...my arse!
Do please forgive the extraordinary profanity, but I am compelled to speak and to swear in my wrath.
One is used to the Christian liturgical seasons having no purpose for the world of capitalist commerce other than as an excuse to boost sales. One accepts - with ill-grace of course - that Christmas begins in the shops about five minutes after one has unpacked the summer holiday suitcase.
But this has taken the utter biscuit and cannot be countenanced. Do you remember when a certain creme egg would appear in March to tempt the sweeter tooth? For certain it should have been held back until the sharp fasting season of Lent were done, but it was accepted as a reasonable pointer towards the great festival of rebirth and joy.
Tonight, however, on going to the local 'offie' for a couple of one's favourite cigars, there on rank display at the very front of the counter are boxes of these creme eggs. For the love of the Lord, we are not yet out of the Twelfth Day of this beautiful feast and they want to shove Easter down our throats! Literally!
Well I am sorry, but this cannot be so. Cannot be let be. I said to young Craig that my shock knew no bounds, that my ire was strong and that he must be telling his delightful manager Sarah I should be seeking my smokes elsewhere in future.
Not her fault at all, poor lady. She lays out what that Godless company - Threshers - sends her to display. But she may cut down on her ordering of cigars for a spell for I, her most loyal customer, shall not be returning.
Had, in fact, intended to quit smoking this coming New Year - as one always by fond tradition does - but I shan't this time, simply for the personal pleasure of buying my smokes elsewhere.
A boycott is not out of the question. Letters to Chairmen will most assuredly be written and with any luck an aghast question or two will be asked in the House.
Easter at Christmas? Bah humbug indeed! I spit upon their profane ways. I really do.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Dies Irae...
...A consequence of being a generally gloomy sort of cove (comes with the Scandinavian blood) of passing years, lived under the perpetual shadow of a potentially life-limiting illness, is that one from time to time lays out scoping plans for one's own funeral as part of the ending of it all.
Consideration indeed of 'The Four Last Things' is a proper clerical activity, one indeed I ought in truth - and in Truth - to be advocating all round. That though, in itself, is considered by many to be a somewhat dull thing. But if a certain reluctance among the living to think much of dying and death is perfectly natural, we church types don't help by oft misplacing the correct order and, thereby, mistaking the whole point and purpose.
We should not speak of 'Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell' as we tend, but rather have Heaven as the last of all. Quite changes the note of the whole thing you'll find if you run it through the mind. Heaven bound, indeed, is our journey's end - quite a pleasing prospect you'll admit. Yes, there is the question of Hell and that is a stark enough thought for any to baulk at contemplating, but it is not the last stop on the line.
And that whole Judgement thing. Who could not have a moment of teeth-sucking terror at the thought of one's whole life laid out before God and his angels?
Another happy consequence of being that gloomy cove aforementioned is that I lightly skipped the traditional and horrid post-diagnosis enquiry "Why me?", for as the question inevitably did begin to surface at once came the self-replying answer - "Well how would you like it boy: alphabetically, chronologically, by degree of appalling sinfulness or what?"
Now there may be some West-by-North-Western European males who do not instinctively think of sexual failings when put to the test of recalling one's moral lapses. I, however, as I would hope you know by now, am not one such.
There are too many musical references one could summons to seek to put that whole matter into any kind of nutshell. Best perhaps to leave it to the words of delightful Tom Paxton: "Should have loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind." More last things!
Well back to the funeral thing. Can never forget James Joyce's spoofing 'funferal' as an alternative view. Yes, there should be a degree of mourning - of grief even - and for at least the host of the show - me - a degree of rank fright. But there must too be something of the 'celebration of his life' that is so much the vogue.
The mix then - and it is still yet an early recipe - is somewhat unclear, but there will be a full Tridentine (please if you will) Requiem Mass, with the 'Dies Irae' and sung by one's monastic ex-brethren. They of course may not be available, nor indeed can one guarantee a dark and a stormy day with awesome flashes and crashes to accompany the chants. (You might think aesthetically that to be somewhat over-egging the melodrama, but if you have - as I have - ever sung the quiet chant to the roar of a thunderstorm, you'll not dispute the majestic wonder of the thing.)
But then there must also be the lighter note. And I shall have mine. The back three rows are to be reserved for the women in black. They are the assembly of the ladies one has loved and - largely - lost. They will all be elegant, with veiled faces, soft sighs and quiet weeping.
None will know who they are - they slip into place without introduction - they will, of course, not know each other, though they will smile gently to each other as if to say "Ah you too felt that magic touch did you? You too are left wondering just what happened, yet happy that it did?"
They will not attend for baked meats but depart each in their chauffeured car, having first cast a flower or other personal memento into the grave. They will shake the officiating Vicar's hand, perhaps with a small expressed sentiment of personal loss and fond recall of the fellow.
I below - at least in mortal form - shall thank them for their love and their presence. I shall be wanting their prayers too, but they will know this and if there is to be wrath that day, as there must, then I am confident they will help its ease.
Consideration indeed of 'The Four Last Things' is a proper clerical activity, one indeed I ought in truth - and in Truth - to be advocating all round. That though, in itself, is considered by many to be a somewhat dull thing. But if a certain reluctance among the living to think much of dying and death is perfectly natural, we church types don't help by oft misplacing the correct order and, thereby, mistaking the whole point and purpose.
We should not speak of 'Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell' as we tend, but rather have Heaven as the last of all. Quite changes the note of the whole thing you'll find if you run it through the mind. Heaven bound, indeed, is our journey's end - quite a pleasing prospect you'll admit. Yes, there is the question of Hell and that is a stark enough thought for any to baulk at contemplating, but it is not the last stop on the line.
And that whole Judgement thing. Who could not have a moment of teeth-sucking terror at the thought of one's whole life laid out before God and his angels?
Another happy consequence of being that gloomy cove aforementioned is that I lightly skipped the traditional and horrid post-diagnosis enquiry "Why me?", for as the question inevitably did begin to surface at once came the self-replying answer - "Well how would you like it boy: alphabetically, chronologically, by degree of appalling sinfulness or what?"
Now there may be some West-by-North-Western European males who do not instinctively think of sexual failings when put to the test of recalling one's moral lapses. I, however, as I would hope you know by now, am not one such.
There are too many musical references one could summons to seek to put that whole matter into any kind of nutshell. Best perhaps to leave it to the words of delightful Tom Paxton: "Should have loved you better, didn't mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind." More last things!
Well back to the funeral thing. Can never forget James Joyce's spoofing 'funferal' as an alternative view. Yes, there should be a degree of mourning - of grief even - and for at least the host of the show - me - a degree of rank fright. But there must too be something of the 'celebration of his life' that is so much the vogue.
The mix then - and it is still yet an early recipe - is somewhat unclear, but there will be a full Tridentine (please if you will) Requiem Mass, with the 'Dies Irae' and sung by one's monastic ex-brethren. They of course may not be available, nor indeed can one guarantee a dark and a stormy day with awesome flashes and crashes to accompany the chants. (You might think aesthetically that to be somewhat over-egging the melodrama, but if you have - as I have - ever sung the quiet chant to the roar of a thunderstorm, you'll not dispute the majestic wonder of the thing.)
But then there must also be the lighter note. And I shall have mine. The back three rows are to be reserved for the women in black. They are the assembly of the ladies one has loved and - largely - lost. They will all be elegant, with veiled faces, soft sighs and quiet weeping.
None will know who they are - they slip into place without introduction - they will, of course, not know each other, though they will smile gently to each other as if to say "Ah you too felt that magic touch did you? You too are left wondering just what happened, yet happy that it did?"
They will not attend for baked meats but depart each in their chauffeured car, having first cast a flower or other personal memento into the grave. They will shake the officiating Vicar's hand, perhaps with a small expressed sentiment of personal loss and fond recall of the fellow.
I below - at least in mortal form - shall thank them for their love and their presence. I shall be wanting their prayers too, but they will know this and if there is to be wrath that day, as there must, then I am confident they will help its ease.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Babes And Sucklings...
...As a child I can recall being invited onto the stage at a magic show. We - the little chosen girl and I - stood either side of the magician as he did a trick first with me and then with her.
When he turned to do his trick with the little girl I could see what no one else in the audience could see - his right hand sneaking into his pocket.
Being but an infant - keen of eye and noble in truth-telling - I was about to try calling out to Mum "Look, see what he's doing. He's cheating Ma!"
Sensing my planned perfidy - knowing full well the ways of little children - the magician employed one of his more crafty tricks. He shuffled just slightly backwards towards me and landed a great crushing heel on my tiny wee foot.
The only cry the audience then heard was my sharp yelp of pain. The trick was done.
So today comes another trick, but this one has come unstuck. Police arrive at a suspected villain's house. Said suspected villain does not care to be found at home and goes to hide in a cupboard. Girlfriend of same bewails the officers that she's not seen him for months.
But then up steps the little four year old son of the bloke in question and in the cupboard:
"I can show you where Daddy is hiding!" he cries out in happy, honest tones.
Babes and sucklings eh!
When he turned to do his trick with the little girl I could see what no one else in the audience could see - his right hand sneaking into his pocket.
Being but an infant - keen of eye and noble in truth-telling - I was about to try calling out to Mum "Look, see what he's doing. He's cheating Ma!"
Sensing my planned perfidy - knowing full well the ways of little children - the magician employed one of his more crafty tricks. He shuffled just slightly backwards towards me and landed a great crushing heel on my tiny wee foot.
The only cry the audience then heard was my sharp yelp of pain. The trick was done.
So today comes another trick, but this one has come unstuck. Police arrive at a suspected villain's house. Said suspected villain does not care to be found at home and goes to hide in a cupboard. Girlfriend of same bewails the officers that she's not seen him for months.
But then up steps the little four year old son of the bloke in question and in the cupboard:
"I can show you where Daddy is hiding!" he cries out in happy, honest tones.
Babes and sucklings eh!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Buchan Days...
...I have been escaping the pressing present to the comfort days of John Buchan. Rather like the ordinand who said he simply could not face the customary Gospels the night before he was priested, but sat up through the hours reading 'Wind In the Willows'.
"I simply couldn't do God that night," he told me. "I needed Ratty and Mole to feel safe." I know just what he means. Sometimes one simply must take that light yet potent escape route - an apposite image for Buchan's tales, as his heroes seem ever to be on the run from the terrible and cunning villains, and who are oft on the point of capture and certain death, yet who unfailingly ever manage the 'one bound and he was free' trick. Lovely stuff.
I believe I am thoroughly versed in most of the major Buchan 'shocker' oeuvre, though until last night I had not, I admit, read a single one. Before though the advent of 'talking books' one had 'reading housemasters', who would while away the post-prep pre-bed hours reading suitable classics to the imprisoned and bored boarders of the School.
Even that long ago, when the English world was essentially static and quite classic, Buchan's time had long passed. He was of one War and we were beyond another. Wish now one could journey back in time and ask of the housemaster what it was that he found so compelling about a man whose tempus et mores so preceded his own. Perhaps it was no more than the eternal love of a good yarn, or derring-do, or bashing a beastly enemy. That taste may vary in flavour, but it does not change in essential and we boys certainly loved it then.
Reading it now I can't pretend my heart doesn't too yearn for some mighty deeds to do, some dark and horrid enemy to be assailed and conquered. And then I look more closely at what Buchan was saying and my heart sinks somewhat at the utter relevance of it all.
For him - as uttered through his characters - there was but a thin veil between the social compact and barbarity in any and so many forms. He saw anarchy as the enemy, the wresting force that would tear it and us all down. As an ex-student, ex-anarchist I believe him more to be speaking of the nihilist. But also of the fanatic.
We have our nihilists. A boy is dead tonight stabbed, as so many others this year, on the streets of London by youths no more than his - or indeed E's - age. Random, bitter, impersonal violence is everywhere. And we too have our fanatics. They are worse than casual killers for they kill for the passion of a cause.
If I speak of Islamic fanatics it is not to single them out as such. There have been Christian fanatic killers and in time - God forbid - perhaps we shall have more atheistic mass murderers. But it is tonight, hearing of the ghastly assassination of Benazir Bhutto, that one particularly thinks of people who will kill for, and in the name of, Islam.
And where in all that does Buchan fit? Well, if you know it not then read his 'Greenmantle' as quick as you might. You might laugh to think there was ever a hope that a European power - his World War One enemy Germany - could ever control such a power of Islamic fundamentalism it sought to unleash. You might rightly baulk at his Anglo-centric notion that everything odd, peculiar and dangerous - never mind plain foreign - began at Dover. But you'd be hard pressed not to suck your teeth and think "Now there's a fellow who seemed to spot something significant in the offing."
