Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Hit Wicket

Of all the ways to be dismissed in cricket, being out 'hit wicket' is perhaps the least glorious. It is, after all, the aim and objective of the other side to hit a batsman's wicket and he has no right to be doing their job for them.

Poor Archdeacon does appear to have suffered such a fate and have brought about his own fall from grace in a thoroughly hit-own-wicket sort of way. Having spent most of the night with him - one eye on his unraveling mental health, one eye on Anila's cherished silver chalices and one's third eye on what support might be available via Old Tom's secretariat - I have arranged for him to be shipped off forthwith to St. Mildred's convent in a remote and bookmaker-free corner of the county, where the good ladies will no doubt mend his broken mind - if not restore his impecunious pocket - through their unearthly (i.e. heavenly) charity and compassion.

I myself once spent a pleasant week in just such an establishment of nuns - not I haste to add because one was going doo-lally or any such, merely having a cheap and cheerful 'busman's holiday' you must understand - and when it came to leaving it seemed only fitting to buy the ladies a little something as token of thanks. Generally speaking a bottle of good malt would be the automatic thing to consider, but I had noticed during my time there not one drop of the hard or even the not-so-hard stuff in sight.

Anxious therefore not to offer a gift of no use or value, I enquired of a passing sister following breakfast on my last day there whether they had drink about the place. "Why of course we do," she said. "You just wait there." Comprehending the first but not the second part of her reply I stood still as ordered. (Obedience to the instruction of a Nun is Golden Rule #7 in the Seminary Book of Survival let me assure you!) Moments later the good woman appeared bearing a full-to-the-brim schooner of sherry, which she happily thrust at me.

Only then did I realise that she had taken my innocent question as the gasping, desperate cry of an alcoholic vicar in need of an urgent fix. Bless her for not judging what she took to be my plight, but imagine if you will my embarrassment, not to mention my struggle to sup a full glass of a not terribly appealing medium sweet sherry at 8.30 of a morning.

Having at least confirmed that theirs was not a dry house, it seemed the least I should do to make good my promise of a decent malt for their larder 'ere leaving. This though meant an early trip to the local off-license before catching my bus, so early in fact that I was obliged to join the pre-opening queue of genuine soaks waiting for the shutters to lift and the alcohol of choice to down.

The vendor of the place - a hypocrite to his very bones clearly - though happy to serve his customers and to make his profit therefrom, gave me a number of filthy looks as I requested my malt as if to say that a clergyman reeking of alcohol at nine in the morning was not his kind of clergyman, no sir! Too befuddled by the sherry to make a cogent or a biting riposte and in no mood to attempt to explain the whole truthful story, I took my liquor like a man and fled the place like a mouse.

H roared when she heard all of this and promised to take me back to X on our next summer's jaunty holiday. I for my part will positively insist we never go near the place again!

Monday, November 27, 2006

Spread Out to Dry

H here, with grim news from Anila.

FDH has, as you know, moved on from here to cast his shadow over St. Bertha's. Anila, the young and perfectly gossipy curate there, has been on the phone this evening with a strange tale of events.

FDH appears to have adopted Carthusian ways during his stay with them; that is, he has taken to spending half his night awake. Anila, gentle trusting soul that she is, had assumed his time was taken with nocturnal prayer and vigilance - much as advocated by our Lord Himself.

It transpires, however, that FDH has not been on his knees to God but in front of the television glued to the nightly Test cricket transmissions from Australia. This she discovered last night when, in search of small hours refreshment during a bout of insomnia, she discovered the Archdeacon slumped in the lounge uttering small moans as the triumphant Aussies were beginning to conduct their crowing post-match interviews.

Assuming, once more as the soul gentle and trusting, that FDH was patriotically mourning his side's defeat - nay humiliation - she had offered a few generic words of comfort and encouragement along the lines of "Never mind, it's only a game" and "I'm sure they'll do better next time." (I do sometimes wonder about Anila's fitness to be a curator of souls if she can utter such inanities, but that is beside the point in question here.)

Anyways, the howling, snarling response her words of c & e received from FDH was enough it seems nearly to frighten the woman out of the modicum of wits the Good Creator has allotted her. Fearing almost for her very safety she had beat an instant and more than hasty retreat from the room. Snatching a swift glass of milk from the kitchen larder - her original quest - she had tiptoed back passed the lounge door, hoping not any further to disturb or derange her troubled guest only very oddly to hear him on the telephone conducting a clearly pained discussion with the item on the other end of the line.

Anila could not be certain of the meaning of this half-heard conversation, but she relayed to me something of the words heard from her end. Much along the lines of "Look here, just because I bought at 300 for 20 doesn't mean I'm about to stand fast while you empty my account of every last note prior to sending me a bill for several thousands more."

A curious and unexplained gap in my own catholic knowledge of life precluded me from making much of this report, until I decided to chance fate and lay it all before dear PP - not for one moment expecting him to have more gen on the matter than myself of course, but rather merely to allow his subsequent ruminant thoughts to provoke my own sharper mind into affirmative action.

Much to my surprise - not to mention somewhat to my annoyance - dear PP turned out to know somethings that I didn't. Knowledge in the First Part: the content of the conversation was clearly to do with the limitless horror of spread betting; Knowledge in the Second Part: the Archdeacon is a fervent nay helpless gambler; and Knowledge in the Third Part: the poor man had clearly come a mighty if not bottomless cropper over the winning margin of runs scored by Australia.

I have just re-telephoned Anila to pass on two essential pieces of information resulting from my conflab with dear PP: lock up the silver chalices at once and prepare to receive dear PP who is on his way over to see the Archdeacon this instant!

One small blessing in all of this - 'twill be a long if e'er before Anila says of anything to anyone "Never mind, it's only a game." I'm off to dear PP's study for a good glass of the malt that he doesn't think I know is there!

Ashes to Ashes?

You could, at a hard pinch, argue that the portents are comparably favourable.

In 2005 we lost the first Test in four days yet went on to win the series. (So awful was the Lord's Test that year this humble member of MCC did not even bother to don the 'rhubarb & custard' [or 'egg & bacon' as preferred] tie to attend the funereal rites on the Sunday.)

In 2006, however, it has taken all of some of the fifth day before Australia has triumphed, so by virtue of some hopelessly over-optimistic casuistry one could argue we're actually doing better than last time and that ultimate victory is assured.

This though is not my sense now. My thoughts turn rather to that dreadful day in 1984 when the West Indies completed their 5-0 'blackwash', as they loved to call it, at the Oval. Being present to witness that final collapse has remained in the memory as a time of grim resignation on the one hand and cacophonous celebration on the other.

