Epiblog for the Feast of St Trumwin

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. [I almost typed “busty!” I wish! - Mind you, it could only help my Google ratings.] Anyway, winter continues, in the meantime. Winter draws on, as the old saying has it. As I sit typing this, trying to ignore the inane nonsense of the Omnibus Edition of The Archers warbling away in the background, it has already started to sleet. In fact, looking across the valley, the trees on the slope up towards Woodhead Road are already partially obscured by a veil of white

Weather apart, the week didn’t start well. In fact, for all the good I did on Monday, I might as well have gone down to the zoo and watched the monkeys masturbating, or the sneaky lemurs turning up their own central heating. In business terms, it was a one step forward, two steps back day, including the warehouse “losing” 400 books, I hope only temporarily. I then topped it off when, in short succession, having given up on the deceased equine flagellation and turned to cookery, I managed to burn my hand on the stove and drop my pizza when taking it out of the oven. The way it’s going, Matilda will not only outlive me, but will probably leave a larger estate, considering that she now owns Flat Eric, Big Mouse, Mr Hedgehog and four ping-pong balls, one of which jingles, plus three crocheted Maisie-blankets, and she’s only been here since September.

Tuesday brought more snow, and I was very glad of the leg-warmers which arrived the other week. I have said it before, but I look even more than ever like a superannuated monk as I sit here typing this with my hoodie up, especially on those days when Debbie lights a joss stick and we are all swathed in the heady smell of “incest”, as it is known in our house. I may break into plainsong at any moment. Granny brought the boys round at the end of their walkies; Zak curled up in his armchair, steaming quietly to himself, giving paw to anyone who passed within his ambit. Poor old Freddie’s getting on a bit now, and he doesn’t like the snow, even with his little coat. According to Granny, he’s started getting to the point where he starts doddering and falling over backwards. So I let him jump up on the settee, even though he was wet and bedraggled, and wrapped him up in a dog-towel. He still seemed to be lacking something, though, so I made him a hot-water bottle, and wedged it down between the cushion and his back. He seemed to appreciate this, and eventually drifted off into a twitchy sleep.

Hot water has been much on our minds this week, because the boiler in Colin’s side of the house seems to be on the blink. We tried to put it on to combat the possibility of frozen pipes, as I said to Debbie that a few quid extra on the gas bill was a better option than a large additional bill, from the plumber. Unfortunately, my judgement on this issue was on a par with my other decisions this week, and it turned out (when the plumber came) that the timer clock on the boiler, and the thermostat on the shower had both gone to the happy hunting ground, for ever and ever, amen. So now we’ll have a few extra quid on the gas bill, and a large additional bill from the plumber – this in a week where the camper van is already up at the garage for its MOT. The way things are going, we’ll have enough bills to open a platypus sanctuary.

It would have been too easy, of course, if it had been merely the timer, but when he came back on Wednesday, John the plumber confirmed that – sadly – that alone hadn’t fixed it, and it needs a new PCB as well. Aaargh. Still, on the plus side, before he left, John did re-stack the several bags of coal that had fallen over (almost onto my foot) in the lobby that morning, and he took away to post the signed contract for my first two digital books: in two or three weeks’ time, Catheter Come Home and Granny Fenwick’s Recipes and Remedies will be on Amazon. What will they think of next! He’s a good bloke, though, and I am going to add him to my rag-tag band of Crusaders when we eventually get around to embarking from Shoreham to cross the main to Outremer and re-take France for the English Crown.

Matilda also had a shock on Wednesday. She was at her usual station just inside the conservatory door, watching out for the birds on Cat TV as usual, when a squirrel just popped its head up on the other side of the window. For a moment, they were snout to snout, with only a pane of double glazing between them, then the spell was broken – Matilda sprang back, and the squirrel skedaddled.

I have had my head down, working, this week, so I haven’t been keeping up with the news, but one issue where the cacophony of babbling did manage to penetrate my self-imposed bubble, because it was impossible to turn on the TV or the radio without hearing someone wittering about it, was “Gay Marriage” and the vote in Parliament. I have to say two things at the outset. I am not gay, I am not in the gayer, they won’t have me, - no good with soft furnishings, though I can cook and sew a bit. Secondly, I have been married now for sixteen years or so, and – though it’s been fun – I wouldn’t ever describe it as gay.

The whole thing centres on who can use the word “marriage” and to be honest, I’ve never thought that any section of society has an exclusive lien on any part of the language. Semantically, it’s like saying you can’t use the word “trout” if you are a lesbian. I’ve always thought that what matters in this life is that you increase the overall amount of love in the world. I know that sounds feeble and rather hippy, but there you are. Like Joni Mitchell (one of my persistent touchstones on matters of human relationships) says, what really matters is:

“We don’t need no piece of paper from the City Hall,
Keeping us tied and true”

Once you realise that, then no amount of posturing denial from antediluvian Tory backbench MPs can take it away from you, however much they stand up and blether on about it. Flesh-eating zombies are known for feeding off brains, and, from what I saw of the Parliamentary debate on the TV news clips, there are going to be a hell of a lot of hungry zombies wandering around Westminster. Too bad the council stopped the soup runs.

“The Bible” is always advanced as a reason why not by the opponents of such measures (see also under Gay/Women Bishops) and the more I hear it, the more I reaslise that I simply can’t believe that the Bible (especially the Old Testament) is the word of God revealed. It’s rambling, it’s self- contradictory, and does God really care if I wear raiments of mixed cloth?

