, midway through a transit from Wessenden to West Nab, to pause and climb Raven Rocks.  She got up there OK, but it took her about half an hour to get safely down. The dogs, meanwhile, lay at the foot on the climb, patiently waiting for her to fall off, and no doubt wondering where she kept the tin opener, and which of them was going to drive home.

It has been the last week of leisure, prior to us being pitched back into the world dictated by Debbie’s teaching timetable again, as from tomorrow.  We have, unusually for us, been able even to watch a little TV now and again.  At the conclusion of one such evening’s entertainment, while waiting for the kettle to boil so I could fill a hot water bottle before scuttling through the cold house to bed, Deb suddenly said to me “It’s a shame Donald’s not going to be in it any more.” For some reason, I though she was referring to the character Donald, of Donald and Jacqueline fame, in ITV’s Benidorm. A reasonable assumption, since the actor who played him died recently. After five minutes of cross-porpoises, it turned out, however, that she was referring to the bloke who plays Captain Donald Cregan in Law and Order, Special Victims Unit, who is apparently really called Dann Florek. I guess you had to be there.

Mind you, she does have a point. One of the other late night thud-and-blunder cop shows we found ourselves subjected to was Blue Murder, in which several members of a family all confessed to the same murder even though they were innocent, to protect one of their own, who was the true culprit. I thought, only momentarily, that the character playing the alcoholic grandfather and patriarch of the clan was David Threlfall, an actor whose work I’ve admired ever since he was Frank Gallagher in Shameless.  I made the mistake of saying this out loud, and Debbie poured scorn on my powers of recognition:

“I’m surprised you ever recognise anybody. Do you ever look in the mirror and think ‘Oh, look, it’s Father Christmas,’ before adding ‘Oh, no, hang on, it’s me!’”

There was no ducking that one. If you ask me, it all started going downhill when we allowed them to vote and taught them to drive.  Deb has achieved at least one of her short-term career goals this week with the acquisition of a new printer. For a while now I’ve been concerned that we were overly reliant on the little HP1010 which only cost about £25.00 but chugs along like a good ‘un. The point is, though, that Debbie needs something that she knows she can rely on, because of all the damn resources she has to print out (which, actually, I think the college should print/copy for her, by rights, but hey ho) so we have been forced to spring a few readies and have acquired a (surprisingly cheap and surprisingly easy to install) Epson wireless ink jet printer.

There was one point where the touch-screen claimed, during the installation, that it would “temporaly” disable the internet connection, but then I suppose that’s near enough, if you’re Korean. I did have to stop Debbie putting a red ring round it though. So, anyway, we have another wireless device now humming away in our little electronic nest, and I am convinced that, what with the printer, the mobile phones, the cordless land line, and the wi-fi network, you could probably hold up an uncooked Cornish pasty in the air anywhere in our house and watch it transform before your very eyes into a piping hot, tasty and nutritious snack. Just like my brain.

If there’s one thing English teachers really do like doing, it’s correcting things in red ink. Debbie actually uses green, because she thinks red is a tad judgemental, but Suzy Howlett, who teaches English as a foreign language, had no such compunction when a leaflet from two UKIP candidates standing for the council in Frome landed on her doorstep. It was littered with typos and grammatical errors (UKIP wants to regain control of our “boarders”, for instance) and her picture of it after she’d finished giving it the 0/10 must-try-harder treatment went viral this week on social media.  Not that UKIP care. Nigel Farage was too busy losing it and accusing the audience of being biased when they started giving him the Bronx Cheer during the “leaders’ debate” and meanwhile, food write and anti-austerity campaigner Jack Monroe was driven from Twitter by a series of hate messages allegedly emanating from the account of Alex Wood, a former UKIP candidate, including the charming “Your sick form of Lesbianism and militant queerism is destroying this country. Get out and give us Britain back! #VoteUKIP.” The messages also suggested she should be sterilised.

It seems, however, that the account may have been “hacked”, at least according to Mr Wood, who disclaims the messages, in much the same way as UKIP have disclaimed him. “My account must have been hacked,” is of course high on the list of excuses we have all heard before. It was what that US politician said when it turned out he had been tweeting pictures of his dick cheney. It’s right up there along with “the cheque is in the post”, “I was only keeping the images on my hard drive for research purposes”, “I have absolutely no idea who those knickers in the car belong to”, “the dog ate my homework”, and “the money was only resting in my bank account”. But we’ll see.  It was only three or so years ago, we should remember, that a UKIP candidate in the Kent County Council elections, Geoffrey Clark, said that Down’s Syndrome foetuses should be compulsorily aborted, lest they become a drain on the NHS.  It’s now got to the stage where this sort of thing happens so often that you could be forgiven for thinking that, if you picked up Britain and gave it a good shaking, everything loose or unhinged would end up in UKIP. Perhaps that’s what happened.

Being driven off Twitter is a concept I am not entirely comfortable with, however. It is, after all, only a glorified internet message board and if you do go, you might as well admit they’ve won. I argued as much, and was told “If you physically socialised with someone who was constantly nasty to you, would you continue to socialise with them?” to which I replied that if  I physically socialised with someone who was constantly nasty, I would excommunicate them fairly swiftly and they'd find it a long road back to getting on my Christmas card list again, but it wouldn't stop me going to the pub altogether.

I've been abused on Twitter (though as yet, no one has threatened my life or suggested I be sterilised, but no doubt it will come) but I wouldn't let my use of the internet be circumscribed by some furtive little anorak-wearing creature in a bed sit in Crouch End who has never had a girlfriend and has never grown the balls to say the stuff in public that he quite happily fills acres of Twitter with. Success or failure in real life is not to be confused with success or failure on Twitter.

Twitter is kept going by the likes of Katie Hopkins, who is being driven to ever-greater excesses in her desperate effort to avoid the obscurity which inevitably awaits her, a nemesis which could be hastened if by some miracle Miliband wins the election, since she has, let us not forget, vowed to quit these shores if Labour gets in.