I doubt too you would dispute his notion - from the mind of a man who was both a politician and a spy himself - that good intelligence is often if not always wasted on bad government.
My friend the ordinand, now priest, said that he realised the utter truth of his vocation that night as he read the chapter 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn': not the Sermon on the Mount, not the Last Supper, but the quiet pagan joy of Ratty and Mole as they basked in the saving love of their natural deity, that's what made it so right between him and his God.
I bet he reads Buchan. Probably preaches on the man too, much to the consternation of his very own Colonel X. We all have one. It's is God's way.
"I simply couldn't do God that night," he told me. "I needed Ratty and Mole to feel safe." I know just what he means. Sometimes one simply must take that light yet potent escape route - an apposite image for Buchan's tales, as his heroes seem ever to be on the run from the terrible and cunning villains, and who are oft on the point of capture and certain death, yet who unfailingly ever manage the 'one bound and he was free' trick. Lovely stuff.
I believe I am thoroughly versed in most of the major Buchan 'shocker' oeuvre, though until last night I had not, I admit, read a single one. Before though the advent of 'talking books' one had 'reading housemasters', who would while away the post-prep pre-bed hours reading suitable classics to the imprisoned and bored boarders of the School.
Even that long ago, when the English world was essentially static and quite classic, Buchan's time had long passed. He was of one War and we were beyond another. Wish now one could journey back in time and ask of the housemaster what it was that he found so compelling about a man whose tempus et mores so preceded his own. Perhaps it was no more than the eternal love of a good yarn, or derring-do, or bashing a beastly enemy. That taste may vary in flavour, but it does not change in essential and we boys certainly loved it then.
Reading it now I can't pretend my heart doesn't too yearn for some mighty deeds to do, some dark and horrid enemy to be assailed and conquered. And then I look more closely at what Buchan was saying and my heart sinks somewhat at the utter relevance of it all.
For him - as uttered through his characters - there was but a thin veil between the social compact and barbarity in any and so many forms. He saw anarchy as the enemy, the wresting force that would tear it and us all down. As an ex-student, ex-anarchist I believe him more to be speaking of the nihilist. But also of the fanatic.
We have our nihilists. A boy is dead tonight stabbed, as so many others this year, on the streets of London by youths no more than his - or indeed E's - age. Random, bitter, impersonal violence is everywhere. And we too have our fanatics. They are worse than casual killers for they kill for the passion of a cause.
If I speak of Islamic fanatics it is not to single them out as such. There have been Christian fanatic killers and in time - God forbid - perhaps we shall have more atheistic mass murderers. But it is tonight, hearing of the ghastly assassination of Benazir Bhutto, that one particularly thinks of people who will kill for, and in the name of, Islam.
And where in all that does Buchan fit? Well, if you know it not then read his 'Greenmantle' as quick as you might. You might laugh to think there was ever a hope that a European power - his World War One enemy Germany - could ever control such a power of Islamic fundamentalism it sought to unleash. You might rightly baulk at his Anglo-centric notion that everything odd, peculiar and dangerous - never mind plain foreign - began at Dover. But you'd be hard pressed not to suck your teeth and think "Now there's a fellow who seemed to spot something significant in the offing."
I doubt too you would dispute his notion - from the mind of a man who was both a politician and a spy himself - that good intelligence is often if not always wasted on bad government.
My friend the ordinand, now priest, said that he realised the utter truth of his vocation that night as he read the chapter 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn': not the Sermon on the Mount, not the Last Supper, but the quiet pagan joy of Ratty and Mole as they basked in the saving love of their natural deity, that's what made it so right between him and his God.
I bet he reads Buchan. Probably preaches on the man too, much to the consternation of his very own Colonel X. We all have one. It's is God's way.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Not Quite Peace On Earth...
...I blame myself - and so does H which more or less confirms the matter - I should have briefed the fellow more closely on local protocol. For the wires have been verily humming this merry Christmas Morn, though sadly the note has been one more of ire than, as it ought, of simple, joyous delight at the birth of Our Saviour.
You'll remember Curate Cuthbert, mentioned some while back, as he who has been posted to sojourn under my wing a while in a general learning-the-ropes capacity. (Haven't said much about him here, as he deserves some privacy while finding his way and his place in the scheme of things.)
And a thoroughly helpful soul he is too, for which mercy great thanks. Bit of an eager beaver in a 'God bothering' sort of way, as these young clerics tend to be - brings back even so many memories of one's own youthful enthusiasm - but fresh blood fired with true Gospel passion is never an ungodly thing despite leading as it must to the occasional unholy row.
Such as we have had today!
Cuthbert I striped down for the Dawn Mass - as we still like it call it round here. Midnight is mine of course as befits my station, and the main family mass also belongs to the senior cleric, plus wife and family. The Parish would have it no other way, so that is the way they get it.
Call it though what you will, it is ever the first service of a Sunday morn, taken quite early - around eight of the clock and no later - and attended by the quieter souls who prefer a less crowded venue for a more restful liturgy. (Some would argue that they come this hour to get it out of the way in as swift a time as possible, but that would not be an awfully charitable thought. So long as they come at all, is my concern!)
It - this early doors service - is what is known formally as a 'said Mass', differentiating it thus from the 'sung Mass'. The clue is in the title: no singing. Not everyone wants to sing, not all enjoy it for many reasons. Off-key bawling may be laudable in worshipful intent, but can be terribly hard on the ear and on the gentler soul wishing a quiet word with his or her Lord.
Now our Cuthbert has himself a fine natural voice and can hold a good tune in season and out of season, in shower and again out. (Should really have been a choir monk, but seems to prefer the 'outdoor' life of an active cleric.) But a gift or charism can be a tricky thing, leading to such syllogistic fallacies as: "I can sing, therefore they can sing. I want to sing because I can sing, therefore they too must want to sing."
But that is precisely the point. Some of them can't and none of them want. That is why they are there at that time, in order not to have to sing or be sung to.
So what does sweet Cuthbert do but announce to an instantly hostile crowd that as it is Christmas Morn they are to have three carols! Iris on the door handing out the sheets was the first to phone an advance warning. "There'll be trouble," she advised rightly H. "The Colonel was furious. Turned quite purple he did before he even got to his pew. Gladys needing help down the nave. Thought she was going to pass out on me." (Gladys has her place behind the third pillar where she can neither see nor be seen. That has been her custom these sixty years and it has kept her on the straight and narrow - if not entirely sane - path of life, so who am I to question?)
Blameless Cuthbert - as I say the fault was mine entirely - arrives back for his breakfast just as Colonel X mounts his charge. 'Tis he himself this time on the telephone. "What's all this bloody Darwinian nonsense doing here eh?!" That, I admit, threw me. Was expecting a rant about 'If I wanted to be a roaring Methodist I'd be down the chapel', but not some loud hectoring about evolution as the science of the anti-Christ - that being the Colonel's take on the subject. (Crisp, if a little unengaged with modern thinking on the matter.)
Seems then that not only did Cuthbert have them warbling - an irksome if venial sin - but he also mentioned something about how in God's plan for man He has turned us from four to two legged creatures in order that we might look up to Heaven and not down to Earth for the way forward.
Personally I've no theological problem with this. I am not persuaded by ardent Creationists that I must be either for them or against them and God. It was though perhaps more than the odd step too far for the early birds of The Wolds.
Cuthbert is beaming through his toast. He did give a cracking homily - this I know because he showed it me in advance and it was a belter - so he believes he has done nothing but sprinkle God's light and love this morning. Well yes he has. He has done the Lord's work mightily as ever. But like dear Saint Paul he has left a trail of havoc in his wake! 'Twill then be for me, though, to do the rounds today seeking to settle frayed nerves and irked spirits.
The turkey must wait until peace on earth is restored in The Wolds. Just a bite of cold turkey sandwich before Evensong shall be my festal lot I fear.
You'll remember Curate Cuthbert, mentioned some while back, as he who has been posted to sojourn under my wing a while in a general learning-the-ropes capacity. (Haven't said much about him here, as he deserves some privacy while finding his way and his place in the scheme of things.)
And a thoroughly helpful soul he is too, for which mercy great thanks. Bit of an eager beaver in a 'God bothering' sort of way, as these young clerics tend to be - brings back even so many memories of one's own youthful enthusiasm - but fresh blood fired with true Gospel passion is never an ungodly thing despite leading as it must to the occasional unholy row.
Such as we have had today!
Cuthbert I striped down for the Dawn Mass - as we still like it call it round here. Midnight is mine of course as befits my station, and the main family mass also belongs to the senior cleric, plus wife and family. The Parish would have it no other way, so that is the way they get it.
Call it though what you will, it is ever the first service of a Sunday morn, taken quite early - around eight of the clock and no later - and attended by the quieter souls who prefer a less crowded venue for a more restful liturgy. (Some would argue that they come this hour to get it out of the way in as swift a time as possible, but that would not be an awfully charitable thought. So long as they come at all, is my concern!)
It - this early doors service - is what is known formally as a 'said Mass', differentiating it thus from the 'sung Mass'. The clue is in the title: no singing. Not everyone wants to sing, not all enjoy it for many reasons. Off-key bawling may be laudable in worshipful intent, but can be terribly hard on the ear and on the gentler soul wishing a quiet word with his or her Lord.
Now our Cuthbert has himself a fine natural voice and can hold a good tune in season and out of season, in shower and again out. (Should really have been a choir monk, but seems to prefer the 'outdoor' life of an active cleric.) But a gift or charism can be a tricky thing, leading to such syllogistic fallacies as: "I can sing, therefore they can sing. I want to sing because I can sing, therefore they too must want to sing."
But that is precisely the point. Some of them can't and none of them want. That is why they are there at that time, in order not to have to sing or be sung to.
So what does sweet Cuthbert do but announce to an instantly hostile crowd that as it is Christmas Morn they are to have three carols! Iris on the door handing out the sheets was the first to phone an advance warning. "There'll be trouble," she advised rightly H. "The Colonel was furious. Turned quite purple he did before he even got to his pew. Gladys needing help down the nave. Thought she was going to pass out on me." (Gladys has her place behind the third pillar where she can neither see nor be seen. That has been her custom these sixty years and it has kept her on the straight and narrow - if not entirely sane - path of life, so who am I to question?)
Blameless Cuthbert - as I say the fault was mine entirely - arrives back for his breakfast just as Colonel X mounts his charge. 'Tis he himself this time on the telephone. "What's all this bloody Darwinian nonsense doing here eh?!" That, I admit, threw me. Was expecting a rant about 'If I wanted to be a roaring Methodist I'd be down the chapel', but not some loud hectoring about evolution as the science of the anti-Christ - that being the Colonel's take on the subject. (Crisp, if a little unengaged with modern thinking on the matter.)
Seems then that not only did Cuthbert have them warbling - an irksome if venial sin - but he also mentioned something about how in God's plan for man He has turned us from four to two legged creatures in order that we might look up to Heaven and not down to Earth for the way forward.
Personally I've no theological problem with this. I am not persuaded by ardent Creationists that I must be either for them or against them and God. It was though perhaps more than the odd step too far for the early birds of The Wolds.
Cuthbert is beaming through his toast. He did give a cracking homily - this I know because he showed it me in advance and it was a belter - so he believes he has done nothing but sprinkle God's light and love this morning. Well yes he has. He has done the Lord's work mightily as ever. But like dear Saint Paul he has left a trail of havoc in his wake! 'Twill then be for me, though, to do the rounds today seeking to settle frayed nerves and irked spirits.
The turkey must wait until peace on earth is restored in The Wolds. Just a bite of cold turkey sandwich before Evensong shall be my festal lot I fear.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Shooting The Past...3
...to complete then the tale of Anastasia's Doll.
It is a blazing hot summer's day at Tsarskoe Selo, where the Romanovs have come to escape the stultifying heat of the city. Alexander Palace is a favourite of the Romanov children. Tall, white, elegant yet not cramped with the formality of the Court. They love to play in the wide parklands and to pretend to camp out at the White Tower.
1909. A lull in time. For them, the Imperial family, the revolution has already happened four years before. There need not be another, nor indeed could there truly be a European war between the nations. Russia had been struck a blow but had not fallen. The children and the land were safe.
A picnic is arranged and Father is coming. The children are gleeful, too excited perhaps for the taste of their English nanny. But she cannot scold as they happily prepare a feast for all. And it will be for all, for servants, for soldiers guarding the family - at peace but alert to danger is their Father - for the whole Palace.