If there were a patron Saint of Cricket one would be needing him now to urge such divine intervention as restoring Harmison's nerve or causing Shane Warne to go walkabout for the next two months. There being, as I believe, no such person I can only implore that perennial saint of last recourse Saint Jude, Apostle, nephew - most likely - of Christ and patron of Lost Causes. (Poor fellow ended up with this moniker as too many confused his name with that of the Traitor Judas, therefore never invoking his intercession until all other avenues of prayer had been exhausted.)

Another 'Great Escape'? Somehow I doubt it this time. So God bless the 'Barmy Army' tonight - they have ten or so more weeks in which to seek to maintain that dogged determination to relish all that cricket and life can throw at them. Don't think I spotted St Jude in the crowd tonight. Just hope he has a ticket for Adelaide on Friday!

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Is Nothing Sacred?!

According to my cyber-chum Shelina [do read her admirable and entertaining writings to be found at: www.spirit21.co.uk/] the new James Bond is one to be missed by a country mile.

The problem would appear to be not so much a matter of Bond qua film as Bond qua Bond, the man having been ripped from his true identity of fearless old-school warrior battling would-be dominators of the world [don't think we've ever had any would-be dominatrix, though that would be fun] with suave cunning, some nifty if implausible gadgets and probably more chest hair than should be actively encouraged in civilised society.

When not so engaged in searing acts of bravery and jocular fortitude our Bond - the true fellow - dedicates his sparse leisure time to sweeping pneumatic [sometimes at least as implausible as the gadgetry] blondes off their feet and onto a convenient chaise langue or other to hand couche d'amour.

Now this sort of clear cut - if not entirely clean living - hero is one much to my liking, not least because when watching such adventures a deux, as H and I are occasionally wont to do, I am able to whisper gently to the beloved as our hero performs one more extraordinary feat of courage under fire or seduction under cover [Bond films being decently coy after all] - "All loosely based on my own life I think you'll find, dear."

H never fails to grin appreciatively at my enduring Walter Mittyesque fantasy that a life of reckless, wild adventuring could so easily have been mine, had I not willfully opted instead for sedate conjugal and professional sobriety. But for a single turn in an early road of life and one would not be out in the sticks ministering to the slightly troubled souls of a English village parish. One would instead be in some mountain fastness fighting to save the very life of the planet from the clutches of a deluded monster with one's best and not entirely clothed gal by one's side.

Even this fancy is - according to the fragrant Shelina, now film critic to the nation as well as social reporter and all round raconteur - to be denied me as, we are told, the new Bond is a caring Bond and - worse - a fallible human Bond, much given to hearing other people's pain and revealing that he only became a spy because of some unresolved childhood trauma and that, given the chance, he'd drop all this spying 'n' seducing malarky for a spell of voluntary work with Greenpeace! (I guess to the details but one gathers it's more or less in this line.)

Is indeed nothing sacred! Pah, time for a large whisky before Evensong. "The name's Palladas. Reverend Palladas." - that'll wow them!

Ripeness is All..

...rightly spoke the Bard's Edgar in that most melancholy of his [the Bard's not Edgar's] works 'King Lear'.

Setting aside the grim 'Men must endure..' aspect of the quotation, the notion that timing is everything is an excellent all-round aide memoire and motto for the gardener; on a par with those wise words of Ecclesiastes - "For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted."

On the more specific matter of fruit within the garden our seasonal rhythm goes something like this:

Early Spring: make firm purpose of amendment and this year not to waste the fine potential harvest of plums, apples, pears and figs even. Think about doing some pruning. Visualise plenteous store of plucked fruit, both fresh and preserved, to supplement the winter menus and to spread a little warm moral glow of 'sustainability' about the house. Determine not to see vast hordes of windfalls shipped off to the compost heap, nor family dogs making themselves wondrously sick from eating half-rotted Bramleys.

Late Spring to Early Summer: realise it's too late for serious pruning or other meaningful preparation, but decide to attack fig trees anyway. Note with some pleasure later that effect appears to be positive with fig buds sprouting all over the shop.

Mid-Summer: think about ordering jam-jars and other materials for preserving impending harvest. Forget actually to do so. Begin to ponder where exactly in the house or outbuildings one could find room to store volumes of fruit at suitable ambient temperatures - no solution obvious to hand.

Late Summer: clear evidence of ripe figs abundant. Pluck one for test eating and find it delicious beyond telling. Spend most of next 48 hours on the lavatory and conclude that a little fig goes too long a way. Plums and apples beginning to fall yet are utterly unripe and uneatable. (Consider gluing them back on tree for further work.) Pears holding fast - huge and unremittingly hard as granite.

Early Autumn: wake up one morning to find lawn bestrewn with fallen apples. Dogs wolfing as many as they can before actually throwing up. Finally order jam-making items. Figs look wonderful, but are eyed with active suspicion and unfond memory [see 'Late-summer' above]. Pears continue their adamantine fastness. Plums attracting wasps, a sure sign of ripeness yet also a clear warning not to interfere - wasps being considerably more aggressively agile in upper branches of a fruit tree than any human competitor. Decide to be Zen and let wasps have their feast first.

On a Certain Day: all pears turned to mush overnight. Magical, if not quasi-mystical, transformation from solid to near liquid. Something akin to the 'miraculous' melting of St. Januarius's blood - but even less credible, annual empirical evidence notwithstanding. Also, wasps have gone but then so has large majority of the plums. Most apples now earthbound having completed their Newtonian journey.

Late Autumn: some boxes of assorted fruit stored in attic room above office waiting for chance to sterilise jam jars. (Acknowledge that location is far from ideal and probably too hot, but cannot find other available space.) Omit to sterilise jam jars. A while later remember to check attic boxes then commit rotting contents to compost heap. Dogs continue to feast thereof and to be sick therefrom.

Winter: mull over lessons from year and conclude most are much the same as in previous years. Plan ahead for coming year.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Battle Hymn of the Republic..

Having complimented the Telegraph for using the correct title of 'soft tissue sarcoma' in their article about the death of Nick Clarke, I must set the balance right and criticise them for using the hackneyed, lazy and essentially offensive headline "...loses cancer battle."

How I hate that military metaphor and all its implications. Death is the loss, and even for we who believe that death is but the beginning of a new life it is a grievous loss, but cancer is not the victor here nor the dead the vanquished. If there is a loser it is the cancer itself for having consumed the very organism in and on which it thrives. Cancer is a very, very foolish thing and nothing that foolish can be said to triumph.

