Epiblog for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, if somewhat frustrating.  We have, finally, now got the camper van back on the road, and, during the week, I have more or less reconciled myself to the idea of having to go on holiday. As the I Ching puts it, rather succinctly, “there is no journey without a return”. The weather, however, has had other ideas, and so, at the end of yet another week of preparation and frustration, we find ourselves trying to load up in between showers. Even Debbie, who cannot see an envelope without wanting to push it, balks at the idea of driving three hours in the rain, then sitting in the yard at Mossburn watching it rain, then getting up the next day and getting ready in the rain, then driving on from Mossburn to Ardrossan in the rain, and so on. So we’re hoping it’s going to pick up a bit.  I’m taking enough work with me on holiday to last till December, but nevertheless, it’s always better when the sun shines.

Matilda has been her usual catty self. Several times I have attempted to take her to one side and explain to her that soon we will be going away, and while we are away it does not mean we do not love her, she has not been abandoned.  There is no journey without a return. She is to come when she’s called, not play up Granny, Uncle Phil or Auntie Katie the dog nanny; she must eat what she’s given, come in at nights when the foxes and badgers are around, don’t get ill, don’t go missing and above all, don’t die.  She took absolutely no notice.  She has, however, been showing a great interest in the camper while the side door has been open and Debbie was inside working. The last cat to be so interested was Nigel, and we always lived in fear of being half-way up the M6 and hearing a catty “prrt” from the back seat.

Misty and Zak (who has been staying here prior to his departure with us) have absolutely no idea that they are about to be plunged into 30 days of playing “stones” on the beach at Kilbrannan Sound and/or being dragged up various mountains by Debbie.  However, before this can happen, we must all work in harmony to complete the crazy jigsaw which must be completed before we can go away anywhere in the camper, and which always takes much, much longer than we think.  The instructions for Doggy Nanny to come and feed Matilda went through four drafts.

The news from the outside world grows ever more bizarre. We are, of course, all in it together, we must never forget that, particularly when we see video of Lord Sewel, who sat on the Lords committee responsible for members privileges and conduct, seeming to snort cocaine, but only with a £5.00 note – he is a Labour peer, after all – while referring to Asian hookers, in a conversation with to two “sex workers” [out of shot] as “whores”.   The fact that he only had a fiver could, at a pinch, be an indication that times are hard – he has, after all, resigned from his £84,525pa role as committee chairman and now would merely be able to claim £300.00 per day for expenses (unless his colleagues bar him from attending, while he is being investigated)

The fact that this is a Labour peer is a symptom of everything that is wrong with the Labour Party at the moment – well, that, and the ham-fisted intervention by Tony Blair in a last ditch, last minute attempt to stop Jeremy Corbyn winning the leadership contest.  Heaven forfend that people are joining a political party and becoming interested in politics and a potential leader who is proposing some alternatives to the robotspeak austerity-lite drivel which the other candidates intone at regular intervals.  Apparently the interviewer on Radio 4’s flagship Today programme commented that Labour was “in danger of becoming a populist anti-austerity movement.” And the problem with this is what, precisely?

It’s a funny old world: when people joined the Labour Party and helped Tony Blair get rid of clause 4 and ditch some of Labour's most fundamental policies, that was called "modernisation". When people who despair at the Tory-lite, feeble pale pink "opposition" that lost Labour the last election, join the party because they are inspired by a potential leader who seems to be offering a real alternative to "austerity", apparently that's "entryism". Who knew?

It’s not all bad news, though. Michael Gove ended up on crutches. Before you start saying that I am being unchristian here, or at least uncharitable, I should point out that all I am doing, as I see it, is reflecting back on Mr Gove the same amount of love and respect that he and his kind have for the institution of the NHS. I am surprised he wasn’t in BUPA anyway, but when he damaged his ankle his wife drove him to a local NHS facility then penned a peevish letter when it turned out that this cottage hospital they’d gone to didn’t have (in contrast to the two much larger hospitals 40 minutes away) 24-hour X-ray facilities, so it was shut on a Sunday night.  The government (in the shape of Jeremy Hunt, a man who probably does not show up on X-rays) has a downer on the NHS apparently not working at weekends anyway, even though it does, and at first it seemed as if the Gove story was going to be more grist to this particular mill – until it started to backfire spectacularly, not least with the revelation that the NHS facility he did attend is managed by one of the government’s preferred partners for NHS privatisation.

And finally, as Trevor McDonald used to say, irony has truly eaten its own tail and consumed itself. A Tory MP officially opens a food bank in Dumfries.  Next week, Count Dracula is put in charge of the Blood Transfusion Service.  Will God ever send us MPs who close food banks, on the grounds of “no further need” instead of opening them?  That’s the sort of bloke I would vote for.

Whatever you do, don’t ask John Bercow to open it for you, unless you want a large bill, that is. He has been rather caught out this week, like a Treen in a disabled spaceship. A freedom of information request revealed that he had spent £170-odd on being chauffered to a conference less than a mile from the houses of parliament, and £346 or thereabouts for being driven to attend a conference at the University of Bedford on the subject of how parliament was much more responsible in terms of spending these days! You literally could not make it up. And people wonder why the electorate is so disconnected from politics, and why people think that all politicians are lying, self serving corrupt bastards. See also under Lord Sewel above.

Anyway, we stumbled through to today, the eighth Sunday after Trinity.  The gospel for today (Matthew 7: 15-21) is suitably apposite, in view of events in Westminster:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.  Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.  Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

But what to do, eh?  Every tree that bringeth not good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire, but who is going to do the hewing, and how does that square with “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay”. Although in recent months, the Church of England has seemed more like the official opposition than the Labour Party, nevertheless, the official church position is, I guess, like the Buddhists, to “let it go with both hands” and take solace in the fact that the next world/next incarnation will be better, and that everything that happens, happens for a reason, even a gang of criminal morons intent on wrecking the economy and making war on the poor.  Blimey, Jesus, you’ll be asking me to forgive them next!  Anyway, it’s something for me to ponder on while I’m watching the cormorants dry their wings and looking out for a pod of porpoise or a basking shark in Kilbrannan Sound.

Actually, I should be making sure I don’t fall out with Jesus at the moment – or more importantly, with St Gertrude of Nivelles, who has the brief for cats in the pantheon of Saints.  So, St Gertrude of Nivelles, if you are listening, look after Matilda while we’re away and keep her safe.  We’re off on one of our jaunts – and, as a first for me, I’ll be taking the last Arran book with me to finish it and restore the missing pages I accidentally burnt, at the same time as I might be working on the next one. Haven’t these people suffered enough?

Come the morning, we’ll be gone – not exactly like a bat out of hell, not in that camper anyway – but more like Vashti Bunyan’s caravan – Jog along, Bess, Hop along May: It’s a long road and weary are we. Bubble up kettle, and make us all some tea.  Every journey has a return, and I hope to see you all again in two or three weeks, if we’re all spared.  

Epiblog for the Seventh Sunday After Trinity

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Yes, we’re still here, becalmed. The camper van came back from the garage, finally, on Friday, and on Saturday morning, its battery warning light came on again. Since this was the issue which first caused it to be the subject of Father Jack’s ministrations, I couldn’t help but feel that, precisely one week later, we were still stuck in the same time-warp. So, tomorrow, we call the garage and give them the good news.  Other than that, we’ve been busy tying up what loose ends we can, although packing the camper to go off on a trip is a bit difficult when you don’t have access to the camper.

Matilda has been dutifully attending to her usual round of catty tasks, patrolling the decking, lying on the decking, sitting by the food bowl in expectation of being fed, squirrel-watching, and going to sleep on the settee in Colin’s front room.  She has also extended her repertoire to include fighting, or at least she did one day last week when we heard the sounds of a scrap between her and (presumably) a marauding cat that had entered “her” territory, outside in the garden.

Eventually, she appeared, having come in through the cat flap, apparently none the worse for wear.  However, when on her way to bed that night, Debbie paused to make a fuss of her and noticed what appeared to be another cat’s toenail embedded in the fur on top of her head.  I don’t think it had actually penetrated, but Debbie removed it anyway.  It was strangely appropriate, though, because I am sure that there were many occasions when she was younger when Debbie herself returned from a night out with someone’s toenail embedded in her head.