It seems to me that it would be perfectly possible to follow all the observances, all of the tenets of the dietary laws and such, and still be a complete bastard. It was this sort of thinking that first led me down the road to moral relativism. If the Old Testament had been the only thing that survived, I would certainly have a lot more trouble being a troubled, lapsed, agnostic violent Quaker than I already do. The only good thing about the Old Testament is that the bad guys usually get smitten. Pharaoh’s army got drownded, as the song says. That is one aspect of the Old Testament I would like to see more of in modern-day society. Smite the buggers who spend our money on having their moats cleaned, for a start.

Thank God Jesus came along and swept it all away with one simple commandment to love one another. Love is not love, which alteration finds, true enough, but love is love is love and nobody can say their kind of love is worth any more or is more holy or pure than anyone else’s kind of love. Well, they can say it, but I don’t believe them. You know it when you see it, like the grass coming green again in spring.

The week finally ended for us on a warm and positive note, though, with the birth of yet another niece, another addition to the next generation of Debbie’s family. Little Chloe entered the world at 8.30pm on Thursday night. As in the Larkin poem (Born Yesterday) I found myself wishing her all the conventional things, and of course, all the unconventional things which Larkin hits on, which make the poem so effective:

May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull -
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

Her birth also instilled in me a renewed feeling that maybe I should get off my backside – ha! that’s easy for me to say – and actually start to do something once again, to try and make the world a better place for little Chloe, and all the others of her generation, Adam, Katie-Elizabeth, Ben, Hollie and Ryan. And, as in previous years when I’ve contemplated the births of each one of her cousins, I have, this week, spent a considerable time reflecting on the sort of world she’ll grow up in, and what influence I could have in shaping it for the better, for all of them, in my own limited time left here.

My sensibilities were heightened in that regard, I suppose, because this week I have spent a lot of time working on the mammoth index to Hampshire at War, and I’ve also been reading (again) A Moment in Time by H E Bates. So I have been pretty much immersed in the war,one way or another, and the idea of a fight to save everything worthwhile about what I suppose we have to call “civilization” and “culture”. The problem being, of course, whose values? Whose culture are we fighting for? I remember my Dad hearing me listening to “Masters of War” by Bob Dylan, and him remarking that it was all very well these people being anti-war, but he hoped Bob Dylan realised how many people had died so he could sing that song. At the time, I felt suitably chastened. Had we been having the conversation today, of course, I’d probably have said something like yes, but there are wars and there are wars, and I would rather war was the absolute last resort, as opposed to the default setting for resolving any conflict of ideals, religions or cultures, which is the more we seem to have slipped into of late.

Maybe the answer is just to pick a set of basic things on which we can all agree, and strive towards those by whatever means possible. It worked reasonably well back in 1945. So I hope that Chloe’s life will be free from Beveridge’s five great evils; Squalor, Ignorance, Want, Idleness, Disease, and I hope, as I said above, apart from the usual stuff, that she’s happy in whatever she does. I’d like her to grow up in an England of tolerance, justice, and fair play, a compassionate society, underpinned by respect, and by live and let live. I’d like her to be able to see the countryside, the hills, the dry stone walls, the sheep. I’d like her to discover the churches and chapels, and appreciate them for the buildings, even if she disagrees with their message. I’d like her to watch cricket, drink real ale, and listen to brass bands. I’d like her to have a knitted teddy and a rabbit made of old socks. After all, I had both, and I turned out OK, didn’t I? (Didn’t I?)

Who knows, maybe she will, though, so far, you could say I’m describing a nephew, more than a niece! But maybe by the time she is old enough to consider such matters, perhaps gender stereotyping will have moved on. And I’d like her to be kind to animals. Who knows, maybe eventually, together, Chloe and her sisters and brothers may succeed in building a world where (in the words of the Facebook meme) a chicken can cross the road in peace without having its motives questioned. On a more serious note, what I don’t want to see is her growing up in a nasty, bigoted, hateful society that’s heading straight back to the days of Patience Kershaw, and we’re going to have to do something about making sure that doesn’t happen.

Who knows? God knows, I guess, but if he does, he ain’t telling. And today is the Feast of St Trumwin, who, according to the usual sources [I almost typed “the usual suspects”] was Bishop of the Southern Picts in Scotland in 681; he worked from the monastery of Abercorn on the Firth of Forth. When King Egfrith was killed by the Picts in 685, Trumwin and his monks had to flee the area, and he retired to spend his later years as a monk in Whitby Abbey, before dying of natural causes in the early 700s.

The Venerable Bede, no less, in his Ecclesiastical History, tells us that, in 681, Saint Trumwin was appointed bishop over the southern Picts by Saint Theodore and King Egfrith. Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury had divided the Northumbrian diocese governed by Saint Wilfrid into three parts (a bit like Caesar and Gaul being quartered into three halves,) establishing the sees of Deira, Bernica, and Lindsey. Three years later, two more were created, for Hexham and on the Firth of Forth to govern the Pictish lands recently conquered. This one became the seat for Trumwin, who organised his see at the monastery of Abercorn and later founded a separate monastery at Lothian on the Firth of Forth. Trumwin also accompanied Theodore to Farne to persuade Saint Cuthbert to be consecrated bishop of Hexham.

In 685, King Egfrith was killed by the Picts in the disastrous battle of Nechtansmere (identified variously as either Dunnichen in Angus or Dunachton on the shores of Loch Insh) which marked the start of the disintegration of the hegemony of Northumbria, and Saint Trumwin and all his monks had to flee south or face either slavery or death at the hands of the Picts. King Egfrith rather unwisely allowed his armies to be drawn into the environs of a Pictish fort by following a feigned retreat on the part of the Pictish leader, and got a spear in his gizzard for his carelessness, as did most of his army.