Tables are set by the White Tower. There is a High Table for Father and Mother, but other than that it is catch-as-you-can, sit where you please. The children are seated with Nanny of course and they are joined by Captains and Colonels from the regiments encamped nearby.
There is a photographer to record the day.
Anastasia is giddy with pleasure. She leans over to grasp her sister in a girl's joke at the soldiers' expense. Then laughing she topples backwards off her chair and in falling is caught by a fat and kindly Colonel.
As the photographer, keen to capture all moments and unafraid of any protocol, leaps forward to take his photograph of this silly, lovely moment, the English nanny glowers at him in distaste. She cannot countenance such behaviour. These are royal girls and her girls. This is a light summer's frolic. It is a private moment, not to be seen by others. She looks sternly straight into the lens chiding the man and his machine.
Yet the photograph is taken. There is Anastasia falling to the ground. There is the fat Colonel catching her and there is Nanny, tight-lipped, round faced, very English and very disapproving.
On the table before Nanny is a doll. It is Anastasia's favourite doll and Nanny is keeping it safe for her. It is the very doll we now have in our house.
The Nanny was Auntie Margaret's friend. This we knew. Nanny was with the Romanovs. That we were told. The note said the doll she came home with was Anastasia's and we believed it.
And now I have seen the photograph, risen by chance from the pages of an archive collection just published, and now therefore belief is truth.
It is a blazing hot summer's day at Tsarskoe Selo, where the Romanovs have come to escape the stultifying heat of the city. Alexander Palace is a favourite of the Romanov children. Tall, white, elegant yet not cramped with the formality of the Court. They love to play in the wide parklands and to pretend to camp out at the White Tower.
1909. A lull in time. For them, the Imperial family, the revolution has already happened four years before. There need not be another, nor indeed could there truly be a European war between the nations. Russia had been struck a blow but had not fallen. The children and the land were safe.
A picnic is arranged and Father is coming. The children are gleeful, too excited perhaps for the taste of their English nanny. But she cannot scold as they happily prepare a feast for all. And it will be for all, for servants, for soldiers guarding the family - at peace but alert to danger is their Father - for the whole Palace.
Tables are set by the White Tower. There is a High Table for Father and Mother, but other than that it is catch-as-you-can, sit where you please. The children are seated with Nanny of course and they are joined by Captains and Colonels from the regiments encamped nearby.
There is a photographer to record the day.
Anastasia is giddy with pleasure. She leans over to grasp her sister in a girl's joke at the soldiers' expense. Then laughing she topples backwards off her chair and in falling is caught by a fat and kindly Colonel.
As the photographer, keen to capture all moments and unafraid of any protocol, leaps forward to take his photograph of this silly, lovely moment, the English nanny glowers at him in distaste. She cannot countenance such behaviour. These are royal girls and her girls. This is a light summer's frolic. It is a private moment, not to be seen by others. She looks sternly straight into the lens chiding the man and his machine.
Yet the photograph is taken. There is Anastasia falling to the ground. There is the fat Colonel catching her and there is Nanny, tight-lipped, round faced, very English and very disapproving.
On the table before Nanny is a doll. It is Anastasia's favourite doll and Nanny is keeping it safe for her. It is the very doll we now have in our house.
The Nanny was Auntie Margaret's friend. This we knew. Nanny was with the Romanovs. That we were told. The note said the doll she came home with was Anastasia's and we believed it.
And now I have seen the photograph, risen by chance from the pages of an archive collection just published, and now therefore belief is truth.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
It's A Wonderful Life?
They call Frank Capra's film of that name the ultimate 'feel-good' film, but having once more this evening watched it I find it more dark than light. A good darkness, but one so heavy as to be quite crushing.
Let us leave aside the wondrous ministrations of Clarence, Angel Second Class bless him, the towering performance of James Stewart - and that of Donna Reed - and the indeed heart-warming rescue from disaster by the generous gifts of money from all who know how much they owe to that great man of principle George Bailey, whose unbending yearning for social justice learned from his father has kept the town Bedford Falls and not Pottersville.
So far, so granted. This though is my other reflection.
Potter, the evil beast of Mammon, hits right through to George when he tells him to his face that he, George, has always hated the fate that kept him in his home town. In saving his family, the family business and the town George has sacrificed every personal ambition or desire he ever held dear from childhood. And this has not been a gift freely given, but one that has silently wracked his spirit and his soul every waking day and moment.
George has no reply or refutation to that charge, because he knows that in some part of his heart he can hear the words of St. Paul "Though I give my body to be burnt and yet have not love..." Yes, he resists the Devil's bargain, he stands for his principles against the offer of easy money, but within him he knows that he has had to suppress deep and precious internal yearnings in order to carry on wearing the hero's crown of thorns. Providence is his duty not his desire.
For then see what happens when Uncle Billy's ever absent-minded foolishness in misplacing the $8,000 leads to near disaster for the company and everything that George has striven for over so many self-sacrificing years.
He turns brutally on Billy, lambasting him for his eternal stupidity, a character foible that until now has been both tolerated and adored. Then George goes home and worse, so much worse, rants at his children who cannot comprehend why their loving father has turned so savagely against them. He tramples on, he physically breaks, the bonds that bind him and preserve them. He reduces his daughter to frightened tears, he smashes to pieces the very fabric of the place.
George hates himself for this terrible and terrifying betrayal, and his urge for self-destruction is as much a matter of self-loathing for that as it is for any threatened loss of his life's work.
Never mind recovery of assets and reputation through friendly donations of cash. What counts - what is the real redemptive act of the film - is the forgiveness of his wife and children for the horror he inflicted so suddenly upon them. (George Bailey has had his Colonel Kurtz moment: "You must make a friend of horror...")
That then is the power and the glory of the film. George is tempted as Christ was tempted. He was offered dominion and refused it. For that he too suffered a Crucifixion of the soul. Then George rose, as Christ rose, to new life.
But as St Paul once more reminds us, to pass to new life is to pass through a death. There is no other way.
It is a wonderful life, but the wonder is found in a dark place. Clarence, Capra, the film, the studio maybe - they all let James Stewart off the hook at the end. It is not because George has friends that his life is not a failure, nor is it even that his life has done so much good that would not have happened without him.
No, it is so much more than that. It is that George can be deeply, horribly - so humanly - flawed, so out of kilter between the good the world sees and the beast that lives inside, and yet with all that can be and is redeemed.
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that we should be saved. Saved from sin. Saved from Pottersville. Saved from our sinful ways of being. Saved from darkness into light. (I do wish sometimes I were Eastern Orthodox - they do so much understand the light.)
Merry Christmas to all. May the eternal, bright and wonderful Light of Christ shine in our dark places. We all have them.
Let us leave aside the wondrous ministrations of Clarence, Angel Second Class bless him, the towering performance of James Stewart - and that of Donna Reed - and the indeed heart-warming rescue from disaster by the generous gifts of money from all who know how much they owe to that great man of principle George Bailey, whose unbending yearning for social justice learned from his father has kept the town Bedford Falls and not Pottersville.
So far, so granted. This though is my other reflection.
Potter, the evil beast of Mammon, hits right through to George when he tells him to his face that he, George, has always hated the fate that kept him in his home town. In saving his family, the family business and the town George has sacrificed every personal ambition or desire he ever held dear from childhood. And this has not been a gift freely given, but one that has silently wracked his spirit and his soul every waking day and moment.
George has no reply or refutation to that charge, because he knows that in some part of his heart he can hear the words of St. Paul "Though I give my body to be burnt and yet have not love..." Yes, he resists the Devil's bargain, he stands for his principles against the offer of easy money, but within him he knows that he has had to suppress deep and precious internal yearnings in order to carry on wearing the hero's crown of thorns. Providence is his duty not his desire.
For then see what happens when Uncle Billy's ever absent-minded foolishness in misplacing the $8,000 leads to near disaster for the company and everything that George has striven for over so many self-sacrificing years.
He turns brutally on Billy, lambasting him for his eternal stupidity, a character foible that until now has been both tolerated and adored. Then George goes home and worse, so much worse, rants at his children who cannot comprehend why their loving father has turned so savagely against them. He tramples on, he physically breaks, the bonds that bind him and preserve them. He reduces his daughter to frightened tears, he smashes to pieces the very fabric of the place.
George hates himself for this terrible and terrifying betrayal, and his urge for self-destruction is as much a matter of self-loathing for that as it is for any threatened loss of his life's work.
Never mind recovery of assets and reputation through friendly donations of cash. What counts - what is the real redemptive act of the film - is the forgiveness of his wife and children for the horror he inflicted so suddenly upon them. (George Bailey has had his Colonel Kurtz moment: "You must make a friend of horror...")
That then is the power and the glory of the film. George is tempted as Christ was tempted. He was offered dominion and refused it. For that he too suffered a Crucifixion of the soul. Then George rose, as Christ rose, to new life.
But as St Paul once more reminds us, to pass to new life is to pass through a death. There is no other way.
It is a wonderful life, but the wonder is found in a dark place. Clarence, Capra, the film, the studio maybe - they all let James Stewart off the hook at the end. It is not because George has friends that his life is not a failure, nor is it even that his life has done so much good that would not have happened without him.
No, it is so much more than that. It is that George can be deeply, horribly - so humanly - flawed, so out of kilter between the good the world sees and the beast that lives inside, and yet with all that can be and is redeemed.
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that we should be saved. Saved from sin. Saved from Pottersville. Saved from our sinful ways of being. Saved from darkness into light. (I do wish sometimes I were Eastern Orthodox - they do so much understand the light.)
Merry Christmas to all. May the eternal, bright and wonderful Light of Christ shine in our dark places. We all have them.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Catholic Blair...
...so Tony 'Warmonger' Blair has become a Roman Catholic has he?
Not sure whether one should pray for him or for them.
One great mercy. Though chances were slim that he should ever have popped in to one of our services, I did fear the consequences. For had it so passed, I should have in all fairness have been obliged to slip out of my cosy seat in the sanctuary and slapped his face.
Not merely, you must understand, to show my disapproval of the man and all his works, but also to forestall H who avowed she would bite his leg if he ever dared to show his face in our place.
'Vicar hauled off to clink after PM slap' is a headline I could be proud of, but 'Vicar's wife eats PM alive' would be just too much to take.
Anyway, good luck to them all. Wonder who will be the first to offer him the 'Sign of Peace' at Midnight Mass!
Not sure whether one should pray for him or for them.
One great mercy. Though chances were slim that he should ever have popped in to one of our services, I did fear the consequences. For had it so passed, I should have in all fairness have been obliged to slip out of my cosy seat in the sanctuary and slapped his face.
Not merely, you must understand, to show my disapproval of the man and all his works, but also to forestall H who avowed she would bite his leg if he ever dared to show his face in our place.
'Vicar hauled off to clink after PM slap' is a headline I could be proud of, but 'Vicar's wife eats PM alive' would be just too much to take.
Anyway, good luck to them all. Wonder who will be the first to offer him the 'Sign of Peace' at Midnight Mass!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Sidewinder...
You will not ordinarily - note that careful word - find me among the host of locals who actively deplore the recent inrush of migrant workers from Eastern Europe to these parts.
Ill befits it indeed a clergyman to be picky about the nationality of his flock, though I do own a tad of envy of my Roman colleagues who seem to garner the majority of new worshippers. (Not many Anglicans in Romania or Poland I believe and if there are, well then that is where they appear to be staying.)
It can be hard separating the real and genuine concerns for the impact of so many foreign workers and their families on our community and our services ('infrastructure' is the word I am told) from rank - in both senses - racism. Chat down the Dragon Inn does not always smack of the fullness of Christian spirit it ought - but then if this were a perfect world I for one would be out of a job!
By and large we try to jostle along together, taking the long view (it will not last) and the short (they're here so let's live with it), and if that is not the most openly welcoming it could be then it is a good and godly distance from the ferment the BNP and their like would have it so.
However - there is a big however tonight - should someone pop round the Rectory at this late hour to propose an armed uprising to repel all boarders, then I fear you would find me reaching for my cutlass to join 'em!
Why this sudden ire you enquire in shocked tones? Well, 'tis this.
This evening H and E ventured on one of those inevitable late-night, female shopping trips that are sadly an integral part of a modern semi-secular Advent. A road trip along a local main road was required. The telephone rings some half hour after their departure. 'Tis E in a state.
For it seems a wretched Portuguese - this much they could tell from the vehicle - lorry driver had nearly driven them off the road by pulling out of his lane into theirs totally oblivious of their presence.