This week, her theme was once more immigration and her target in particular the continuing stream of desperate refugees who try to cross the Mediterranean to get to southern Italy, either under their own steam or, increasingly, in the hands of organised traffickers who have little or no regard for the safety of their human cargo.  Obviously these people are trying to get into the EU, and who can blame them. Whatever you think about picking fruit in Italy for starvation wages and in conditions that Steinbeck would have recognised, it’s a paradise if you come from some Godforsaken hole in the sub-Saharan desert, or a village made of breeze blocks in the Syrian desert that’s been bombed by ISIS and the RAF in the same day.

Unfortunately, since the rules of search and rescue in the Med were changed recently, throwing the responsibility on to a new body, more of the boat people are dying than ever before. This doesn’t stop Katie Hopkins though.  Never mind that in some cases they are fleeing a war zone, they are, in her world “cockroaches”. Writing in The Sun (where else?) she refers to migrants in Calais trying to enter the UK as “a plague of feral humans”, adding “we don’t need Save The Children encouraging migrants to make the journey, what we need are gunships sending these boats back to their own country”. [The fact that “their own country” is probably landlocked is lost on Ms Hopkins.]

This is beyond parody, in fact, it’s so far past Barking and off the bus route that it’s tantamount to incitement to racial hatred, and definitely worthy of a complaint to whatever the Press Complaints Commission is called this week.  Especially as she is then seeking to conflate it with the idea, once again incorrect as always, that asylum seekers get benefits, when she says:

“Some of our towns are festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers, shelling out benefits like Monopoly money.”

Asylum seekers don’t get benefits, and illegal immigrants can’t claim benefits either because they’re here, er, illegally.

I really hope two things for Katie Hopkins. Firstly I hope that, if she is by some miracle forced to carry out her promise and leave the UK in the event of a Labour victory, that whichever port she tries to make landfall in, the authorities send out a “gunship” to blow her out of the bloody water.  As I am writing this, news is coming in of yet another migrant boat tragedy off Lampedusa, with perhaps as many as 700 people drowned, some of them children. My second wish for Katie Hopkins is that wherever she ends up, and be her life long or short, the dying screams of those children, and their dead, drowned ghosts, follow her to the end of her days.

It would be more bearable if Katie Hopkins was the only compassionless vacuous idiot making stupid suggestions that undermine the fabric of a civilized society, but she is, sadly, by no means alone. Also this week, Lord Bichard, a cross-bench peer previously only known for chairing the Soham murder enquiry, came out with the idea that pensioners should be forced to work for their pension (although they have, in fact, done precisely that, all their lives). Speaking to a committee of MPs, he said:

 “Older people who are not very old could be making a very useful contribution to civil society if they were given some incentive or recognition for doing so. We’re prepared to say to people if you’re not looking for work, you don’t get a benefit. If you’re old and you’re not contributing in some way, maybe there should be some penalty attached to that. These debates never seem to take place. Are we using all the incentives at our disposal to encourage older people not just to be a negative burden on the state but actually be a positive part of society?”

Yes, starting with the old fogeys in the House of Lords.  Do something to earn your bloody expenses, you leech and scrounger. Get out there and do a litter pick, or run a soup kitchen or a food bank. The thing is, Lord Bichard, if you’re not looking for work, you’re not worth your expenses, so we should donate them to Shelter.  In fact, Lord Bichard, why stop at death? When the pensioners you have worked into the ground finally succumb, their ashes will keep the egg-timers of Britain going for a generation!

It is, sadly, becoming more and more difficult to ignore the election, even though I’ve now taken routinely to turning over to The Simpsons when the BBC Six O’Clock news comes on, on the grounds that it is funnier and probably more realistic than whatever’s happened here during the day. Give me Homer Simpson over John Simpson any day. Our local Tory candidate, Jason McCartney, sent out an election leaflet which consists of 75% unfounded assertions 23% tissue of untruths, and 7% dry matter including chip fat and gunge. I have started an open letter of rebuttal, which is currently on its fourth page. I did briefly consider turning over the entirety of this week’s blog to it, so you have had a lucky escape there. I’ll post it on my other, specifically political blog, if I can ever remember the login details, and put a link here or on Facebook.  Much as I would like to say that I am looking forward to the choice available at this election, and to exercising my democratic right to vote and chuck out the government, in fact the choice at the next election is between the Tories and the other Tories, and voting for Miliband instead of Cameron is merely voting for the lesser of two weevils.

Mention of weevils and worms reminds me that one of my correspondents asked me this week if we still see Brenda the Badger, and the answer is that, sadly for the last year or so, we haven’t seen her, and I can only assume that she is getting her earthworms from someone else’s garden these days. Either that, or she chooses to be nocturnal only on the nights when I choose to go to bed.  So I felt slightly envious of 79 year old retired charity worker Terry Cooper, who found himself widely reported in the press this week after coming face to face with a giant super-badger, the size of a small pig, and its two cubs, in his garden. Mr Cooper claimed that it had teeth “as long as a lemonade bottle is wide”, which was an adventurous and unusual simile, though it might have attracted the red pen of a certain English teacher.  Mr Cooper and his dog, a small Jack Russell, turned tail and fled indoors.  Given that badgers are typically shy, nocturnal creatures, one wonders what exactly it was that Mr Cooper saw, and whether it was chemically-assisted in any way. The sun was over the yard-arm, certainly, and there are other common black-and-white objects in the English landscape, several pints of Guinness for instance, but maybe we should give him he benefit of the doubt, and assume that there really is a breed of super-badger, come to seek revenge for the culls. I sort of hope so.

While I have been writing these words, it occurred to me that a disproportionate amount of these stories emanate from the south-west of England, as does the sorry tale of  Nick Allen, a musician who uses a wheelchair, who has spent £160,000 on converting a barn into a wheelchair-friendly recording studio, only to be told by Wiltshire County Council that unless it is demolished by September 10, he will be prosecuted for failing to disclose a change of use and thus contravening planning law.  True, Mr Allen may have made some elementary mistakes with his paperwork, but given the paucity generally of such amenities for “the disabled”, you would think that the council might, in these circumstances, be prepared to employ common sense and act in the spirit, rather than the letter of the law. 