The bloody aftermath of the battle, where the Picts allegedly continued burying their dead far into the night by torchlight after the daylight had failed, has occasionally been seen by subsequent observers, as a ghostly re-enactment. According to the web site “Uncovering Scotland”, a Miss F E Smith was walking home from a cocktail party in 1950, having crashed her car into a ditch en route, when she saw the torches and ghostly figures moving across the supposed battlefield:

Miss Smith saw moving torches to her right a mile away on Dunnichen Hill. She saw more figures 50 yards away in a field to her right. Her dog was with her at the time of the incident and he began to react to the figures and growled at the lights, indicating fear on his part. The woman thought she could make out the forms of Pictish warriors carrying the torches. The men were dressed in tights and roll-necked tunics with a roll at the bottom. The lights she saw gave off a red glow, rather than a yellow or orange one. This was typical of the torches that the Picts would have used. Wood taken from resinous roots of Scots fir trees emitted a red colour when they were lit.

As indeed would Miss F E Smith, probably, had anyone been unwise enough to approach her resinous body with a naked flame that evening.

Trumwin, meanwhile, went to Whitby Abbey, where he was welcomed by Abbess, Saint Elfleda. One thing about these saints, they looked after their own. There he lived out his last days in "austerity to the benefit of many others beside himself" (Bede). Trumwin's relics were translated during the 12th century with those of King Oswy and Saint Elfleda, something which always amuses me when I read it – this business of digging up relics and passing them around always makes me think of that portable reliquary that was used for St Bernadette of Lisieux on her recent world tour, specifically manufactured to be the right size to be carry-on hand luggage on an aircraft. It could have come straight from Father Ted, as I have observed before.

So that was Saint Trumwin, and to be honest, apart from the austerity bit, I am not sure why he’s even a Saint. The selection process toughened up a lot in the last few years. We’ve still got problems with the Picts wanting to go their own way, though, and that’s another knotty problem that Chloe and her generation will have to deal with. If I started branching out into a general discussion about the threat to Scotland which Alec Salmond’s own particular brand of “independence” represents, this blog would be twice as long and, if that is even possible, four times as boring. I do hope, though, that, whatever happens with Scotland, Chloe will one day go there and appreciate its beauties. As Fred Small says:

You can be anybody you want to be
You can love whomever you will
You can travel any country where your heart leads
And know we will love you still

You can live by yourself, you can gather friends around
You can choose one special one
And the only measure of your words and your deeds
Will be the love you leave behind when you're done

As to me, next week, I have another week of more of the same. If sitting around in your hoodie being austere and writing manuscripts counts for anything, then maybe I have more in common with St Trumwin than I realised. At least in the time it’s taken to put this blog together, the snow has turned to sleet, and then to rain, and it’s finally stopped raining. The stove is ticking away, the cat is asleep on her chair with Big Mouse, and the TV is just warming up so that Debbie can watch the Six Nations and shout at the men playing with odd-shaped balls. Is there honey still for tea? Do the bees even know they’re being expoited? Who knows, but I might as well go and put the kettle on, just in case.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Blaise

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The weather decided to substitute one kind of cold unpleasantness for another. The snow was all hosed away on Sunday, by horizontal, torrential rain, which was good – but then the winds came. We were lashed by gale after gale, as the tail of a massive Atlantic low swept across the country. Obviously, we had it nowhere near as bad as places like the Hebrides, where the power went off and didn’t reappear for some hours, and when it did, for a while thereafter, it was on and off more times than Madonna’s knickers. But the garden here has had a terrible pasting, and it looks like it’s been sprayed with brown muck – the mess of all the dead leaves that were already on the ground before the snow came. The cast-iron ornamental heron sculpture has been blown over and is lying forlorn on its side next to the pond, and the plastic greenhouse is leaning over at an angle reminiscent of a drunk hanging on to a lamp post. One of the glass t-light holders that was hanging from a hook on the guttering of the conservatory has been blown down and shattered all over the decking. It’s a grim prospect to think of all the work that will have to be put into it to get the garden back to how it was last summer.

To make it worse, I haven’t seen the snowdrops this year – the “fair maids of February” that have usually made their appearance by now, nodding in the keen wind. I don’t know enough about gardening to know if it’s possible for snowdrops to just die out, but they’ve come up every year we’ve been here so far, without human intervention of any kind, in fact they have previously seemed to thrive on neglect. Maybe they’re just late. As for crocuses, there’s definitely no trace. Which is a shame, because I always take the sight of the first crocus to be the harbinger of Spring. Still, maybe they’ll come up yet, like the snowdrops.

One thing that has survived the destruction of winter is Maisie’s daffs, which were originally planted next to Russell’s mosaic. When Deb dug out the new, smaller, pond, this summer, the daff bulbs were lifted, and I was going to store them and then put them back in when the weather was better. But at the end of a long day of gardening last autumn, when I was feeling tired, instead I just laid them rather haphazardly in a square concrete planter just at the end of my ramp, and slung a bit of soil mixed with compost over them, fully intending to come back and do the whole thing of taking them and wrapping them in newspaper, but, in the way that things do, it got forgotten in the hurly-burly of autumn – forgotten entirely, in fact, until this week when the snow melted and I saw green shoots coming up. The indestructible daffs have survived and colonised their new home – helped, no doubt, by the shelter afforded them by the bulk of the old camper van, which is now an empty hulk, awaiting its final disposal as time and weather allows. So it’s not all bad news on the garden front, this week; despite the Holme Valley being ravaged by the sort of storms that wouldn’t have been out of place on the surface of Pluto, I have managed to grow some daffs. By accident.

