Epiblog for St Chad's Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, but there are some signs of spring at last.  The snowdrops in the garden, and Maisie’s indestructible daffodils, to name but two. And yet again, we’ve had some more of those days where even though it’s raining, it’s also sunny at the same time.  Or it’s raining on one side of the valley and sunny on another.

Predictably, we didn’t get away in the camper van. Not this time.  There were several reasons for this; the weather forecast for the Lake District was worse than here, and there’s little point in leaving a cosy hearth in a place where the weather is relatively mild and occasionally sunny, to go and sit in a tin box on Walney Island watching the rain sheeting down and listening to it drumming on the camper roof.  While we have been away in the camper in winter before, notably one night in Borrowdale when it was minus 13, and a weekend I remember in November in Galloway where we lay awake all night listening to the gale force wind howling through the wire hawsers of the kayak rack, it does have to be something special these days to drag us out. Especially when Debbie wants to climb mountains and the weather says there’s only a 30% chance of a cloud-free summit.

The overriding reason, though, was that we were both still feeling totally blitzed from the cold/flu thing, and we just didn’t have the energy to get all the gear together and get it on to the camper.  We’re both now at the stage where the cold itself has gone, but every so often a wave of fever washes over you and everything goes woozy and you just have to stop for half an hour or so.  I’m not surprised it’s poleaxed Deb, she has been running on empty for weeks now, and I suppose in my case it’s an inevitable consequence of my condition.

Deb has managed to get out for some walks, though, accompanied by Misty and also by Zak, when she can borrow him. And they have climbed some hills, albeit local ones. Generally speaking they all return from these forays plastered with mud up to the elbows, looking like a first world war re-enactment society, so everybody has to stand on the mat and be towelled down before they can proceed any further.

Matilda is more circumspect about her journeys to the outside world, especially since one of her bolt-holes to get out of the rain, the “good” plastic greenhouse, blew off the decking, over the rails, and into the garden during the recent gales. Deb has gathered the bits of it and stowed them under the deck, in case we can ever put it back together again, but now Matilda is reduced to cowering under the tarp which protects the camp cooker, until someone comes to let her back in. 

She’s also taken to wandering round the house at night, yowling. I don’t know why she does this, it’s not because she’s hungry, though she does stack away the Felix at an alarming rate. I think she just wants the reassurance that she hasn’t been left on her own, because when I snarl at her to shut up, generally she does so, and we can all get back to sleep. If only she would sleep in/on the bed like a normal cat, she need never feel lonely again, but who knows what does on in her little furry crinkly walnut of a brain.

Other nature-related news this week includes the fact that the owls seem to be back. Well, strictly speaking, I am not sure they ever went away, but the other night, they were giving it some stick in the trees that fall away downhill behind our garden. We had the TV on, watching Law and Order, and I kept hearing this hooting going on, which eventually led me to ask if it was on TV.  Debbie looked at me pityingly and asked what an owl would be doing in the squadroom of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, and I had to admit she had a point. Deploying the mute button confirmed that, while Detectives Stabler and Benson had fallen silent, Olly was indeed still telling his mates loudly about the mice he’d eaten, dropping pellets and rotating his head through 360 degrees, and all the other things owls do so well. So, we have owls. Or at least, an owl.

I’ve been feeling a bit flat this week, to be honest, what with the wishy-washy after effects of being ill, the oppressive nature of the mountain of work I have allowed to build up, and the feeling of time slipping through my grasp without anything significant being achieved. I have been ploughing steadily on, wherever and whenever I could actually get on with any specific task, grappling with laying out books and also the complexities of email marketing.  Sometimes, though, I feel like I am just shooting into the brown, whistling in the dark, whatever, and I want to go away and live in a Yurt in the woods with only the owls for company, and weave my own bread and bake my own curtains. I blame Thoreau.

I did sort of get my own back for the owl debacle when I was showing Debbie a book I’d bought online. A history, with photos, of Elloughton, Brough and Brantingham, where I grew up, by Denny Lincoln. It came out in 1998, apparently, but somehow I had missed it until now, despite the fact that it mentions my family and even quotes my cousin Joyce. The quotation in question is about when they were bombed out of their house in 1943 by a Luftwaffe parachute mine that missed Blackburn’s aircraft factory and landed in Skillings Lane instead, taking off the front of the house and blowing the front door through the house and into the back garden.  Auntie Nancy flung herself on Joyce and the two boys and probably saved them from serious injury or even death as their home disintegrated around them. Uncle Bert was out on ARP duty, and their lodger, upstairs, slept through it all!

I was reading this to Deb and mentioned that the crater left by the mine was 80 feet by 30 feet, apparently, according to the author.  Debbie asked me if that was how big the bombs were, and I patiently explained that no, the actual bombs were much smaller and the apparent disparity between the size of the bomb and the eventual size of the crater was down to the fact that the bomb detonated and blew up on impact. The clue is in the title. I don’t know if she really thought this, or if she was just winding me up, but who knows what does on in her little furry crinkly walnut of a brain.

So, anyway, like I said, a flat week. Except for one wonderful high spot, when on Tuesday at 6pm, Cary, my wheelchair services lady, brought round some old canvases that her mum had purchased for her painting before she died, plus her mum's old easel, a custom-made wooden box (made by her dad for her mum) of oil paints, thinners and media, plus some brushes, and various other goodies. I was truly touched, not only by the generosity of the gift in material terms, but also because some of these things (eg the box and easel) are heirlooms.

She replied that she's been following the "art giveaway" and that she wants me to put them all to the best possible use, raising funds for Mossburn, Rain Rescue and FOSTBC. So there you go. I was totally blown away by this gesture. Top lady.  Now, of course, the responsibility falls upon me to use them wisely,  not that I need any encouragement, as again I have spent much more time painting this week than I really should, and while doing it, I have been as happy as a pig in archives, to the detriment of my burgeoning “to do” list, and next week I really do need to stop fannying about like Fotherington-Thomas and get down to some real work!

I have also been watching quite a lot of TV, especially about the first world war, which is all over the BBC at the moment, for obvious reasons. Debbie and I argue about the causes of the first world war (well, it  makes a change from whose turn it was to pay the gas bill) but I maintain that it was certainly not helped by rivalry over naval power and empire, military brinkmanship,  unwise treaties, and the speed and ease with which armies could be mobilized, compared to wars of previous centuries.  So it was with a considerable amount of trepidation that I looked upon the unfolding events in Ukraine this week.

No sooner has the Winter Olympics at Sotchi come to an end, than Mr Putin reverts to type and in a desperate attempt to assert his masculinity and prove he is not gay, he sends in several plane loads of no doubt heterosexual Russian commandos and special forces, to seize the airport and protect the Crimean bases of the Russian fleet. In response, Ukraine mobilizes its army in turn.  Thank God we haven’t gone and signed any treaties this time around that might have committed us to safeguarding Ukrainian neutrality, like we had for Belgium in 1914.  Ah. Er, except for The Budapest Memorandum, which sounds like it might be a book by Tom Clancy, but is in fact an agreement signed in 1991 by Bill Clinton, John Major, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma - the then-rulers of the USA, UK, Russia and Ukraine. It promises we will protect Ukraine's borders, in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. A definite brown-trouser moment. I think it’s time to check if that old air raid shelter on the Isle of Arran is still for sale.  Those of us who thought John Major would go down in history  merely for the cones hotline and shagging Edwina Currie may yet be forced to think again.

Not that the Crimea has a monopoly on crackpot politicians with dangerous right-wing views. Torquay, of all places, was invaded this week by the lunatic fringe of UKIP. Actually, UKIP is a party where the fabric and the fringe are the other way on.  Normally the fringe is something narrow along the edge. In UKIP we have a party which is 99% lunatic fringe.  Although Nigel Farage, bless him, did say one thing this week which is absolutely, 100% true, and with which (whisper it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon) I absolutely, 100% agree with him.