Like the council in Hull which is actively preventing volunteers from feeding the homeless near Holy Trinity, it behoves these bone-headed burghers to remember who put then there, and why. It’s not like Mr Allen built a housing estate in his back garden without telling anyone, and I am sure that there are many, many times all over the UK when planning disputes are settled amicably in the pub car park by the developer giving the planning officer a jiffy bag full of tenners, so unless Wiltshire county council can show they have always, in all their other decisions, upheld the law, the letter of the law, and nothing but the law, for ever and ever amen, then I think they should cut Mr Allen some slack in this case. As do all the other people who have signed the petition supporting him.

             

So, that was the week that was, and somehow we have arrived at The Feast of St Alphege of Canterbury.  St Alphege is, amongst other things, the patron saint of Greenwich, Solihull, and kidnap victims. Well, someone has to be, I suppose.  Supposedly born in Weston, near Bath, in 953AD, he later entered the monastery at Deerhurst, but then eventually gave that up as well, becoming a hermit, back at Bath once more. From that occupation he then entered the monastery at Bath, eventually becoming its abbot.

His next significant career break cam when, at the age of only thirty (although that was old, in those days) he was elected Bishop of Winchester, on October 19^th 984AD. As bishop, he promoted the cult of St Swithun, and built a mighty organ in the cathedral that could be heard from over a mile away and which required 24 men to operate it. Shades of Reginald Dixon.  It would be nice to think of St Alphege rising up from the undercroft, belting out Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.

It is also said that, during his episcopate, so great was his generosity to the poor that beggars were nowhere to be found in the diocese. We could do with a few like him today.

This was of course the time when England was being plagued by constant attacks from the Danes, who were actively engaged in raiding and pillaging in those years, although subsequently they settled down in their own country and over the years, gave the world Sandi Toksvig, Peter Schmeichel, bacon, and dismembering giraffes.  Following a Viking raid in 994AD, a peace treaty was signed with one Olaf Tryggvason which entailed him receiving Danegelf and converting to Christianity, and it is thought he was confirmed by St Alphege.

In 1006, Alphege took another step up the clerical ladder when he succeeded Aelfric as Archbishop of Canterbury, and brought with him to his new post a souvenir of his previous job, in the form of the head of St Swithun, presumably to use as a novelty paperweight or something.  Unfortunately, though, those pesky Danes just wouldn’t go away, and Alphege’s ministry and reforms were interrupted yet again when the Danes staged another raid and this time laid siege to Canterbury, from the 8^th - 29^th September, 1011.  It didn’t end well for the home team.  Unfortunately, the city was betrayed and Alphege was taken prisoner and held for seven months, along with Godwine, Bishop of Rochester, Leofrun, the Abbess of St Mildrith’s, and Aelfweard, the King’s Reeve.  To round off a good day for the visitors, the Danes then plundered and burned Canterbury Cathedral.

Alphege refused to allow a ransom to be paid for his release, and eventually the patience of his Danish captors snapped, as related in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

... the raiding-army became much stirred up against the bishop, because he did not want to offer them any money, and forbade that anything might be granted in return for him. Also they were very drunk, because there was wine brought from the south. Then they seized the bishop, led him to their "hustings" on the Saturday in the octave of Easter, and then pelted him there with bones and the heads of cattle; and one of them struck him on the head with the butt of an axe, so that with the blow he sank down and his holy blood fell on the earth, and sent forth his holy soul to God's kingdom.

Sudden death at the hustings has of course stayed with us until modern times, just ask Michael Portillo, but in this case there was to be no second career on BBC Four for Alphege, who was taken back and buried in the precursor to St Paul’s Cathedral.  A contemporary account not featured in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates how one of the Danes, Thorkell the Tall, was so shocked by the brutality of what he saw taking place that he offered all his wealth and possessions, apart from his ship, if his fellow Danes would relent and spare the saint. Sadly, his appeal went unheeded, and it is said that after the event, he switched sides and fought with Aethelred the Unready against his former comrades. What Wilbert White-Ear thought is also unrecorded.

In 1023, Cnut himself had Alphege’s relics moved back to Canterbury, and in 1078 he was canonised, by Pope Gregory VII. Apart from being dead, things were looking up. After the Norman Conquest, Lanfranc, the Archbishop chosen by William I, had a massive clear-out of saints and only Alphege and St Augustine remained on the calendar at Canterbury, proof even then that he was held in regard. His shrine was rebuilt, and after the fire at Canterbury in 1174, he was moved to a new shrine near to the high altar.  It is said that St Thomas a Becket dedicated his spiritual life to St Alphege, shortly before he himself was martyred, near to the Alphege tomb.

Of course, all the usual caveats apply to the story of St Alphege. The sources are fragmentary and unreliable, written sometimes long after the events which they purport to describe, and often embroidered with additional material that can also be found in other lives, of other saints, taken from some sort of standard back-story archive that now seems to have been lost.  What it does bring home, though, is of a time when the peaceful, orderly society of England was under attack, when the division between rich and poor was immense, and when life was brutal and often short and violent, and ordinary people struggled to avoid disease and misfortune, and feed themselves, while the rich were cushioned by a layer of finery and gold. So different to today. Oh, hang on…

Well, that was St Alphege, and I guess the truly Christian part to his story was his submission to his fate and his refusal to be ransomed, which has echoes of Christ himself and the crucifixion. Not that I have ever truly understood the rationale for that, either, as readings of this blog in recent weeks will tell.  The more I think about it these days, the more I am coming to the conclusion that my faith, whatever it once was, is now more or less in tatters.  This afternoon, Deb did some tidying up on the decking, by way of down-time before starting on her prep for tomorrow’s classes, and took down the last remaining remnants of the prayer-flags, the ones the squirrels left behind.  Now, the only one left flying is the one the dropped and abandoned, stuck on a branch half way up one of John’s trees. It’s still there, miraculously, despite all the rain and gales of this late, cold spring.

Sometimes, I think my relationship with what some would call my creator has become a little like those prayer flags.  It started out as a row of bunting, fluttering and colourful in the summer breeze, and then one by one, the rain came and the wind howled and the frost nipped, and parts of my faith were stolen away from me and never returned, and now I’m left with two sorry, dirty flags and another scrap of cloth half way up an unreachable tree.