Misty has so far managed to spend the week without getting in any fights or incurring any toenail infarctions, although for some reason known only unto collie dogs, she has twice felt the irresistible urge to roll in cowclap while out on one of her many route-marches, and has had to have it cleaned off her by yours truly, upon her return.  Why do they do it? Tiggy, bless her, used to do a special variant when we were on Arran, rolling in guano, and even, on one memorable occasion, in the remains of an actual deceased seagull on the beach.

As for me, apart from occasional diversions into canine grooming, I have been busy trying to strike down the thicket of outstanding tasks, on the assumption that this weekend would see us en route to the Isle of Arran. I have been more successful in some tasks than others. The entire book trade seems to be gripped with a collective obsession for Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman, to the extent that apparently certain Waterstones buyers, for instance, are literally unable to think of anything else.  It’s the times when I have to talk to people like that which really make me appreciate all the more the days I spend cleaning cowshit off the dog.  In any case, my efforts were unnecessary as it turned out, as we can’t get to Arran without the camper, see above. Still, I have done what I can, and on the domestic front, Katie the doggy nanny, Granny and Uncle Phil between them are set to take occupation and administer to Matilda’s every culinary whim, so that’s at least one thing crossed off the to-do list.

As you would probably gather, having been head-down, nose to the proverbial grindstone, I haven’t been paying much attention to the outside world anyway, although there are certain stories which are impossible to avoid, however much you concentrate on meditating on the stupidity of Waterstones.

It wasn’t all bad news. The Scottish National Party discovered they did have principles after all, it was just that Alex Salmond had locked them away in a drawer in Holyrood and it took Nicola Sturgeon a while to find the key. By threatening to vote against the partial repeal of the fox hunting ban, they effectively scuppered Cameron’s plan to relax even further the already unenforced law on the subject, and forced the Blight Brigade to retreat to fight another day.

All that Cameron had to offer in return was to bluster about the SNP being “opportunistic”, which is about as ironic as Prince Philip, this week, addressing a community group he was meeting in East London with the opening line “And who do you scrounge off?” Taxi for Mr Kettle, I think, in both cases.

Still, - and this is a sentence you won’t see me type very often, so make the most of it – good on the SNP. I hope that they will do more of this sort of thing, specifically to the Blight’s “austerity” plans, and all the Tories can do at the moment to stop them is to witter about English votes for English laws, although their current plans for these are woolly, imprecise, and unworkable as they stand.

It is pleasant to see David Cameron suffering in discomfort though, and if you think I am being harsh in saying that, I think we should perhaps pause to consider that all the time he was whittling on about understanding that parliament had voted against bombing Isis in Syria, and respecting the decision, we were actually bombing Isis in Syria. And he knew we were.

I know it’s a truism to say that the way you can tell if a politician is lying is that his lips are moving, but I was surprised that this wasn’t made more of. Basically, the Prime Minister ignored the sovereign will of parliament and lied, if not emphatically then at least by omission.  This sort of thing is precisely the reason why people hold politicians in such low esteem and feel that whatever they voted for (be it a cap on care home costs or a high speed trans-pennine rail link) their wishes are ignored by arriviste politicians who are much more interested in changing their bank accounts than in changing society.

If we had any doubt about that, this was the week when, just over a week after the budget when George Osborne told public sector workers that, in the spirit of “we’re all in it together”, they faced another five years of stringent restraint and annual increases of 1 per cent, we learnt that MPs have awarded themselves a 10% pay rise to £74,000 pa. I say “awarded themselves” although in fact the award was made by IPSA, an “independent” quango, which was set up to advise on MPs’ pay and to ignore public opinion on the matter.  I’d also like to know what IPSA costs us, per annum, if it comes to that.

Both the BBC and Channel 4 News wheeled out some identikit drone of a Tory MP, I missed his name, but does it matter, who said that he was in favour of the pay rise because, without it, parliament would be made up of “the rich, the mad, and those who were unable to do anything else”.  Quite how that differs from the present situation was not made clear.  I think whoever he was, the MP probably had a Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award in irony.

Cameron’s official position is that he opposed the rise, but since it’s been suggested by an “independent” body, then it would be rude not to, thank you very much, ker-ching! In the same week that MPs were reluctantly accepting an additional 10%, (well, dear boy, since you insist…) the Tata steelworks in Rotherham announced 700 job losses, which will devastate Rotherham still further, a town which is already on the floor in terms of economic deprivation and which is now being run by a junta of unelected government Gauleiters. This follows hard on the heels of the news of the closure of the last deep coal mine in Yorkshire. What price your northern powerhouse now, Mr Cameron?

The Blight Brigade will, of course, when challenged, point to the fact that they have created some potential jobs in Yorkshire – the secretary of state won’t be calling in the proposal to despoil the North York Moors National Park with a giant potash mine, and this week, they gave permission for the construction of a facility to breed beagles for laboratory experiments at Grimston, near Hull.

Communities Secretary Greg Clark (who he, anyway?) has allowed an appeal by Yorkshire Evergreen [which is part of US animal supplier Marshall BioResources] to breed beagle puppies and other animals for drug testing at the site, where dogs taking part in “scientific experiments” will be made to inhale toxic substances via masks, be force fed through tubes, and strapped down so that they can be injected with drugs. They will be exposed to weed killer, pharmaceutical drugs, and industrial chemicals.

I don’t really have the words to express my contempt for this decision. Well, I do, but they will quickly descend into Anglo-Saxon. I’m not going to debate here the rights and wrongs of animal research. I have said many times that the experiments have no scientific validity and are only done because the law, which is outdated and inappropriate, demands them, and there is no political will in the government and no will at all in a scientific community that relies on the funding which comes with the experiments, to rock the boat in any way at all. And so the status quo is maintained, and the animals continue to suffer.  If we really want to test toxic substances on living organisms, I would suggest that we start with MPs who accepted the pay rise.

To leaven the dish of bad news and negative stories, I should perhaps record that Dr Jo Patterson, of the Welsh School of Architecture, has succeeded in building an eco-house in 16 weeks (it’s actually part of something called the SOLCER project, she didn’t do it single-handed) in Brigend, which gives back more energy to the National Grid than it consumes. I was especially interested in this because of my interest in social housing generally, and particularly in turning neglected brownfield sites into self-contained “Rooftree” communities as a way of solving the social housing crisis. The SOLCER house (no, I have no idea what it stands for) is not much to look at, but then neither were the prefabs, yet they solved the housing crisis in 1945 – they may not have been homes fit for heroes, but they were a start, and a lot better than asking ex-servicemen to sleep under bridges, which seems to be the de facto position these days

Anyway, somehow we came to today, the seventh Sunday after Trinity, without really noticing. There are a few saints I was tempted by today, notably St Arsenius the Greater, but given my current state of mind, I didn’t trust myself not to be facetious.  So I turned instead to the Anglican tradition, and found that one of the set texts for today is the feeding of the five thousand, a Bible passage often referred to but, I suspect, very seldom actually read.  So I read it, in the full-fat, high-tar King James Bible authorized version.

And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.  And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him.  And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.

And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat. He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat? He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see. And when they knew, they say, Five, and two fishes.  And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties. And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes.  And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.

So, here we go again with the miracles.  Actually, what struck me on the first read through, and it’s literally years since I read this, is that the pastoral imagery of Jesus as a shepherd and the disciples as sheep is present even here. I shouldn’t be particularly surprised, though, because the New Testament is shot through with it.  Various Biblical commentators, writing on this particular passage, contrast this mention of the sheep-shepherd relationship with the false leaders of Israel whose teachings Jesus was subverting. Also, it has been suggested that the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes is not intended to be taken literally, but rather as a metaphor for the hunger these people had to hear the Gospel, and that the preachings of Jesus were sufficient to satisfy the spiritual hunger of the crowd. I am not a theologian – half the time, I don’t even believe in the Bible, although some parts of it make more sense than others, but – at the risk of becoming tedious and repetitious – if there is no such thing as reality, which is becoming clearer and clearer with every new discovery of particle physics, then is there any reason why a massive effort of the will should not  bring about a desired result? Jesus takes the loaves and fishes and prays that there will be enough to go round.  Given that you would imagine that a prayer from Jesus, who had a broadband connection to God, probably got more priority than my musings and mutterings and febrile warblings in the watches of the night for St Gertrude of Nivelles to look after Matilda while we are away, who is to say what happened? 