The practice is, I am aware, known as 'side-swiping'. Left-hand drive drivers who cannot or will not see what they are doing on our roads. The Government it seems is offering voluntary extra side mirrors to such persons before crossing the Channel in the hope of reducing the carnage caused this way.
'Voluntary'! I'll give them voluntary! Not welcome in this Parish I can tell you any trucker who does not care what he is about, but calmly risks causing death to my family.
Apparently many other cars sounded their horns in alert and alarm. And the driver's response? To raise his arms in disgruntled unconcern as if a matter of no interest to him whatsoever.
Not a wise move on his part. My antipathy is fixed. At least for this evening.
Ill befits it indeed a clergyman to be picky about the nationality of his flock, though I do own a tad of envy of my Roman colleagues who seem to garner the majority of new worshippers. (Not many Anglicans in Romania or Poland I believe and if there are, well then that is where they appear to be staying.)
It can be hard separating the real and genuine concerns for the impact of so many foreign workers and their families on our community and our services ('infrastructure' is the word I am told) from rank - in both senses - racism. Chat down the Dragon Inn does not always smack of the fullness of Christian spirit it ought - but then if this were a perfect world I for one would be out of a job!
By and large we try to jostle along together, taking the long view (it will not last) and the short (they're here so let's live with it), and if that is not the most openly welcoming it could be then it is a good and godly distance from the ferment the BNP and their like would have it so.
However - there is a big however tonight - should someone pop round the Rectory at this late hour to propose an armed uprising to repel all boarders, then I fear you would find me reaching for my cutlass to join 'em!
Why this sudden ire you enquire in shocked tones? Well, 'tis this.
This evening H and E ventured on one of those inevitable late-night, female shopping trips that are sadly an integral part of a modern semi-secular Advent. A road trip along a local main road was required. The telephone rings some half hour after their departure. 'Tis E in a state.
For it seems a wretched Portuguese - this much they could tell from the vehicle - lorry driver had nearly driven them off the road by pulling out of his lane into theirs totally oblivious of their presence.
The practice is, I am aware, known as 'side-swiping'. Left-hand drive drivers who cannot or will not see what they are doing on our roads. The Government it seems is offering voluntary extra side mirrors to such persons before crossing the Channel in the hope of reducing the carnage caused this way.
'Voluntary'! I'll give them voluntary! Not welcome in this Parish I can tell you any trucker who does not care what he is about, but calmly risks causing death to my family.
Apparently many other cars sounded their horns in alert and alarm. And the driver's response? To raise his arms in disgruntled unconcern as if a matter of no interest to him whatsoever.
Not a wise move on his part. My antipathy is fixed. At least for this evening.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Bouncer R.I.P.
One must pause here to bring sad news that Bouncer has died. Bouncer indeed has been put down, shot of necessity today.
You who know enough of country ways may not be too hard pressed to guess that Bouncer was a horse, for animals are put down and horses shot.
Not our horse - for if it were I would not now have the steely determination needed to speak of the sorrow - but of a friend, a friend who tonight is heartbroken. (Auntie Margaret would have understood and stood by as needed.)
Bouncer was not elderly, it was not age that took him, but he was throughout his life a 'wind-sucker'. Again, if you know horses you will know how both silly and how lethal that is.
Many have been the times when Bouncer and I have shared a quiet chat across the stable door (the yard knows me as not the horse whisperer but the 'horse chatterer', which is a noble title and one I am proud to bear howsoever daft it may seem) about life and good grazing and so forth.
But as we have spoken thus, inevitably moment by moment Bouncer would break off the conversation to bite at his stable half-door. Silly, silly boy! And I would say so. For in biting he was sucking and in sucking he was pulling air into his innards. And in pulling air into his innards he was risking - and often suffering - colic.
Colic you say? Sounds a fine and ancient illness. Quite like a gout, something to be had by Squire Roger de Coverley of early Spectator days. Indeed yes, so it sounds a bad belly and no more. In a human.
But in a horse something utterly more horrid. For if you have ever seen a horse thrashing in agony, kicking the very bricks out of its stable, throwing itself to the ground, twisting and rolling in a vain effort to ease the pain of the twisted gut - if you have seen that then you have seen torment.
And so, I would be wanting to say to Bouncer each day, when will you stop doing the silly one thing - the endless habit - that may kill you? And he would look me in the eye as if to say "Perhaps soon."
In passing - you are taught if you study these things never to look a horse in the eye as this will cause the poor beast to believe you must be a predator. For certain, until a full rapport is established better it is to nod as the horse nods, to sway as the horse sways and not to be seen to be a threat by making direct eye contact.
But in time - often but not not always - one can go far beyond this. Once that connection has been made between man and beast (or is it rather 'beast and noble horse'? - I do sometimes wonder) the soul of horse and man can meet through their eyes.
If you knew not that, then you know it now and you are the luckier for it.
And back to Bouncer. Tall, quite lean with a true equine face - long, narrow but not sharp and light and high. I took him quite for an antiquarian, a lover of good past things. In touch with the world and yet not a little distant. Perhaps in truth somewhat of an autistic disposition, yet for all that kindly and communicative.
We chatted at length only the other day, he with head held high and ready for a tickle. (Many the horse there is that delights in a fond tickle. More than you might imagine from the haughty look of most. Try it in due season and if they like it they will.) Post-operative was Bouncer that day, surgery having been tried to fix the suffering innards. But calm as ever - wind-sucking as ever - he gazed out over his door at the yard and its passing traffic.
But now he is gone. A sudden burst of colic, a terrible thrashing and torment, the vet summonsed and a mercy killing the only option. E tells me that his body lay covered by a blue tarpaulin at the back of the yard, the younger girls of the place in hysterics at the sight.
I am glad I did not hear the bullet fired, but I am sad not to have had the chance to say farewell.
No wind-sucking now dear boy. Beyond that silliness you are now. An eternal pasture for you and endless sorrow for Sam your rider and keeper.
And if you chide a Christian for avowing that animals have souls, then you chide in vain for you know not horses and if you know not them then little do you know.
You who know enough of country ways may not be too hard pressed to guess that Bouncer was a horse, for animals are put down and horses shot.
Not our horse - for if it were I would not now have the steely determination needed to speak of the sorrow - but of a friend, a friend who tonight is heartbroken. (Auntie Margaret would have understood and stood by as needed.)
Bouncer was not elderly, it was not age that took him, but he was throughout his life a 'wind-sucker'. Again, if you know horses you will know how both silly and how lethal that is.
Many have been the times when Bouncer and I have shared a quiet chat across the stable door (the yard knows me as not the horse whisperer but the 'horse chatterer', which is a noble title and one I am proud to bear howsoever daft it may seem) about life and good grazing and so forth.
But as we have spoken thus, inevitably moment by moment Bouncer would break off the conversation to bite at his stable half-door. Silly, silly boy! And I would say so. For in biting he was sucking and in sucking he was pulling air into his innards. And in pulling air into his innards he was risking - and often suffering - colic.
Colic you say? Sounds a fine and ancient illness. Quite like a gout, something to be had by Squire Roger de Coverley of early Spectator days. Indeed yes, so it sounds a bad belly and no more. In a human.
But in a horse something utterly more horrid. For if you have ever seen a horse thrashing in agony, kicking the very bricks out of its stable, throwing itself to the ground, twisting and rolling in a vain effort to ease the pain of the twisted gut - if you have seen that then you have seen torment.
And so, I would be wanting to say to Bouncer each day, when will you stop doing the silly one thing - the endless habit - that may kill you? And he would look me in the eye as if to say "Perhaps soon."
In passing - you are taught if you study these things never to look a horse in the eye as this will cause the poor beast to believe you must be a predator. For certain, until a full rapport is established better it is to nod as the horse nods, to sway as the horse sways and not to be seen to be a threat by making direct eye contact.
But in time - often but not not always - one can go far beyond this. Once that connection has been made between man and beast (or is it rather 'beast and noble horse'? - I do sometimes wonder) the soul of horse and man can meet through their eyes.
If you knew not that, then you know it now and you are the luckier for it.
And back to Bouncer. Tall, quite lean with a true equine face - long, narrow but not sharp and light and high. I took him quite for an antiquarian, a lover of good past things. In touch with the world and yet not a little distant. Perhaps in truth somewhat of an autistic disposition, yet for all that kindly and communicative.
We chatted at length only the other day, he with head held high and ready for a tickle. (Many the horse there is that delights in a fond tickle. More than you might imagine from the haughty look of most. Try it in due season and if they like it they will.) Post-operative was Bouncer that day, surgery having been tried to fix the suffering innards. But calm as ever - wind-sucking as ever - he gazed out over his door at the yard and its passing traffic.
But now he is gone. A sudden burst of colic, a terrible thrashing and torment, the vet summonsed and a mercy killing the only option. E tells me that his body lay covered by a blue tarpaulin at the back of the yard, the younger girls of the place in hysterics at the sight.
I am glad I did not hear the bullet fired, but I am sad not to have had the chance to say farewell.
No wind-sucking now dear boy. Beyond that silliness you are now. An eternal pasture for you and endless sorrow for Sam your rider and keeper.
And if you chide a Christian for avowing that animals have souls, then you chide in vain for you know not horses and if you know not them then little do you know.
Shooting The Past...2
Shot then. By the past, that is.
The story unfolds thus. Earlier you will - or will not - have read the story of 'Anastasia's Doll'.
The doll in question is a somewhat raggedy affair, plain of dress and look. The head is its only remarkable aspect in that it can be turned to one of three looks: she smiles, she cries, she sleeps. A baby in total really, all about that there is to say or note.
Of a German style we are told. Early Twentieth century they say. Well, they are right about the period for sure. This we know, for we also know that this doll was once the toy of no less personage than Princess Anastasia of Romanov fame and fate.
Gosh, you might well say. You are in possession of a doll once owned by the poor lost child who died - or not - when her family were slaughtered by the Bolsheviks? Yes, we would reply, we are.
Hot stuff indeed and the very making of our temporal fortune it would be. Had we the proof of provenance that is. Our proof is a narrative that we find both truthful and plausible.
There was once an ancient Auntie Margaret, spinster not just of this parish but of the entire County in that her beneficence and kindly ways supported not merely the poor of her immediate community but the semi-destitute far and wide. I am not suggesting, of course, that is a necessary prerequisite of saintly care for others that one should be both female and unmarried. (Being neither, indeed, I do not fear I am entirely excluded from such sanctity, though perhaps lacking in the necessary performance. For others to judge of course.)
But if not a necessity, it is certain that of disposition there was - one would hope will continue to be - once a generation of unmarried women for whom the world as they knew it was their family to nurture and love. A big ask, one might say as indeed it is. Big heart, strong arms and endless patience. Nothing less will carry one on and through indeed. Auntie Margaret had all three, mercifully, throughout a long life.
There were many then who mourned her passing some ten years back - 'promoted to Glory' she would say of others and certain we said it of her - we not the least of them.
From that demise followed in due order an inheritance. Part of a house and all of its contents. Among the effects was the doll. Had it not been the note that lay in the tatty shoebox with it, the doll should have not been of any great note.
But note there was and what a story that note told. In brief it was this.
A friend within the sisterhood of spinsterdom, not content with being spinsterly and goodly at home chose to venture abroad to serve as a nanny to whomsoever would have her. And as an English nanny much was she in demand in her chosen foreign land - Russia.
Russia of 1910. Pre-War, pre-revolutionary Russia. Imperialist Russia. An Imperial family much desiring a nanny, Auntie Margaret's chum was chosen for the post. Nanny to Anastasia.
Some years passed. Happy years perhaps, though with sufficient dark portents no doubt. Come the War, then came the Revolution. Time little enough for the English nanny to leave, seek safety in her own land. Or else perish with the Romanovs could have been her fate.
So she came home, and in leaving was gifted a present from her charge. The doll, Anastasia's favourite. And with the gift our note:
"Dear X, Thank you so very much for caring for me. I shall miss you. I hope we can see each other again after this is all over. Would you like me to come to England? Anastasia."
The doll and the note came home with the nanny, but never the child.
Some will say - have said - that our small note is but too light a thing to carry such a weight. But we have believed and now, the past having shot us, we also know.
How we know is to come....
The story unfolds thus. Earlier you will - or will not - have read the story of 'Anastasia's Doll'.
The doll in question is a somewhat raggedy affair, plain of dress and look. The head is its only remarkable aspect in that it can be turned to one of three looks: she smiles, she cries, she sleeps. A baby in total really, all about that there is to say or note.
Of a German style we are told. Early Twentieth century they say. Well, they are right about the period for sure. This we know, for we also know that this doll was once the toy of no less personage than Princess Anastasia of Romanov fame and fate.