Nor is cancer in any true sense an alien, separate presence - some Manichean evil matter - come to dwell within us. It is a part of who we who have it are - a crazy, silly thing yes, but not an 'enemy within.' Does that mean that one blithely accepts it without demur or complaint? Of course not. One wishes to be rid of it, which is why we accept the knife, the poison and the nuclear bombardment. But you cannot alienate what has become innate. (On a comparable note I also detest the labeling of dementia as 'the living death', for what else does that mean but that they who have it are the living dead?)

No, that is not the way. A far more potent as well as humane approach - understood at least in struggling part by we who live with it - is one of acceptance [which is not acquiescence to repeat myself], one of daring to embrace it as part - but only part - of who we have become in our human journey. One image even is of 'dancing with sarcoma' and if of any who don't have it there are some who can grasp the essence of that notion - a totally positive and life-affirming idea - then you are some way to comprehending life on Planet Sarcoma.

'Death where is thy sting, grave where thy victory?' as St Paul challengingly asked. You won't find me the greatest fan of that largely over-bearing Apostle, but in this moment he was spot on. Nick is dead and that is desperately sad, but he is not vanquished and sarcoma is not the winner.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Nick Clarke - farewell peg leg

You have to love a man and his family who can greet his return from a radical surgery that took both leg and buttock with the banner "Welcome home peg leg." You though now have to mourn Nick Clarke's passing and the sorrow of it for his wife and children. May his good soul rest in peace and may the Holy Spirit be a close comforter in their loss.

Not being a 'World at One' person for some years - I stopped listening in protest when the powers that Birt lopped it from its proper 40 mins to a bare half an hour and simply never started again - I hadn't caught up with the radio diary Nick bravely kept during his time of illness. I use the word 'bravely' advisedly as, while there is nothing inherently brave about having cancer, despite its common application to anyone who has the disease, to share thoughts and feelings so publicly about something so intimate and personal takes a kind of special courage and commitment.

And it is not so much the decision to share at all, but the choice of sharing with anyone who DOES NOT KNOW BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T GOT IT. I rarely resort to the rude shouting of capitals, but for this I make an exeception - if you've not had sarcoma you simply cannot come close to knowing what it feels like and how one's life is riven through in every moment and in every way by the damn thing. That is partly why so many people with this wretched thing spend so much time on message boards with others who have it too - these are the only people you can communicate with who truly do understand.

So hats off to peg leg Clarke for sticking to his journalist's last and giving the wider world a glimpse into that strange world of Planet Sarcoma. (You thought Solaris was weird? Not even close!) Thanks too to, at least, the Telegraph for giving the illness its proper title. Mostly it gets subsumed into 'cancer' or sometimes 'rare cancer'. It is actually neither. Cancer is the scuttling crab, but sarcoma is the rip that tears. Same root word from the Greek as 'sarcasm', which is good and handy - one can make sarcastic remarks at one's tumour to the like of "God, so you're still there you little bastard and there was me thinking I'd be waking up and you'd be gone forever." (Not necessarily wise to be caught muttering thus in public lest one gets arrested as a failed care in the community number, but a welcome emotional indulgence all the same.)

God be close to them that mourn tonight.

Prodigal Returned...

Prodigal Patrick has come back to George and to us, thank goodness, unharmed and unkidnapped. Not quite liturgically correct to ring a peal in celebration, though a discernibly relieved mood in all the village. A pining pub landlord is a lowering bellwether for everyone: sour beer and bad spirits.

Not yet spoken to the man himself, but word reaches me that Patrick's sudden absence, complete with microwave, was his way of telling Geo. that he felt perpetually insulted as cook-in-charge - positively bursting with skills, enthusiasm and drive - by the presence of this machine, gifted of course by Geo. to him, which in his view has destroyed more souls and Dover soles than any kitchen device invented since first man thrust raw meat into naked flame. (Rather share this view myself having once had to sit down to a bag of sodden pulp masquerading as a chicken that had been so electronically 'cooked'.)

Poor Geo. had been, as is his way, utterly oblivious to Patrick's pain, having decided that he [Geo.] was being terribly helpful by installing what he [Geo. again] regarded merely as a labour saving item, not for a moment comprehending that to him [Patrick this time] a microwave is not far short of a symbolic representation of the Devil's bottom!

Typical of the pair of them that they had never once sat down to discuss their mutually opposed views on the subject, it having to come to the pretty pass of Patrick kidnapping the microwave - and not as others had had it being the subject of a kidnap himself.

Further, in a later fit of Catholic scupulosity that would do a Jesuit proud he [Patrick] had felt compelled to return the microwave as it was Geo.'s property, but not the special plug with in-built failsafe, which he [Patrick once more] had bought and fitted. (A note of 'rendering unto Caesar's salad that which is Caesar's' is floating through my head, but I can't quite pin it down.)

Patrick it seems had hoped that first his bunk with the machine and then the silent return of it damaged beyond use would, both or either, be sufficient to bring Geo. to his senses in this matter. Patrick the meanwhile having taken temporary refuge with Bill the Boatman on his barge - where of course he had been spotted by E, who was out by the river communing with her inner punk as it the wont of teenagers throughout the land. (And hence of course her knowing grimace at yesterday's luncheon!)

It was E in fact - and bless her for that - who had eventually spoken to Patrick to let him know that his stunt had not worked quite the way intended (as is oft the way with stunts of course!) and that his darling Geo. was a broken man beyond human care or divine restoration. Patrick repenting of his prodigal ways had promptly legged it back to Geo. and after many tears of both lamentation and of joy domestic peace has been recovered, the beer is safe for a spell at least and the microwave has been consigned to thankful oblivion.

It was the somewhat sadistic prison warden in the wonderful film 'Cool Hand Luke' who had said to the eponymous hero, prior to administering some horrid punishment for Luke's refusal to submit to the warden's will: "What we have here is a failure to communicate." And here too it seems.

Fear of Flying...

...Not much call round here for frequent flying: on most days a bicycle is all I require to complete my parish rounds. A car for necessary trips to Norwich, plus of course the horse-box for countless county shows and the like. Shame really, as I should love to be in a position to cut up my British Airways Club Card - or whosoever it is named - and post the virtual pieces on www.baboycott.com

The refusal of British Airways to allow Miss Nadia Eweida to wear her cross rampant, permitting only couchant as it were, is as ugly a demonstration of corporate insanity and ill-considered oppression as one would hope not to witness. The particular lunacy of their official stance is that were the lady to arrive for work sporting a more exuberant symbol of her faith - say a pectoral cross a foot or so in length - she would be allowed it as it could not reasonably be hidden beneath her clothing. That being their rationale for allowing a turban but not a five-pennypiece sized cross.