An aged man is but a paltry thing

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing

And louder sing, for every tatter in the mortal dress

said W B Yeats in Sailing to Byzantium. And how right he was.

I seem to be saying this with increasing regularity these days, but I have to say, I am not looking forward to next week. In fact, looking back (see what I did, there) it is difficult to remember when I last looked forward to anything, apart from a general longing in winter for it to be spring.  Plus, this last week has been underscored by a troubling and annoying new development - back pain. Not constant, not that painful, to be honest, but enough to give me a twinge now and again and remind me that it’s there, underneath everything else, like a sinister obbligato underlying the whole score.  I’m hoping it’ll cure itself. Obviously, if it carries on, I’ll have to have it looked at. I don’t remember doing anything that specifically crocked my back, but then backs, like noses on some people, are notoriously easy to put out of joint.  To be honest, it’s the last thing I need right now, as I already feel ill, old and crabby, without adding that to the mix.  And of course, Deb is back at her teaching next week, with all of the early starts which that implies.

Then there’s the insurance claim, which is rapidly approaching the proportions of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Bleak House.  One thing is looking increasingly clear, though: whoever insures our camper next year, it won’t be Adrian Flux.  Flux off, I think the expression is.  These people, they sit there, taking your money year after year, and the premiums go up, even though you have never made a claim, and then the one time you need them, they rat on you.  As Woody Guthrie put it:

As through this world you wander, you meet some funny men

Some will rob you with a six-gun, others with a fountain pen.

At times like this, I can usually recover some of my savoir-faire by counting my blessings, and it is true, I do have blessings, and I do try and cherish every moment, even emptying the dust-bag on the Hoover, because you never know the minute or the hour.  But I have to face the fact, and accept it, that I’m a long way from where I wanted to be, and some days I’m going backwards. I haven’t exactly given up praying, although these days if I am honest I rather think Big G has put me on hold.

I do have blessings though, and I should remember that.  God or no God, blessings are the thing that drags me out of bed in a morning and makes me get on, even though some blessings are chores, and vice versa.  I have a cat that needs feeding, I have a dog that will beg and give paw for dog-treats.  I won’t have to water the Ceanothus tonight, because it’s started raining. Still, if it’s at all possible, just the odd day next week when nothing blows up, catches fire, crashes or dies would be good, right now. A soft day, thank God.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Zeno of Verona

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and, apart from today, which is windy, cold, blustery and showery, with occasional showers of spiky rain, the rest of the week has been fine, warm, and sunny. Yes, warm - that thing we’d all forgotten. I can finally forsake my winter duvet in favour of a single layer of down sleeping bag.  Spring, when, as e. e. cummings once said, the world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. Spring, “whan spray beginneth to, er, spring.” We still only have one daffodil by the pond, though, boldly trumpeting its golden message of defiance to the cold dark days when it was just a bulb in the mould.

With spring, of course, a young man’s fancy turns to herbs, and an old saggybaggy pusscat’s fancy also turns to spending more time in the garden. Actually Matilda is not that old. She was allegedly 8 or 9 when we got her, which makes her either 11 or 12 this year – 55 or 60 in human terms.  Most cats would be settling down and spending more time with their bowl, their milk and their catnip mice three at this stage of life, but Matilda sparked a major alert by going missing for 15 hours overnight on Thursday.  With the warmer weather, we’ve been leaving the cat flap door open all the time (we can’t do it in winter because the draught from it aims straight for my bed and I tend to wake up with ice crystals in my beard) so she has been coming and going more or less as she pleases.

I think on reflection what she must have done is that she went out during the very warm afternoon, and found herself a nice place to curl up and nest in the garden, although we couldn’t actually see her.  Because Thursday was such a warm day, it didn’t cool off dramatically after sunset like it usually does, so I am guessing she just slept on regardless. Some days, like Debbie, she could sleep for England.  Anyway, bedtime arrived and there was still no sign of the missing cat, so I decided that I would stay up and make sure she was OK.  This was the start of some four hours of trundling round from door to door, trying to call her name loudly enough for her to hear but not so loud as to wake the neighbours, all to no avail.  At 2.30AM I even went out into the driveway for a stooge around and unlocked the side door of the camper to make sure she hadn’t managed to get herself shut in there by accident. (Nigel was a great one for stowing away while we were preparing to go off on a trip, and we lived in dread of suddenly hearing a pert “meeeow” from the back seat when we were half way up the M6, but it never actually happened).

Anyway, by 4.30AM I was sitting in my wheelchair, dozing by the stove, and trying to keep awake until first light, when I would resume the search. I was already making mental lists of all the things you have to do when you lose a cat, like printing out posters and sticking them on the local tellywag poles, and wondering if it was too late to cancel the cat food off the Sainsburys order, when she sauntered in, completely unconcerned, polished off two sachets of Felix and some dry food on the side, curled up on her cushion, and went fast asleep. I went and shut the cat door, with a resounding clang that probably woke the whole house, but by then I was past caring. God alone knows where she had been for all that time, probably murdering some hapless rodent, or counting the stars in Orion’s penis like Stewie Griffin, or possibly, since her eyes were wide as saucers when she first came back, she had been looking into Chapman’s Homer, since she stared about her with a wild surmise. Who knows. Anyway, that night I had four hours sleep and both of us lost one of our nine lives.

This week, I also became 60 in human terms. In cat and dog years I’m already dead, of course. The occasion passed extremely pleasantly – the day itself was relatively painless – like old Shakespoke once said, it’s the bit leading up to it which tends to be the gnat in the germoline. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but by the time you actually get to 60, and realise the inevitability of it, there’s not much you can do apart from to say, metaphorically, to life, “pull my vest down when you’ve finished.”  For once, I spent the day doing things I wanted to do, rather than the things I had to. The fact that it was Easter Monday helped, and nobody was expecting me to be compost mantis anyway.  So I did some painting, and I did some pottering around in what passes for my garden, and in the evening, I looked a spinach and chickpea pie and we had that with fat chips and beans, washed down, rather incongruously, with Chateauneuf du Pape, which was one of my birthday presents.  I worked out that Debbie would have had to have worked an hour and a half to earn the money to pay for it, but if you can’t push the boat out (or push the Pope out, more like) on your 60^th, then when can you?