Collective hallucination is one possible “scientific” explanation, but equally you could consider what if Jesus at that juncture somehow “jumped the points” and set off down a different track into an alternative universe where there was enough food to go round, and somehow took everyone else with him? Their lives were changed in more ways than one.  Of course, all the usual caveats apply – to even discuss this you have to believe that Jesus existed, that he was who he was, and that the thing really happened. Otherwise, it’s just another myth.  These days, I don’t know if I’m in the believer camp or not.  If I was still of a religious bent, I would say that Jesus is testing me, these days, by his absence. On the other hand, you could just as equally say that maybe I have been looking in the wrong place, when whatever it is, was under my nose all the time.

I haven’t forgotten, either, that this week contained a sombre anniversary. St Swithun’s day, which was a good day, weather-wise, and if it stays like that for 40 days I shan’t complain, also marked the fifth anniversary of me being whisked off to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary for a life-saving operation that was the start of a six month stay in various hospitals and which culminated in my coming home that Christmas in a wheelchair.  As I wrote last week, in my semi-delirious state as I went under the anaesthetic, I did, somehow, experience a slight return of that feeling I’d had in Holy Cross Abbey, and it was while I was stuck in hospital, in the autumn of 2010, that I started writing these Epiblogs again. I came home that Christmas feeling that I had been handed a second chance, and determined to do something with the remainder of my life. But what?  Five years later, I am still no further on, and no wiser.  If only I had Jesus’s knack of interfering with “reality”, eh? Not forgetting also that yesterday would have been my mother's 87th birthday, her early and untimely death in 1986 being another thing I would rectify if I could but change things like Jesus changed them.

Still, they also serve who only stand and wait, and it looks like we’ll be doing quite a lot of that next week, depending what the garage discovers tomorrow morning when they have to undo their work of last week to find out exactly where they went wrong, then re-do it again, but right this time.  So, for the second or third week running, as I write this, I am finishing by saying that I don’t know where I’ll be this time next week, possibly the Isle of Arran, probably still here.  Whatever. With the wind in the willows, and the birds in the sky, we’ve a bright sun to warm us, wherever we lie. And, I hope, a jug of red wine.

Epiblog for St Veronica's Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and yes, we are still here, and not yet on the Isle of Arran.  The plan is now to get off sometime early next week, but, like poor old Jimmy Cliff, there are many rivers to cross, before that can happen.  The weather here, meanwhile, is still stuck in that curious half-summer/half autumn mode that seems to have characterised it of late. The temperature goes up and down like a yo-yo, and the choice seems to be between hot and sultry but dull (I can think of several film stars that description also applies to) and cooler but a bit more sunshiny. Whatever happened to those long warm sunny days of summers past?

Matilda’s still spending more of her time out of doors, as well you might when it’s sticky and clammy and you are forced to wear a compulsory fur coat. She is still no nearer catching any of the squirrels, either. She could have a great career as a Bagpuss tribute act. Poor little dote, though, she’s going to miss us while we’re away.  If we ever get away.

Misty, Zak and Ellie have all had various walks, treats and meals, Misty because she lives here and the other two because Debbie always believes in treating doggie guests as equals. The only problem with these much longer walkies is that Ellie really can’t hack it as she just isn’t built for 15 miles of rolling moorland, so she has to go separately on her own. She’s only got little legs, bless her.

The last week seems to have gone by in a blur for me. Like the weather, I, too, seem to be locked into a pattern, especially when it comes to holidays.  The preparation for going on holiday is always stressful and depressing, nobody does my work for me while I am away, so there’s always a massive backlog when I get back, and there’s always the chance of losing the odd pet and/or the odd person, given Debbie’s insistence on climbing every mountain and fording every stream.  Plus of course, every year the holiday more or less coincides with one or two “significant” ie depressing, anniversaries.

Baggis Day, which we celebrate every year in honour of our former cat, Russell, aka Baggis, reminds me that on the 9^th July 2005, while Deb was kayaking in Brodick bay and we were out of range of all mobile phones, the poor little cat was dying at  Donaldsons, after Granny had found him, keeled over, when she came to feed him that morning. He was, and still is, the best bad cat in the world, something he excelled at for all his 15 years of life, and he is still remembered. And St Swithun’s Day, July 15^th,  this year, will be the fifth anniversary of my dash through the streets of Huddersfield to the sound of the blue lights and the ambulance siren, en route to having my innards re-assembled, followed by six months in hospital, followed by officially discovering I had Muscular Dystrophy.  29^th August will mark three years since Kitty died, two days after we got back from Arran that year.  So all in all, it’s not a happy time of year, and I could do without it.

You could be forgiven for wondering why I bother to go at all, and I do sometimes wonder and ask myself that very question.  I do enjoy it when I’m there, although it usually takes a few days to slough off the feeling that I should be doing something and learn to appreciate, once more, the virtue of doing nothing at all.  Plus, of course, my winters are very long, and the thought of not getting away at all, and instead spending July and August doing more of the same, watching summer fade and die around me, and marking the encroaching cold and darkness, without having had at least a break from the norm, is probably even worse. So, in short, if I don’t go, I’ll wish I’d gone, and if I stayed at home, Debbie would probably go anyway on her own (well, taking Misty) and then I would still be worrying about them, but from a distance of about 250 miles, which is even worse.

The other thing which having an annual holiday at this time brings home, especially one in the camper van, is how much my condition has deteriorated in the preceding twelve months.  At home, there is no doubt that life is easier for me, with everything more or less set up to facilitate the use of the wheelchair, and with my profiling bed. In the camper there are no such refinements, and the bed is hard and unyielding. This is not all bad news: a hard bed is actually better for my spine, but the struggle to transfer four times a day – bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to front seat, front seat to wheelchair, wheelchair to bed, takes its toll and is always fraught with the possibility of falling off and doing myself some damage and/or having to call an ambulance.

You could also be forgiven for thinking that God doesn’t want me to go on holiday this year, either – my tooth, of all things, flared up painfully during the week. One of those big, back, lower mandible molar wisdom thingies. I don’t know if it’s sprung a leak or what, but there is absolutely no time to go and see the dentist and get it fixed up. It’s so long, anyway, since I have been, that I bet the surgery has closed down, or at least I have fallen off their list.  And of course, right on cue, the camper van has decided to play up.

Characteristically, in previous years, as soon as term has ended, we’ve let the garage give it the once-over, on the principle that a stitch in time saves nine, and it’s always potentially easier to get stuff fixed around here than in the wilds of Scotland where the only option might be to take a tow truck back home.  This year, however, I thought we could maybe do away with even that expense (a service is about £150.00) because it’s been behaving itself and it was only up at the garage back in March when they had it in to repair the vandalism.  So, of course, a couple of days this week, it’s refused to start.  The battery, however, according to the RAC man, anyway, is OK, and it’s holding its charge. Which means of course the worst of all possible outcomes, some little niggling electrical problem is draining the battery and it will take ages to find and cost gazillions to fix.  As it stands at the moment, they’re coming to take a look at it tomorrow morning, and I am praying very hard for a good outcome.

Deb, meanwhile, has been getting together what gear she can, and enjoying the unaccustomed feeling of freedom brought on by not having deadlines for lesson plans and creating resources.  As I’ve said before, the ideal career for her would probably have been something in the armed forces, except she has trouble remembering the points of the compass, and may often be heard muttering “Never Eat Shredded Wheat”, let alone the phonetic alphabet beyond C-Charlie.  The other day we were watching something on TV and there was a recruiting advert for the RAF reserve or some such, and she actually said she’d often thought of something along those lines.  Based on our life to date with the camper, I could presumably expect a mobile phone call to say she was lost and could I look something up on Google streetview for her, or that her Tiger Moth had run out of petrol at 20,000 feet.

The only other happenings for me this week of anything approaching significance were that I more or less established beyond reasonable doubt that I have accidentally burned the fair copy handwritten final draft of We’ll Take The String Road, because I am an idiot, and my brain is now like Homer Simpson’s in that every time I take in something new, it pushes out some of the old stuff, and I found the missing envelope of family history research going back to 1980, so once more I have been reunited with some very dead ancestors without having to bother to have to do the research all over again. Calling it an envelope, actually, is like calling the Hindenburg a blimp: the envelope in question is actually one of those big, old, basketweave gusseted manila jobs, a dreadnought, a battleship among envelopes, absolutely crammed with stuff from the days when “online” was something that happened to wet washing, and if you wanted to trace your ancestors, you had to spend hours poring over old documents or using the microfilm readers, in a library or search room.