Matilda’s been largely opting out of the weather, in favour of her new adopted place of rest, namely the foot of my bed, just where the morning sun streams in through Colin’s back window downstairs. In fact, she has got me so well trained now that, when I get up in the mornings, I make sure that there’s a cat-sized hollow dented into the duvet, then I spread out first one, then the other, of the two Maisie-blankets on top of it, then add Mr Hedgehog so she won’t feel lonely, and leave it all ready for her whenever she cares to jump up there and curl round. Not that she’s spoilt or anything. Other than that, for her it’s been a week of bird-watching from (as she sees it) the relative safety of behind the conservatory door, where those fierce birds can’t get her, an occupation occasionally disturbed by Freddie hurling himself past her and crashing into the grass every time he sees a squirrel.

Freddie and Zak went home on Friday, having – I think – largely enjoyed their stay. Zak was exceptionally fussy and kept giving paw as I trundled past him into the conservatory. It can get very wearing if you are doing something such as putting the shopping away, which involves multiple trips, but he means well, poor soul. Once during the week he “gave” one of his hind paws by mistake, and then looked worried when I accepted it, as much as to say “there’s something not quite right here, but I just can’t put my finger on it”. I saw a TV programme this week which indicated that a dog’s brain is just one-tenth the size of a human brain, but the part of a dog’s brain which is to do with smell is 80 times larger than the corresponding part of the human brain. This may well be true of Zak. The remaining crinkles of his furry little walnut are almost certainly taken up with random acts of food-snaffling, finches and fairies. Freddie’s brain is mostly full of dog treats, mince, smells and squirrels, I should think.

Granny returned, anyway, and they went home. For some reason, she has started to take an active interest in grammar, of all things, and rang me up the other day while I was still in bed (and Debbie was in the shower) to ask me how to spell “voyeur”. I didn’t ask why. I recounted this to Debbie, who then promptly accused me of always asking her how to spell things when I was sitting here writing, and I replied that it was because if I was into a good bit, I didn’t want to lose my train of thought, and she said my train of thought was more of a sleeper than an express. I was just about to make a smart remark which involved her thought processes and the late, great Dr Beeching, but thought better of it.

Anyway, somehow we all made it to the weekend, apart from the camper van, which is up at the garage for serious life-saving surgery in order to satisfy the insane and grandiose demands of the Ministry of Transport. Saturday was an interesting day in the year’s calendar, February 2nd marking a variety of ceremonies and anniversaries. For me the most poignant one is that it marked five years since Nigel, our old ginger cat died. I can’t believe it, but it really is five years. He died at home, in his favourite armchair, in the warm, curled up asleep, just as Match of the Day was coming on. As I have observed before, we should all wish for such an end, but I still miss him, poor old ginger odd sock that he was. In fact, Matilda shares some of his vocal trills and other odd characteristics (sudden bursts of stiff-legged galumphing, run-like-a-chicken activity across any wooden floor for instance) so in some ways, the spirit of Nigel lives on.

February 2nd is also Candlemas, in the Christian calendar, although it’s probably grafted on to the Celtic ceremony of Imbolic, one of the four great ceremonies of their year, the others being (correct me if I’m wrong) Beltane, which always makes me think of Marc Bolan, Lughnasa, and Samhain. Candlemas in folklore is often connected with weather-related sayings and prophecies. A traditional rhyme says:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.
If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be two winters in the year.

So, judging from the cold, clear, bright weather that marked Candlemas in the Holme Valley, we’re not out of the woods yet.
In the USA, a similar weather-forecasting tradition involves Groundhog Day. I could re-hash the Wikipedia entry about it, but it’s probably easier just to quote it in full, since it gives a fairly accurate summary:

‘Punxsutawney Phil Sowerby is a groundhog resident of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. On February 2 (Groundhog Day) of each year, the town of Punxsutawney celebrates the beloved groundhog with a festive atmosphere of music and food. During the ceremony, which begins well before the winter sunrise, Phil emerges from his temporary home on Gobbler's Knob, located in a rural area about 2 miles east of town. According to the tradition, if Phil sees his shadow and returns to his hole, he has predicted six more weeks of winter-like weather. If Phil does not see his shadow, he has predicted an "early spring." The date of Phil's prognostication is known as Groundhog Day in the United States and Canada. He is considered to be the world's most famous prognosticating rodent. During the rest of the year, Phil lives in the town library with his "wife" Phyllis.’

You’ll have to make up your own jokes about Gobbler’s Knob, as I have promised to try and avoid bringing too much smut into this blog. Still, as place names go, it can only increase my rankings with the search engines. People who know much more than I do about folklore have apparently written learned treatises on this tradition, linking it back through the German immigrants into Pennsylvania, to much older traditions involving badgers and other animals which were held to be similar weather-predictors in Medieval Europe. For my part, I just love the phrase “prognosticating rodent”, and have been trying to think of other occasions when I could work it into polite conversation.

And so, somehow, we arrived at Sunday, St Blaise’s day. St Blaise, despite his name, is not, sadly, the patron Saint of firemen, but of throat illnesses. Again, the internet is our friend here:

Many Catholics might remember Saint Blaise's feast day because of the Blessing of the Throats that took place on this day. Two candles are blessed, held slightly open, and pressed against the throat as the blessing is said. Saint Blaise's protection of those with throat troubles apparently comes from a legend that a boy was brought to him who had a fishbone stuck in his throat. The boy was about to die when Saint Blaise healed him.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the miracle, such as it was, consisted of St Blaise sticking his fingers down the kid’s gizzard and hoicking out the offending obstacle, but as I’ve said before, the entry requirements for sainthood were obviously a lot more lax in those days.

Very few hard facts are known about the life of St Blaise, although this has not prevented a richly-woven tapestry of conjecture and folklore being associated with him. He was supposedly a Bishop, in Sebestia, in what was then Armenia, a Roman province under the Emperor Licinius. Licinius was known to be tolerant of Christians, so whatever Blaise did to annoy him he must’ve gone out of his way to do so.