Farage told members attending the party conference that because Britain is unable to challenge freedom of movement within the EU the government is "conning the public that we have a degree of control over this". I agree with him because I was saying this even before he was.  However, I totally disagree with his proposed solutions for it, coming as they do with a generous but subtle leavening of BNP-lite racism and bigotry, but you can’t deny he is right, and the sooner mainstream politicians stop posturing and farting about and actually start to deal with that problem, the better, because at present there is a dangerous  power vacuum which is in grave peril of being filled by UKIP, giving us a country where women are compelled by law to clean behind the fridge, gay people are put in the stocks for causing localised flooding, and anyone vaguely brown is deported to Bongo-Bongo Land.

The more I look at the news, actually, these days, the more I find myself shaking my head in disbelief. It seems that the US National Security Agency has been snooping on the Yahoo webcam chats of millions of people. A leaked GCHQ report into this practice, which found its way into the media, stated, rather plummily:

"Unfortunately … it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person"

I don't know which I find more disturbing, actually: the thought of NSA analysts trawling through millions of images of one-handed mouse clickers with their faces contorted at the moment of bliss, in the hope of finding someone naked but for a suicide vest; or the fact that this particular specific use of web cams seems to have come as a surprise to GCHQ! A sub to "Beautiful Agony" would have been cheaper, quicker, and probably more educational.

Also leaked this week were a set of compliance reports by Natural England’s badger cull monitors. They showed that some badgers killed in the plot culls were shot in the wrong body area including the head, or were wounded. Two of them were wounded, chased, and had to be shot a second time. In one case five to 10 minutes elapsed between the first and second shot. We’ve already established that the culls were ineffective and that they were expensive – for what it cost to kill each badger, they could have put them up at the Ritz for 11 days – and now we have, officially confirmed, that it was cruel and inhumane as well.  Despite this, however,  George Eustice, the Farming Minister, is reported to have said the Government would not be duty bound to follow the advice of its independent expert panel, and that the cap on licences to kill in England, currently restricted to 10 per year, could be lifted!

Should we be surprised? Not really. The Junta likes killing defenceless targets. I think they actually get off on it.  This week, as part of Iain Duncan Smith’s continuing blitzkrieg on the ill, the DWP sent a letter to a woman in Lancashire who has been in a coma for two months, suggesting she should up her game and make more effort to find a job! Quite right, too, lazy article, lying there all day – the least she could do is apply to be an extra in Casualty.  The letter was condemned by her MP, Labour member Simon Danczuk, which sounds as it should be, until you remember he is the twonk who suggested there was nothing wrong with making fresh claimants wait an extra fortnight. Given Labour’s lamentable lack of anything which might be construed as opposition, I expect Rachel Reeves to pop up any day now saying she totally approves of the DWP’s letter and that if elected in 2015, Labour would go further, and insist that the ashes of dead pensioners should be used by the council to grit the roads in icy conditions, as the country simply can no longer afford to pay them for doing nothing.

And so we came to Sunday, the feast day of St Chad. Chad, who lived from 634-672AD, is the patron saint of Mercia, Lichfield, and astronomers.  Most of what we know of St Chad comes from the writing of the venerable Bede, who in turn got it at first hand from the monks of Lastingham, where both Chad and his brother Cedd were abbots.

St Chad appears to have originally been Irish, and was trained by St Aidan at Lindisfarne, then spent some time in Ireland with St Egbert. At the time when St Chad was flourishing, the Benedictine Rule was spreading across Europe, and there was still a dichotomy in Britain between the Celtic version of Christianity and the Roman version, including over when Easter was to be celebrated, and the style of monastic tonsure. I know life was short, nasty and brutish in the 7^th century, but wouldn’t it be nice today if all we had to argue over was different hairstyles and the dates of official holidays? 

The early church in the area was deeply intertwined with the ruling Northumbrian dynasty and another of Chad’s brothers, Caelin, introduced Ethelwald to Cedd.  Ethelwald, a nephew of King Oswiu, had been appointed to administer the coastal area of Deira. Caelin suggested to Ethelwald the foundation of a monastery, in which he could one day be buried, and where prayers for his soul would continue, and according to Bede, Ethelwald, practically forced on Cedd a gift of a desolate place at Lastingham, near Pickering, on the North York Moors, and told him to build his monastery there.

By 664AD, Cedd has died of the plague and Chad succeeded to the position of abbot at Lastingham. Apparently he would break off reading whenever a gale sprang up, and call on God to have pity on humanity. If the storm intensified, he would shut his book altogether and prostrate himself in prayer. During prolonged storms or thunderstorms he would go into the church itself to pray and sing psalms until calm returned. His monks obviously regarded this as an extreme reaction even to English weather and asked him to explain. Chad explained that storms are sent by God to remind humans of the day of judgement and to humble their pride, which these days we can probably refer to as the UKIP position. He would have had his work cut out this last winter.

King Oswiu eventually got around to asking St Chad to become bishop of Northumbria, stepping into a prolonged and complicated wrangle over who should succeed to the post, some of the earlier contenders having also succumbed to the plague. The successor should really have been St Wilfred, but Bede seems to imply that Oswiu got fed up of waiting for Wilfred to return home after his ordination, and decided to step in and take action.  The designation of bishop of Northumbria eventually spread to include York. Chad spent his time travelling and preaching, but he was soon to fall foul of the continuing rivalry between Celtic and Roman Christian traditions.

In 669, a new Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, sent by Pope Vitalian arrived in England. He immediately set off on a tour of the country, bent on tackling abuses and rooting out unorthodox practice. He instructed Chad to step down and Wilfrid, who had by now returned, to take over. According to Bede, Theodore was so impressed by Chad's humility that he did at least confirm his ordination as bishop, while still insisting he step down from his position. Chad retired gracefully and returned to his post as abbot of Lastingham, and  Wilfrid now became bishop of the Northumbrians at York.

There was, however, to be one last twist. Later that same year, King Wulfhere of Mercia requested a bishop. Wulfhere had converted to Christianity, but  Archbishop Theodore refused to consecrate a new bishop. Instead he recalled Chad out of his retirement at Lastingham. Chad was consecrated bishop of the Mercians and of the Lindsey people, meaning more or less the whole of modern Lincolnshire was under Mercian control at that time.

Chad's responsibilities centred on the middle Trent and lower Tame, the area around Tamworth, Lichfield and Repton but Wulfhere donated land at Lichfield for Chad to build a monastery. It was because of this that the centre of the Diocese of Mercia ultimately became settled at Lichfield. The Lichfield monastery was probably partly staffed by monks from Lastingham, including Chad's old retainer, Owin.

There was also an outpost in Lindsey, referred to by Bede as “Ad Barwae”. This is probably Barrow upon Humber: where an Anglo-Saxon monastery has been excavated. This was easily reached by river from the Midlands and close to an easy crossing of the River Humber, from Winteringham to Brough Haven, or from South Ferriby to North Ferriby [although these days it crouches under the shadow of the Humber Bridge] allowing rapid communication along surviving Roman roads with Lastingham. Chad remained abbot of Lastingham throughout his life, and rotated his time between that monastery and the communities at both Lichfield and Barrow on Humber, covering difficult terrain, with woodland, heath and mountain over much of the centre and large areas of marshland to the east. Chad worked in Mercia and Lindsey for two and a half years before he too died of plague. Yet St. Bede considered that Chad's two years as bishop were decisive in the conversion of Mercia.

St Chad died on 2nd March 672, and was buried at the Church of Saint Mary which later became part of the cathedral at Lichfield, but in true saintly fashion, he couldn’t just die, it had to be a major production number.