Spending hours tracing the details of long dead people and wishing to imagine enjoying their company may seem odd, but when you look at some of the dead people in question, and compare them to some of the living people around at the moment, you begin to understand the attraction.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer is definitely one who pales by comparison, especially after this week’s budget.  Thousands of words have already been written on the budget and thousands more will be: I don’t intend to add significantly to that mountain, you’ll be pleased to know. My observation is limited to noting how cynical and divisive it was.

Despite the fact that Osborne repeats the mantra about us being all in it together until he starts foaming at the mouth, in fact, the Blight have been practising "divide and rule" since day 1 of the last parliament. All of that rhetoric about "people sleeping away their lives on benefits with their curtains closed while hard working alarm clock Britain goes off to work" should have been debunked by Labour but instead it's taken hold, and now the Tories have just enshrined the division, with a budget which seems to be rewarding people for working and punishing those on benefits.

So, the choice facing the Labour Party now is a stark one. Does it, a la Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves and others of that ilk, go along with the Tory world view, and hope to pick up some crumbs from the table of the floating voter, or does it try and unite the country behind a radical alternative vision to show that there is another, better, way. Get it wrong, and Labour will be out of power until 2025 or later.

In fact, what Osborne has done is to shift the burden of dealing with low incomes onto the private sector. Quite what happens when the “recovery” tanks in 18 months and living wage private sector jobs become rarer than rocking-horse shit, is a moot point.  Employers in the private sector are going to think twice (or more) before creating jobs where they are forced to pay people £9/hr.  Meanwhile, benefits in real terms are frozen for four years, and the benefits cap is lowered, for, I believe, the first time, disproportionately for people outside of the capital.

One Tory MP, though, this week, has at least spoken out for a specific group of people whom he feels are underprivileged and whom he considers should be given special treatment, because they are struggling.  MPs.

A man who some have tipped as a future Tory leader, Adam Afriyie MP, has claimed it is “impossible” to raise a family on the £67,000pa which an MP earns, and has put forward the idea, in an interview with Chat Politics, that, instead,  MPs should not be given a salary and audited expenses but an “allowance” of up to £225,000 to spend however they want.

There are some people who are so far out that they are almost back in again. You feel like buying a Ouija board just to be able to ask them what colour the sky is on their planet, and do they ever do day trips back to the real world, to try and contact the living? I have heard of “one stop beyond Barking and well off the bus route”, but this bloke has long left Stratford-Atte-Bow behind, and is heading for Harwich at a rate of knots.  Actually, though, I have a theory. He’s not that out of touch. He made his millions from hi-tech communications, after all. He’s just a smug rich whingeing Tory bastard thumbing his nose at the poor, the old and the ill because he can, because a load of selfish morons who are the spiritual heirs of Margaret Thatcher voted to put him in a position where he can say yah-boo-sucks to the rest of us, and he’s exercising that privilege in the way only a compassionless unfeeling boor could do. That’s my theory, anyway.

Other than that, life has pretty much rumbled on without me noticing it, this week, although I also noted the demise of Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister who was sacked my the Greek PM in the wake of the referendum, presumably as some sort of sacrifice in order to smooth the way in any future negotiations. I just think it’s sad that someone who was a potential character should be eased out  of the frame, with the compliance of his boss, whom he also considered a friend, simply because his unorthodox methods and attempts to actually solve an intractable crisis and achieve something in the face of near-universal intertia seem to have rubbed the bean-counters in suits, the faceless accountants, up the wrong way. But then, I have been in that situation myself, so perhaps I’m identifying too strongly with him. Either way, I’m afraid the Greek PM has now lost a lot of my respect, but I doubt that he’ll lose any additional sleep over that, when he already has an overdraft the size of Mount Olympus, and what did I expect anyway – the man is a politician, after all.

And so we came to Sunday, which is St Veronica’s Day. It’s also the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, of course, but I’ve never seen the rationale in celebrating 350 years of divisive sectarianism, so I’ll leave that to the people with the drums, the bowler hats and the sashes.  St Veronica is the patron saint of laundry workers and photographers, for reasons which will probably become obvious in due course.  She was allegedly a pious woman of Jerusalem at the time when Jesus was busy turning the world upside down, not to mention the tables of the bankers.  The legend which attaches to her is that she was so moved with pity when she saw Jesus carrying his own cross to his place of execution, that she offered him her veil, so he could wipe his forehead. Jesus accepted the gift, and held it to his face. When he gave the veil back to its owner, his image had been miraculously transposed on to the cloth, a la The Turin Shroud, I guess.

There is, as with almost all early saints, some doubt and confusion about this. There are those scholars who say that the “Veronica” refers to the veil, and not its owner, and that it derives from the Greek word “icon” and the Latin for “true”, vera. Thus it was the veil that was the “vera icon”, not the woman who owned it. By the 13^th century, the term was being used for the relic venerated as a true relic of Jesus in Rome, but it has long since gone.

Whatever she was called, she is not referred to by name in the relevant passage in any of the four Gospels, and that well-known modern theological expert Mr Mel Gibson chose in his film The Passion of the Christ, to call her “Seraphia”.  The incident has become associated with the sixth Station of The Cross, and has been depicted in art many times.

She doesn’t seem to have much going for her in the way of other miracles, but she became a saint long before the present rules about having to do intercessions and all that stuff, so I suppose she was sort of elected “on the nod”.  There are some mentions of her in the Apochrypha, one where she is supposed to have cured the emperor Tiberius by touching him with a cloth bearing the image of Christ, presumably the same veil, unless she had a stack of them in the ironing cupboard at home. The devotion to St Veronica and the holy face of Jesus was officially approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1885.

In researching St Veronica I also discovered that the most common “pass” used by the toreador in bullfighting is called a “Veronica” because he holds his cape out by the corners in the same way as St Veronica is usually portrayed holding up the veil with Jesus’s image on it.

This is possibly the single most interesting thing about bullfighting, a crime of which I know very little, except that Hemingway waxed boring on it, and the bull should win far, far more often than it does, see also under the right to arm bears. 

So, there we have St Veronica, Dear Reader, and as usual, I am at a loss to take any particular inspiration from the incident. It is interesting, however, in view of modern revelations about God and nuclear physics, to look at any instance of images being burnt onto any material, be it the Turin Shroud or Veronica’s veil, and to wonder about the atomic power that would be necessary to make such a thing possible.  Of course, all the scientists amongst my readership will probably have fallen off their chairs laughing by now, pretty much as people did 200 years ago when Benjamin Franklin wondered what would happen if he flew his kite in a thunderstorm with a key tied to the string. I was just moved to make the comparison by remembering those images of the shadows of people permanently blasted into stone walls by the A-bomb blast at Hiroshima.

Of course, for that theory to be even mildly tenable, several other things also have to be taken as read – the existence of Jesus for instance, and the fact of his divinity (or at least that he had more static electricity than you could shake a stick at – or a veil). None of these are givens in my world any more, except that I am reminded once again, as I am whenever I think of the crucifixion and of Jesus dragging that heavy cross through the hot, sweaty streets of Jerusalem, if it really happened like that, with the crowds jeering and the Roman soldiers spitting on him and licking him when he fell… I am reminded of standing that day in Holy Cross Abbey in Ireland, and feeling whatever it was that was being transmitted – that’s the only word to use – transmitted, by that tiny fragment of wood said to be a piece of the true cross, in its gold case on the chapel wall: the heat, the smell, the spices, the Ras-El-Hanout, the cries of the crowd, the adobe walled buildings, the palm trees, the shouting, the what I can only describe as the ancient yellow sandiness of it all.

That last bit, now I’ve written it down, sounds and looks crazy. “Ancient yellow sandiness”? What the hell? Unfortunately, sometimes you cross burning boundaries where you can’t smuggle the meaning back to those you have left behind. It had meaning like a dream has meaning, and when you wake up, what seemed so powerful and important turns out to be absurd and stupid.  I know, also, that I felt the same feeling again, or a tinge of it, while I was waiting to go under the anaesthetic in 2010. But then I was probably delirious.

You pays your money, and you takes your choice. As always. Perhaps these episodes were just my febrile imagination. Certainly, the God I attempted to describe in last week’s Epiblog would not be compatible, particularly with the idea of Jesus and his mission on Earth, although to be honest, if that is the sort of thing God really is, how could we ever know the innermost reaches of its mind, its reasoning?  Anyway, that is probably me done for the day. I should really be getting ready to go on holiday, not sitting here writing blogs. I have done something towards it today though, I sewed up the rip in my scarf. As ye rip, so shall ye sew. Euripides, Eumenidies.  Oh well, it’s all Greek to me, as Mrs Merkel said.