Apparently, St Blaise received a message from God to go into the hills to escape persecution. Men hunting in the mountains discovered a cave surrounded by wild animals who were sick. Blaise walked among them unafraid, curing them of their illnesses. Recognizing Blaise as a bishop, the hunters captured him to take him back for trial. On the way back, he talked a wolf into releasing a pig that belonged to a poor woman. When Blaise was sentenced to be starved to death, the woman, in gratitude, sneaked into the prison with food and candles. Finally Blaise was killed, on the orders of the Governor. He was martyred by being beaten, attacked with iron carding combs, and beheaded.

In iconography, Blaise is often shown with the instruments of his martyrdom, metal combs, and the similarity of these instruments of his torture to wool combs led to his adoption as the patron saint of wool combers in particular, and the wool trade in general. In addition, he is also the patron saint of wild animals because of his care for them. Who said men were no good at multi-tasking?

He died in the year 316AD and Marco Polo, in his travels, makes reference to a shrine dedicated to his cult in Sebestia, a shrine now long lost. In the wonderful way in which the Catholic faith continues to grade us all into the rich man at his castle, the poor man at his gate, even after death, St Blaise is now officially one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, which sounds like it ought to be a Marvel comic devoted to super-heroes. His remains now allegedly rest at the Basilica over the town of Maratea, on Italy’s Tyrrhenian coast, where the local mountain, Mount San Biagio, is named after him. A silver statue of the Saint is processed through the town on his feast day.

In this country, the Cornish town of St Blazey derives its name from him, where the parish church is still dedicated to Saint Blaise. The council of Oxford in 1222 forbade all work on his feast day, but then in those times they were always on the lookout for a reason to down tools and broach a barrel of ale, and why not? Other churches dedicated to St Blaise may be found at Haccombe, near Newton Abbot, Shanklin on the Isle of Wight and Milton, near Abingdon. He also lends his name to a well in Bromley, which issues water considered to have medicinal properties.

In England in the 18th and 19th centuries St Blaise was adopted as mascot of woolworkers' pageants, particularly in Essex, Yorkshire, Wiltshire and Norwich. The popular enthusiasm for the saint is explained by the belief that Blaise had brought prosperity (as symbolised by the Woolsack) to England by teaching the English to comb wool, harking back again to the carding combs with which he was martyred. According to this tradition Blaise came from Jersey, in the Channel Islands. However, this legend is an example of oral tradition ending up with the string bag inside-out because it’s almost certainly an instance of confusion with a different saint, Blasius of Caesarea – Caesarea also being one of the Latin names for Jersey.

So there we have St Blaise. As to what lessons we can learn from his life, the answer is probably not a lot, although (as with St Francis of Assissi) there is of course the empathy with wild creatures and the desire for them not to suffer unduly, which I would like to think is an aspiration shared by many. Once again, as with many martyrdoms, ancient and modern, as I said last week, the situation could probably have been defused by both sides cutting each other a little slack and displaying tolerance, but I guess if you are the Emperor Lucinius, you don’t get to that position, in the decaying years of the Roman Empire, by “live and let live”. You probably err more on the side of decimating the Armenians, to be honest. And the more you are threatened, the more power seems to be slipping from your grasp, the tighter and more desperately you will cling on to it, as shown by the current antics of David Cameron and George Osborne, whose determination to press on regardless, ever deeper into the mire, is seemingly undimmed by the muddy waters lapping around his ankles.

If it wasn’t so tragic, it would almost be funny. But, sadly, it has ramifications: George Scollan, 58, had worked for Remploy, which specialises in providing work for people with disabilities, since 1973. But the factory, in Springburn, Glasgow, closed this week, with the loss of more than 40 jobs, and he was found dead on the day it closed. Colleagues said he had “lived for his job” and grown “more and more depressed” about the prospect of unemployment, according to the Black Triangle blog, which makes a point of documenting the excesses of the Junta’s war against the poor. Phil Brannan, a friend of Mr Scollan and a senior shop steward for the GMB union/Unite the Union consortium at Remploy, said: “George never claimed a day’s benefit in his life and he felt that once he had been made redundant he would be labelled as a scrounger. “Through no fault of his own, he lost his job today. The government know full well that many of these people now face long-term unemployment. It is a disgrace.”

Mr Scollan worked as an oxy-acetylene brazer, assembling wheelchairs. If only he had been able to make missiles, or knuckledusters, or guns, or bombs, his future welfare would have been assured. I suppose it was his misfortune to live under the Blight of a Junta who are dedicated not only to phasing out wheelchairs, but also their occupants, with the help of people such as Atos. Like the homeless, we will soon cease to exist altogether, hidden in plain sight by the blinding blizzard of black-is-white bullshit emanating from 10 Downing Street. Massaged away, into imaginary jobs and imaginary hostels, creatively manufactured from imaginary statistics.

Spring is, of course, inevitable (climate change notwithstanding) and eventually the snowdrops will come, and the crocuses. George Scollan won’t be around to see them, though. He’s another sad statistic, another name added to the “plaguey bill” for which the Blight is responsible. An illustration that it only takes one party in the bargain to decide that you’re going to be a martyr. At least the efforts of people such as Black Triangle will ensure that these crimes, these disgraces, are documented, enumerated and remembered. Avenging them is a different matter. Revenge is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. I really hope I live to see the day when that repayment falls due, and those responsible receive the final demand of destiny.