Perhaps our own Bearded Bard [The Arch himself] should take a lesson from Miss Eweida's example. Far too often he has contented himself with looping his cross of office into his shirt pocket, as if too onerous to be left where it can and should be seen. If he is not willing to bear witness to his faith in this way, then I am saddened. (Correspondence on the subject has been exchanged with his third under-secretary, though not - to my surprise and slight dismay - with any resulting change in behaviour.)

Will talk to H about booking that long-awaited foreign holiday next year, just for the pleasure of not flying with my national airline!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Wide Of The Mark...

...Middle stump is not necessarily the pace bowler's 'bullseye', as it were, when taking aim. True enough such a ball speeding unerringly down the middle, over upon over, would be more than sufficient eventually to demolish the amateur player, but a professional batsman would not find such directness anything of a challenge - even should the length of delivery vary - and would not be deterred from endless run-making strokes with the occasional forward or backward defensive play as required.

The fast bowler must therefore be able to hit middle stump in his sleep and yet on the day opt to place the ball a little wide of the stumps - to the on and to the off - with the intention of keeping the batsman both on and off his toes. Add some aggressive pacey short balls that rear into the face of the fellow, a couple of yorkers to threaten his feet, the ability to swing and, with luck, reverse swing and you have the makings of decent seamer.

That then in essence is the theory: keep 'em guessing and keep 'em anxious if not downright terrified.

What then is one to make of Steve Harmison's first ball of the new Ashes series at the stroke of midnight last night, so wide of the mark as to sail into the - thankfully - waiting hands of Capt'n Flintoff at second slip? (The norm for second slip is to be watching the batsman and not the bowler, alert for that wicket-losing snick. Had our Freddie been thus engrossed he could have been felled by his own man rendering him incapable for the day or the match or the series even!)

Had it been another player one might have thought "Oh, what a hoot, what an unexpected fluke, something for the 'What happened next?' archive on that nice Miss Barker's sporting quiz show." Not sadly in this case. Harmison's confidence is known to be fragile and what was noted at the time as probably the worst wide ever seen in Test cricket proved to be a portent of and a prelude to the entire day: England all over the place and the Australians in charge throughout. One fears in equal and consequent measure for Harmison's sanity and the Ashes' destination.

In years to come there will be too many, surely, who will be able to answer with accurate recall the question "So where were you when Harmison bowled that wide to end all wides and, with it, our hopes of retaining the Ashes?"

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Games They Play...

H here, fuming!

A sad morality play of modern times in the health service:

Call came through while dear PP was out on his rounds to say that Peggy had taken a tumble, was in an ambulance on her way to A&E and could someone pop down to hold her hand, she having no family and fewer friends. Pure vicar's wife territory of course and rather an attractive notion to go see how the old trout was doing: not Peggy - though she is both old and fishy - but Newchurch Hospital where once one donned the apron of nurse to the fevered. Some ten years since I last worked there and even longer since I had used its facilities ("See Newchurch and die" was the motto among the staff let alone the patients!), so a venture into the brave new world of the 'modernised' NHS was an occasion not to be resisted.

Of Peggy there is not much to say - they poked and prodded as they should, pronounced a severely sprained ankle, bounced her up and down a few times to confirm she was tolerably fit and said she could go home with '50 painkillers and that nice Mrs P', which latter was sweetly appreciated by me if not by Peggy, who was in her usual grump.

But it was an overheard conversation between two of the medical staff that has me fuming with more than righteous indignation this evening and more than half-despairing of the mortal corruption that has crept into our health service. As we all know - or should know - hospitals are not run any longer by doctors (or even better by matrons) but by 'targets'. One key target is that no one should have to wait in A&E for more than 4 hours before being either admitted or discharged. (Quite why 4 hours should have been chosen and not say 3 or 5 is a complete unknown, but there it is.)

Meeting this arbitrary target is now the be and the end all of staff's attention and many games are being played to ensure nominal compliance if not actual achievement of swift and effective medical care - which was the original idea. A sound idea in its own right, but naturally one not achieved through the imposition of a target that can and is manipulated. People discharged without proper assessment or treatment, people admitted unnecessarily - and all to play the game of 'Beat the Clock' - this we are all too familiar with.

But tonight's episode of the NHS Game Show was truly shaming.

A consultant had been bleeped to attend to a patient in need of this person's particular specialism - stomach I think though the organ or disease thereof is not relevant to the case.

Consultant duly arrives pretty pronto and takes a shuftie at the medical notes of the waiting patients. "But hang on a minute," says attending consultant. "You've bleeped me to see Patient Q who certainly does need my services, but you also have Patient W who is clearly much more ill and a priority for my immediate attention."

The duty chief of A&E could only huff and bluster in best 'Little Britain' fashion - "Yeah, but no but, yeah but no but yeah, but..." - before finally coming clean and saying that yes while she acknowledged the clinical priority of Patient W, that poor person had already and disastrously passed the four hour deadline becoming thus a dead case as far as the target was concerned; whilst Patient Q, though agreed not so ill as patient W, was still running under the four hours with but a bare fifteen minutes to go before the big bong.


Would therefore the consultant mind setting aside his clinical judgements, his thirty years of dedicated service to the sick of the land, his professional ethics and codes of conduct and attend to the patient who needed him less but who could, if sped through, come in at under the allotted time?

What corrupting forces must be at work, poisoning the hearts and souls of staff, for this to happen? How did a nursing sister so come to lose all sight of what is right and what is decent? You will doubtless expect me to be blaming Tony Blair for this evil in our midst (I use the word advisedly - 'evil' that is and not 'midst') and yes of course I do, though this time I shall opt for a variant on the lesson of how sin came into our world and, more vitally, how it can be expelled once more.

Patricia Hewitt has announced that she will resign if health service budgets don't balance by the end of the financial year. She is lying of course. The budgets won't balance, but she won't resign because she will say that they have and that she's staying put. But just to tip the balance in our favour can I urge that every health service manager's motto from here 'til next April must be that of the darling old dear who won the Pools then blew the lot - 'Spend, spend, spend!'

An almost happy ending to the above tale: the consultant not only refused to attend to the less ill patient in order that a time target could be met, he actually threatened to assault the nursing sister who proposed that he should. Something about large surgical devices and places where the sun rarely shines. Bravo he!