The week progressed in like vein, actually. I did have to do lots and lots of tedious work, catching up on stuff I had wilfully neglected over Easter, but at the same time, I found myself able to receive and plant out into planters, two large cartons of herbs.  This was despite the fact that the courier which delivered them, UK Mail, is to fragile items what Jimmy Savile was to child-minding, and one of the boxes, when I got it, was a complete bugger’s muddle of soil, leaves, and empty pots. Anyway, for better or for worse, they are all out there now, protected for the most part by cloches and some panes of glass which I saved a couple of years ago when Owen dismantled our old outside door.

I posted a picture of them on Facebook and a lively discussion ensued about the various herbs and their properties, especially English Mace, which is something different in America, as I learned. In America, Mace is the outer skin of a nutmeg. It’s also what the police use on black people for a few nights, whenever one of them gets shot.  Just when I thought the extended 60^th celebrations were finally over, at the end of the week, a box arrived containing some wonderful vegan chorizo, sent by one of the readers of this blog, an unexpected but very kind and generous gesture. The box it arrived in was actually sealed with some sticky tape bearing a running advert for vegan dog treats, and at first Debbie accused me of spoiling Misty and ordering expensive stuff unnecessarily, since the house is already awash with dog-treats. When it turned out that the contents were human treats, and I was not responsible for them, the vindication made them all the tastier.

I haven’t been paying much attention to the outside world this week, partly because I’m deliberately ignoring the election coverage and partly because I’m sixty, you know. However, even I couldn’t miss the Junta’s ham fisted attempt to demonise Ed Miliband as someone who might endanger national security by kow-towing to demands from the SNP to remove Trident in return for their support on an issue by issue basis if Labour forms a minority government after May 7^th.  From the party that produced the “demon eyes” poster of Tony Blair, I suppose in one sense they’re only following previous form, but even so, the only shots now left in their locker are the Blood Libel, The Zinoviev Letter, and the unfounded assertion that after the election, Miliband will attempt to conjure up the ghost of Aleister Crowley and sacrifice a goat on Chidham Common.

When you start to tease it apart, you realise that the claim is, of course, what Marcus Aurelius, were he here right now, would label as “totum taurem excretum”. For a start, it would require a specific set of circumstances that in any case might not occur, and Miliband has already ruled out a coalition with the SNP, but the Blight Brigade needs to be very careful, in any case, when it starts bandying assertions about imperilling national security. Cameron was the fatheaded twerp who allowed himself to be painted into a corner by Alex Salmond and put Trident in danger by allowing a referendum that almost broke the UK apart, and it was the Junta themselves who, because of their bone-headed recalcitrance, have left the UK without an aircraft carrier for a decade.  True, they did manage to get a British aircraft carrier into the Med during the ill-judged and useless, costly foreign policy intervention in Libya – it was our last one, on its way to the breakers’ yard. So, Mr Cameron, in a world where maritime power is at least as important to us now as it was in Kipling’s day, a world where if anyone hinders the coming of the “big steamers”, we’ll starve, when it comes to endangering national security, it’s a case of “Taxi for Mr Kettle.”

Talking of Kipling, and poetry about ships, reminds me of the only other significant story I noted during the week: apparently there is now only one right answer when it comes to poetry.  Education secretary Nicky Morgan was the subject of a coruscating demolition of her proposed new mini-syllabus in an open letter written by children’s poet and performer Michael Rosen. This extract from Rosen’s article goes to the nub of the question:

Now, though, there’s an official view of what poetry is for: “Standards and Testing Agency, Key stage 1 English reading, sample questions, marks schemes and commentary for 2016 assessment”. Here we find Where Go the Boats? by Robert Louis Stevenson, followed by eight questions, their correct answers – that’s to say, the only answers that are allowed, and a commentary to explain what’s being tested. This will lay down the activities of thousands of teachers, children and parents between now and May 2016. Thousands of hours of school – and homework – time will be focused on these correct answers. It’s no use you, or any Ofsted report, telling us that it’s only bad teachers who teach to the test. Because of your system of enforced conversion to academy status on the basis of schools not scoring high enough on tests, schools will teach to the test. Inevitably, this test will enforce what reading poetry is about and what it’s for and that doesn’t coincide very much with what poets and people interested in poetry have to say about it.

Speaking as someone who once got chucked out of a seminar on Gawain and the Green Knight at University for daring to suggest that there might possibly be a specifically pagan interpretation of a poem about a scary green giant who gets his head cut off at the turn of the year and then comes magically back to life again, this resonated with me. When Christopher Ricks was Oxford Professor of Poetry, he caused a huge controversy with an interpretation of Milton’s lines:

His state is kingly,

At his bidding thousands speed

which suggested that the poet was writing about his erect penis.  Yes, OK, it was Christopher Ricks, but even so, these days he’d be banged up by Ofsted before you could say “Seven Types of Ambiguity”.  The whole point of poetry is the interpretation thereof.  If you reduce it to black and white, then any discussion of, for instance, whether Tennyson is being critical at the same time as admiring the bravery of the Light Brigade when he writes that “someone had blundered” is void. The correct answer is six hundred.

Poetry cannot be quantified and measured, and there are no right answers.  A good poem has as many right answers as it has readers, and it yields up its meaning gradually, over many readings. The skill of analysis and interpretation is what it’s all about, but then the Junta doesn’t want the education system to produce people who can analyse and interpret text, because they might find themselves thus analysed, and found wanting,  interpreted as exponents of the Gradgrind system, in agreement with Lady Bracknell when she says:

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a very delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

It would probably lead, in fact, to more people like Ian Harris. He is currently accusing the DVLA of discrimination because they won’t allow him to submit a picture of himself wearing a colander on his head for official use on his driving licence.  Mr Harris, a banjo player from Hove, states that he is a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster and this colander is part of his adherence to their cult of Pastafarianism, making it a piece of religious headgear.