As I have said before, we’re all only three bad decisions away from being on the streets, and with the current set of clowns in charge, the bad decisions don’t even have to be your bad decisions. Spring ought to be about renewal and relief, release from the dreary slavery of Winter. Some “springs” also bring political release from slavery and injustice. Not always, of course; I can remember the Prague Spring of 1968 being crushed by the Russian tanks. The so-called “Arab spring” is degenerating into chaos as we speak, and looks set to suck British troops into the maelstrom it has left in its wake. Is it too early to hope for an English Spring, with perhaps a better result? Best out of three, perhaps? Apparently so.

So once again, I’m ending on a downbeat. Winter’s obviously winding itself up to have another go, and we’re not shot of it yet. February comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Next week will be another week of watching, and waiting: except the Lord keep the City, the wakeman waketh in vain, though. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself, as the Zen masters say. Right now, I’d settle for some snowdrops, in preference to more snow drops.

Epiblog for Septuagesima Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The snows came, and they stayed. And stayed. Like an unwelcome guest, the snows stayed and overstayed. It was always on the cards, I suppose. The garden was reduced to a series of frozen hummocks, smoothed and simplified by the drifting flakes; the driveway was covered, and, most annoyingly, the ramp was also covered, with about four inches of fresh snow. This immediately curtailed my movements, especially after it had been crunched up into ruts with the passage of feet backwards and forwards.

While it is possible to propel a manual wheelchair over snow, if you know what you are doing and/or you are Tanni Grey-Thompson, it is also possible to get stuck at the bottom of your wheelchair ramp and die of hypothermia while waiting for your wife to come back from teaching. So I decided on discretion, as the better part of valour, and stayed indoors. As did Debbie, because college was closed for two days – to all apart from those people lucky enough to be taking exams, for whom the health and safety risk of a fractured ankle is presumably judged to be more acceptable than the risk of having to reset in the summer and create additional admin work for the college. Sadly, Debbie doesn’t get paid for those missed classes, but at least she got a rest, some extra kip, a lie-in and some extra time to prep for the rest of the week. The college also issued an appeal (rather hopefully) for staff members to come in and help clear snow and ice from the paths (bring your own shovel) - an appeal which I have to say fell on deaf ears as far as Debbie was concerned, very deaf ears.

The Sainsbury delivery man, when he struggled down the drive bearing the crates of groceries I’d ordered online, had a shovel with him (presumably so he could dig his van out if he got stuck) and he very kindly offered to clear the snow off the ramp. This worked brilliantly for about three days, until the remaining lumps of snow which he’d left all coalesced into a hard icy fringe along one edge, which once more made the passage of my small wheels impossible. Then the postman came the day after that, bearing a very welcome parcel, of which more later, and he very kindly kicked away all of the said lumps of ice and also took away my post to post it for me!

In fact, give me those two, and the bloke from the Pharmacy who battled through the snow-drifts, delivered my meds, saw me struggling across the ice-field with the bin-bag balanced on the tray of my wheelchair, took it off me and dumped it in the wheelybin for me, and I could probably have a half decent stab at re-taking Harfleur for the English Crown. In fact, throw in the coalman, who carried 16 x 25kg bags of Real flame over the hard-packed snowy ice to deliver them to us on Friday, and I’ll push on and besiege Burgundy as well.

Despite the traditional Scottish weather, on Friday, for Burns Night, we celebrated the event this year with the traditional Scottish fare of Tofu with Lime and Coconut (or should that be “Cokernut”) curry sauce. Eventually, the weather outside got around to doing what the weather forecasters had said it would do this weekend, albeit on a slightly different time-scale, and the promised rain arrived and started to eat away at the lying snow. This morning, I woke to hailstones battering against my window, in what I hope is a last vexed flexing death-rattle from the tail of winter’s rattlesnake.

Mind you, our snowy week has been a picnic, compared to the friends in Wales I wrote about last week, who had embarked on having their roof replaced just before the snow arrived. Fortunately, proceedings weren’t materially affected by the weather, and in addition, they earned themselves a hot, freshly-made lemon drizzle cake in return for rescuing one of their neighbours who was stuck on some ice, so all in all they probably had a better week than we did.

As I type this, the snow has all gone, swept away by a combination of last night’s rain and the accompanying rise in temperature, but I am still wearing my leg-warmers - one of two pairs - which arrived in the said parcel brought by the ice-clearing postman, in response to the piece I wrote last week about how to keep the backs of my legs warm and combat the many draughts. The ice-postman cometh, and he bringeth the leg warmers. So, from the knees down at any rate, I now resemble one of the Kids from Fame. If only I could dance as well. Thank you to the kind person who sent them, they are very useful and they fit a treat. Now, about that Ferrari…

The dogs largely took the snow in their stride. Zak managed to lose his (well, really Tiglet’s) “lunker” (a tennis ball thing on a rope that allows you to hurl it even further afield) in the snow one day, down on the cricket field, and then found it again the next. Freddie continued his habit of coming home from walkies early, on his own, whenever he got fed up. Sadly, there’s still no further news of Elvis, either better or worse, so we’re still in limbo, and we assume his health is pretty much the same as when we last heard.

Matilda has been dealing with the weather in her own way, by nesting on my bed next door, on top of a couple of crocheted Maisie-blankets and snuggled next to Mr Hedgehog. The amount of time she decided to spend there has been directly proportional to the amount of time the central heating was on next door. So much so that she now seems to prefer it to the more direct heat of the stove.

So, it was one of those weeks beloved of the media, with headlines about “Br-r—r-r, Britain Freezes in the big chill”, and that perennial favourite, “Met Men Say There’s More To Come”. The enterprising lemurs in a Somerset zoo learned how to lean out of their cage and tweak the thermostat to turn up the heating to compensate for the sub-zero temperatures, and of course there is always some intrepid nutter on the news who snowboards in from Thames Ditton, having harnessed up the family dog as a husky, when everybody else has simply taken one look at the snow, groaned, turned over and pulled the duvet higher. It snows, and the country comes to a virtual standstill. That’s the law.