Bede says that Owin the retainer was working outside the oratory at Lichfield. Suddenly, Owin heard the sound of joyful singing, coming from heaven, gradually coming closer until it filled the roof of the oratory itself. Then there was silence for half an hour, followed by the same singing going back the way it had come.

An hour later, Chad called him in and told him to fetch the seven brothers from the church. Chad gave his final address to the brothers, urging them to keep the monastic discipline and then he told them that he knew his own death was near, speaking of death as "that friendly guest who is used to visiting the brethren". He asked them to pray, then blessed them and dismissed them. Owin returned a little later and saw Chad privately. He asked about the singing. Chad told him that he must keep it to himself, but that the angels had come to call him to his heavenly reward, and in seven days they would return to fetch him. So it was that Chad weakened and died on 2nd March, which remains his feast day.

St Chad appears to have been one of those saints who, like St Cuthbert, continued travelling after death. According to Bede, Chad was venerated as a saint almost immediately after his death, and his relics were translated to a new shrine at Lichfield. He remained the centre of an important cult throughout the Middle Ages. The cult was commemorated in two places - his tomb, in the apse, directly behind the high altar of Lichfield cathedral; and more particularly his skull, which was kept in a special Head Chapel, above the south aisle.

At the dissolution of the Shrine during the Reformation, in about 1538, Prebendary Arthur Dudley of Lichfield Cathedral removed and retained some relics, probably a travelling set.  [Shades of the reliquary designed as carry on luggage for air travel, which might have come from Father Ted but was actually used in the case of St Therese of Lisieux]. These relics were eventually passed to Dudley’s nieces, Bridget and Katherine Dudley, of Russells Hall. In 1651, they reappeared, when a farmer Henry Hodgetts of Sedgley was on his death-bed and kept praying to St Chad. When the priest hearing his last confession, Fr Peter Turner SJ, asked  the old farmer why he called upon Chad. Henry replied, "because his bones are in the head of my bed".

He instructed his wife to give the relics to the priest, and they found their way to the Seminary at St Omer, in France. After the persecution of Catholics had lessened somewhat,  in the early 19th century, the relics found their way to Sir Thomas Fitzherbert-Brockholes of Aston Hall, near Stone, Staffordshire. When his chapel was cleared after his death, his chaplain, Fr Benjamin Hulme, discovered the box containing the relics, which were then examined and presented to Bishop Thomas Walsh, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District in 1837 and were enshrined in the new St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, opened in 1841, in a new ark designed by A. W.  Pugin.  At the present time, the remaining relics, some long bones, are now on the high altar of St Chad’s RC cathedral in Birmingham, and have been authenticated as 'true relics' by the Vatican authorities. Just as well, after all their travels and travails.

Since 1919, an Annual Mass and Solemn Outdoor Procession of the Relics has been held at St Chad's Cathedral, on the Saturday nearest to his Feast Day, 2nd March. In folklore, St. Chad's Day is traditionally considered the most propitious day to sow broad beans in England, so I hope you have got yours in. I haven’t, but I must remember to add a tin to the next Sainsbury’s order, in his honour.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you St Chad.  Again, I think, at such a distance it is difficult to see what made him saintly, especially at a time when religion and the struggle for political hegemony in an emerging nation were so inextricably mixed. By Bede’s account though, he was a humble man, preferring to walk everywhere rather than to ride, and I was struck in that respect by his likeness to Fr Vincent McNabb, of whom I have written in previous blogs. He used to tramp round the streets of his London parish wearing a cassock and army boots, ministering to the poor, and he once wrote:

"Buy boots you can walk in. Walk in them. Even if you lessen the income of the General Omnibus Company, or your family doctor; you will discover the human foot. On discovering it, your joy will be as great as if you had invented it. But this joy is the greatest, because no human invention even of Mr. Ford or Mr. Marconi is within a mile of a foot."

And of course, St Chad’s premonition of his own death is echoed by Fr McNabb’s last sermon, delivered to his wartime congregation at the Sisters of Mercy in 1943:

"And now dear sisters, I have some very good news for you. This is the last time I shall be speaking to you together in this chapel. You know in these days everyone is being called up.... I too have been called up!... And for what? To the King of Kings, and that not for the duration but for Life Everlasting! The words of the Psalm, Rejoice at the things that were said to me - with joy I have entered the House of the Lord, are filling my heart with joy."

Well, dear reader, let’s hope we can all avoid getting called up, in either the wartime or the religious sense, a little while longer. If I can just hold out and do a few dozen or a few hundred more paintings, while I can still hold a paintbrush, and before the cataracts which the optician blithely mentioned kick in,  I can at least raise some more money for “my” charities and do some good with what remains of my life. You may think, as I do sometimes, that this is a bit of a comedown – has my life really come to this – but on the other hand, you know what they say; before you criticise a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes – then, when you do criticise him, you will be a mile away. And, more crucially, you will also have his shoes.

Painting is strangely liberating, though, and of course in my case, I won’t be walking anywhere in anyone’s shoes any time soon, bitter-sweet as it would be to hear ATOS declare me fit, if I could do so.  No, next week’s work beckons the hands, and no doubt it will be another week when I find myself wondering, along with Morrisey, why I give valuable time to people who don’t care if I live or die. I was looking for a job, and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now. And it’s somehow already St Chad’s day, and I haven’t got my broad beans in yet.  Still, we press on. I’ve often said life is like a pilgrimage, but Vincent McNabb says it’s more like a sermon:

"Some people say, I do not like sermons . I never go to hear a sermon. They do not know that these very words are themselves a sermon. They do not realise that every deed done in the sight or hearing of another is a preached sermon. The best or the worst of all sermons is a life led.

So I guess I had better get on with this sermon called life, and hope and pray that we’re not reading the next instalment in a fallout shelter. Heaven knows I’m miserable now, but heaven has also sent me a mission to paint, I guess. It’s too early to say if this is the answer to the question I’ve been asking in many different ways since 2010, but, as the Zen masters say – sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

 

 

Epiblog for the Feast of St Boswell

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley.  The bad weather has shown some signs of letting up, though, and the endless succession of storms that have marched like a series of conquering armies across the south and west seems to have come to a temporary halt. For us, here in the Holme Valley, this has meant days when, yes, it was still windy and raining, but has often been sunny at exactly the same time. Dodging the showers has led to many instances of soggy doggies, and rainbow-spotting.

Matilda’s been skittering about on the decking, trying to cope with the changing weather. One minute she’ll be sitting in the sun at the top of the garden steps, surveying her domain for any signs of Spidey from next door, or dicky-birds that might not have seen her. Then it starts hailstoning and she streaks past the window, belly flat to the ground and ears back, seeking the shelter of Deb’s tarpaulin over the camp cooker. As soon as the first blast of the shower has passed, she’s up at the door, meowing furiously to be let back in. This has been an oft-repeated cycle, over the last seven days.

The week started with us both barking and snuffling. Debbie’s cold was two days behind mine, but, by now, we’d both reached the disgusting stage where the cold, and all that it entails, was physically leaving us, in a raging storm of snot, phlegm, mucus, and discarded tissues.  Thankfully, Debbie had already decided over the weekend that there was no way on God’s green earth she could get into College this week to do any teaching.  Apart from anything else, in order to teach somebody something, you need to be able to speak to them, and see them; two things of which Debbie was incapable on Monday morning.

She was also deaf to the world, which proved to be rather inconvenient on Monday morning when I was getting out of bed and transferring to my wheelchair, and fell off the banana board onto the floor.  It was my own fault, I was hurrying and trying to wing it on my own, because I knew Debbie was ill in bed upstairs and I had to get up and do stuff. I felt the chair starting to slide away from me, and instead of doing the sensible thing and going back, re-seating the board and trying again, I decided to press on regardless, figuring that one last push would take me into the chair.  Sir Isaac Newton, however, had other ideas, gravity took its toll, and I ended up crashing to the floor in a blubbery mass.