His point, and it is a very valid one, is that the DVLA does allow photos of other people wearing religious headgear to be used on driving licence, Sikhs for example, and thus their decision to deny him his photo is discriminatory, unless they are setting themselves up as the arbiters of what is and what is not a “proper” religion.

This will no doubt be seized upon by those who want to ban the hijab, or the burkha, or the turban, or whatever, and used as a stick with which to beat them, claiming that they get special treatment out of “positive discrimination” or “political correctness gorn mad”.  I, too, think everybody should be treated the same, without fear or favour, but my solution is a simpler one. The DVLA should show some common sense, and let Mr Harris wear his colander in his photo. Here is a goose, a gander, and some sauce. Please apply the one to the other two.

Mentioning religion reminds me that I am supposed to be writing about matters spiritual, although the way the weather is going at the moment, after such a nice week, it makes me think I would be better employed looking for forty cubits of gopher wood in the garage.  Or taking up fishing, which would be quite appropriate, since today is the feast of St Zeno of Verona, who is the patron saint of fishermen and anglers.

He died in 371 AD, and apparently originated in Mauretania (Northern Morocco and Algeria). The chief source for his life is a 7^th century Veronese author named Coronato, and, of course, as with many other saints of that era, it is impossible at this distance to distinguish fact from fiction.  He might even have been a martyr, or that might have been another, different Zeno. During his life he was responsible for around 90 theological documents or sermons, which apparently contain demonstrably African influences and styles. He partook of the monastic life in Verona until around 362AD, when the current bishop of Verona died and Zeno was elected his successor.

As a bishop, he preached against the Arian heresy (yes, I have still forgotten what the Arian heresy was. It’s a bit like the Schleswig-Holstein question: only three people know the answer, one is dead, one is mad, and I’ve forgotten). He also set up a convent specifically for women, reformed the feast of Agape, and told people off for holding funerals where the mourners expressed their grief in loud moans and wailing.  The reason he is sometimes considered a martyr is that there is an entry in the Roman Martyrology about a bishop of Verona being killed on 12^th April 371AD by order of the Roman Emperor Gallenius, who had, rather inconveniently for this theory, died in 268AD.  There may well have been two Zenos anyway, as another story relates the tale of Zeno exorcising a demon from the daughter of the Emperor Gallenius.

Zeno is also supposed to have built the first basilica in Verona, though the present building on the site dates back only to 806AD, when Zeno’s relics were translated there from his previous resting-place.  Because of this, Zeno’s feast is also celebrated locally in Verona on 21^st May, the date of the supposed translation.  Little remains of the original, as most of the present-day basilica dates from between the 12^th and 15^th centuries.

As I said before, the “life” we have of Zeno is probably a mixture of truth, fable and conjecture. One legend says that he was briefly stolen just after birth and replaced by a “demonic changeling”.  Another story tells of when, one day as he was fishing in the Adige river, he saw a rustic farmer driving a horse and cart across the bridge towards him, and the horses became strangely unsettled by Zeno until he calmed them by making the sign of the cross.  He is often depicted with fishing-related apparatus, with either a fishing rod, or a fish hanging from his crozier, though there are interpreters who claim this is actually a visual allusion to his success in getting people to be baptized. In 568AD, the Adige broke its banks and Verona was flooded, but although the flood waters reached the door of the cathedral, they “miraculously” failed to enter it, even though the door was open, an event which was attributed to the divine intervention of St Zeno.

The way the weather has been progressing here while I have been writing this Epiblog, I may well need to invoke St Zeno’s help in bailing out my herbs, and will have to cut this short soon and go and see how they are faring. I may have to put some extra drainage holes in to stop them being washed away. The rain is also most unwelcome because our camper van appears to be letting in water somewhere, and we’re going to have to investigate that further as well.

I must admit, I find myself in a bit of a lull, spiritually and physically. The coincidence of Easter and my birthday last weekend and earlier this week has left me a bit deflated. After the Lord Mayor’s parade, comes the dustcart. After enlightenment, the laundry. And today, the weather is definitely not helping. The trouble is, I got too used, too soon, to the bright, warm spring sunshine, I think, and now it’s been snatched away, I feel like someone whose rabbit has died and who can’t sell the empty hutch. In the church calendar, this Sunday is also sometimes called “Low Sunday”, supposedly in contrast to the “High Sunday” of Easter, although there’s also a theory that it refers to the dramatic drop in church attendance, one week on.

It’s also known as Quasimodo Sunday. The character from Victor Hugo’s novel was named Quasimodo because he was found in church on this Sunday, in which the Antiphon at Mass began with the words from 1 Peter 2 :2  - ‘Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.’ Or, in Latin,

Quasi modo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite ut in eo crescatis in salutem  si gustastis quoniam dulcis Dominus.

Well, Quasi Modo Sunday or not, I’ve certainly got the hump, and I am not feeling in the least bit summoned by bells.  No doubt the sun will return, but also next week will bring tasks of near-unutterable tedium: the continuing wrangle with the underwriters over the insurance claim for the vandalism to the camper, to name but one.  If anything was calculated to make you feel low on Low Sunday, that prospect alone would be enough. Anyway, I suppose we shall have to make the best of it, and soldier on. It would be good to have a week where something went right, first time, and nothing blew up, caught fire, or slid to the floor and died.  Yes, I know I should count my blessings, and at least Matilda came back. Things could always be so much worse, but then that seems to be part of the trouble. 

I must admit to no great spiritual lessons from the life of St Zeno, and as far as Easter goes, we’re now in that weird time between the resurrection and Pentecost, when Jesus was wandering around doing his now you see me now you don’t act and letting people stick their hands in his wounds.  My trouble is, I guess, that for me, Jesus has always been a bit “now you see me, now you don’t”, although I daresay I must take at least part of the blame for that state of affairs.  If I wasn’t such a faint hearted fraidy-cat I’d believe with every fibre of my being, but then something particularly stupid or unjust happens in the world and you think, “What?”