Gosh, you might well say. You are in possession of a doll once owned by the poor lost child who died - or not - when her family were slaughtered by the Bolsheviks? Yes, we would reply, we are.
Hot stuff indeed and the very making of our temporal fortune it would be. Had we the proof of provenance that is. Our proof is a narrative that we find both truthful and plausible.
There was once an ancient Auntie Margaret, spinster not just of this parish but of the entire County in that her beneficence and kindly ways supported not merely the poor of her immediate community but the semi-destitute far and wide. I am not suggesting, of course, that is a necessary prerequisite of saintly care for others that one should be both female and unmarried. (Being neither, indeed, I do not fear I am entirely excluded from such sanctity, though perhaps lacking in the necessary performance. For others to judge of course.)
But if not a necessity, it is certain that of disposition there was - one would hope will continue to be - once a generation of unmarried women for whom the world as they knew it was their family to nurture and love. A big ask, one might say as indeed it is. Big heart, strong arms and endless patience. Nothing less will carry one on and through indeed. Auntie Margaret had all three, mercifully, throughout a long life.
There were many then who mourned her passing some ten years back - 'promoted to Glory' she would say of others and certain we said it of her - we not the least of them.
From that demise followed in due order an inheritance. Part of a house and all of its contents. Among the effects was the doll. Had it not been the note that lay in the tatty shoebox with it, the doll should have not been of any great note.
But note there was and what a story that note told. In brief it was this.
A friend within the sisterhood of spinsterdom, not content with being spinsterly and goodly at home chose to venture abroad to serve as a nanny to whomsoever would have her. And as an English nanny much was she in demand in her chosen foreign land - Russia.
Russia of 1910. Pre-War, pre-revolutionary Russia. Imperialist Russia. An Imperial family much desiring a nanny, Auntie Margaret's chum was chosen for the post. Nanny to Anastasia.
Some years passed. Happy years perhaps, though with sufficient dark portents no doubt. Come the War, then came the Revolution. Time little enough for the English nanny to leave, seek safety in her own land. Or else perish with the Romanovs could have been her fate.
So she came home, and in leaving was gifted a present from her charge. The doll, Anastasia's favourite. And with the gift our note:
"Dear X, Thank you so very much for caring for me. I shall miss you. I hope we can see each other again after this is all over. Would you like me to come to England? Anastasia."
The doll and the note came home with the nanny, but never the child.
Some will say - have said - that our small note is but too light a thing to carry such a weight. But we have believed and now, the past having shot us, we also know.
How we know is to come....
Monday, December 03, 2007
Shooting The Past....1
...a Stephen Poliakoff fan I, from the moment haughty Peggy Ashcroft and self-obsessed Michael Kitchen so marvellously clashed in 'Caught on a Train'.
I, to this day, cannot ask for a railway 'ticket' without attempting the clipped Mittel-European accent and aggressive intonation of Dame Peggy's character. (Quite off-putting that to the average BR - as was - Inspector of Tickets, which of course adds to the innocent fun.)
See it if you haven't, but skip for now along to a much later work 'Shooting the Past'. There you will find the heavenly Lindsay Duncan grappling with the wonderful Timothy Spall, curators of a great and decaying photographic archive, as they both seek to thwart the evil archive-closing American Liam Cunningham. (And, in passing to note, Emilia Fox with more gumption than ever she shows as that drippy little pathologist in latter-day 'Silent Witness'. H and I are at one in wanting to give her a good shake in that show, but not here.)
These three, Poliakoff and photography as recorder and keeper of the past. It really doesn't get much better. The nub of the piece is that hard times having fallen, the archive must go, must be dispersed, to make way for a thrusting new Business School.
Duncan, through Spall, eventually though persuades Cunningham that the archive must be preserved as a unity - not the best creamed off for auction to art or ad houses with rest discarded as so much waste - because they can lead him, by their photographs of ordinary people, from his present to his grandmother's past.
She - following Spall's clues - takes Cunningham on a journey through three generations of his family (a complex, emotionally charged and possibly murderous past) until before his until then doubting eyes he is shown a photograph of himself as a young boy with his mother meeting this magnificent grandmother.
Proof positive. Seeing is indeed believing. All there in black and white. And so forth.
Naturally the archive survives. Though Spall doesn't quite. In making so many connections he has become quite disconnected. A sacrifice. Touch of the Tarkovsky's there, and no worse for that.
Is there though, you ask, a point to this Poliakoff paean other than that in itself? Well yes there is, though this is not it. For today I have 'done a Cunningham' and my past too has been well and truly shot. Oh yes indeed it has.
But do not rush me to these connections or I too, as Spall, shall disconnect. A moment to frame the print before the exhibition....
I, to this day, cannot ask for a railway 'ticket' without attempting the clipped Mittel-European accent and aggressive intonation of Dame Peggy's character. (Quite off-putting that to the average BR - as was - Inspector of Tickets, which of course adds to the innocent fun.)
See it if you haven't, but skip for now along to a much later work 'Shooting the Past'. There you will find the heavenly Lindsay Duncan grappling with the wonderful Timothy Spall, curators of a great and decaying photographic archive, as they both seek to thwart the evil archive-closing American Liam Cunningham. (And, in passing to note, Emilia Fox with more gumption than ever she shows as that drippy little pathologist in latter-day 'Silent Witness'. H and I are at one in wanting to give her a good shake in that show, but not here.)
These three, Poliakoff and photography as recorder and keeper of the past. It really doesn't get much better. The nub of the piece is that hard times having fallen, the archive must go, must be dispersed, to make way for a thrusting new Business School.
Duncan, through Spall, eventually though persuades Cunningham that the archive must be preserved as a unity - not the best creamed off for auction to art or ad houses with rest discarded as so much waste - because they can lead him, by their photographs of ordinary people, from his present to his grandmother's past.
She - following Spall's clues - takes Cunningham on a journey through three generations of his family (a complex, emotionally charged and possibly murderous past) until before his until then doubting eyes he is shown a photograph of himself as a young boy with his mother meeting this magnificent grandmother.
Proof positive. Seeing is indeed believing. All there in black and white. And so forth.
Naturally the archive survives. Though Spall doesn't quite. In making so many connections he has become quite disconnected. A sacrifice. Touch of the Tarkovsky's there, and no worse for that.
Is there though, you ask, a point to this Poliakoff paean other than that in itself? Well yes there is, though this is not it. For today I have 'done a Cunningham' and my past too has been well and truly shot. Oh yes indeed it has.
But do not rush me to these connections or I too, as Spall, shall disconnect. A moment to frame the print before the exhibition....
Lost In Translation...
...Have you ever tried to describe a dipstick? Ever sought even to explain in words what the head of a dipstick looks like, or where abouts in relation to a particular car engine it is to be located?
Sounds not too difficult in principle perhaps, though one has to factor in the assumption that the person to whom you are seeking to give such information and illumination has requested it, thereby striping herself - note that - down as a person of severely limited life-skills or faculties.
Is it indeed possible for a grown adult not to know what a dipstick looks like and where to find one on - or in - any particular engine? Should it not in fact be a necessary test to pass for anyone aspiring to the noble title of adulthood that they can be shown seven car engines and spot seven dipstick heads in a trice?
If you add to this volatile mix that one is attempting to provide such information whilst slumbering in complete mental and emotional exhaustion upon the sofa, having the moment before returned safe and sound from Town the all clear [see previous] having once more been given one, if then one lets slip a little temper would it be a matter of any great surprise?
Let us merely record the final printable part of this bitter exchange:
H [herself]: "I still can't see it."
Self: "As I have oft repeated it is at the front of the engine. Now would you kindly let me rest, I am shattered. It has been a testing day all round. Go forth and find your own ruddy dipstick."
H: "Front of the engine? Which bit is the engine?"
The rest is not for preserving in print, though the memory will be seared deep into the soul for ever more.
Which bit is the engine! No jury would convict I tell you.
Ten mins later E arrives to disturb the same fretful slumber. She wants fifteen pounds to treat herself to an Indian meal for the evening, so does Papa have such a sum about his person?
Papa is not overly impressed at such profligacy, but sets aside any domestic fiscal concerns merely to remark that no, actually, Papa does not have fifteen quid to hand. A fact, not a judgement on or denial of the request, but merely a statement of fact. Fifteen quid requested. Fifteen quid not passed over as it was simply not there to be so passed. End of. As I believe E would say.
Poor E though. You could tell from her sweet little shocked look that this simply did not compute. Papa not handing over dosh on demand? An a priori impossibility silently said the sad face of the child.
You could tell my words had about as much meaning to her as H's to me about which particular bit of the engine is actually the engine. There was no aspect of content that in any way resembled a universe she recognised, no purchase could she find on the words with any conceptual cognitive tool or experientially learned capacities.
It could not be that Papa did not have money on demand, any more than that H could require of me that I enlighten her as to the matter of engine qua engine.
Impossible really to translate meaningful speech from the language of male to that of female. Two completely separate species. Might just as well expect a pea to converse with a strawberry, or a gibbon with a bison, or a brick with a spoon. It cannot happen.
All is lost in translation.
Sounds not too difficult in principle perhaps, though one has to factor in the assumption that the person to whom you are seeking to give such information and illumination has requested it, thereby striping herself - note that - down as a person of severely limited life-skills or faculties.
Is it indeed possible for a grown adult not to know what a dipstick looks like and where to find one on - or in - any particular engine? Should it not in fact be a necessary test to pass for anyone aspiring to the noble title of adulthood that they can be shown seven car engines and spot seven dipstick heads in a trice?
If you add to this volatile mix that one is attempting to provide such information whilst slumbering in complete mental and emotional exhaustion upon the sofa, having the moment before returned safe and sound from Town the all clear [see previous] having once more been given one, if then one lets slip a little temper would it be a matter of any great surprise?
Let us merely record the final printable part of this bitter exchange:
H [herself]: "I still can't see it."
Self: "As I have oft repeated it is at the front of the engine. Now would you kindly let me rest, I am shattered. It has been a testing day all round. Go forth and find your own ruddy dipstick."
H: "Front of the engine? Which bit is the engine?"
The rest is not for preserving in print, though the memory will be seared deep into the soul for ever more.
Which bit is the engine! No jury would convict I tell you.
Ten mins later E arrives to disturb the same fretful slumber. She wants fifteen pounds to treat herself to an Indian meal for the evening, so does Papa have such a sum about his person?
Papa is not overly impressed at such profligacy, but sets aside any domestic fiscal concerns merely to remark that no, actually, Papa does not have fifteen quid to hand. A fact, not a judgement on or denial of the request, but merely a statement of fact. Fifteen quid requested. Fifteen quid not passed over as it was simply not there to be so passed. End of. As I believe E would say.
Poor E though. You could tell from her sweet little shocked look that this simply did not compute. Papa not handing over dosh on demand? An a priori impossibility silently said the sad face of the child.
You could tell my words had about as much meaning to her as H's to me about which particular bit of the engine is actually the engine. There was no aspect of content that in any way resembled a universe she recognised, no purchase could she find on the words with any conceptual cognitive tool or experientially learned capacities.
It could not be that Papa did not have money on demand, any more than that H could require of me that I enlighten her as to the matter of engine qua engine.
Impossible really to translate meaningful speech from the language of male to that of female. Two completely separate species. Might just as well expect a pea to converse with a strawberry, or a gibbon with a bison, or a brick with a spoon. It cannot happen.
All is lost in translation.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Scanxiety...
...you'll not find me at the head of any queue to applaud or to use a neologism. Modern, new fangled in quite that sense, words are mostly rubbish. An OED from the late 1950s is generally all I ask or need.
There is, though, one such word I cannot avoid acknowledging quite hits the spot and that word is 'scanxiety'.
Not come across it? Lucky you then say I. For it has but a single, narrow usage in circumstances that the user cannot call in any way a pleasure.
A swift analysis points the way clear. Not hard to unravel that scanxiety is a simple conflation of 'scan' and 'anxiety'. Any further explanation necessary?
Well if it is, then this is it. When one might have, has or did have cancer - or in my situation that far more rare disease of soft tissue sarcoma - one will be subjected to a pretty unending sequence of scans of one kind or another. An X-ray here, a CT scan there and everywhere there is the MRI tube waiting for custom.
Each of these various scanning devices is planned to take that greatly needed look into the very inside of one. That way, and only truly that way, can any decent medic worth his or her white coat tell what is there deep in one's very being.