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

De-plugged...

...a most peculiar development: George's microwave has returned though minus its plug, which appears to have been rudely severed. Patrick, however, has not been seen plugged or de-plugged. Geo. phoned at dawn to say he'd been taking the morning air behind the pub, after yet another sleepless night of worry, when he spotted the microwave on the patio not far from the chimenea - which he'd installed last summer in a somewhat fruitless attempt to smarten up the back garden. (He and Patrick have both visions of more a lofty clientele than our village could ever truly serve up. The chimenea, needless to say, met with a certain local ridicule and is already known to all as the 'Dragon's Dildo'.)

Anyway, theories now abound as to what this might mean. M&M - Mildred and Maurice of course - are both minded that this is a message from 'the kidnappers': pay a handsome ransom or Patrick's plug too will be pulled as it were. Leaving aside the ambiguity of the symbolic import of the missing plug there is of course nothing to suggest that Patrick has indeed been kidnapped, it not being one of our local customs or traditions. Centuries back we, in common with all surrounding villages, suffered the occasional loss of menfolk to the press-gangers operating out of the Norfolk naval dockyards, but even that was not true kidnapping in the 'return to sender once payment has been made' sense.

M&M were able to make use of their extensive and highly personal knowledge of local feuds and feuding to ponder whether Patrick might have been caught up in some dark clan warfare, but though a number of possible options were considered all were deemed improbable cause, as Patrick is one of the few true in-comers with no local family ties, having drifted somehow over from Dublin as a youth.

Geo. himself is not of the kidnapping theory persuasion, though I had a sense from him this morning that there was in this for him a clue about what is going on here. Something in his face told me he is more to the wise than he is letting on - we keen-eyed pastors are taught to spot such signs of the human heart in the outward presence.

My thoughts passed on at home over the luncheon table, I could swear I detected a glint or gleam in E's eyes, as if she too had some inside line on this whole situation. Not of course that an interrogation on the subject was in any way fruitful, E merely remarking as ever that her father was being 'totally gay' - an apposite if inaccurate remark to make in the circumstances I could only riposte.

A swift walk this afternoon to digest lunch - one of cook's heavier offerings I fear - and the meaning of this morning's events.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

All Hands To The Pumps!

Poor Geo. is at his wits end and utterly unable to function at any recognisably human level. Not since E's rapid, vapid decline when Mr Doherty took up with that nice Miss Moss have I seen a person so broken in love. As that Gilbert has his George, so this Geo. has - or seemingly had - his Patrick. Funny how one doesn't notice two people glued to each other until one half is torn away leaving the remaining portion just a fragment.

Hardly knowing where or how to start, I have probed a little into any possible significance of the vanishing microwave to see if that might lend a clue as the turn of events. A certain something did emerge though quite its import I'm as yet uncertain. Patrick it appears positively hated the microwave - Geo.'s idea to speed things up in the kitchen - and took it as a slight on his culinary skills; not an unfair point from a man whose steak and ale pie is the stuff of local legend.

Geo. does the beer and front of house; Patrick, more retiring, the kitchen and the meals. It has been - one almost hates to use the past tense - a near ideal partnership, despite Geo.'s inbred inability to keep his pumps as clean as either God or the drinking public would wish. Now, of course, that Geo. is a man in only name there is no chance he will attend to this pressing duty and so - how oddly prescient of H - there I was in the cellar trying to figure out what needs to be done in what order to preserve parish health.

Actually, I had thought I'd made a decent job of it - a swift phone call to Bernard who runs the Bone [Dog and Bone more formally] to check for instruction had vastly helped - that is until Peggy, who came in at lunchtime to manage the post-homily rush [quite why my sermons - kept as ever short and sharp - should drive up such a thirst I fail to understand!], informed me that as the Guinness tap was pouring lager and the lager pump Firebreath I'd better return pronto and reconnect the right line to the right barrel!

'Pronto' is in fact literary shorthand for a volley of verbals the like and content of which I would not have credited Peggy from knowing let alone using. It seems we are all getting rather jumpy as Geo. sinks lower and lower.

H suggests a conflab with Mildred and Maurice, and much as I dread that particular pairing - with only little less fervour than the distaste they have for each other [some ancient family feud too complex for this moment to explain] - I believe H is right to summons the most intuitively sensitive and utterly nosy minds in the village in order to try and find a way forward.

Something must be done. This is something. We shall, therefore, do it.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Missing...

A rather sad telephone call from George. Patrick has gone and so has the microwave. George and Patrick have been together forever (my predecessor would remark that they probably entered the Ark two-by-two), though George and the microwave only for the past couple of years.

It is not known for certain that Patrick and the microwave left together but Geo. is minded that the two events are connected. I suggested to Geo. that he might wish to involve the police at even this early stage. This he did not care to consider as the double theft of heart and cooker would be - I can see his point - hard to convey to an unknown and uncomprehending voice in a remote control centre. (Had PC Williams still been on the local beat he would have at once grasped the full significance of Geo.'s complaint, but when Williams retired last year he was not replaced in person, we being offered just a telephone contact number to a far away station that never once has shown its human face in our village. All in the name of progress naturally!)

Geo. is naturally devastated and, at present, inconsolable. My few words of succour may have been of some use, though I did struggle to think of any Gospel event by which one might link Geo.'s pain to the Lord's plan. According to him [Geo. that is and not the Lord] there were no warning signals, no signs of discord, no unexplained absences that might explain Patrick's doing a bunk. And as for the microwave Geo. is at a complete loss to fathom a single reason why his lover should decamp with a cooker!

H and I reflected on their situation over a decent port and, although not strictly germane to the current crisis, opined that the Geo./Patrick liaison, as a thing in itself, signified a peculiar and rather laudable rural tolerance of what in essence should be held unusual, perhaps unwanted or even, in some orthodox circles, highly immoral.

You would not be short of conversation if you opened up in the Dragon about the iniquitous state of the country as a whole and urban environments in particular. Tales of city sin are a constant source of opprobrium and dismay in equal measure: "Never like that when I were young", "End of all civilisation as we know it" - that sort of thing.

Yet when it comes to what happens here in our own patch, you would not find stronger supporters of the rights of individuals to live their lives as best suits them so long as - a standard and sensible proviso - no one else gets hurt or has to be involved if they choose not to. For example, our local carpenter, odd jobber and all round fixer of broken fences or chimneys is called Sam. Sam is quiet, but Sam is strong, out in all weathers doing good work and much loved by all. Sam's evenings are spent in the Dragon having always no more and never fewer than five pints of Firebreath before returning home to his Hilary.