God alone knows where I will be at this time next week, or how many teeth I will have. No change there, then. 

Epiblog for St Veronica's Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and yes, we are still here, and not yet on the Isle of Arran.  The plan is now to get off sometime early next week, but, like poor old Jimmy Cliff, there are many rivers to cross, before that can happen.  The weather here, meanwhile, is still stuck in that curious half-summer/half autumn mode that seems to have characterised it of late. The temperature goes up and down like a yo-yo, and the choice seems to be between hot and sultry but dull (I can think of several film stars that description also applies to) and cooler but a bit more sunshiny. Whatever happened to those long warm sunny days of summers past?

Matilda’s still spending more of her time out of doors, as well you might when it’s sticky and clammy and you are forced to wear a compulsory fur coat. She is still no nearer catching any of the squirrels, either. She could have a great career as a Bagpuss tribute act. Poor little dote, though, she’s going to miss us while we’re away.  If we ever get away.

Misty, Zak and Ellie have all had various walks, treats and meals, Misty because she lives here and the other two because Debbie always believes in treating doggie guests as equals. The only problem with these much longer walkies is that Ellie really can’t hack it as she just isn’t built for 15 miles of rolling moorland, so she has to go separately on her own. She’s only got little legs, bless her.

The last week seems to have gone by in a blur for me. Like the weather, I, too, seem to be locked into a pattern, especially when it comes to holidays.  The preparation for going on holiday is always stressful and depressing, nobody does my work for me while I am away, so there’s always a massive backlog when I get back, and there’s always the chance of losing the odd pet and/or the odd person, given Debbie’s insistence on climbing every mountain and fording every stream.  Plus of course, every year the holiday more or less coincides with one or two “significant” ie depressing, anniversaries.

Baggis Day, which we celebrate every year in honour of our former cat, Russell, aka Baggis, reminds me that on the 9^th July 2005, while Deb was kayaking in Brodick bay and we were out of range of all mobile phones, the poor little cat was dying at  Donaldsons, after Granny had found him, keeled over, when she came to feed him that morning. He was, and still is, the best bad cat in the world, something he excelled at for all his 15 years of life, and he is still remembered. And St Swithun’s Day, July 15^th,  this year, will be the fifth anniversary of my dash through the streets of Huddersfield to the sound of the blue lights and the ambulance siren, en route to having my innards re-assembled, followed by six months in hospital, followed by officially discovering I had Muscular Dystrophy.  29^th August will mark three years since Kitty died, two days after we got back from Arran that year.  So all in all, it’s not a happy time of year, and I could do without it.

You could be forgiven for wondering why I bother to go at all, and I do sometimes wonder and ask myself that very question.  I do enjoy it when I’m there, although it usually takes a few days to slough off the feeling that I should be doing something and learn to appreciate, once more, the virtue of doing nothing at all.  Plus, of course, my winters are very long, and the thought of not getting away at all, and instead spending July and August doing more of the same, watching summer fade and die around me, and marking the encroaching cold and darkness, without having had at least a break from the norm, is probably even worse. So, in short, if I don’t go, I’ll wish I’d gone, and if I stayed at home, Debbie would probably go anyway on her own (well, taking Misty) and then I would still be worrying about them, but from a distance of about 250 miles, which is even worse.

The other thing which having an annual holiday at this time brings home, especially one in the camper van, is how much my condition has deteriorated in the preceding twelve months.  At home, there is no doubt that life is easier for me, with everything more or less set up to facilitate the use of the wheelchair, and with my profiling bed. In the camper there are no such refinements, and the bed is hard and unyielding. This is not all bad news: a hard bed is actually better for my spine, but the struggle to transfer four times a day – bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to front seat, front seat to wheelchair, wheelchair to bed, takes its toll and is always fraught with the possibility of falling off and doing myself some damage and/or having to call an ambulance.

You could also be forgiven for thinking that God doesn’t want me to go on holiday this year, either – my tooth, of all things, flared up painfully during the week. One of those big, back, lower mandible molar wisdom thingies. I don’t know if it’s sprung a leak or what, but there is absolutely no time to go and see the dentist and get it fixed up. It’s so long, anyway, since I have been, that I bet the surgery has closed down, or at least I have fallen off their list.  And of course, right on cue, the camper van has decided to play up.

Characteristically, in previous years, as soon as term has ended, we’ve let the garage give it the once-over, on the principle that a stitch in time saves nine, and it’s always potentially easier to get stuff fixed around here than in the wilds of Scotland where the only option might be to take a tow truck back home.  This year, however, I thought we could maybe do away with even that expense (a service is about £150.00) because it’s been behaving itself and it was only up at the garage back in March when they had it in to repair the vandalism.  So, of course, a couple of days this week, it’s refused to start.  The battery, however, according to the RAC man, anyway, is OK, and it’s holding its charge. Which means of course the worst of all possible outcomes, some little niggling electrical problem is draining the battery and it will take ages to find and cost gazillions to fix.  As it stands at the moment, they’re coming to take a look at it tomorrow morning, and I am praying very hard for a good outcome.

Deb, meanwhile, has been getting together what gear she can, and enjoying the unaccustomed feeling of freedom brought on by not having deadlines for lesson plans and creating resources.  As I’ve said before, the ideal career for her would probably have been something in the armed forces, except she has trouble remembering the points of the compass, and may often be heard muttering “Never Eat Shredded Wheat”, let alone the phonetic alphabet beyond C-Charlie.  The other day we were watching something on TV and there was a recruiting advert for the RAF reserve or some such, and she actually said she’d often thought of something along those lines.  Based on our life to date with the camper, I could presumably expect a mobile phone call to say she was lost and could I look something up on Google streetview for her, or that her Tiger Moth had run out of petrol at 20,000 feet.

The only other happenings for me this week of anything approaching significance were that I more or less established beyond reasonable doubt that I have accidentally burned the fair copy handwritten final draft of We’ll Take The String Road, because I am an idiot, and my brain is now like Homer Simpson’s in that every time I take in something new, it pushes out some of the old stuff, and I found the missing envelope of family history research going back to 1980, so once more I have been reunited with some very dead ancestors without having to bother to have to do the research all over again. Calling it an envelope, actually, is like calling the Hindenburg a blimp: the envelope in question is actually one of those big, old, basketweave gusseted manila jobs, a dreadnought, a battleship among envelopes, absolutely crammed with stuff from the days when “online” was something that happened to wet washing, and if you wanted to trace your ancestors, you had to spend hours poring over old documents or using the microfilm readers, in a library or search room.

Spending hours tracing the details of long dead people and wishing to imagine enjoying their company may seem odd, but when you look at some of the dead people in question, and compare them to some of the living people around at the moment, you begin to understand the attraction.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer is definitely one who pales by comparison, especially after this week’s budget.  Thousands of words have already been written on the budget and thousands more will be: I don’t intend to add significantly to that mountain, you’ll be pleased to know. My observation is limited to noting how cynical and divisive it was.

Despite the fact that Osborne repeats the mantra about us being all in it together until he starts foaming at the mouth, in fact, the Blight have been practising "divide and rule" since day 1 of the last parliament. All of that rhetoric about "people sleeping away their lives on benefits with their curtains closed while hard working alarm clock Britain goes off to work" should have been debunked by Labour but instead it's taken hold, and now the Tories have just enshrined the division, with a budget which seems to be rewarding people for working and punishing those on benefits.

So, the choice facing the Labour Party now is a stark one. Does it, a la Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves and others of that ilk, go along with the Tory world view, and hope to pick up some crumbs from the table of the floating voter, or does it try and unite the country behind a radical alternative vision to show that there is another, better, way. Get it wrong, and Labour will be out of power until 2025 or later.

In fact, what Osborne has done is to shift the burden of dealing with low incomes onto the private sector. Quite what happens when the “recovery” tanks in 18 months and living wage private sector jobs become rarer than rocking-horse shit, is a moot point.  Employers in the private sector are going to think twice (or more) before creating jobs where they are forced to pay people £9/hr.  Meanwhile, benefits in real terms are frozen for four years, and the benefits cap is lowered, for, I believe, the first time, disproportionately for people outside of the capital.

One Tory MP, though, this week, has at least spoken out for a specific group of people whom he feels are underprivileged and whom he considers should be given special treatment, because they are struggling.  MPs.