Signs and symptoms of cancer/sarcoma are legion, but true diagnosis requires that scan. So a scan - or dozen - one has to have, and when one does have it as I shall tomorrow one tends to be somewhat anxious as to the outcome. Just what will the films and plates show? All clear and on one's way back to ordinary living, or au contraire, not all clear, something ghastly and lethal found, and now on one's way to - well not to put too fine a point on it in my own particular situation - perdition and doom.
The terrorist has said - rightly if horridly - "You have to be lucky every time. We only need to be lucky once." Metastatic sarcoma says it too.
So far, so lucky. Whether one is to be lucky once more tomorrow we simply do not yet know.
Hence, not unsurprisingly, the scan anxiety and hence, neologically speaking, the 'scanxiety'. Even seven years from initial diagnosis and two years after one was told not to expect or anticipate a recurrence, one still frets when the moment to scan once more comes as it does.
Not a happy word, but then not a happy feeling.
"Drink, feck!" as dear Fr. Jack would say. This fellow here rarely takes his scans without a hangover. Has worked so far, so why break a good pattern? Cheers!
There is, though, one such word I cannot avoid acknowledging quite hits the spot and that word is 'scanxiety'.
Not come across it? Lucky you then say I. For it has but a single, narrow usage in circumstances that the user cannot call in any way a pleasure.
A swift analysis points the way clear. Not hard to unravel that scanxiety is a simple conflation of 'scan' and 'anxiety'. Any further explanation necessary?
Well if it is, then this is it. When one might have, has or did have cancer - or in my situation that far more rare disease of soft tissue sarcoma - one will be subjected to a pretty unending sequence of scans of one kind or another. An X-ray here, a CT scan there and everywhere there is the MRI tube waiting for custom.
Each of these various scanning devices is planned to take that greatly needed look into the very inside of one. That way, and only truly that way, can any decent medic worth his or her white coat tell what is there deep in one's very being.
Signs and symptoms of cancer/sarcoma are legion, but true diagnosis requires that scan. So a scan - or dozen - one has to have, and when one does have it as I shall tomorrow one tends to be somewhat anxious as to the outcome. Just what will the films and plates show? All clear and on one's way back to ordinary living, or au contraire, not all clear, something ghastly and lethal found, and now on one's way to - well not to put too fine a point on it in my own particular situation - perdition and doom.
The terrorist has said - rightly if horridly - "You have to be lucky every time. We only need to be lucky once." Metastatic sarcoma says it too.
So far, so lucky. Whether one is to be lucky once more tomorrow we simply do not yet know.
Hence, not unsurprisingly, the scan anxiety and hence, neologically speaking, the 'scanxiety'. Even seven years from initial diagnosis and two years after one was told not to expect or anticipate a recurrence, one still frets when the moment to scan once more comes as it does.
Not a happy word, but then not a happy feeling.
"Drink, feck!" as dear Fr. Jack would say. This fellow here rarely takes his scans without a hangover. Has worked so far, so why break a good pattern? Cheers!
Deep Cover....
....I have worked it all out! This Labour Party funding mess that is. That is, it is a mess and I have worked out why it is a mess. Rather clever really.
This Mr. Abrahams, do we not hear him everywhere called 'a lifelong Labour supporter'? Why yes we do. And do we believe what we are told? Why, again, yes we docile souls tend to of course.
But - this is so cunning - of course he is not and never has been. How indeed could a true supporter, who wants nothing but good for Labour, have acted in this way? In truth he could not.
And the truth of it is that he did not! For - and this is the clever part I have worked out - he has all along been a Conservative, recruited many years ago to go into 'deep cover' - like all the best spooks - living the life of a Labour man to the hilt, but just waiting for that one order to come through, when the time was most ripe, to unleash himself in a way that would do the most harm.
The time came and the way was clear: Gordo was morphing - in that glorious phrase - from Stalin to Mr. Bean. All it needed was one more push and so here it is: Abrahams comes out from under deep cover and Labour teeters to the very edge of self-destruction.
I imagine the original plan had been to use him during the Blair years, but when it became clear that Blair and his ways were so totally corrupted yet invincible that no other scandal could touch him, Abrahams was kept for better times.
It is a marvellous wheeze and hats off to the Cameron boys for their tactical nous. Timing is perfect. (There must be a list somewhere of other such names. Dave alone knows. That would be an interesting dinner discussion chez Dave!)
And if you doubt me - though you could not deny the plausibility - I can offer proof. How so you reasonable enquire? Well it is this. Apart from being a Labour man, how else is Mr Abrahams described?
As - the quote I believe from the Mail - "a confirmed bachelor with a taste for musical theatre.' Now you tell me what that is code for.
Obvious. 'High Tory' of course!
QED.
This Mr. Abrahams, do we not hear him everywhere called 'a lifelong Labour supporter'? Why yes we do. And do we believe what we are told? Why, again, yes we docile souls tend to of course.
But - this is so cunning - of course he is not and never has been. How indeed could a true supporter, who wants nothing but good for Labour, have acted in this way? In truth he could not.
And the truth of it is that he did not! For - and this is the clever part I have worked out - he has all along been a Conservative, recruited many years ago to go into 'deep cover' - like all the best spooks - living the life of a Labour man to the hilt, but just waiting for that one order to come through, when the time was most ripe, to unleash himself in a way that would do the most harm.
The time came and the way was clear: Gordo was morphing - in that glorious phrase - from Stalin to Mr. Bean. All it needed was one more push and so here it is: Abrahams comes out from under deep cover and Labour teeters to the very edge of self-destruction.
I imagine the original plan had been to use him during the Blair years, but when it became clear that Blair and his ways were so totally corrupted yet invincible that no other scandal could touch him, Abrahams was kept for better times.
It is a marvellous wheeze and hats off to the Cameron boys for their tactical nous. Timing is perfect. (There must be a list somewhere of other such names. Dave alone knows. That would be an interesting dinner discussion chez Dave!)
And if you doubt me - though you could not deny the plausibility - I can offer proof. How so you reasonable enquire? Well it is this. Apart from being a Labour man, how else is Mr Abrahams described?
As - the quote I believe from the Mail - "a confirmed bachelor with a taste for musical theatre.' Now you tell me what that is code for.
Obvious. 'High Tory' of course!
QED.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Language Is A Foreign Country...
From the BBC tonight:
"Croatia rose to the occasion in their crucial Euro 2008 defeat of England - after an apparent X-rated gaffe by an English opera singer at Wembley. Tony Henry belted out a version of the Croat anthem before the 80,000 crowd, but made a blunder at the end.
He should have sung 'Mila kuda si planina' (which roughly means 'You know my dear how we love your mountains'). But he instead sang 'Mila kura si planina' which can be interpreted as 'My dear, my penis is a mountain'."
Magnificent! And now it seems Mr Henry is a national hero in Croatia. He has apologised if he caused offence, but on the contrary it seems his wondrously unintended masculine boast completely cracked up the Croatian team with laughter making them so relaxed they could not but win the game!
I cannot claim to have come close in the wrong word contest - certainly in never so public an arena - but I have had my moment.
Many years ago I travelled the length and breadth of Greece with a dear companion of the times, asking - as I thought - for 'two of this' and 'two of that' in halting but determined Greek. As one would. Two tickets for the Acropolis or two beers with the meal. And so forth.
It was only many weeks into the journey that a kindly bi-lingual Greek revealed to me that my accenting of the word 'theo' had caused it to slide from the intended 'two' to the completely unexpected and utterly nonsensical 'Uncle'.
So there I had been asking for 'Uncle Souvlaki' and not a pair of national dishes as intended.
No wonder then we Brits stick to talking loud and slow in our own tongue when abroad. So much safer than risking a little local patois!
"My penis is as a mountain, tall and strong." Wonder what that is in Romanian!
"Croatia rose to the occasion in their crucial Euro 2008 defeat of England - after an apparent X-rated gaffe by an English opera singer at Wembley. Tony Henry belted out a version of the Croat anthem before the 80,000 crowd, but made a blunder at the end.
He should have sung 'Mila kuda si planina' (which roughly means 'You know my dear how we love your mountains'). But he instead sang 'Mila kura si planina' which can be interpreted as 'My dear, my penis is a mountain'."
Magnificent! And now it seems Mr Henry is a national hero in Croatia. He has apologised if he caused offence, but on the contrary it seems his wondrously unintended masculine boast completely cracked up the Croatian team with laughter making them so relaxed they could not but win the game!
I cannot claim to have come close in the wrong word contest - certainly in never so public an arena - but I have had my moment.
Many years ago I travelled the length and breadth of Greece with a dear companion of the times, asking - as I thought - for 'two of this' and 'two of that' in halting but determined Greek. As one would. Two tickets for the Acropolis or two beers with the meal. And so forth.
It was only many weeks into the journey that a kindly bi-lingual Greek revealed to me that my accenting of the word 'theo' had caused it to slide from the intended 'two' to the completely unexpected and utterly nonsensical 'Uncle'.
So there I had been asking for 'Uncle Souvlaki' and not a pair of national dishes as intended.
No wonder then we Brits stick to talking loud and slow in our own tongue when abroad. So much safer than risking a little local patois!
"My penis is as a mountain, tall and strong." Wonder what that is in Romanian!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Safety In Numbers...
...is the one - pretty miserable for all that - consolation in all this data loss catastrophe that over 25 million records have gone missing?
Oh no! Croatia have just scored a third!
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Out of the twenty-five million records, the odds of any one of us being hand, or even randomly, picked by the crooks for some pesky identity fraud are extremely low.
Not having many, if any, cash assets to nick I am not desperately concerned for myself. (All and any crooks reading this, please don't waste your time siphoning a dry well.)
But for this country I despair, as ever I did and do.
And not just for the football!
Oh no! Croatia have just scored a third!
Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Out of the twenty-five million records, the odds of any one of us being hand, or even randomly, picked by the crooks for some pesky identity fraud are extremely low.
Not having many, if any, cash assets to nick I am not desperately concerned for myself. (All and any crooks reading this, please don't waste your time siphoning a dry well.)
But for this country I despair, as ever I did and do.
And not just for the football!
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Butcher, The Baker....
...and the Oil Slick Maker!
Odd but true I am that one, the very maker of oil slicks to complement those other worthy and more established trades and crafts.
I have not forsaken the pastoring of souls for the captaining of tankers only to run them aground off Scarpa Flow or any such matter. I am though, if still incumbent as before, indelibly - note that word for it will come back to haunt me! - marked down as the one upon whom to call should ever the need for a goodly sized oil slick ever arise. As I doubt it shall. Indeed hope it won't in my time or vicinity, for I can assure you that one oil slick is one too many for any reasonable village locale.
It came about thus. Though first, before retelling the tale I needs must put the oleaginous matter in its proper context. When God created The Wolds - some short time after he had earlier practised by creating the rest of our goodly planet Earth - He decreed, as He might well, that there should be at least a single representative of every required art, craft and trade readily to hand. One per village was to be the normative distribution, making for a pleasant life for all.
Roof need mending? Call then at once on the services of John Thatcher resident of Mill Lane, where also dwelt - reasonably as it was by the mill itself - Mick Miller, close cousin to and of Geraldine Loaf, wife of Farmer Giles who were friends of Bill Brewer, etc., etc., etc. Generation would pass the secret of the craft unto generation - the usual father to son number though with the odd variant, we having a fine female carpenter and joiner at present in our midst - so that one could know that if George was one's waggoner then George's great-grandfather would too have been waggoner to one's own equivalent ancestor.
Quite reassuring to know that there was skill deep bred in the blood. Perhaps less happy the thought that George's great-grandson would one day be taken his due and decided place among the axles and the staves, if only because the fellow just might wish to be having other thoughts on the matter of a chosen career or indeed life.
You get the picture I am sure. On occasions down the centuries there may have been more than the allotted one person per craft, which did open the sometimes difficult can of worms of competition, leading to deep felt loyalties, adherences and sometimes even the spot of inter-craft feuding. Should then Mick's flour be off on any one day, then Sid Millerson from across the river would be the first to be suspected of sabotage. That poor Sid had not been quite the man he had been since that unfortunate accident when smacked on the head one of his mill sails - an 'accident my foot' according to Sid's people of course! - did little if anything to dampen the suspicions of Mick's folk.
Could be tricky all that, but we managed in our way. The one craft and trade where competition for local custom was legion was, mercifully, in the one matter where it did not matter - the brewing and the selling of ale. The logic was and is simple. When fifty thirsty souls require a decent seat for an evening pie and pint, there is little to be gained for any if all of them were to attempt to pile in together chez Ma Fuller's back parlour. Simply no room for all or any fun for any. But put ten down there, another twenty down the lane at Zachary's barn, with the rest making do with some benches outside of the Parson's Cook's kitchen and all will be well.