I took stock. I could still wiggle everything, so I hadn’t broken anything, I guessed. I would, however, no doubt have some spectacular bruises on my arse and my elbow, assuming I could tell the difference, which is always a moot point.  More than anything else, I was furious with myself for ending my long unbroken run of successful transfers: previously, I had only fallen off my banana board twice in the preceding three years.  Anyway, there was nothing for it, unable to get myself up, dust myself down, and start all over again, I had no option but to call in the cavalry to come and put Humpty together again.

I dialled 999, and explained the situation, and they asked me various questions such as was I bleeding or anything, and then told me help was on the way. The only problem now was that the ambulance men would not be able to get in, because the house was still locked up, bolted, barred and chained. So, reluctantly, I would have to rouse Debbie. I shouted, but – not surprisingly, given that she was effectively upstairs in the other side of the house and had taken enough flu remedies and painkillers to stun a fairly large elephant – she failed to hear me.  I tried dialling her on my mobile, and it went to voicemail, six or seven times in succession.

Soon, my attention was distracted by an ambulance man looking at me through the window, and while I was miming to him that I was locked in and he needed to go and shut under Debbie’s bedroom window, his controller called me back on my mobile, and I told her the situation and what he needed to do.  Somehow, the message must have got fairly quickly to his colleague, because I could hear her standing in the front garden, yelling “DEBBIE!” as loud as her lungs would manage.

Then medic number one returned to the window and I mimed to him that I was going to try and crawl to Colin’s side door and let him in that way. I got as far as the doorway leading to the lobby when Debbie appeared, having finally been roused from her sleep of a thousand years.

I filled her in on the situation and she flitted off to let them in, and then my bedroom was suddenly filled with ambulance men and women all talking on their radio and doing that “10-24 officer down bravo echo tango bacon sandwich” type speech that you have to use by law if you are in the emergency services.  I did, however, catch them telling the police to “stand down”, so it would seem we narrowly avoided having our door battered in, in order to effect an entrance, as they put it.  As with all NHS operations, it took them five minutes to fix me (two of them picked me up in a sort of cross-armed firemans’ lift, as used by cross-armed firemen the world over, and dumped me in my chair) and half an hour to do the paperwork afterwards.  Anyway, they went away happy, and I had signed to say that basically I still had all my legs, I wasn’t diabetic, or allergic to anything, apart from gravity, and if I died now, it was my own fault for not breathing.

Having got that crisis out of the way, I looked forward to the remainder of Monday passing in relative peace and tranquillity, in order for me to recover and “centre” myself, in the current phrase beloved of New Age psychobabble.  The washing up needed doing. Having made myself a coffee, I started in on it, because it was exactly the sort of mindless task that would allow me to smooth out my ruffled mental feathers. What could possibly go wrong?

Dropping a wine glass for a start.  The thing squirmed out of my grasp like a live fish, and landed on the tiled portion of the kitchen floor. I have occasionally got away with this, in the past, but this time it didn’t bounce, it shattered into a few thousand shards of shrapnel. Heaving a big sigh, I began picking up the pieces, and of course stuck one of them into my thumb. Having safely gathered the big bits, I swept up the rest, and then Debbie, cursing me for a clumsy oaf, roused herself from the couch for long enough to hoover up the dust, and order was restored.

By now, the postman had arrived, and I was looking forward to the arrival of the little desk lamp I’d ordered off Amazon to help me paint in the evenings when the light in here is dim and eye-strain is the order of the day. I’d noted that it came without a bulb, but the Amazon software did its usual thing of “people who bought this lamp also bought these bulbs”, so I’d ordered three of them, as well. It turned out, however, that the people who had ordered “these” bulbs were quixotic idiots  who had ordered the wrong size, ones that didn’t fit, and so was I, for mindlessly following their example. Still, I reflected, as I put them wearily aside to sort out later, at least we now know the answer to that age-old question about “how many publishers does it take to change a light bulb?” The answer is, nearly one.

On her way back from the lobby with the post, Debbie caught her foot on the edge of the dog’s dish and catapulted the muttnuts in it all over the kitchen floor.  I briefly considered a Munch-type scream but the moment passed and I began picking the scattered pellets up one by one with my grab-stick. I had counted 174 before Debbie got fed up of me bemoaning the fact that, since I had an honours degree from the University of London, upper second division, I shouldn’t have to do this, and joined me in restoring the remainder of them to Misty’s bowl.

By now, I was wishing I had just stayed in bed.  The only bright spot of the day was that the postman had also brought our replacement hot water bottles. Because two of the old ones had perished, literally as well as metaphorically, in the ceaseless fight against the winter cold in our house, I’d ordered two new ones, which duly arrived from China, again via Amazon, complete with the following instructions sheet:

Rubber Heat Water Bag - Direction

1. Heat water bag is used in medical treatment health and common live to get warm

2 The water temperature that the heat water bag used should be around 90 degrees C. The water should be not over 2/3 than the capacity of the heat water bag.

3. After filling water, must let the air in the heat water bag out and let the screw tight. Check if there is leak water phenomenon.

4. When baby use the heat water bag, should let the heat water bag a little far from baby.

5. When the heat water bag is used or storage must avert it to be weight on or stabed, not touch sour, alkali, oil and sunlight shoot.

6. Storage heat water bag should fill a little air inside. Put it in shady environment.

7. The dirt on the heat water bag can be washed by soap water than use water wash it clean.

8. The heat water bag should not be put n the display window so long time, especially the display window in the sunlight shoot.

All of which we found predictably hilarious, although I did say at the time that there was absolutely no way in which I could instruct a Chinaman in the correct usage of a hot-water bottle (or heat water bag) either in Cantonese or Mandarin. Still, it gave us a chance to reprise all the old “Waiter, this hot water bottle is rubbery! Ah, thank you, Sir!” jokes. No doubt the Chinese find us screamingly funny, and no doubt my name means “donkey testicle” or something in Cantonese.

Still, at least the worst is over, I thought, as I trundled out to the lobby to get some coal for the stove. When the coalman delivered, he had stacked it in a stack of 6 and a stack of 8 sacks, instead of two stacks of 7. No problem, I reckoned. I could just gently slit the top sack of the 8-hgh stack and remove the coal bit by bit. Unfortunately this course of action, which sounded fine n principle, resulted in the coal moving inside the sack, destabilising the teetering mass even further and sending the 25K plastic bag crashing to the ground, narrowly missing my foot, but catching the corner of my wheelchair tray (the very one I had repaired the previous week) and bending it down out of shape. Further examination revealed that the only way it will go back again is to be put in a vice and whacked with a large lump-hammer, and if Clarks can’t do it, it’ll have to wait till Owen comes up again.

So that was Monday, and in truth, I have had better days.  The rest of the week, thank God, was easier. The stock imbroglio remained an enigma, with no sign of a return of serve, so I left that cage unrattled (if I may be allowed to mix the odd metaphor).  It’s just as well nothing else challenging happened, since we were both seeing the world through a haze of man-flu and spent hours dozing when we should have been working. Or in my case, painting.  The elusive portfolio still remains at large in the wild somewhere, so I have decided, like Carlyle, to start again.

The pleasant highlight of the week, for me at any rate, was a trip to Radio Leeds to be interviewed by Martin Kelner for the “One-on-One” programme on Thursday afternoon.  This necessitated a trip in a taxi, both ways. On the outward leg, I got into a conversation with the driver about which team I supported, and I said Hull City. He asked me what I thought about the current owner’s plans to re-brand them as “Hull Tigers”, incorporating the club’s unofficial nickname (on account of their black and amber strip) into the official name of the club. I said not a lot, and that the owners had obviously badly misjudged it, since the supporters’ club had obtained thousands of petition signatures telling him not to do it.