When temperatures drop consistently below freezing for more than a couple of nights, the council has a duty to implement its emergency plan for the homeless, apparently. For someone with a general interest in the subject, I must admit this was bit of a hazy area for me. And for some councils as well, I gather; while the best councils kick into action at the first opportunity, commandeering community centres, setting up camp beds etc, others are more prone to dragging their feet, apparently.

I was alerted to this situation by an email from one of these “campaigning organisations” onto whose email list I seem to have managed to wangle myself, probably by signing a petition in the past. As a result of my own subsequent email enquiry to Kirklees, I discovered that they had implemented their plan, and that a total of seven people who were officially living rough in Kirklees had been identified and helped by it.

While every little widow’s mite helps, this figure sounds incredibly low to me, and I said as much. I have often thought that the official figures, on which – ultimately – the DCLG bases its policies, are understated. I also suggested, to the Kirklees councillor who emailed me, that the council should consider opening up vacant shops (where the council was the landlord) as daytime drop-in centres for rough sleepers, somewhere where they could get out of the cold for a few hours, have maybe a warm drink or some soup or something, and gain access to people who might have the official capacity to help them further.

My subsequent foray onto the Kirklees web site for details of the local organisations that help the homeless then led me on to the council’s own list of public venues, which was of interest because of my planning for Lockstock. Sadly, many of those listed would probably be unsuitable on religious grounds, since I fully intend that if Lockstock happens, it should feature wine, music, and possibly pigs. But, like two feminists doing the washing up, it is at least a start.

(If you’re worried about someone you’ve noticed sleeping rough in this icy cold weather, by the way, you can make sure they get help by telling Streetlink, the new national helpline and website: http://www.streetlink.org.uk/tell-us-about-a-rough-sleeper)

The prevalence of headlines about the snow made it a good week for politicians to bury bad news. Actually, I may be doing Cameron a disservice there, which is not a sentence you will see me type very often, in that he did originally intend to make his big pronouncement about the EU on another day – one which his advisors then advised him would have caused offence both to France and Germany, and then he had to postpone it again because of the Algerian hostage crisis. And after all that, was it even worth waiting for?

I start from the premise that I am highly suspicious of the “ever closer union” aspect of the EU, and I often get the feeling that it is invasion by any other means, invasion by the back door, in fact. The trouble is that, in order to register my views in any political forum, I have to appear, by saying so, to ally myself with the likes of UKIP and the Euroskeptic Tory MPs, all of whom are very high on my list of people never to get stuck in a lift with. Mainly because their dislike of the EU comes bundled with several other attitudes which are not officially party policy, and are only ever tacitly admitted, but which can be summed up as “once we’ve sorted out Europe, we’ll start on the brown people next”. In that respect, at least the BNP and the EDL are more honest about their aspirations, however nauseating.

Cameron has obviously been looking at the recent election results and has come to the conclusion that, when it comes to Europe, you catch more flies with the vinegar of UKIP than the honey of the Liberal Democrats. While it is always gratifying to see the Liberal Democrats hoist, nay, even shafted, with their own petard, it nevertheless raises to disagreeable possibility that they might seek to ally themselves with Labour at the next election. It doesn’t happen very often in life, but if it did, this would be yet another rare instance of rats rushing to join a sinking ship. Whether or not Cap’n Miliband and his crew have the sense to repel boarders remains to be seen.

The only redeeming feature of Cameron’s blustering, which has absolutely nothing to do with “the national interest” and everything to do with saving his miserable hide from being savaged by his own party, is that there are a lot of ifs and buts in the way. If he succeeds in renegotiation, if this, if that – if indeed, he is still Tory leader at the next election. It’s all going so terrifically well on the economy that the quicksand of George Osborne’s “Plan A” may yet suck him under as well.

With or without him, though, rather depressingly, it seems that the next general election will be fought on a platform of popular xenophobia based on the government-inspired popular (but untrue) white-van-man-taxi-driver ideas that “there are millions of ‘em over here, taking our houses and our jobs.” The race card at one remove, in fact, because when the Junta and UKIP say it, they mean “EU Immigrants” but the silent dog-whistle note that always underscores it says “brown people”.

As I type this, Cameron's poll ratings have already risen on the strength of this empty rhetorical claptrap, as he is obviously tapping into the vague, unfocused anti-EU sentiment in the UK at large, in the same way that Alex Salmond does in Scotland with vague unfocused anti-English sentiment. You don’t have to do anything, or have any policies really, other than vague hints and promises, you just find the patriotic xenophobic vein, the familiar my country-right-or-wrong supernumerary nipple, and leech onto it like a bloated vampire.

The Lib Dems must be feeling pretty pissed off right now, at having been used as a figleaf for all those nasty little Tory policies for two years, only to be told that, when it comes to Europe, their services are no longer required from 2015 onwards. It serves them right, of course, but I really do hope they do something Quixotic, petulant and self-destructive that really damages the Junta before then, just out of spite.

Meanwhile, the Blight continue to pick and choose who they let in and who they deport when it suits them, on a politically-motivated basis. I have nothing against Malala Yousafzai and wish her well in her self-appointed crusade (probably the wrong word) for women’s education in Afghanistan against the medieval nutcases who run the Taleban. I fear it will end badly, but at least we saved her life this time by flying her to Birmingham and throwing a lot of NHS resource at her.

Others are no so lucky, as I have said before, and as pointed out in various press articles this week about Luqman Onikosi, who the Home Office are sending back to die in Nigeria. The journalist Alana Lentin, who knew him personally, wrote a piece about Theresa May's decision to deport this seriously ill Nigerian man after university. The Junta probably don’t like Mr Onikosi’s views very much: he used his experience as an African to highlight everyday racism in the UK, and drew attention, not only to black history, but to the politics of migration and Islamophobia as well.