And from that necessary distribution and dissemination of custom arose other goodly and fine things, such as friendly rivalry on the field of sport and play. The 'pub team' was born, requiring continual and intense training and practice, the hard raising and wise - or not - spending of subscriptions, any number of committees to determine rules and watertight processes of appeal to the governing body should a 'ringer' be discovered in the opposing team or some such. And so forth and so forth.
Even on occasions resulting all this activity in an actual 'match' between two teams of the finest darts throwers, or bowls bowlers, or half-pennies shovers. Weeks of frantic preparation, agonies over team selection and discussion of tactics and then the day itself where legends were born and reputations made or lost. Weeks after of post-mortems, analysis and tall-tale telling, avoidance or otherwise of blame, the championing of success - much ale - or the equally thirsty drowning of sorrows.
Kept the men mostly off the streets and out of the houses of the womenfolk, an accomplishment generally of no less appeal to either street or womenfolk, both of whom being thus left largely in more peace than otherwise would be been their lot and portion in life.
What today would be called 'social cohesion', though we called it rather normal village life. But then of course it has all now changed, and not largely - as ever - for the better. Post-War saw the beginning - the First and then in turn for the generation of the Second - an uprootedness and a restlessness. Sons no longer would only follow fathers' footsteps and trades, daughters mothers'. A good moving in many ways, a stretching and a stirring, seeking something more beyond.
Too broad a story the decline of the English village in this respect, but simple truth that where once there was one of each - a butcher, a baker and even a candlestick maker - close to hand, those days are gone. Lucky indeed - as we are - the place that has some one remain, who can and does seek to offer more than the one in the hope of providing something for the many.
And thus our butcher. Seeing the demise of the grocery shop, the greengrocer, the baker in all of fewer than ten years, the butcher is pleased to supplement his selection of meats cooked and uncooked, not just with pies and the odd tin of soup, but with coffee, loo paper, cereals, jams, fresh - mostly - vegetables and near on an hundred other items a household might need. No alcohol and no newspapers, but those aside more or less enough for any family to survive at a generous pinch.
But then a year past, something of a fine yet troubling revolution. For a disused confectionery shop was overnight re-invented as a smart new baker's, with a wondrous selection of loaves of many countries. All right, most of the English or the French kind, but nonetheless it was grand once more to catch the scent of freshly baked breads of a morning's stroll.
Grand for all that is if not seen from the shopfront of said butcher, who at a trice watched a significant portion of his multitudinous trade skip out of his doorway and around the corner straight into the new baker's shop. A pound and a half of braising steak might remain safe in his hands, but the useful addition to his till-roll of 'three large cob and a small granary' has gone.
Thank goodness - the very Almighty himself even - for that corner. Had the new baker been in clear sightline of the butcher's shop I had hardly dare entered the place for fear of hurting dear Sydney and Son, purveyors of best beef and pork to the Rector these many a year. But round the corner it is, so I am largely safe in first purchasing the meats for the day then disappearing from view to pick up the breads. (The baker doesn't mind one bit this order of play - she doesn't do sausages after all!)
Then the other day it all went horribly wrong - and here we are beginning at last to close in on to the matter of the oil slick. For clever Syd and Son, having calculated that it is little gained if a man has his meat yet not the means of cooking it, have taken to selling olive oil as one of their many sidelines. And thus this fateful day one left Syd behind with two heaving bags of produce, including five pound best spuds, three or more tins of this and that and the centrally significant item: bottle, half-litre, oil, olive.
Entering the baker for necessary supplementary bread products presented no difficulties whatsoever. Purchase of same, none the more. It was though on exiting the premises that a loud smash as of glass smiting pavement caught my ever eager ear as herald of disaster. For yes, the butcher's wafer-thin plastic bag had sundered dashing the bottle and its oil to the ground, where now it lay in an ever widening circle on the very front step of the baker's shop, all encrusted with shards of broken glass.
I must say the ladies of the place were wondrous at once. Hardly had the awful sound of smashing ceased than they were on the case with paper towels, and cleaning fluids and mops and sympathy and so forth; my ineffectual contribution to the ablutions being no more than ceaseless apologies and witterings about 'mind your hands on that glass'.
Eventually - well soon really - it was time to flee the scene of the crime, thinking it not unreasonable to make a return call upon the butcher to mention - and no more - in a spirit of public concern the inadequacy of his plastic bags. Immediate restitution was proffered and accepted - more oil that is not another bag - and the tale could have ended there, had I not been so foolish as to mention the very spot where the oil had landed.
"On the baker's front step?", they cried as one in glee at the discomfiture of their rival. Not highly charitable a sentiment, but understandable if not entirely excusable. But then the killer blow. "So you were just passing by then Rector?" said Son of Syd with a certain interrogatory stance. And at once of course I knew what lay behind the question. Not a matter of the convenience of fate that had dumped my oil where they would most wish it to be dumped if it had to be at all, but rather a soul-piercing inquisition of my loyalty to them.
Had I, as it were, been consorting with the enemy was what Son of Syd wished to know. Well, he may have wished to know it, but blowed if I was about to tell it. Certainly not to his face and most assuredly not when his hand clasped as it did one of the keenest boning knives mankind can craft!
So I have made my oil slick - it's not a trade I shall adopt, just stick to the one I think - and I must pray no one, not least me, takes a tumble in it. You can see it still as a dark shadow on the paving. It will last for years. Oh dear!
Odd but true I am that one, the very maker of oil slicks to complement those other worthy and more established trades and crafts.
I have not forsaken the pastoring of souls for the captaining of tankers only to run them aground off Scarpa Flow or any such matter. I am though, if still incumbent as before, indelibly - note that word for it will come back to haunt me! - marked down as the one upon whom to call should ever the need for a goodly sized oil slick ever arise. As I doubt it shall. Indeed hope it won't in my time or vicinity, for I can assure you that one oil slick is one too many for any reasonable village locale.
It came about thus. Though first, before retelling the tale I needs must put the oleaginous matter in its proper context. When God created The Wolds - some short time after he had earlier practised by creating the rest of our goodly planet Earth - He decreed, as He might well, that there should be at least a single representative of every required art, craft and trade readily to hand. One per village was to be the normative distribution, making for a pleasant life for all.
Roof need mending? Call then at once on the services of John Thatcher resident of Mill Lane, where also dwelt - reasonably as it was by the mill itself - Mick Miller, close cousin to and of Geraldine Loaf, wife of Farmer Giles who were friends of Bill Brewer, etc., etc., etc. Generation would pass the secret of the craft unto generation - the usual father to son number though with the odd variant, we having a fine female carpenter and joiner at present in our midst - so that one could know that if George was one's waggoner then George's great-grandfather would too have been waggoner to one's own equivalent ancestor.
Quite reassuring to know that there was skill deep bred in the blood. Perhaps less happy the thought that George's great-grandson would one day be taken his due and decided place among the axles and the staves, if only because the fellow just might wish to be having other thoughts on the matter of a chosen career or indeed life.
You get the picture I am sure. On occasions down the centuries there may have been more than the allotted one person per craft, which did open the sometimes difficult can of worms of competition, leading to deep felt loyalties, adherences and sometimes even the spot of inter-craft feuding. Should then Mick's flour be off on any one day, then Sid Millerson from across the river would be the first to be suspected of sabotage. That poor Sid had not been quite the man he had been since that unfortunate accident when smacked on the head one of his mill sails - an 'accident my foot' according to Sid's people of course! - did little if anything to dampen the suspicions of Mick's folk.
Could be tricky all that, but we managed in our way. The one craft and trade where competition for local custom was legion was, mercifully, in the one matter where it did not matter - the brewing and the selling of ale. The logic was and is simple. When fifty thirsty souls require a decent seat for an evening pie and pint, there is little to be gained for any if all of them were to attempt to pile in together chez Ma Fuller's back parlour. Simply no room for all or any fun for any. But put ten down there, another twenty down the lane at Zachary's barn, with the rest making do with some benches outside of the Parson's Cook's kitchen and all will be well.
And from that necessary distribution and dissemination of custom arose other goodly and fine things, such as friendly rivalry on the field of sport and play. The 'pub team' was born, requiring continual and intense training and practice, the hard raising and wise - or not - spending of subscriptions, any number of committees to determine rules and watertight processes of appeal to the governing body should a 'ringer' be discovered in the opposing team or some such. And so forth and so forth.
Even on occasions resulting all this activity in an actual 'match' between two teams of the finest darts throwers, or bowls bowlers, or half-pennies shovers. Weeks of frantic preparation, agonies over team selection and discussion of tactics and then the day itself where legends were born and reputations made or lost. Weeks after of post-mortems, analysis and tall-tale telling, avoidance or otherwise of blame, the championing of success - much ale - or the equally thirsty drowning of sorrows.
Kept the men mostly off the streets and out of the houses of the womenfolk, an accomplishment generally of no less appeal to either street or womenfolk, both of whom being thus left largely in more peace than otherwise would be been their lot and portion in life.
What today would be called 'social cohesion', though we called it rather normal village life. But then of course it has all now changed, and not largely - as ever - for the better. Post-War saw the beginning - the First and then in turn for the generation of the Second - an uprootedness and a restlessness. Sons no longer would only follow fathers' footsteps and trades, daughters mothers'. A good moving in many ways, a stretching and a stirring, seeking something more beyond.
Too broad a story the decline of the English village in this respect, but simple truth that where once there was one of each - a butcher, a baker and even a candlestick maker - close to hand, those days are gone. Lucky indeed - as we are - the place that has some one remain, who can and does seek to offer more than the one in the hope of providing something for the many.
And thus our butcher. Seeing the demise of the grocery shop, the greengrocer, the baker in all of fewer than ten years, the butcher is pleased to supplement his selection of meats cooked and uncooked, not just with pies and the odd tin of soup, but with coffee, loo paper, cereals, jams, fresh - mostly - vegetables and near on an hundred other items a household might need. No alcohol and no newspapers, but those aside more or less enough for any family to survive at a generous pinch.
But then a year past, something of a fine yet troubling revolution. For a disused confectionery shop was overnight re-invented as a smart new baker's, with a wondrous selection of loaves of many countries. All right, most of the English or the French kind, but nonetheless it was grand once more to catch the scent of freshly baked breads of a morning's stroll.
Grand for all that is if not seen from the shopfront of said butcher, who at a trice watched a significant portion of his multitudinous trade skip out of his doorway and around the corner straight into the new baker's shop. A pound and a half of braising steak might remain safe in his hands, but the useful addition to his till-roll of 'three large cob and a small granary' has gone.
Thank goodness - the very Almighty himself even - for that corner. Had the new baker been in clear sightline of the butcher's shop I had hardly dare entered the place for fear of hurting dear Sydney and Son, purveyors of best beef and pork to the Rector these many a year. But round the corner it is, so I am largely safe in first purchasing the meats for the day then disappearing from view to pick up the breads. (The baker doesn't mind one bit this order of play - she doesn't do sausages after all!)
Then the other day it all went horribly wrong - and here we are beginning at last to close in on to the matter of the oil slick. For clever Syd and Son, having calculated that it is little gained if a man has his meat yet not the means of cooking it, have taken to selling olive oil as one of their many sidelines. And thus this fateful day one left Syd behind with two heaving bags of produce, including five pound best spuds, three or more tins of this and that and the centrally significant item: bottle, half-litre, oil, olive.
Entering the baker for necessary supplementary bread products presented no difficulties whatsoever. Purchase of same, none the more. It was though on exiting the premises that a loud smash as of glass smiting pavement caught my ever eager ear as herald of disaster. For yes, the butcher's wafer-thin plastic bag had sundered dashing the bottle and its oil to the ground, where now it lay in an ever widening circle on the very front step of the baker's shop, all encrusted with shards of broken glass.
I must say the ladies of the place were wondrous at once. Hardly had the awful sound of smashing ceased than they were on the case with paper towels, and cleaning fluids and mops and sympathy and so forth; my ineffectual contribution to the ablutions being no more than ceaseless apologies and witterings about 'mind your hands on that glass'.
Eventually - well soon really - it was time to flee the scene of the crime, thinking it not unreasonable to make a return call upon the butcher to mention - and no more - in a spirit of public concern the inadequacy of his plastic bags. Immediate restitution was proffered and accepted - more oil that is not another bag - and the tale could have ended there, had I not been so foolish as to mention the very spot where the oil had landed.