Only the rank outsiders - that is those who moved in less than twenty years ago - don't know that Sam is actually Samantha. Sam grew up in the village as a tomboy and simply carried on being a tomboy until he became a tom-man. That has never once been "an issue" - as Old Tom would call it - it's just what happens.

But were some smart Johnny to challenge them and say "So you support gay rights then don't you?" he'd as like as not be drummed out of the village and, more like than not, take with him a muck full of verbal if not physical abuse for his filthy mind. (Bit like the old folk at the lunch club. Offer them quiche and they scorn it, but tell 'em it's just egg and bacon pie and it'll be taken in a trice. H learned that one the hard way!)

I must pop down the Dragon in the morning to see how Geo. is doing and whether he has any news. H's suggestion that I should offer to clean the pumps for the duration of his bereavement lest the beer go off again may be sound, but hardly apposite to the magnitude of the personal grief!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Hold The Front Page...

...Sex-Change Vicar in Palace Hospital Mercy Dash!

In more innocent days that, I believe, was considered by Fleet Street's finest to be the ultimate fantasy headline for capturing the public's imagination and selling newspapers. A fairly obvious combination, it must be said, of royalty, sickness, heroism, the church, plus a nod towards sexual peculiarity.

Close in many ways and infinitely more interesting, if somewhat saddening, was the real headline that reached us yesterday: Prison Chaplain Caught Smoking Crack.

Poor fellow had, it seems, been led from the straight and narrow following his befriending of a certain Mr Peter Doherty whilst in residence at HM Prison Pentonville. Mr Doherty is, I am reliably informed by E, a talented popular music maker of a somewhat dissolute and addictive disposition.

Whilst applauding the Xtian spirit that led our fallen comrade to seek out Mr Doherty in his time of turmoil (his paid employment after all), it does seem a mighty shame - and somewhat symbolic of the times - that he came so far under the spell of 'celebrity' as to give up everything for what has been, in effect, his five minutes of fame.

At least - and this is graceful - the man has had the wisdom to say he has acted like an utter ass, though the thought that his behaviour will henceforth be considered a benchmark for the 'trendy vicar' makes me quail.

E of course thinks the whole thing is cool and, I fear, will be wanting to invent for her pals the story that her Pa has been a hopeless narcotic addict since forever, gosh, wow, etc. (I will own that once upon a time, long ago and far away, I did in a De Quincey moment take a pipe of opium with some college chums. The effect on one's external and internal vision was rather remarkable, though the appalling accompanying stomach cramps did somewhat lessen the overall experience. E of course is never to know this!)

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

NED once more...

...all that needs to be said really. One more fence jumped in the never-ending Sarcoma Steeplechase. Disregarding unexpected return of symptoms I merely hang on until another year has passed before presenting myself once more to the screen of destiny.

My dear oncologist always prefaces her examination by asking how I am, to which I have no choice but to reply "You tell me!" I have become sufficient of an amateur expert (i.e a complete silly billy!) to take a squint at the X-ray plates first for signs of warning bright spots, but it still of course takes the expert reading to reassure me that there is nothing there that shouldn't be. Technicians who take and print the plates generally suck their teeth when they see the collateral damage caused by the necessary radiotherapy, but even that funny moment will be lost from now on as they're going digital and no longer will I have the pleasure of receiving a hard copy of the X-ray, all information passing from computer to computer.

One becomes accustomed, though never fully acclimatised, to these testing days. 'Scanxiety' usually takes hold some weeks before the event, climaxing in the seemingly endless minutes of perusal of the plates before the verdict is given and culminating in days following of complete nervous collapse as one lets go all the held-in fear and fret.

(A word to the wise. Never say to someone who is about to be scanned this way "You'll be fine", as the only possible riposte - and one I have to own I have used as the occasion demanded - "How the f*ck would you know? You've seen the frigging X-rays/MRI already then have you? Since when have you been gifted with the effing powers of clairvoyance!")

What we are all who have this thing (soft tissue sarcoma - think cancer of the muscle, bone, body fat or sinews and you'll be as close as you need) on the look out for is secondary spread to the lungs [mostly], the brain [occasionally, though generally via the lungs] and - men look away now - in rare cases the penis. The little chancer is prone to wending its way through the bloodstream seeking suitable sites in which to nest and grow.

If that happens - we call it metastases - then you can lop it off, you can poison it, you can nuke it, but you can't finally destroy it. That particular snake is only ever scotched not killed - a thing beyond remedy though not, as Lady Macbeth would have it, beyond regard. (There is one Norwegian - I believe - paper that posits that smokers with sarcoma are at reduced risk of pulmonary metastases, with a certain logic that no self-respecting sarcoma cell could expect to thrive in the toxic pit that is a smoker's lungs. That my excuse anyway for sticking to pipe and cigars!)

Once there settled it will inexorably and exponentially expand taking over healthy tissue, eventually - in the case of lungs - causing death by more or less asphyxiation, or drowning if it breaks through into the plural cavity. (Rather like that scene in the first 'Alien' film where the monster bursts forth from John Hurt's chest - only of course in slow motion and without the creature then vanishing into the heating ducts!)

People can and do live lengthy and happy lives with secondary sarcoma, but generally once that Rubicon has been passed it's more a question of booking the world cruise right now and bring the pension pot it will be needed on board.

Thus although the years pass and the statistical risk, therefore, reduces one never quite escapes that teetering and vertiginous sense of being on an edge. A dream still haunts me from those early days:

I'm lying face-down on a thin, transparent plastic film suspended over a bottomless dark chasm between two cliffs. Friends on either cliff are urging me to move and come back to them and to safety, but I know that any movement I make will cause the plastic film to rupture sending me crashing into the darkness. I can't even lift my head or close my eyes to escape the sight of the blackness beneath. Someone tries to crawl out over the film to come to me, but all that does is to make it flutter and stretch like a sail in a high wind. They must go back and I must remain utterly motionless gazing into bleak eternity. If I could scream I would, but even that relief is denied me.

...And for someone who looks for ceiling straps in aircraft to hold on to just in case the floor gives way, that is a potent image and memory!


Sunday, November 12, 2006

Dear Diary...

There are many - if not most - who keep a diary of forward appointments and there are some - far fewer - who keep a diary record of past events:

"Dear Diary, today we left the trenches for the LBP - last big push, or as Evans would call it 'latest bloody punch-up'. That I'm writing this now, Mam, shows at least I made it back alive, though poor Evans was blown apart by a Bosch shell in NML - what we all call 'no man living.' Funny, we were told that all of their artillery would have been wiped out by the weeks of our bombardment, but obviously the message didn't get through to the enemy, who opened up the minute we went over the top."