A man who some have tipped as a future Tory leader, Adam Afriyie MP, has claimed it is “impossible” to raise a family on the £67,000pa which an MOP earns, and has put forward the idea, in an interview with Chat Politics, that, instead,  MPs should not be given a salary and audited expenses but an “allowance” of up to £225,000 to spend however they want.

There are some people who are so far out that they are almost back in again. You feel like buying a Ouija board just to be able to ask them what colour the sky is on their planet, and do they ever do day trips back to the real world, to try and contact the living? I have heard of “one stop beyond Barking and well off the bus route”, but this bloke has long left Stratford-Atte-Bow behind, and is heading for Harwich at a rate of knots.  Actually, though, I have a theory. He’s not that out of touch. He made his millions from hi-tech communications, after all. He’s just a smug rich whingeing Tory bastard thumbing his nose at the poor, the old and the ill because he can, because a load of selfish morons who are the spiritual heirs of Margaret Thatcher voted to put him in a position where he can say yah-boo-sucks to the rest of us, and he’s exercising that privilege in the way only a compassionless unfeeling boor could do. That’s my theory, anyway.

Other than that, life has pretty much rumbled on without me noticing it, this week, although I also noted the demise of Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister who was sacked my the Greek PM in the wake of the referendum, presumably as some sort of sacrifice in order to smooth the way in any future negotiations. I just think it’s sad that someone who was a potential character should be eased out  of the frame, with the compliance of his boss, whom he also considered a friend, simply because his unorthodox methods and attempts to actually solve an intractable crisis and achieve something in the face of near-universal intertia seem to have rubbed the bean-counters in suits, the faceless accountants, up the wrong way. But then, I have been in that situation myself, so perhaps I’m identifying too strongly with him. Either way, I’m afraid the Greek PM has now lost a lot of my respect, but I doubt that he’ll lose any additional sleep over that, when he already has an overdraft the size of Mount Olympus, and what did I expect anyway – the man is a politician, after all.

And so we came to Sunday, which is St Veronica’s Day. It’s also the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, of course, but I’ve never seen the rationale in celebrating 350 years of divisive sectarianism, so I’ll leave that to the people with the drums, the bowler hats and the sashes.  St Veronica is the patron saint of laundry workers and photographers, for reasons which will probably become obvious in due course.  She was allegedly a pious woman of Jerusalem at the time when Jesus was busy turning the world upside down, not to mention the tables of the bankers.  The legend which attaches to her is that she was so moved with pity when she saw Jesus carrying his own cross to his place of execution, that she offered him her veil, so he could wipe his forehead. Jesus accepted the gift, and held it to his face. When he gave the veil back to its owner, his image had been miraculously transposed on to the cloth, a la The Turin Shroud, I guess.

There is, as with almost all early saints, some doubt and confusion about this. There are those scholars who say that the “Veronica” refers to the veil, and not its owner, and that it derives from the Greek word “icon” and the Latin for “true”, vera. Thus it was the veil that was the “vera icon”, not the woman who owned it. By the 13^th century, the term was being used for the relic venerated as a true relic of Jesus in Rome, but it has long since gone.

Whatever she was called, she is not referred to by name in the relevant passage in any of the four Gospels, and that well-known modern theological expert Mr Mel Gibson chose in his film The Passion of the Christ, to call her “Seraphia”.  The incident has become associated with the sixth Station of The Cross, and has been depicted in art many times.

She doesn’t seem to have much going for her in the way of other miracles, but she became a saint long before the present rules about having to do intercessions and all that stuff, so I suppose she was sort of elected “on the nod”.  There are some mentions of her in the Apochrypha, one where she is supposed to have cured the emperor Tiberius by touching him with a cloth bearing the image of Christ, presumably the same veil, unless she had a stack of them in the ironing cupboard at home. The devotion to St Veronica and the holy face of Jesus was officially approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1885.

In researching St Veronica I also discovered that the most common “pass” used by the toreador in bullfighting is called a “Veronica” because he holds his cape out by the corners in the same way as St Veronica is usually portrayed holding up the veil with Jesus’s image on it.

This is possibly the single most interesting thing about bullfighting, a crime of which I know very little, except that Hemingway waxed boring on it, and the bull should win far, far more often than it does, see also under the right to arm bears. 

So, there we have St Veronica, Dear Reader, and as usual, I am at a loss to take any particular inspiration from the incident. It is interesting, however, in view of modern revelations about God and nuclear physics, to look at any instance of images being burnt onto any material, be it the Turin Shroud or Veronica’s veil, and to wonder about the atomic power that would be necessary to make such a thing possible.  Of course, all the scientists amongst my readership will probably have fallen off their chairs laughing by now, pretty much as people did 200 years ago when Benjamin Franklin wondered what would happen if he flew his kite in a thunderstorm with a key tied to the string. I was just moved to make the comparison by remembering those images of the shadows of people permanently blasted into stone walls by the A-bomb blast at Hiroshima.

Of course, for that theory to be even mildly tenable, several other things also have to be taken as read – the existence of Jesus for instance, and the fact of his divinity (or at least that he had more static electricity than you could shake a stick at – or a veil). None of these are givens in my world any more, except that I am reminded once again, as I am whenever I think of the crucifixion and of Jesus dragging that heavy cross through the hot, sweaty streets of Jerusalem, if it really happened like that, with the crowds jeering and the Roman soldiers spitting on him and licking him when he fell… I am reminded of standing that day in Holy Cross Abbey in Ireland, and feeling whatever it was that was being transmitted – that’s the only word to use – transmitted, by that tiny fragment of wood said to be a piece of the true cross, in its gold case on the chapel wall: the heat, the smell, the spices, the Ras-El-Hanout, the cries of the crowd, the adobe walled buildings, the palm trees, the shouting, the what I can only describe as the ancient yellow sandiness of it all.

That last bit, now I’ve written it down, sounds and looks crazy. “Ancient yellow sandiness”? What the hell? Unfortunately, sometimes you cross burning boundaries where you can’t smuggle the meaning back to those you have left behind. It had meaning like a dream has meaning, and when you wake up, what seemed so powerful and important turns out to be absurd and stupid.  I know, also, that I felt the same feeling again, or a tinge of it, while I was waiting to go under the anaesthetic in 2010. But then I was probably delirious.

You pays your money, and you takes your choice. As always. Perhaps these episodes were just my febrile imagination. Certainly, the God I attempted to describe in last week’s Epiblog would not be compatible, particularly with the idea of Jesus and his mission on Earth, although to be honest, if that is the sort of thing God really is, how could we ever know the innermost reaches of its mind, its reasoning?  Anyway, that is probably me done for the day. I should really be getting ready to go on holiday, not sitting here writing blogs. I have done something towards it today though, I sewed up the rip in my scarf. As ye rip, so shall ye sew. Euripides, Eumenidies.  Oh well, it’s all Greek to me, as Mrs Merkel said.

God alone knows where I will be at this time next week, or how many teeth I will have. No change there, then. 

Epiblog for a Random Sunday in Common Time

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley.  Preparations to go away on holiday rumble on, as does the weather, by and large. Dull, hot days predominate still, and at least twice in the night during the week I woke in the early hours to hear rain drumming and thunder crashing, and thought about Colin’s roof, while muttering a fevered prayer and crossing my fingers before dropping back to sleep. Record temperatures have been the order of the day, but no sunshine.

Matilda has settled down to such a little routine of her own, that she’s going to find it a shock to the system when we head off to the hairy-arsed regions of the north, leaving her to the tender mercies of Granny, Uncle Phil, and Katie the doggy nanny. But for now, she goes out first thing, comes back for her breakfast, goes out again, watches the squirrels, comes in, goes out, and eventually, at dusk, comes in, has a couple of suppers, and settles down on Colin’s settee.

Misty’s week has been a special one, because on 3^rd July we celebrated the fact that she has now been with us for two years. It hardly seems possible, but nevertheless, the calendar doesn’t lie. Actually, she didn’t do anything specifically to celebrate, other than a 19 mile walk starting and finishing at Binn Lane, accompanied by Debbie and Zak.  Everyone slept well that night.

It’s also been the last week of term, something for which we have all been fervently longing. Typically, however, there was one more grimbly lurking in the undergrowth of life, in that the camper battery died on its arse on Friday, the van refused to start, and Debbie had to go in for the final day of term on the bus.  Meanwhile, I called out the recovery man. The verdict is still open on the battery – once it had been on charge overnight, it started up OK the next day, but the unresolved question is why did it run down in the first place.