“I think it’s because he’s trying to get them to be big in the Asian market,” said the taxi driver, “but it’s not as if they’re Manchester United!”  I was tempted to add a “Thank God”, at that point, but by now we were there, or at least his sat nav said we were. Of BBC Radio Leeds, however, there was no sign. We were parked (temporarily) outside the Northern Ballet. “Are you sure this isn’t it?” asked the taxi driver, and I assured him that my dancing days were over.  Then we saw the metal BBC sign sticking out round a corner, and in a few moments he’d deposited me outside and pushed me into the foyer.

The whole thing was a very slick, very well-managed operation and I was well looked after by the BBC. I really enjoyed the interview. Martin Kelner is a knowledgeable and professional broadcaster and interviewer, and it seemed we shared some tastes in music and (more improbably) T S  Eliot. Like all enjoyable experiences, it was over far too quickly, and I found myself in a different taxi, heading back to Huddersfield.  “So,” said the driver, “which team do you support, then?” It must be something they learn at taxi driver college. Anyway, I found myself agreeing with this one on at least two points; one, Mourinho should have been Manchester United’s new manager and two, that Fulham were toast on toast, with a side of toast, this season.  And then I was home.

Friday was the start of half-term for Debbie, since she didn’t have any classes that day – not that she’d have been in a fit state to teach anybody anything – and she was starting to make noises about maybe going off for a few days in the camper, so I made a desperate effort to try and catch up on everything else, but since I was so banjaxed by the after-effects of the cold, I ended up only achieving about a quarter of the things that I’d intended. At that point, I called it a day for the week, at least mentally, and spent Saturday painting.  Debbie watched the rugby, the stove ticked away, the kitchen was warm and snug, Misty was asleep on her cushion, Matilda snoozing on the chair, and all was right with the world.  Then the phone rang.

It was a paramedic from the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham.  He was ringing because he was looking after Deb’s dad. Grandad had got a lift with one of his mates to go and watch the National Cross-Country Championships in Wollaton Park, and somehow, the arrangement to get a lift back had fallen through, leaving him wandering alone and hypothermic in the dark, long after everyone else had gone home. Hence the encounter with the paramedics.  He was fine, they reassured us, and they had organised him a taxi to come home, but they just needed someone to pay for it. His home number was ringing out unanswered and he couldn’t remember his wife’s mobile. 

I filled them in briefly on some of his extensive medical history and cautioned them that he was not a well man.  Then I gave them Granny’s mobile, and rang her myself to tell her not to panic when she got a call from the paramedics in a minute or two.  So, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, it might really have been the end, to be stuck inside of Nottingham with a mobile phone again, except that Grandad doesn’t carry a mobile phone, a state of affairs which may need to be rectified in future. On this occasion at least, thankfully, he came to no harm. And, one way or another, the family has done its bit this week for the NHS and the long-distance taxi industry.

With so much going on here this week, and the remaining gaps being filled with coughs, sneezes, and spreading diseases, I’ve scarcely had time to comprehend any news from outside the Holme Valley, but I did note that, during the week, following on from the attack made by Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who pointed out the essential immorality of benefits cuts forcing people to use food banks, a further 40 faith leaders, no less, including 27 Anglican bishops, signed an open letter dated March 5^th and published in The Daily Mirror to mark the beginning of Lent, condemning the Blight Brigade for their war on the poor.  The bishops, who included those of Oxford, Gloucester, Newcastle and Manchester, pointed to figures showing that 5,500 people were admitted to hospital for malnutrition in the UK last year, while records show half a million were forced to visit food banks.

In the letter, the bishops said the figures were unacceptable for “the world’s seventh largest economy”, continuing:

“We often hear talk of hard choices. Surely few can be harder than that faced by the tens of thousands of older people who must 'heat or eat' each winter, harder than those faced by families whose wages have stayed flat while food prices have gone up 30 per cent in just five years. We must, as a society, face up to the fact that over half of people using food banks have been put in that situation by cutbacks to and failures in the benefit system, whether it be payment delays or punitive sanctions.”

“We call on government to do its part: acting to investigate food markets that are failing, to make sure that work pays, and to ensure that the welfare system provides a robust last line of defence against hunger.”

Responding to the bishops' calls, Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves said: “This letter should be a wake-up call to David Cameron.” This is the same Rachel Reeves who has publicly declared that, if they come to power, Labour will be even tougher on benefits than the Tories. Remind me again, is there a Nobel prize for hypocrisy?

The thing is, though, the debate about food banks and their causes, their virtues and vices, is at last gaining ground. Despite the attempts of die-hard Tories to focus the discussion elsewhere, or dismiss such talk as “divisive” (this, from a Junta that specialises in ‘divide and rule’) it is getting to the point where the clamour is becoming impossible to ignore.  And it is a debate we urgently need to have, because according to the London Food bank Blog, the DWP are now “rationing” food bank vouchers.

Is an unofficial quota system for food bank vouchers operating at job centres? One man who called into a food bank in this London borough recently said he was told by his job centre that they’d given out 15 vouchers already that week. Persuading the staff there that he was in need was hard work. He said he did get a voucher eventually, but his experience begs a question. How many people in genuine need of an emergency supply of food are now being refused a food voucher by job centres?

How many indeed? This is a question perhaps for the enquiry on the effect of government policies on poverty, which Parliament has voted for, but which the Junta is ignoring on the grounds that it would be very embarrassing. Meanwhile, on Thursday, an all-party group of MPs launched an inquiry into the causes of UK food poverty and food bank use. The inquiry will be headed by the Bishop of Truro, Tim Thornton, and inquiry members include Labour MP Frank Field and Tory backbencher Laura Sandys. Good luck with that. Still, every little helps, as Tesco are fond of saying, as they skip tonnes of perfectly edible food.

They could save themselves a lot of time and effort by reading the report which was commissioned by DEFRA on poverty and food bank use back in June, and which has been gathering cobwebs in someone’s in tray ever since.  Finally, on Friday, it slipped out under the wire, and it’s devastating stuff, albeit entirely predictable. The Guardian reported that:

The researchers found that a combination of rising food prices, shrinking incomes, low pay and increasing personal debt meant an increasing number of families could not afford to buy sufficient food.

No shit, Sherlock. The Guardian went on to say:

Examining the effect of welfare changes on food bank use was not a specific part of its remit, says the report, which is understood to have undergone a number of revisions since early summer at the behest of the Department for Food and Agriculture and the Department for Work and Pensions.

Ha ha ha ha. You bet it has. “Revisions” consisting of Iain Duncan Smith scribbling “No” and inserting the word “Not” in red pen, at various strategic points in the text.

Still, once more we have a situation where the Church seems to be the only effective opposition, since Labour have already sad they will be worse, and conceded the debate.  Beastrabban, a blogger who specialises in the benefits debate, posted a very interesting analysis of the attitude to the poor in the early days of the Church, a small part of which I reproduce below:

The Fathers of the Church believed that superfluous wealth belonged to the poor. The great medieval theologian and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, stated that

According to natural law goods that are held in superabundance by some people should be used for the maintenance of the poor. This is the principle enunciated by Ambrose … It is the bread of the poor you are holding back; it is the clothes of the naked which you are hoarding; it is the relief and liberation of the wretched which you are thwarting by burying your money away.

St. Basil, in his sermon ‘On Mercy and Justice’, stated that if the rich did not making offering to God to feed the poor, they would be accused of robbery. This was reflected in another of Pauper’s statements

Withholding of alms from the poor needy folk is theft in the sight of God, for the covetous rich withdraw from the poor folk what belongs to them and misappropriate the poor men’s goods, with which they should be succoured.