That sort of thing. Apposite to the day.

A wise management thinker - and there are some - once said that a forward diary should not be a record of other people's demands, but of one's own desires. Think about it. How many days are blocked with meetings arranged by and for someone else? There are few enough days or slots within days where one pencils in time to do something of personal choice.

Tomorrow though I have one such appointment: made by me for me. Though in truth it is hardly the most welcome of moments. Do not mistake me, I do rather enjoy time spent with dear Anna chatting about life, liberty and the pursuit of government targets ['All targets create sub-optimal behaviour' being our common take on the matter']. If only we could skip the part where she introduces either 'NED' or 'ED' into the meeting my time would be an entire treat.

As yet, these past five years, dear Anna has stuck with NED to my complete relief and satisfaction, though were she ever to revert to ED I would know it's essentially 'Good Night Vienna.'

Are you puzzled? Probably. Am I slightly toying with you and the thing? Most likely. If you are 'on the bus' of cancer you will already have fathomed my meaning - knowing also that once 'on' you can never finally get 'off', there being no final END - but if not then let me reveal that 'NED' is our beloved 'No Evidence of Disease' [the rest you can work out for yourselves].

Notice the precise use of terms: NED means as much and as little as exactly that. There is no evidence that the disease is present, but then there is no proving that it isn't. At best - and it is a good best - they are saying there's nothing they can see. At a cellular level it might well be there, just biding its time before revealing its fell and lethal face, and like the terrorist you can hear it whisper 'You need to be lucky every time, we just need to be lucky once.'

So, dear diary, who's my appointment with tomorrow - Ned or Ed? Wish I knew.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Eleventh Hour...

Quite. How can anyone call himself a gentleman - howso'er loosely one defines the term - and yet have Christmas Carols blaring out in his shop in Armistice Day? H is right of course and one mustn't have a row, nonetheless a voiced opinion that this was a step just too far and a slight on the Old Contemptibles as much as on the Church - meeting I might add with an audible 'Hear, hear' from other waiting customers - was in order.

Oddly enough and coinciding with some heated - if unilluminating - public debate on the wearing of the poppy this year, I am sure I have noticed a decline in the numbers of people seen out and about with one. Even I, who bought mine, per usual, when they first went on sale, only thought actually to pin it on this very morning. And a number of the parish war widows - husbands who fought and died in Burma, Africa, Italy or France - have not been wearing a poppy at all this year.

Could it be that as a society - and we of the Wolds are as much our own society as a part of the wider world - we are losing touch (or even worse, faith) with symbolic and customary shows of public historic solidarity? I do wonder if all that we have witnessed of a shameless undermining of truth, probity and values by Mr Blair and his cronies has made everyone shy away from displays of belief. We have witnessed so many moments when that ludicrous man has appropriated anything decent to use as a screen for his indecency. We have suffered so many abuses of reality to shore up his unreality. I do believe we no longer wish to be any part of any public act he might barge into, with that cheezy 'gosh but I'm trying guys' grin, or that pseudo-sanctimonious Bambi-flutter-eyes look.

It could be too that where once we could 'remember' war because essentially it was over, we now tremble and fear dismemberment as war is among us once again. (You don't need a preacher to tell you whom I hold responsible for that either!)

There was a certain safe distance, as well as beauty and purpose, in saying to ourselves on behalf of the fallen "Tell them of us and say, For their tomorrow, We gave our today", yet now we fear we might in an uncertain future have those very words said of us, and in that fear lies our reticence.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them, and pray God we remain so that we might.

Fond Farewells...

H here.

FDH has gone on his travels, leaving us I hope in some more peace than we have had this past week. Dear PP has been utterly hopeless throughout of course, never tiring of talking the fellow up when the situation clearly required him to be firmly put down. Mildred and I have had conflab even on whether Xtian charity should be re-defined as middle-aged loopiness, though in the end we did own that a tad harsh.

Maddeningly PP has been dropping hints 'if only we knew' etc., etc., which hardly helps as clearly there is some significant intel he is choosing not to share with the troops. Sufficient though for the moment that, as best one can tell, the parish accounts remained safely in the drawing room safe for the duration of the visitation and if FDH is determined to build a case for penury as the new black he won't have accessed any useful data from us to lay before Old Tom.

Peace though has not entirely returned as dear PP is in an utter fluster about Nick the News [vendor to the parish of newspapers, magazines, limited supplies of stationery, rarely the right sort of stamps, and never batteries when they are needed, etc., etc.] who has taken to playing 'O Come All Ye Faithful' in his shop by the second week of November. Even I can see PP's point in this as it's plain barking, but I fear a row brewing and clerics simply can't afford to row. Howsoever just the cause, a clerical row always ends up pitting half the village against the other half to no good effect.

We nearly came badly unstuck last Spring when PP decided he simply couldn't reconcile the Xtian creed and blessing the May Dance, which reasonable stance against synthetic paganism earned him reprobation from all sides. Mabel [baker for all and Wicca priestess for some] came close even to invoking some ancient daemon in retaliation. Happily Mildred and I were able to remind her that such an act was contrary to the 'National Service Framework for White Magic' and she desisted, though not before Mildred and I had had to sit through an interminable crystal gazing session as Mabel sought guidance from the spirits.

A quiet word with Mrs Nick the News down the gym next time we meet over a bench press is perhaps the thing here to quell this stir before it becomes a storm! Must also keep tabs on our Rake's Progress as I hear FDH has descended on St. Bertha's for a sojourn. Anila there has been briefed on the whole situation, so will doubtless be sharing her thoughts and risk assessment 'ere long.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Ruthless...

...As a pastor of rural souls I must only but publicly rejoice that Ruth ['The Archers' passim] allowed not her loneliness, unhappiness and her honest-to-God lust to lead her into carnal temptation with the cowman. (If you've not been keeping up with the Home Service then I've not really the time to explain, though I would presume you get the general drift: take 'Lady Chatterley' - but one who said that on the whole she'd better not - as a basic template and you won't be far from the matter in hand.)

As though l'homme moyen sensuel (a cleric is nothing if not a man after all - leaving out the whole women priests question altogether) it was a little disappointing that she called the whole thing off before at least venturing into that twilight world of darkened desire, by whose fell light so much can be learned.