This week also marks the renewal date for the home insurance and the camper insurance, which means I have spent much more time than any sane person would ever countenance on the phone to dreary companies who tell me that my call is important to them and I am now number 47 in the queue. Giving people money should not be this hard. The reason for the prolonged trawling of the internet and various call centres is that both the house and the camper insurance had been creeping up and up, because the temptation is always to go with a quiet life, an easy solution, and just accept the renewal. I wish I had done the exercise last year – or even the year before – because I saved £270 on the house insurance and £218 on the camper, minus whatever it costs for breakdown cover, which I now have to arrange separately. And all achieved without the help of any bloody meerkats.

As part of the holiday preparations, Debbie’s new walking boots arrived this week. This was actually a necessary purchase, rather than a frivolous one, because the old boots have really had it, and are probably only fit now for a Viking funeral. Plus, of course, being Debbie, she did hours of online research first, and got a really keen price, from a web site in Germany.  A possible reason for the really keen price was revealed when the said footwear arrived, minus insoles.  Fortunately I was able to provide a rough and ready translation into German of “my insole is missing” which allowed her to at least contact them.

I had forgotten all about it until a couple of days later when, out of the blue, she asked “What is Abs Chicken?” I replied that I didn’t know, but it was probably a chicken that spent a lot of time at the gym or something. However, when advised of the actual context, I was able to dredge the sludge at the bottom of my brain for the remaining nuggets of German implanted there by Frau Graham back in 1970, and tell her that “abschicken” was a German verb, involving sending things. So, it would appear that the missing insoles are even now winging their way towards us from Germany. Assuming they can avoid the searchlights, the barrage balloons and the night-fighters.

A more serious piece of news from Debbie was that apparently, from next term, she and her colleagues will all be given compulsory training in recognising “radicalisation” and spotting students who are displaying it. It seems that we’ve got so inured to the mess we’re in that this seems to have been mutely accepted as necessary by all those concerned, although in effect what it amounts to is the Blue Blight Brigade recruiting a whole new set of “thought police” at one remove. If this is something which is going to be “rolled out” nationally, I can only foresee trouble.

For a start, it simply won’t work. If I was a student who was in any way “radicalised” – whatever that means – and I knew that my teacher had been primed to snoop on me for signs of “radical” sympathies, I would make damn sure that I kept my head down in the classroom, didn’t spout off about it, and passed my exams with flying colours, just to put them off the scent.  It also, of course, fundamentally affects, indeed, damages, the relationship between teacher and pupil. I know from seeing it at first hand that in some cases the role of teacher also encompasses that of counsellor, and confessor, and much more. You are much less likely to open up to someone who you think is going to snitch on you to the Feebs. It’s like we’ve stepped back to the McCarthy era.

The other thing which concerns me about it is the question of “what exactly is radical behaviour?” I might hold some fairly “radical” ideas myself about the way in which society should be organised and structured.  How soon, I wonder, before the Blight extend the definition of radical to people who, for instance, believe passionately in animal welfare, or to the “Occupy” movement, or the anti-fracking campaigners, or DPAC, or anyone who looks a bit funny in their book?

Again, the fact that few people if any have questioned any of this is evidence of the relentless tide of fear and propaganda which has been pumped at us of late.  We are, of course, at the conjunction of the significant 10^th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings,  complete with re-runs of several documentaries on this and on 9/11 on TV, and the fallout  and aftermath of the Isis attack in Tunisia, complete with  the government hijacking the grief of the families with military-style repatriations and a minute’s silence for the victims. In addition, we’ve had the spectacle of a full-scale war-game anti terror exercise being played out on the streets of London, and given pride of place in the TV news.  Just to remind us, of course.  I know that the security services are necessary, in order that we should all sleep safely in our beds, and they need to be trained, but they have plenty of facilities available for this without the need to do it in public. There are army ranges in Norfolk, and on Salisbury plain, where there are full size replicas of Afghan villages, so I am sure knocking up a plywood front of a mocked-up tube station is not beyond the remit of the Royal Engineers.  There is only one reason for holding such an exercise in public, and that is to scare people.  Scared people are much easier to manipulate.

The Blight say that basically, Isis are coming for us all, they may even be under the bed right now, and every Muslim is a potential terrorist, because after all, why else should they have to suffer the insult of being all considered for snooping, en masse, by their teachers. If I was a Muslim, I would feel both anger and hurt over this, all being painted in the same light, reinforcing stereotypes, and feeling that I couldn’t be trusted to be part of my chosen country.  If you try and delve deeper into the causes of all this, though, the “government”, if I may dignify it with a title it manifestly does not deserve, are altogether more reticent. Why do Isis and their ilk hate us so much? Where did they come from, because they didn’t actually exist in Iraq at the time we invaded. The answer is, of course, that we created them. We have been, firstly, Al-Qaeda’s, and latterly, Isis’s best recruiting sergeant. If you keep prodding a wasps’ nest with a stick, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get stung.

One definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result so it came as no surprise to me this week when Cameron suggested that the appropriate response to the Tunisian outrage was to extend the RAF bombing missions against Isis to include targets in Syria as well. Of course, it will do no good, in any real terms, but Cameron feels he has to be seen to be doing something, however lame, ineffectual, and useless. It’s the same as the government response to the spread of bovine TB. Keep the Daily Mail and the NFU happy by culling badgers, even though it won’t do any good.

What disturbs me, though, is the reaction of Labour’s shadow defence spokesman Vernon Coaker, who said that the Labour party would “look at” any proposals that the “government” made in parliament to vote for extending the bombing.  Either he is carrying on the craven, supine, lack-of-opposition that has characterised Labour since 2010, or he is criminally stupid and unaware of the issues. If you’ve got a pen, Mr Coaker, please take notes.

Firstly, in financial terms: there is no point whatsoever in firing missiles that cost £800,000 each to destroy a Toyota Hilux pickup truck of approx market value £1500 in a Godforsaken desert wadi somewhere. Given that everything these days seems to come down to money, at least this argument should carry some weight with MPs.  The evil Tories are currently looking to steal £12bn from the benefits budget in the name of the false God, “Austerity”. What has it cost us to have that squadron of RAF Tornado aircraft in Cyprus flying missions every other day to bomb Isis in the Iraqui desert?  They’ve been at it for eight months or so now, so that’s 240 days, say they fly a mission every other day, that’s 120 x £800,000, or approximately £96,000,000 in ordnance alone, not counting fuel.

Then there’s the “strategic” argument. True, the air strikes – which are overwhelmingly flown by the USAF anyway – may have had some limited success in blunting the Isis advances on certain strategic targets.  But are we expected to keep this up forever, just to make sure they stay in their box?  They are never going to be defeated by bombing from the air alone. Philosophically, you cannot persuade someone that jihad is misguided and democracy is much better, from a height of 20,000 feet. Militarily, they need to be crushed by ground forces, but there are others in the region who can, and should, be stepping up to the plate to do that, not us. The whole sorry intervention, which began in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wasted the lives of hundreds of British personnel in those two countries to achieve precisely nothing, should on no account be extended to include further deaths in other theatres of war.

The proponents of bombing Isis also claim that it prevents them from committing atrocities. This is plainly rubbish, yet you see it advanced again and again. It was also the rationale behind some of our actions in Libya. I’m afraid there is another harsh and unpalatable truth to face up to here. Intervention does not prevent atrocities, it merely determines which set of people get fed through the shredder. People still die, however much we meddle. And go on dying, in the ongoing refugee crises which our meddling causes.

Finally, there is the argument that bombing Isis in Syria will decrease the likelihood of terrorism at home. Precisely the opposite is true. If you really want to give people a reason to become “radicalised” let them see members of their religion being napalmed on the news. Then expose them to the preaching of a set of lunatics who are still living in the middle ages and who have a ready-made “solution” for the problem, in the form of a suicide belt. As they used to say in the 1930s, the bomber will always get through. At the time, they meant bomber aircraft, but the maxim holds even truer for the lone, alienated individual, flying under the radar. Do we really want to create phalanx upon phalanx of new recruits to this ideology?

So, there you are, Coaker minor. I hope you have got all that, I will be asking questions later, and the wrong answer will result in you receiving my Labour party membership card in the post with no stamp, cut into 5mm squares.