He had started an organisation, which he still heads, Hear Afrika, to help African youth projects. In 2009, Onikosi was diagnosed with hepatitis B. Two of his brothers, Hanuna and Kolade, had died of the same illness at home in Nigeria. Despite the fact that the chronic liver condition suffered by Onikosi and his brothers, if untreated, leads very quickly to the loss of life, Theresa May has decided to deport him to Nigeria. After graduating from Sussex, Onikosi continued to work, pay taxes and volunteer in the UK.

As Lentin says:

The Home Office disregards this and, following legal appeals and the intervention of Onikosi's MP in July 2012, deems it correct to send Onikosi back to Nigeria where virology specialist, Dr CI Anyanwu, explains there is "no definitive treatment available for the level of his condition he is experiencing".

In austerity Britain, the government has no qualms about universities accepting international students to pay huge fees to keep a virtually unfunded higher education system going. Foreign students are regularly referred to as cash cows by cynical university managers. Yet those same cows are accused of "milking the system" as soon as they overstay, no matter the reason, even when it means life over death.”

And she ends her article by saying:

“Integration, a word beloved of post-9/11 western governments, suddenly becomes an irrelevance when it comes to wrenching from their homes people who have put down roots, created professional links, and benefited the society. Onikosi has lived in the UK for five years. It is the country in which he entered adulthood, as well as political consciousness. He has contributed to this society in ways in which his peers, born into the privilege of citizenship, may do also but do not have to in order to prove their worth.

There is no doubt, barring a miracle, that removing Onikosi to Nigeria will result in this young man losing his life. The UK is quick to preach when it comes to human rights abuses in other countries, but equally quick to moralise when the same victims of global inequality put its own ethics to the test. Are we really willing to cause a third, useless, death in one family?”

And, sadly, yes, it seems we are. I don’t begrudge the compassion shown to Malala Yousafzai, but it’s time we acknowledged the appalling double standard and extended that compassion to some other case where medicine and borders collide. If borders and nationality were no problem in Malala’s case, what is different here?

Today is Septuagesima Sunday, which is easy for you to say, meaning that it is the 9th week before Easter. Next week is Sexuaguesima Sunday, which sounds a lot more fun, but don’t let’s go there. Septuaguesima Sunday marks the start of the preparation for Lent, which in turn is a preparation for Easter, so this is sort of the start of the start of the run-up to Spring, although it doesn’t feel like it today, with the hailstones bouncing off the decking.

The text for today is the parable of the workers in the vineyard, Matthew 20, 1:16.

For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.

And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.

But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, saying, these last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.

But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

The key to the parable being that everyone receives the same generous payment, whether or not they have been labouring for the whole day or not. The idea being that the Kingdom of Heaven is equally available to all, those who have been lifetime adherents of a religion and those who have had a blinding epiphany and suddenly feel the presence of something other than what we commonly call reality. Equally available to all; those who have access to the privileges of a cushioned life and to those who have no such access. In fact, in other pronouncements, Jesus indicates in the Gospel of Mark that:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.

Sadly, though, the same maxim doesn’t apply to this world, where, as we have seen far too often, it is easier for a rich man to do anything and everything, than for a poor man. So it seems the poor and the disadvantaged have got the next world sewn up, alright (though organised religions of various flavours have interpreted that, shamefully, as “so shut up in this world, and be happy with your lot”) but what I would like to know more about is this stuff about the meek inheriting the Earth.

Perhaps what we need at the next election is a coalition. A coalition of the meek. When the meek get stroppy, it’s time for the rich and powerful to watch out. When the going gets tough, the meek get organised. Like Langland’s Piers Ploughman, I have a vision of “a field full of folk”

Then began I to dream a marvellous dream,
That I was in a wilderness wist I not where.
As I looked to the east right into the sun,
I saw a tower on a toft worthily built;
A deep dale beneath a dungeon therein,
With deep ditches and dark and dreadful of sight
A fair field full of folk found I in between,
Of all manner of men the rich and the poor,
Working and wandering as the world asketh.
Some put them to plough and played little enough,
At setting and sowing they sweated right hard
And won that which wasters by gluttony destroy.

Some put them to pride and apparelled themselves so
In a display of clothing they came disguised.
To prayer and penance put themselves many,
All for love of our Lord living hard lives,
In hope for to have heavenly bliss.
Such as anchorites and hermits that kept them in their cells,
And desired not the country around to roam;
Nor with luxurious living their body to please.

Which could easily be a vision of the inequality of our own society, apart from the fact that the Sumptuary Laws have been repealed, that prevented people in Langland’s day from wearing clothes that would identify them as being “above their station”. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they made a comeback.

The poor, the unemployed, the sick, the asylum seekers, the deportees, the homeless. These shall be my coalition, then, along with the lost, neglected and homeless animals. At one time, you could rely on the Labour Party to stand up for at least some of these categories, but since they became a slightly less Tory corporate arm of the Tory Party, until recently, you couldn’t get a fag paper between them all, and the only reason you can do so now, is that the Tories have differentiated by moving even further into the territory of the nasty. So if we are to have a general election in two years from now (or sooner) where hateful, ill-informed xenophobia is manipulated by David Cameron in a desperate attempt to cling on to power so he can carry on ruining the country while pretending to run it, then this is going to have to be the coalition that stands against him. We can’t rely on anyone else, least of all the Opposition. The labourer is worthy of his hire. Many are called, but few are chosen. I stand with all of them. Me, Jesus, and Bill Langland. It is time for us all to stand up, and be counted. Which is quite ironic, really, in my case.