Anyway, as far as next week goes, it will be a case of remembering the words of the civil war soldier before the battle of Edge Hill – “Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, forget not thou me.”

So, I’m sorry that I don’t have much for you today. My tidings are that there is no news this tide, this Easter-tide.  I had hoped that by now, the rain might have stopped, and I might have seen a rainbow, the sign of God’s covenant with Noah, and by inference, with mankind. But no such luck. It’s set in for the day, so it’s time to rescue the herbs. Time to don the sou-wester and head out into the storm. Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s off to hoe I go.  I’m sixty, you know.

Epiblog for Easter Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. March, which was supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, according to the old traditional weather-sayings, decided instead to come in like a lion and go out like one as well. Having said that, today, Easter Sunday, has dawned bright and fine, and – what has been crucially missing all these recent dreary weeks – warm, at last. So warm that, at the moment, as I type this, the conservatory door is slightly ajar, and Matilda has been sauntering out on to the decking, finding a place in the sun, rolling over and squeaking with pleasure, then getting up, shaking herself, and sauntering back in again for more food. All without the help of yours truly having to go over there and open the door for her each time.

Misty is preparing to go walkies over the moors at Black Hill, no doubt in the company of Zak. Misty’s preparations consist mainly of rushing aimlessly back and forth to the door, lest she be mistakenly left behind. By the time she sets off on one of these 13-mile route marches, she’s probably already done an extra mile in aimless milling about. It’s just like watching Debbie get ready for work on a college day.  Poor little Ellie did find herself included in a walk the other day, despite trying to remain very small and insignificant and hope no one noticed her. When she came back, eight miles later, she was clarted up with mud up to her haunches, and she clambered wearily into the dog bed and fell instantly into a deep sleep, without waiting to have her harness taken off.  Zak, meanwhile, ate her tea and his, and curled up on the chair, and Misty was up for going out again, although Debbie wasn’t.

My own week was pretty much more of the same, really. The insurance claim over the camper rumbles on, and is now in the lap of the underwriters.  During the course of the week I must have given the same details at least three times to various people from various call centres in Norfolk, where Adrian Flux are based, despite the fact that they already had it all in an email and by letter. The idea of a call centre in Norfolk may seem a little odd, and I have to be careful of regional stereotyping here, because my own ancestors are originally from Norfolk. I would like to say that here is nothing at all wrong with having a call centre in Norfolk, and that it’s just as likely to be as efficient and business-like as a call centre anywhere else. I’d like to say it, but, sadly, the most recent conversation I had with them was with someone called Wendy, who gave the impression that, when she wasn’t busy flying around with Peter Pan, she went home to a village where the gene pool is closed on Sundays and Wednesday afternoons.

I opted out of both April fools’ day and the great Election leadership debate.  Partly because I just can’t be bothered any more, at a time when I am already fighting battles on several different fronts, and partly because the world is so damn crazy these days that sometimes the April fool stories seem much more plausible and likely than the real ones.  Anyway, the leadership debate came and went, and if there is ever a serious shortage of horse tranquilisers in this country, they can just park the poorly geegees and neddies in front of a TV, and play them a few seconds of it, which will be more than enough to induce equine narcolepsy.

If you doubt for a minute my assertion that real life and April foolery have changed places, consider for a moment the case of Nigerian gay rights activist Aderonke Apata, who is fighting deportation back to Nigeria, where her lifestyle means that she will be at risk of serious harm, or worse. This week, a high court judge decided that he would turn down her asylum claim because she “wasn’t lesbian enough”.  Of course, a high court judge is by far the most authoritative person to decide this sort of thing. After all, the lesbians he watches on the internet don’t look a bit like Ms Apata: they are tall, blonde, leggy, and wear stockings and suspenders, of course.  Nary a doc marten, checked shirt, motorbike, or K D Laing CD is sight.  Quite where this leaves Ms Apata (apart from in a potentially life-threatening situation owing to idiocy on behalf of the judiciary) is a moot point.  Presumably she will now have to snog an usher while the judge watches, or something.

Meanwhile, the election is being used as media wallpaper by all the major channels. I really do think, the more I see of Ed Miliband’s efforts, I think that Labour would be better off with the Glen Miller band. The end result would still be the leader missing in action, but at least the music would be better. It was left to a self-confessed Conservative, Ramesh Patel, writing a blog on the Huffington Post web site, to point out the actual figures, and to conclude:

Cameron is playing the blame game to depress confidence and growth to justify austerity. Secondly, to use austerity as justification for a smaller state to gain lower taxes. Thirdly, to paint Labour as a party that can not be trusted with the country's finances again. Therefore, we Conservatives will win a second term because, people vote out of fear. The latter strategy worked the last time in office (18 years) and will work again because, in the end, elections are won and lost on economic credibility. Hence, as people believe Labour created the mess they won't be trusted again.

This, I am afraid is true. And, in apologising for mishandling the economy, when they actually did nothing of the sort, and in apologising for a global banking crisis that was none of their doing, Ed Miliband and Labour have played right into the Junta’s hands.  Miliband, and those around him, should be doing all they can to rebut this strategy and point out that, in addition, the Junta have missed all their self-imposed targets for deficit reduction since 2010, and even now their claim of having “halved” the deficit only works if you add the weasel get-out clause of “as a proportion of GDP”. Why they are choosing instead to major soft-focus shots of Ed Miliband strolling across the factory floor with a throng of merry workers beats me.

It’s not just a dry economic argument, either. We should never forget the terrible human cost of “austerity” inflicted by the Blight Brigade on the poor, the ill and the disadvantaged these last five years. And it’s still going on. Last month saw the inquest on Benjamin McDonald, 34, of Nelson, Lancashire, who hanged himself in woodland near the fields where he used to play as a child, last November, after his benefits were stopped by the DWP and he was threatened with eviction.  The coroner observed:

“At the time, his money had been stopped, he had no form of income. He said he was threatened with eviction from his home - all matters that can play one someone’s mind very much. The appropriate conclusion for me today is that while he was suffering from a significant bout of depression, he took his own life.”

£12 billion more of this sort of thing is what you are voting for if you vote Tory at the next election.