The fact that we’re even contemplating extending the bombing to Syria also gives the lie to any pretence that the idea of “Austerity” is anything to do with really saving money and balancing the books.  While even the Tories wouldn’t go so far as to actually provoke an outrage just to take the pressure off elsewhere, there is, nevertheless, a tacit understanding that all this fear and paranoia is very helpful to them in masking their true intentions and preventing people focusing on the debate over just where the £12bn of cuts should fall, for instance. It emerged this week that the Blight have been considering cutting ESA, which replaced sickness benefit, to the same levels as Jobseekers’ Allowance, on the grounds that the higher rate of ESA apparently acts as some sort of incentive for people who “choose” to be on benefits as a lifestyle choice.  Charlie Pickles, who despite her name, is actually female, from the Tory think tank Reform, said:

"We have a huge gap between disabled people's employment rate and non-disabled people's employment rate and if you are building in perverse incentives, within a benefit system, then you are encouraging people to move on to that benefit,"

Well, there you have it. Yes, Charlie, you are right, you have foiled my cunning plan. Sixty years ago I deliberately chose to be born into a family with defective genes because I knew that one day, I would develop Muscular Dystrophy just so that I could access disability benefits! I also shot my parents so I could go on the orphans’ picnic, and any day now I’m going to burn the house down so I can be homeless and get free tomato soup!

Charlie is obviously a proper Charlie, and indeed is quite clearly in a pickle. I looked her up on LinkedIn. Upper second in modern history at Oxford, worked for the high flying consultants, Accenture, and then between 2010 and 2012 was a special adviser to Iain Duncan Smith.  I don’t want to pre-judge the issue, so I will move my comments from the particular to the general at this point. Political life in this country is infested with “special advisers” who have never had to live in the real world, from privileged backgrounds, and they represent 75% of what is wrong with the standard and calibre of politicians in public life today. The other 25% is greed.

But it’s all down to money, you see. Since the days of Thatcher, you can justify anything if it will bring in money or create jobs. This week saw the closure of the deep coal mine at Hatfield, which will devastate the local area. However, we are supposed to rejoice, because at the same time, the North York Moors National Park voted to allow potash mining – a potential ecological disaster and a dangerous precedent, especially if the Fracking industry has its eye on any National Park sites – on the grounds that “it will create jobs”.

Perhaps they should reflect on the Native American saying which has been around for a while now in various forms, and was originally attributed, I think, to Chief Luther Standing Bear:

When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money

The best way of creating full employment (purely in practical terms, and disregarding any moral issues) would be to start another world war, of course. Maybe that’s the plan behind it all. If so, sadly, it makes little difference in that scenario if Greece votes “No” in today’s referendum and sticks two fingers up to “Austerity” but I still hope they do.

And so we came to today, Sunday. Today is the feast day of several saints with very silly names, all of them superficially attractive to write about: Marinus, Domitius, Triphena, Edana and Numerian, to name but a few. To be honest, none of them particularly appeals to me, and there is no specific Anglican ceremony on which to tag this Epiblog, either. We are now firmly ensconced in the period called “Common Time”that stretches from the end of Easter to the start of Advent.

There has, however, been one major development on the spirituality front this week, or at least for me there has.  I read an online review of a book called Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza, who is apparently a respected American scientist, of whom I had never heard. I haven’t read the book yet, but I may take it on holiday with me.  Despite its rather ponderous if not actually misleading title, it posits the theory that life does not end when the body dies, but goes on forever.

So far, so Biblical. But what Lanza has done, apparently, is to meld this theory with physics, astrophysics and quantum physics, which puts it firmly in the area I have been writing about for some time. Admittedly, I write from pure ignorance, whereas Dr Lanza is a doctor, at least of something or other.  Rather than make a hash of his theories by trying to re-constitute them in my own words, it mprobably makes more sense to just quote from the review:

Biocentrism teaches that life and consciousness are fundamental to the universe.  It is consciousness that creates the material universe, not the other way around. Lanza points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life, implying intelligence existed prior to matter.  He also claims that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding.  Lanza says that we carry space and time around with us “like turtles with shells.” meaning that when the shell comes off (space and time), we still exist.

The theory implies that death of consciousness simply does not exist.   It only exists as a thought because people identify themselves with their body. They believe that the body is going to perish, sooner or later, thinking their consciousness will disappear too.  If the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies.  But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals, then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle. In fact, consciousness exists outside of constraints of time and space. It is able to be anywhere: in the human body and outside of it. In other words, it is non-local in the same sense that quantum objects are non-local.

Lanza also believes that multiple universes can exist simultaneously.  In one universe, the body can be dead. And in another it continues to exist, absorbing consciousness which migrated into this universe.  This means that a dead person while travelling through the same tunnel ends up not in hell or in heaven, but in a similar world he or she once inhabited, but this time alive. And so on, infinitely.

This is so like what I have said in several previous blogs that I am definitely moved to find out more., As before, no doubt I will be constrained by my lack of understanding of the science behind the physics, but I want to give it a go.

After a long period of being unexcited by any spiritual topic whatsoever, and of beginning to question whether there was actually a point, and it was just that we couldn’t see it, or there was absolutely no point to anything at all, reading this review has at least set me thinking. I can only hope the book lives up to it, and isn’t 99% unintelligible gobbledeygook and psychobabble.

For those who can’t be bothered to flip back through previous blogs to find the bit I wrote at the time (and who can blame you!) I speculated that what we call God might actually be the universe and everything, all having existed outside of time for ever and ever, amen.  Actually, I don’t really have the words to explain it,  although it could probably be neatly done in an equation, if I had the maths. Which I also don’t.  Imagine something which just goes on forever and which has gone on forever and which contains everything that has ever happened or will happen in the course of all the possible universes resulting from all of the available choices to us at any given moment.  We move in this, we are contained within it, we navigate over it with the loophole lens of what we call consciousness. For a while, in the illusion of time.  That is currently the nearest I can come on paper to a definition of God.

Of course, that is a long way from the picture of an old geezer with a beard and a white robe, sitting on a throne, judging people and issuing laws carved on tablets of stone. And this is where the problems start. In the middle ages, I would no doubt have been burned at the stake for even getting this far, but maybe there is no judgement, no perdition. That doesn’t give us carte blanche to do what we like, though, and God or no God, there are still certain things we can generally assume to be morally wrong.

It also brings into question the value of worship and the power of prayer. If this is God, then it strikes me as a rather blind, impersonal God, who is unlikely to listen to my whimpering and pleading for the continued well-being of Matilda, while we are away on holiday. Nor does he/she/it particularly want, or value, my worship, I should think, despite the fact that I am actually quite awe-struck by the concept, so much so that it inspires fear and terror in me if I think about it for long enough.  And where does that leave Jesus, and the whole fall-and-redemption cycle. Will someone have to break it to him, when he comes back from his surfing holiday on the Dead Sea, that he is now redundant?

Still, at least it’s got  me thinking about all this stuff again, after a long period when I’d decided that I couldn’t be bothered. Quite where it leaves me, apart from up in the air, as usual, is a moot point, though. I think I might be becoming a Quaker without noticing. Quakerism by stealth, now there’s an example of radicalisation I bet none of you spotted.

Time passes incredibly quickly now, though. The older I get, the more it seems to be speeding up.

Like as the waves toward the pebbl’d shore

So do our minutes hasten to their end,

As Shakespeare might have interjected at this point, if he were here right now.  So it’s not necessarily a comfort to me to know that consciousness is actually reality, and that consciousness persists. It still doesn’t numb the loss.  Two years ago, when we went over in the camper van to collect Misty from the collie dog rescue at Baildon, the party comprised me, Deb, Mike, Zak and Freddie. Now, of that mission, Freddie and Mike are both gone.  Who could have foreseen it?  This time next week, maybe, though I doubt it, given our usual speed of preparation, I might be sitting at the side of Kilbrannan Sound on the Isle of Arran, looking out for the red can buoy off Carradale Point.  Most people’s holidays are enjoyable, and indeed so are mine, but they also involve an increased risk of danger and death (mountain climbing and kayaking) and pet loss (Misty running off while there, Matilda going missing at home) patchy internet connection, and mechanical breakdown. Plus there’s always the chance of falling off my wheelchair while transferring, or developing some exotic condition while far from medical aid. So I look forward to it warily. Whatever, it’s going to be a another, very, busy week next week, so I intend to get my gardening done today, if the rain holds off.  Now, in fact, as it’s looking a bit black over Will’s mother’s.

In the meantime, happy trails to you all, and I’ll post as and when I can.