Ambrose went further and stated that those, who did not provide food for the starving killed them. Pauper also made the same statement when he referred to the Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

If any man or woman dies for lack of help, then all who should have helped, or might have helped, or knew the person’s plight, but who would not help are guilty of manslaughter.

Are you listening, IDS? And do the names Mark and Helen Mullins ring any bells?

ATOS, the private company which is making millions out of misery by operating the Junta’s “assessments” aimed at knocking people off benefits, has said this week it wants to pull out of the contract, citing the fact that its staff have been receiving abuse and death threats. Basically, ATOS’s stance is “we were only obeying orders” (where have we heard that one before) and the catalyst for this announcement was the UK-wide day of protest against ATOS at various centres throughout Wednesday.

The Junta replied that ATOS were rubbish anyway, and the DWP was already looking for alternatives.  If you were looking for an illustration of rats fighting in a sack, look no further. And I also have to observe that, while the allegation about death threats is regrettable, if true, perhaps the attitude of ATOS staff in referring to all benefit claimants as “LTBs” (it stands for “lying, thieving bastards” in case you wondered”) may have contributed to the situation. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but perhaps ATOS should have paused to consider the numbers of people who have actually died after being declared fit for work by ATOS, and possibly even as a result of it.

And finally, no, not a skateboarding duck, but the sound of the recovery falling into a pothole, after George Osborne was forced to concede that the tax revenues and other government income expected to top £7.5bn this month by experts, actually netted £4.7bn. Still a surplus, yes, but down from last year’s £6.5bn, and attributed to the falling tax take from a faltering, stuttering economy, caused by, er, George Osborne. As I have said many times, if you owe somebody 100 apples, you do not pay them back by cutting down the orchard.

At the end of a fairly bludgeoning week, then, we woke today to St Boswell’s day, to a fine sunny morning and a howling, horizontal gale bending the trees down the valley. St Boswell, also called “Boisil”, died in 661AD and was the Abbot of Melrose Abbey. He studied under St Aidan and served as a biblical scholar. He is reputed to have trained both St Cuthbert and St Egbert. His chief claim to saintly fame seems to have been the gift of prophecy, which unfortunately didn’t extend to seeing the plague coming, since he caught it and died.  ATOS then declared him fit for work. 

Once again, I’ve not had a very spiritual week, and to be honest, unlike St Boswell, I failed to predict several things, to my detriment, and mostly involving the effects of gravity. What I need to do is to shake off this feeling of having a head full of cotton wool, and come through this “dark night of the body” that seems to be oppressing me these days. The feeling that I am using every atom of my energy just to get through the day. I can ill afford the time, and I am not sure Debbie is up to it anyway, but if we could get away to the Lakes for a couple of days in the camper, seeing the hills again would do me the world of good. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills”. I have to say, though, that the omens are not propitious. We will have to overcome illness, inertia, lack of motivation, weather, and several practical tasks that I can’t leave undone before I go. I could certainly do to see the world in a grain of sand again, and experience infinity in an hour, something which is always easier to do, I find, when you are under the protection of the Old Man of Coniston or in the lee of Helm Crag. In the mountains, there you feel free, as T S Eliot said.

Who knows, though? If the sun shines and the wind drops, we might yet manage it. And spring is coming; Maisie’s indestructible daffodils grow stronger and higher every day, and the snowdrops are now out in the garden. En route to Leeds, I saw my first crocuses of this year. More to the point, we’re almost through February, because today, as well as being St Boswell’s day, is also Reggie day, the day we remember little Reggie, Phillip’s cat, a re-homed feral, who died on this day in 1998 and who now, I hope, sits purring with the rest of them, on the lap of St Gertrude of Nivelles.  Sardines and cream are the plat du our in cat heaven, and if anyone deserved them, Reggie did. Reggie, you were remembered by those who still mss you. Sit terra tibi levis.

As for me, who knows. Last Monday was the worst day so far of 2014, a year which has been full of unpleasant surprises.  I have got some steel wool under the sink. If I start knitting now, I might just manage a suit of armour by morning.

Epiblog for the Feast of St Onesimus

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, and one where I have often found myself singing along with Feste, in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night:

When I was but a little tiny boy

With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain

A foolish thing was but a toy

For the rain it raineth every day

“The rain it raineth every day” seems to just about sum it up.  And, of course, it never rains but what it pours, to trot out the sort of thing Granny Fenwick would have said.  Actually, she always used to refer to this month as “February Filldyke”, and she’s not wrong this year. The weather has gone way beyond silly, it’s now two stops beyond Barking and well off the bus route, and it seems to be de rigueur for TV news anchors to have to present to camera while standing ankle-deep in a saturated solution of poo and sewage, lest they be thought faint-hearted, feeble, and out of touch.

Of all of us, Matilda’s life and routine has been the least disrupted by the weather, as she has developed the coping strategy, when it’s absolutely sheeting it down outside, of sticking her nose out of the conservatory door just enough to determine that today is going to be the cat equivalent of a “duvet day”, then jumping up onto Auntie Maisie’s cat blanket spread out on the chair, curling round, and going to sleep.

Even Misty, made of hardy mountain-dog stock, has become rather cheesed off at being turfed out into a garden that resembles the set of “Singing in the Rain” in order to do her necessaries. A couple of times when I have suggested that “wee-wees” might be in order, she has stopped at the open door and looked round at me with a pitying look intended to convey “If you think I am going out in that, you are out of your tiny little Chinese mind.”

So, cabin fever is the order of the day, and Matilda sits at the conservatory door watching “Cat TV”, in the form of the birds desperately trying to get the bread I put out on the decking for them, before it turns to mush and is washed away, while Misty is curled up on her dog-cushion behind the settee, with only the tip of her snout protruding to the outside world.  Occasionally, they meet in passing, and one day last week they almost “kissed” noses, while sniffing each other, before Matilda ruined the romantic moment by hissing at Misty and then uttering one of the special stock of low unearthly growls that she normally reserves for when she meets Spidey, next door’s cat, crossing our garden.

"It never rains but what it pours" more or less sums up my week as well. I don’t remember a year in recent times that has started so badly, with so many adverse challenges for me and mine.  Debbie has been battling the weather to get in and out of College, including the dusting of snow which we had on Wednesday, on top of the relentless wind and rain, and on a purely physical level, I’ve been seeing the week through a haze of man-flu and suffering as I started coming down with a cold on Tuesday which is only just leaving me as I type today, having reached the foul disgusting stage where it is coming out of my nose, my eyes, and probably my ears. Apologies if that’s too much information.

One bright spot in an other wise grim week was the unexpected visit of Mark’s son, Scott, on Tuesday, en route back from Tralee to the Isle of Arran, and having decided to do the journey via Huddersfield. As you do. We got to talking about pets, and he was telling me of his friend who owns a parrot that originally belonged to a Saudi prince in Saudi Arabia. Because it was forced to hear it several times a day, it began to mimic the Muezzin’s Islamic call to prayer, which led to a fatwa being placed on the unfortunate bird, but because its owner was a price, he managed to pull some strings and the death sentence was commuted to exile. It was shipped to Europe, where it passed through several owners before ending up on the Isle of Arran, where it no doubt continues to startle the good folk of that Isle, as they hurry to Kirk on a Sunday, with its cries of “Aaaa-allah-u-akbhar!”

My cold set in more or less a few hours after Scott had left, and much of Wednesday and Thursday was spent huddled dozing in my wheelchair, clutching a hot water bottle. The only thing I actually felt up to doing was painting, and even that was lacklustre. I still had to sort out the problem of moving the stock, however, which continued to be the thorn of my life and a bane in the flesh all week.  We have got it down from 44 pallets to 25, and of those, I have managed to find a home for 14, I think and hope.  My mood, already darkened by depression, cold, and the fact that every day it is grim, grey and pissing down, wasn’t improved by my receiving a snarty email reminding me that this agreement had resulted in “a substantial loss” for the company concerned.