One person who knows all about depression, is of course Katie Hopkins, who obviously decided she wasn’t getting enough attention last week and tweeted that depression was “the holy grail” that people longed to be diagnosed with, and told sufferers to “get a grip”.  As someone who has decided to tough out being depressed with only herbal remedies because I don’t want my brain turned to chemical soup, I can assure Ms Hopkins that I would love to get a grip. On her scrawny neck.

Sadly, this week, Joni Mitchell, whose music has in many ways been the sound track to my life, was hospitalised in Los Angeles after being found unconscious at her Bel Air home. As I type this, she lies in a hospital bed, diagnosis and recovery uncertain. One of the contributory factors to her condition is the mysterious Morgellon’s disease, which some doctors claim does not even exist and others attribute entirely to mental illness – the feeling that your entire body is infested with unknown parasites that cause the skin to itch unbearably. I truly hope Joni Mitchell recovers from whatever it is that put her where she is, and, Big G, if you are listening, take Katie Hopkins instead. All it would need is one well-placed lightning bolt.

Still, this is supposed to be a blog about spiritual concepts such as redemption and forgiveness, and it is Easter Sunday after all, so I suppose I should put my back into it, and bend to my task, and all that. Good Friday was for me a bit of a non-event. I’ve been feeling so tired lately with all the crap coming at me from every side, that I slept later than I intended.  I wasn’t much use even when I got up, but I did manage to stumble through my domestic chores, at least, and I did manage to find the time to read, as I do every Good Friday, John Donne’s poem Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward. Every time I come to it, I find something new and unexpected, and this time it was the amazing contemporary quality of some of the language. It is a complex and many layered poem, that plays with the concepts of the author having been forced, out of the necessity of business, to turn his back on the direction of the Crucifixion, and ride westwards instead.

I could fill the entire remainder of this blog with a line-by-line, I A Richards-style critical analysis of the text, but why don’t you find it and read it instead? Note especially the continued use of paradox and antithesis throughout, as the images ring like hammer blows, or like the sound of a tolling bell, down the page. T S Eliot attempts something similar in Four Quartets, although not so successfully, in East Coker, when he writes:

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

I know all there is to know about the chill ascending from feet to knees, by the way. But the essential point of both these poems, it seems to me, is paradox.  God killing himself (or a bit of himself, I am always hazy on the theology) in order to save his creation, which is a part of him as he is of it.

What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.

Says Donne.  But did it happen, and if it did, did it happen like that, and if it did happen like that, why did it happen like that. These are the issues which possess me: Eliot again, this time in Ash Wednesday:

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain

The reason they possess me is not hard to find. This day, today, this Easter Sunday, is the very last day ever when I shall be fifty-nine. Tomorrow, I am sixty. Six decades of life that seems to have flashed by in a blur.  As the Zen masters put it:

A flower falls whether we love it or not, and weeds grow whether we love them or not, and the peach blossom smells gorgeous, even when we are not around to smell it.

I hope to be around to smell the peach blossom for a while, but nothing is certain in this life. It’s not the stuff that you worry about, it’s usually the one thing that you didn’t see coming that gets you. Aeschylus, for instance, never did get to open that turtle sanctuary.  So I am concerned to know whether a distant historical event which I am pretty sure did happen, the brutal Roman execution of a rather troublesome Jewish firebrand preacher who asked some very awkward questions, so awkward that even his own kind weren’t comfortable with them, and sold him down the river, whether that event has any greater symbolic or theological significance for me, in my sixtieth year to heaven.

All that I have ever been able to believe is that something happened. I know this falls a long way short of accepting Jesus Christ into my heart as my own personal saviour who died for my sins, or however the accepted phraseology goes, but it’s the best I can do. Reverting back briefly to Christmas, if I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. But I’m not. And my attempts to attain a status of child like innocence and forgiveness are inevitably undermined by the wrath of Cain and the cynicism of Woody Allen. Or occasionally, even worse, the other way round. I could wish to be like Dylan Thomas, writing of his own birthday, albeit only his thirtieth:

And there could I marvel my birthday

Away but the weather turned around. And the true

Joy of the long dead child sang burning

In the sun.

If the women found an empty tomb and a mysterious white-robed angel that Sunday morning two millennia ago, is it really evidence of my own, personal hope of eternal life? On the face of it, it seems a fairly thin proposition. Bolstered in my case by a faith that is very much “now you see it, now you don’t” And, of course, people will point to the fact that the story of the resurrection is but one of a number of similar myths that were prevalent in the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean in ancient times.  Although it is maybe equally true to acknowledge this, and point to their being perhaps all different manifestations of some underlying truth, something Jung might call an archetype, that resurrection really is so significant to us, so hard-wired, that we construct it over and over again for each passing society or age. Even if Jesus is just our, most recent form of the myth, it doesn’t mean that the underlying principle is fictitious.  And then there are those times when you know, you just know, that it’s all true, and God was one of us.

The body dies. Everything changes, is rendered back down to atoms. The plants I put in last year have been blasted by the winter and many of them are gone. Dead, lifeless, shrivelled, as one day, I will be. Although we do still have one brave daffodil in flower, and I discovered this week, to my surprise, that the Lady’s Bedstraw, which I thought was a goner, is putting forth new shoots! New plants are on their way, and next week I’ll be potting them out into planters, and feeding them, and nurturing them, as I hope to get them to grow, in turn.  Everything changes, and no man can jump into the same river twice, says Heraclitus.

But if the story of the resurrection is true, it offers a vision of a life where a part of me survives, where nothing is ever changed or lost, or if it is, it happens in some compensatory way that brings endless delight, the other side of the bright portal of death.  I find the concept of eternity equally terrifying, and when I struggle to comprehend it, I usually end up shaking my head and going and doing something manual instead.

Which is what I am going to do right now. I am going to trundle out in the remaining sunshine of the day, take the rubbish out, and have a look at transferring some more soil into another planter, while it’s warm.  Tomorrow, I might take the day off and do a painting. If it’s warm, I might even take all my gear outside. Make the most of the warmth: you’re a long time cold!