Far from it for me to urge the Vestals of my patch to abandon all discretion and sup the dangerous cup of Dionysus, yet although dear 'Fried Rice' (as we punningly if naively named Nietzsche in seminarian days) is not by and large to be taken as a beacon of light for illuminating the human path, I do admit that his mandate to acquire sanity or sanctity from all that is mad was at least brave if not heroic.

One should not be too sensible if by that cold rationality - howsoever tied to morality or fidelity - that precludes true, pure passion. Not a view I shall necessarily be sharing with Old Tom, or even alluding to in the Sunday homily, yet if I reflect on past moments when one opted to be sensible and not passionate [one thinks University days and M visiting] one damns one's eyes for not seizing the moment and the woman.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Devilish Detail...

...Quite why it is said that the devil is to be found in the detail I have never understood, as Ol' Stan, our eternal enemy, is to be found in matters large as in small, vide the Iraq War. Pretty big affair I think you'll agree and one devil of an enterprise all round.

That said, the detail can be evil as evidenced by our experience yesterday. Dear Ericka was taking part in a dressage competition - a supposed 'friendly' inter-club affair, though those of you who know the world of horse know too that 'friendly' and 'competition' are not words that can sit easily in a single sentence!

Our horse was born to jump - indeed can on occasions take off in one county and land in another - but it is surprisingly capable of a nifty dressage test too. (Not always mind you. The phrase 'Enter at a working gallop' is not one found in any BD test that I've ever come across!) So yesterday horse and rider executed a rather wonderful Prelim 13 - that despite the caller at one point crying "At C - no fuck I mean at A!" - and the team cheers were resounding around the arena, until the Judge - a saintly woman no doubt, but not in E's book bound for heaven - announced she had noticed that the rider had not been wearing gloves and therefore would be eliminated from the competition.

If you know dressage you will know that wearing gloves is as mandatory as riding a horse not an elephant, i.e. it is a standard issue rule and one not to be overlooked. E of course blamed me for not noticing, then H for not being there to remind her, then the Judge for spotting her bare hands, then the sun for shining - you get the general picture. Only the horse was exempt from a share of the blame, though even that in the end was a close call. We warm up without gloves because the horse is more responsive and we put them on just before we are to go into the arena - only we didn't and instead of a winning score - for such it would have been - being posted, the stark and horrid sole word "Elim" was written next to her name.

There is a horror book - I've not read it - called 'The Devil Rides Out.' What though it should be titled is 'The Devil Rides Out But Without Gloves.'

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Of Saints and Souls

I do sometimes wish I were Mexican, especially at this time of the year. This has nothing to do with a desire for warmer winter months, but more a fondness and sympathy for their exuberance in celebrating the dead.

Dia de los muertos - our All Saints Day, though also really All Souls Day following too - is a colourful and vibrant affair paying tribute to the dead; what G K Chesterton called 'true democracy' - the present paying heed to the past in order to inform the future. (Fireworks and festivities in the graveyard would not do here sadly. Did once suggest it to H and found her response of asking whether my medication had been changed for any reason somewhat offensive!)

The Archdeacon - whom you will recall we last left in the aftermath of a momentous confession of human fallibility - has been appropriately glum, though he says this is in deference to the solemnity of the liturgy and not the result of any moral hangover. It was rather delightful to see him choose the long abandoned black vestments for All Souls. (Nothing quite like black to mark mourning and the modern preferred pastel mauve is horribly insipid.)

I am quite beginning to warm to the young cove. He is as troubled as he might be by what he sees of the world and in himself: a rational and reasonable garb of pessimism in which to wrap the gospel message of hope I always feel. (Can't abide these irrepressibly cheery types who assume a constant aura of seraphic bliss simply because they are beloved by the Lord.) He was even empathetic enough to commiserate with me when I mourned the passing of another dia del nacimiento - though we agreed that if one had to have a birthday at all having in on the very day of the dead was rather wonderfully ironic.

H is still focused on ensuring he leaves without a deep squint at the parish accounts, though I am equally determined to focus on establishing rapport with the fellow.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Brought To Bookmaker

The Archdeacon has had what can only be described as a fulsome day.

The day began with a little light fencing on whether the current bank base rate of interest represented the triumph of evil in the modern world; it being his view that corporate greed signified Ol' Stan [as I like to call our eternal adversary] rampant, whilst mine that though capitalism by and large did stink it was - like democracy in the sphere of politics - the worst form of economics apart from all the other options available.

The day nows ends in mutual weariness, but perhaps an enhanced acceptance of the frailty of all things human.

We strolled the parish, meeting and greeting the flock on the streets, and FDH began the more earnestly to attempt to persuade me that simplicity in all things was the true mark of sanctity and that - more or less - penury was next to Godliness. I remarked that it was all very well St Francis beetling about discalced, though this was hardly practical in the modern era of smashed beer bottles and doggie pooh at every step, nor indeed fair upon the humble cobbler whose need to earn sufficient to feed his family was an essentially decent aspiration. And so we debated back and forth with seeming little occasion for shifting our respective positions.

It was though a chance remark of mine that proved the decisive moment. I happened to say of some thesis or other of his "I bet..." and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than the poor Archdeacon let rip "How much do you want to bet then?" in earnest, nay eager if not desperate, tones. The poor man could not have then blushed more if he had been caught peeing out behind the vestry and his face - unhappy fellow - crumpled into a maze of despairing anguish.

'Twould not be fitting or proper to now tell the full tale of woe I then heard from this tormented soul. If not strictly a matter of the seal of the confessional, it would not be a pleasant fellow who revealed what transpired between us. Save it to say that 'Gamblers Anonymous' was talked of and 'firm purposes of amendment', interspersed with Jungian phrases such as 'addictive personality', were mentioned on either side.

In a nutshell it seems that the Archdeacon is suffering not so much from a fear of the love of money as more a fear of money itself. He has it in his mind - and near close to his heart too - that only in rejecting anything pecuniary can he - and by extension the world - be safe from all and any temptation. To attain this pseudo-nirvanic state the Archdeacon is currently doomed to bet a losing wager with each and every last pound that comes within his personal orbit. Not content with mere charitable gifting the poor man is compelled to gamble away everything so as to strip himself of the very taint of cash. Dostoevsky would have understood all too well.

I do not claim to have reached bottom in this matter - not even of diagnosis let alone cure - but tonight I have an inkling that there is a Manichaean aspect that must be tackled at an opportune moment. This though now is not it. The Archdeacon has retired to bed if not sleep, and I have taken to the den in search of a large measure of finest malt.