I was very tempted to reply that, had I known I was going to keel over and nearly die, thus choking off any sales for between six and 18 months while I clawed my way painfully back to some sort of state of recovery, I would never have signed the bloody agreement either.  At the time, Barclays Bank, God strafe them, had just sandbagged me behind the ear with a lead-filled sock and taken away my overdraft, so, a bit like the multiple compartment design of the hull of the Titanic, it seemed like a good idea. At the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I might also have taken issue with the notion of “a substantial loss”. To me, “a substantial loss” is when you go overnight from being a director of two companies to being a hospital patient, narrowly escaping dying, losing the ability to walk, and being diagnosed with a progressive and incurable wasting disease. That’s what I would call “a substantial loss”. A “substantial loss” is when you are lying in a hospital bed and your erstwhile colleagues conspire in your absence to let you go, on the grounds that they can save a stack of money, and no-one speaks up for you or the good things you did while you were there. That’s what I would call a “substantial loss”. The rest is just money, and could have been rectified, given time and effort, and God knows I have tried over the last three years to dig myself out of the pit into which I slid in 2010.  OK, so now I will have to do the rest of that digging without a spade. Fine. I’ll survive, I’m a Fenwick.  When you’ve had some of those sorts of substantial losses, come back, and we’ll talk.

Not that they have a monopoly over questionable redundancy practices – one of my friends, who teaches in the same field as Debbie, albeit at another College, had a “substantial loss” of her very own this week, when she discovered her class had been cancelled when one of her students texted her to tell her. When she contacted the College administration to confirm, she was given a semi-literate explanation to the effect that a letter had been put in the post to her (no doubt from an office two doors along from hers). Welcome to the wonderful world and white heat of the thrusting Cameron/Osborne recovery, driven by ideology and managed by halfwits. What a waste of dog-farts.

The worst substantial loss, for me this week, though, was the loss of one of my online friends, who died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  On the face of it, it was an unlikely friendship, which began when her sister wrote me an email to tear me a new one about a poem I’d written about their family monument in Cleveland, Ohio.  I had made some references to the family (intending to use them as a paradigm for all of the people in that state in the US at the time) and in any case the poem was really “about” the nature of reality and whether death is the end (cheerful stuff) and not in any way a comment on the family escutcheon.

I had no idea that there were so many descendants still alive, but there were, a whole raft of them, and they were ornery as hell at this upstart from England writing about their family. Anyway, after many emails, we all became friends, and I used to get regular bulletins from Leslie about the life she enjoyed with her husband in Florida, going off on boating trips and about their getting “gussied up” as she put it, to go out to restaurants for their happy hour.  It was obviously a different world. We did have painting in common, though, and she actually painted one of me, from one of my online pics, and I hope I entertained her in her retirement with my tales of wild and woolly weather, and the doings of the various animals here at home and characters from The Archers. I’d known she was ill because she said, in the last message I got, that she’d had to give up painting for a while, but I didn’t know how ill, and now she’s gone.  Now, that is a substantial loss, to all her family, friends, and to the world at large. She was a kind, funny, talented lady, and we’re all the worse for her not being here.

The week progressed in a wild and windy way, see above, and on Wednesday night the plastic greenhouse that wasn’t previously damaged blew off the decking and down into the garden, where it currently remains. This is more of a minor irritant than anything else, but it’s just typical of the way this year has panned out so far that it was the good greenhouse which went, and not the broken one which has already been shredded by the wind and rain this winter, yet which still stands defiantly, its structure a scarecrow of sticks, rags and tatters.

Meanwhile, in the wilder world, now that the flood waters are lapping literally and metaphorically at the doorsteps of Tory-voting, middle-England heartlands, Cameron and all the other politicians have been wading through the floods in an effort to woo “floating” voters and to be seen to be caring. This is nothing new, of course, ever since hurricane Katrina in the US, all politicians have been aware of the damage that weather can do – to their prospects of re-election. Their attention can be selective, however. When the village of Toll Bar near Doncaster flooded in June 2007, there was coverage of the event in the national media, but it was nothing special. It was only a fortnight later, when the flooding hit the Cotswolds and all those picturesque little stone villages where the BBC executives and the politicians and the reporters all have their weekend cottages, that it became a news agenda priority.

That was Tony Blair and Labour, but something similar happened this week when Cameron came out with his “money is no object” speech.  This may yet come back to bite him on the bum, and actually I hope it does, since I always enjoy seeing hypocritical politicians hoist with their own petard.  There is actually money available, from the EU, which could be tapped right now, except that Cameron also knows that to be seen to be going “cap in hand” to the EU for a grant to fix flood damage would open a very large can of Eurosceptic worms, at a time when UKIP is already snapping at his knackers, electorally speaking.

So, where is the money to come from? If the likes of the Daily Mail are to be believed, it should come out of the overseas aid budget. I have my own issues with giving aid to countries which only spend it on missile systems or gold-plated taps in the presidential palace, but I don’t see why it has to be either/or. Plus there are other potential sources, such as the money we spend internationally promoting arms sales, to name but one.  And we are a rich country, says Mr Cameron. There are times when anger makes you incoherent, and I started to write a long diatribe about this, only to discover that the blogger Jane Young had already summed it up so much better:

So, here we are. Disabled people clearly don’t matter. Poor people clearly don’t matter. Older people matter a bit, but not enough to ensure social care is properly funded. But suddenly, after lots of people and communities have been suffering from dreadful flooding for many weeks, the Thames breaks its banks. As if by magic, the Prime Minister tells us “Money is no object. We are a wealthy country”. I feel sick.

When disabled people can’t get suitable housing, we have no money. When we need accessible public transport, we have no money. When poor families can’t afford both food and heating, we have no money. When people who appeal an incorrect “fit for work” decision need money to live on while their decision is “reconsidered”, we have no money. When those who care 24/7 for family members are penalised financially, simply to remain in their homes, we have no money. When A & E departments are under severe strain and sick people are waiting hours even to get into the hospital, we have no money.

BUT, when homes in middle England are flooded, money’s no object and we’re suddenly a wealthy country.

 

I can’t believe, by the way, that there are still some people who say all of this weird, freak and extreme weather has nothing to do with climate change. What will it take to remove the blinkers? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse wearing flashing deely-boppers, surfing a 500-foot Tsunami wave up the Severn Estuary?

Into the argument about whether money is no object stepped the unlikely figure of Cardinal-Designate Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic archbishop of England, proving once more that the only effective opposition to the Junta at the moment is the Church.

“People do understand that we do need to tighten our belts and be much more responsible and careful in public expenditure,” said the Archbishop to the Daily Telegraph “But I think what is happening is two things: one is that the basic safety net that was there to guarantee that people would not be left in hunger or in destitution has actually been torn apart. It no longer exists and that is a real, real dramatic crisis. And the second is that, in this context, the administration of social assistance, I am told, has become more and more punitive. So if applicants don’t get it right, then they have to wait for 10 days, for two weeks with nothing – with nothing. For a country of our affluence, that quite frankly is a disgrace.”

My own continuing battle against the misuse of statistics took a minor setback this week when the UK Statistics Authority wrote back to me and said they didn’t accept the point of my complaint against the BBC.  They pointed out that the figures used by the BBC in their report did come from official statistics and were right, neither of which I ever disputed. It was the way in which the BBC presented it as if these were people who had been caught swinging the lead and then withdrew their claims as a result, when in fact it took no account of claims later allowed on first or second appeal.  I am not sure I have either the strength or the time right now to write to them and correct this. The BBC has not even replied to my letter of complaint or indeed acknowledged it in any way.  Time to stop paying the licence fee for a while, in order to get their attention, perhaps.

The only other newsworthy event of note this week was that I found myself agreeing with something George Osborne said. Probably for the first, and I certainly hope the only, time. It was concerning the inadvisability of Scotland continuing to use the pound sterling after “independence”, should they vote “yes”.

Looking at recent developments I have been modifying my theory about Alex Salmond and "independence". It's always been my contention that Salmond never wanted "independence" in the true sense of the word. In that respect, the vote to have a referendum originally set him back on his heels, because it meant he could no longer carry on surfing the wave of casual anti-English sentiment (for reasons ranging from Culloden and the clearances through religion to oil to football) which voted SNP on the premise that "one day" Scotland would be "free" and he would now have to actually do something about it.

If Scotland voted to be truly independent, then the SNP would find itself in the position of the Imperial Cancer Fund on the morning someone discovers a cure for cancer. Oh shit, no raison d’etre and nowhere to go... So the wily Mr Salmond comes up with plan B, in the form of “Devo Max”, whereby Scotland retains all of the advantages of being within the UK, but has yet further powers devolved to it. That having been negated by Cameron, we're now on to plan C, where an independent Scotland looks pretty much the same as it does now, but Salmond gets to cherry-pick the things that will be electorally popular.

I don't know why it should have come as such a shock to Scotland that the UK government ruled out the use of the pound after a “yes” vote for independence. The Treasury has long had a phobic dread of cross-border currency sharing ever since our inglorious exit from the EMS. Brown hated the Euro and kept us out of it (thank God) and there is no way that a free-spending post "independence" Scotland could be allowed to run wild with the £ sterling and undermine its value. It'd be like giving your credit card to Nigella Lawson's stylist.

But my latest theory is that Salmond actually secretly welcomes this development, because if he now loses the vote, he can retire safely to "Dunleading, Isle of Arran" safe in the knowledge that he did his best and he will be forever remembered alongside Bonny Price Charlie and William Wallace.

I should say at this point I would have no problem with a truly independent Scotland, with its own currency, judicial system, armed forces, diplomatic system, passport etc and a border post at Gretna. However, I suspect that would be anathema to Alex Salmond, who wants Scotland to exist in a sort of "Schrodinger" state of neither independent or not independent, or both at once, or something. You can’t have it both ways.

Personally, as I have said before, I think the whole premise of the independence vote is barmy - self determination for an indigenous people who don't even live in the place its current inhabitants are voting for. I think the whole of the UK should have voted on this, as well, especially as there are probably more "Scots" living in England than Scotland.

As well as the currency issues, there are also constitutional matters to settle - if Scotland votes “yes” in 2014, do we expel the Scottish MPs from an English parliament at that point, or at the next general election in 2015?

Much has been made of the paucity of the "better together" campaign and I agree that most of the reasons for not voting “yes” can be summed up in the obverse of that phrase, "worse apart", but I also think many of the people lining up to vote “yes” are dong so on a platform of the Young Pretender, over the sea to Skye, tartan, Braveheart, and the Proclaimers, just to "stick it to the English" without thinking it through and, actually, without thinking that there might be English people who agree with some of their historical grievances and who do want to see a happy, prosperous and contented Scotland, but not at the expense of breaking up the UK and making the future for all of us more uncertain.

Meanwhile the drear wee dragged on, and Friday brought us to valentine’s day. Let it not be said that I didn’t give my wife anything for valentine’s day, because by Friday, Debbie, too, was streaming with my cold.  I tried to do my usual valentine’s day ritual of singing Dame Durden, and collapsed into a paroxysm of coughing.

'Twas on the morn of Valentine when birds began to prate
Dame Durden and her maids and men they altogether meet.

'Twas Moll and Bet and Doll and Kit and Dolly to drag her tail
It was Tom and Dick and Joe and Jack and Humphrey with his flail.
Then Tom kissed Molly and Dick kissed Betty
And Joe kissed Dolly and Jack kissed Kitty
And Humphrey with his flail
And Kitty she was the charming girl to carry the milking pail.

Valentine’s Day also makes me think inevitably of Geoffrey Chaucer and The Parliament of Fowlis, which sets out the premise that it’s the day when all of the birds choose their mates for the coming year. I did see two magpies out the back on Friday morning, a rare outbreak of joy, so who knows, it could be true.

`Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe,

That hast this wintres weders over-shake,

And driven awey the longe nightes blake!

`Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte; --

Thus singen smale foules for thy sake --

Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe,

That hast this wintres weders over-shake.

Yes, welcome summer – I can’t bloody wait.  Meanwhile Sunday brought us to the feast of St Onsiemus.  I must admit I chose to make this Epiblog about him because he had such a silly name and sounded as if he might have just invented one-piece fleecy pyjama suits with a bum-flap. But he didn’t.  He was a martyr and former slave, who died in AD 68.  St Paul, the man who more or less kept the Mediterranean postal system going single-handed after Jesus was crucified, mentions Onsiemus in a letter to Philemon, as a slave in Colossae, Phrygia, who ran away.  Paul met Onsiemus in a Roman prison, and baptised him. On his release, Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon with his epistle, asking Philemon to accept him as:

“no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man in the Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me. And if he has done you any injustice or owes you anything, charge it to me”.

In St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, Onesimus is again mentioned, as accompanying Tychicus, the bearer of the letter. The pre-1970 Roman Martyrology incorrectly identifies Onesimus with the bishop of Ephesus who followed St. Timothy as bishop of Ephesus and who was stoned to death in Rome. Other traditions maintain he was not stoned to death but was actually beheaded, and just to confuse matters further, in some traditions, his feast day is celebrated on 15^th February and not February 16^th.

So, there you have St Onesimus, whose chief claim to sainthood appears to be that he was some kind of personal postman to St Paul.  Sainthood by association, if you like.  Of course, it’s easy for me to scoff, as we are talking about things that happened one thousand nine hundred and thirty two years ago, things are bound to be a little sketchy.  I suppose Onesimus, if he indeed existed, must have been a holy man – more holy than me, that’s for sure!

My holiness, these days, is more holey than righteous. I don’t think I have ever felt more out of touch with spiritual matters. By the time I’ve dragged my reluctant body out of bed, across the banana board, and into the wheelchair, I’m already tired, and everything this year has been bloody, full-on, and relentless.  Painting, which I seem to have rediscovered big-style, helps to get me into the zone, but even when I am there, it seems strangely empty. I’ve more or less given up praying, except in extremis, although this week I did try and formulate a prayer for what Catholics would probably call the repose of the soul of my friend Leslie in Florida.

I miss those times when I had the feeling that there really was someone looking out for me, someone who’d got my six.  Especially when that entity was what Barbara Ehrenreich, in Nickled and Dimed, called “Jesus, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist.” Maybe I need to go on a retreat or something. Time spent in the mountains is never wasted. The great art giveaway, in favour of Mossburn Animal Centre, Rain Rescue, and The Freedom of Spirit Trust for Border Collies, is also stuck, now, until Deb can find the missing portfolio, something she is unlikely to accomplish in her present state, huddled in a poncho next to the stove, clutching a hot water bottle and sneezing, coughing and groaning by turns.

The room was dusty and the pipes were old

All that winter, we shared a cold

Drank all the orange juice we could hold…

Amen to that, brother Paul Simon, you must be reading my mail.  Except that in Debbie’s case it’s carrot juice. “I do it for your love”. Vaguely appropriate, in a week which included St Valentine’s day. I may cook some vegetable soup later, if Deb feels she can manage to eat it. But in the meantime, from our cosy fireside in the Holme Valley, that currently looks a lot like the Fever Hospital at Missilonghi, at the end of another week where I once more failed to connect with the infinite, failed to achieve anything here on earth, failed to save the world or even part of it, and suffered a substantial loss, of a friend I had never met in person, I am going to sign out, and maybe do some painting. All too soon it will be Monday.