"On the baker's front step?", they cried as one in glee at the discomfiture of their rival. Not highly charitable a sentiment, but understandable if not entirely excusable. But then the killer blow. "So you were just passing by then Rector?" said Son of Syd with a certain interrogatory stance. And at once of course I knew what lay behind the question. Not a matter of the convenience of fate that had dumped my oil where they would most wish it to be dumped if it had to be at all, but rather a soul-piercing inquisition of my loyalty to them.
Had I, as it were, been consorting with the enemy was what Son of Syd wished to know. Well, he may have wished to know it, but blowed if I was about to tell it. Certainly not to his face and most assuredly not when his hand clasped as it did one of the keenest boning knives mankind can craft!
So I have made my oil slick - it's not a trade I shall adopt, just stick to the one I think - and I must pray no one, not least me, takes a tumble in it. You can see it still as a dark shadow on the paving. It will last for years. Oh dear!
Monday, November 12, 2007
Between The Woods And The Water....
...if you're not familiar with this fine book by the legendary Patrick Leigh Fermor then nip off now and make yourself so acquainted at once. This post will still be here when you return!
It is a wonderful evocation of a grand time in a young man's life as he travels largely, though not exclusively, on foot through pre-War Hungary and Romania; the largest portion of it being time spent among the glorious mountains and peoples of Transylvania.
Eastern Europe was to me a lost place when I was but a growing boy, locked into eternal dull captivity behind the wall of the Iron Curtain. Half my continent was gone. It has now come back to me and to itself, of course, it never left. But of it, its history, its struggles and its beauties I knew little if anything. An single relentless communist grey land.
But reading PLF one learned that there was magnificent life there before the War. Tremendous bottomless hospitality, deep held customs and beliefs, passions for politics, for life and for love, stupendous vistas and darn near perfect - because now half-decayed - castles and keeps. Families whose ancestry receded into the time of the Roman legions - by myth at least if not provable fact - loyalties to creeds and cultures that would shame a 'modern' country that lets slip the ways of a past generation before they are cold in their tombs.
Written some fifty years after the events, Paddy allows himself the occasional regret for something missed - though much was not. One such regret was the necessary overshooting of Sibiu, a glorious city in the very heart of the place.
It seem only then fitting that someone should now volunteer to rectify that omission.
I leave tonight then for the very heart of Transylvania. Time methinks indeed for such a glorious adventure. I shan't be walking there though. PLF, bless him, trod that way. I shall fly.
It is a wonderful evocation of a grand time in a young man's life as he travels largely, though not exclusively, on foot through pre-War Hungary and Romania; the largest portion of it being time spent among the glorious mountains and peoples of Transylvania.
Eastern Europe was to me a lost place when I was but a growing boy, locked into eternal dull captivity behind the wall of the Iron Curtain. Half my continent was gone. It has now come back to me and to itself, of course, it never left. But of it, its history, its struggles and its beauties I knew little if anything. An single relentless communist grey land.
But reading PLF one learned that there was magnificent life there before the War. Tremendous bottomless hospitality, deep held customs and beliefs, passions for politics, for life and for love, stupendous vistas and darn near perfect - because now half-decayed - castles and keeps. Families whose ancestry receded into the time of the Roman legions - by myth at least if not provable fact - loyalties to creeds and cultures that would shame a 'modern' country that lets slip the ways of a past generation before they are cold in their tombs.
Written some fifty years after the events, Paddy allows himself the occasional regret for something missed - though much was not. One such regret was the necessary overshooting of Sibiu, a glorious city in the very heart of the place.
It seem only then fitting that someone should now volunteer to rectify that omission.
I leave tonight then for the very heart of Transylvania. Time methinks indeed for such a glorious adventure. I shan't be walking there though. PLF, bless him, trod that way. I shall fly.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Open All Hours...2
To continue on from previous: I have never much cared for the slanderous notion that women have colds but men always the 'flu, carrying with it as it does a false propagandistic message that women are ever the more resilient gender quite content to seek to run off a broken leg, whilst men will collapse to a sofa for a week if a toe should be slightly stubbed.
This is not, I must assert, a slander ever uttered in the Palladas household for H and I completely recognise our respective personal stances on such matters: should she sense the slightest blemish to the skin it is off to Harley Street by the first available train for tests for skin cancer, whilst I, au completely contraire will sit on any given set of signs and symptoms for at least a fortnight, in the generally false presumption that time is the only, as well as the great, healer needed and that if you ignore any illness for long enough it will pass away of quite its own accord. (Regular readers are aware of course that this course was once even tried by oneself with what proved in the end to be one's very own cancer. There are then acknowledged limits to this masculine inspired stoical approach to sickness, and very much 'Tip for the Day' is, therefore, that time alone as a cure for cancer simply does not cut the, or indeed any, mustard.)
But today the subject is not life-threatening malignancy but rather a far less awesome matter of a swollen and deeply painful elbow. (OK well actually we are making a pitch for possible abscess tending towards - if unchecked - peritonitis and even mortal extinction. But that is to jump too far too fast for the purposes of this tale.)
An ever-aching elbow one has learned to live with as the consequence of some lazy ergonomics. One ought not continually to lean on it whilst typing away, but one does, one has for many years. I lean, it aches. It's a simple transaction. But then some four days ago the ache came accompanied by some serious and painful swelling. Let us call it, what is surely is, a modern fangled disease: 'Computer Elbow'.
And what should a fellow do in such circs? Well clearly, to follow the masculine line and ignore it. Change perhaps for a while one's usual slumped posture and then wait for sensible and long-overdue environmental adjustments inevitably to work their magic. A perfectly reasonable and proportionate reaction and response one would say.
One would, however, not in this case be right. Reasonable certainly given the known facts, but proportionate not at all it has transpired: for swelling - inflation - has but masked infection, and whereas an inflated elbow may subside all by itself once the irritant causing the swelling is removed, an infected elbow alive and kicking with all sorts of bacterial nastinesses needs active, immediate and, as we all know, antibiotic treatment.
All that though is but the diagnostic and subject context. The heart of the matter here is how and why one has journeyed from a Friday morning annoying ache to a Sunday night of waiting for the midnight hour to strike in order to hoick down the last dose of the first day of treatment.
Friday then ack emma status report: feeling a bit ropey and aware that resting heart rate is well above the norm for either age or man. Put both down to industrial-strength hangover from previous night of delicious excessive alcohol. Think, therefore, to self-medicate with Ibuprofen and strong coffee, and reckon neither will do any harm to raging pain in elbow now in its second day.
Headache and hangover subside as these things do, but pounding heart rate and raging elbow pain do not. (Note this, but no more, for now.)
Saturday ack once again emma. Poor night's sleep of restless wakefulness due to ever-present pain, interspersed with fitful dreaming of loud tom-tom beats and dark skies lit by dazzling displays of red-hot fireworks. Decide to take a stroll round to local pharmacy establishment for a swift chat with the resident Drugs Czar Harold. Harold does not hold himself to be medically qualified, has no ideas above his station at all, but is for all that a thoroughly knowledgeable cove when it comes to minor ailments of all sorts. Check, therefore, with him then if there is more to do than knock back the odd anti-inflammatory and suffer in silence whilst time gets to its work.
Sound notion but one blown clean away sadly by Harold choosing to have the morning off and substituting a sweet child in his place. Said sweet child mayhap be solid enough for the purposes of a locum dispensing powders and potions but not, as it turned out, of any substantial use when it comes to the matter of sound advisement. For, says she wrongly, there is no other course of action required other than the analgesics. No mention whatsoever of the possibility of a true infection that uncapped will rage throughout the whole body at the blink of a horse's eye.
One specifies the eye of a horse as it was in the equine context that one next made some progress. For the mother of one of E's stable friends happens to be a G.P. in her leisure time; that is, the little time that can be spared from the endless task of caring for a horse. One does not, therefore, ordinarily seek to burden her more with off-the-cuff remarks about human sickness, rather focusing on how one's horse fares and what is the latest news on its tendency to chuck its young rider if in mareish mood - as these mares so oft are.
Prompted though this time by ever increasing levels of pain, one did ask in purely general terms what might be the reasonable parameters of thought and action in regard to an elbow on the turn. It was then that other dimensions, previously unconsidered, hove into view. Abscesses were revealed as an optional extra, with necessary accompanying elements such as urgent medical treatment of both topical and systemic natures: get it drained possibly and most certainly get on board at once with the antibiotics.
Thought provoking stuff you'll agree. For the moment though nothing more than cerebral contemplation and no actual action following. One could leg it over to one's own G.P. for the full professional view, but then one couldn't it being Saturday and one's own G.P. doesn't do weekends. There is, instead, a telephone answering service that does not take calls, or if it does rarely replies to the simple request for urgent medical attention: "If you are breathing please don't bother us; if you are not breathing please phone your undertaker and stop bothering us." That sort of thing.
The alternative access to health services of any nature would be a by a trip to A&E. Through natural native cunning we have all learned that since the introduction of the false target god of a maximum four hour wait to be seen, no matter how trivial the matter, going to A&E is no longer something one only does when a limb is hanging off, or one is truly desperate, but is a convenient alternative to hanging on the telephone attempting and generally failing to book a G.P. appointment.
That's rather like those hotlines for buying tickets to popular music concerts so loved by E and paid for by her father: miss the beat of 9.00 a.m., when the box-office or doctor's reception opens for calls, and all you'll get for the next three hours is the engaged signal. Until finally you do get through only to be told all tickets were sold within the first nine minutes, or indeed all appointments for the day within that same short time.
But call me of the old school if you will, I tend to prefer not to trouble the hectic lives of Casualty staff until and unless the aforementioned limb off-hanging desperate pitch is reached. In which case waiting until the Monday when G.P.s returned from their weekend yachting breaks or whatever seemed the only choice.
Until of course one suddenly recalled that the local new hospital has something all the rage in the health service these days: a 'Walk-In Centre'. Just the ticket then for someone who simply wanted to walk-in, see a doctor, get a script and continue on with his busy life. And by the Sunday morning with arm rapidly - nay very nearly visibly - swelling by the hour a trip to the WIC was definitely on.
A swift phone call first though to check that the service actually operates on a Sunday morning seemed in order. Not a heck of point in trying to walk-in through closed doors. So one phones the main switchboard number for information. The flow of such information goes something like this:
Good Self: "I believe you have a walk in centre service at your fine new hospital. Could you tell me if it is open at this hour?"
Surly Operator: "Yes, but you have to make an appointment first."
GS: "An appointment for a WIC? That most surely belies the nature of the thing! The clue is in the title - 'walk-in'. One cannot need an 'appointment' for walking in can one?"
SO: "Yes one can, in fact one must. So there. Tell them about it if you like. I'm just following orders! Here's the number for appointments." (That last very much said in call central traditional accent of taking it or leaving it being entirely a matter for myself and of absolutely no interest or concern to the call centre itself or to its surly staff.)
So one did take the proffered number, if with some distaste, and made this use of it:
Good Self: Dials number given
Automated message: "This is the number for making appointments for the wonderful new WIC."
GS [thinks]: I frigging know that, that's why I'm phoning you dolt!
AM: "In order to make an appointment you must speak to an operator. Unfortunately all our operators are busy at present. Please do not hang on in the vain hope of speaking to one of them. Please don't even think of leaving a message as we won't listen to it. Please hang up now before we hang up on you."
GS [swears]: Frigg that for a game of soldiers!
AM [presciently]: "No point in swearing. I'm just a machine."
Machine hangs up.
So back to the first number:
Good Self: What is going on here? Just tried your wretched appointments line and got nowhere. Please suggest a viable alternative option.
Surly Operator Two: "As my colleague just told you" [clearly a marked card me] "you must have an appointment for the WIC."
GS: This is arrant nonsense and you know it. My Bro. Geo., whose professional life is spent designing health systems and processes that actually work, could if he were here put you right on this. A 'Walk In' service is precisely that. No more and certainly no less.
(At this point one must confess one pushed the boat out a bit here. For the actual words uttered were along the line: "I happen to work for the health service and let me tell you...etc., etc." But if a tad over the mark on strict truthfulness a veritable miracle cure for the impasse.)
SO2: [suddenly a lot less of the 'S'] "Sorry, did you say you work for the health service?"
GS: [plunging on] "Indeed so my good woman...."
Hardly 'S' at all O2: "Well in that case Sir, you may simply go down to the centre and indeed walk in!"
GS: "What!"
O2: [more 'S' for sheepish by now] "We've been instructed not to tell people this, but to use the appointments systems. Please don't say you heard it from me!"
Good self decides not to pursue this mystery any further but simply to grasp the chance, howsoever illegitimately gained, and get right on down walking into the walk-in at a trice and a pace.
So one does attend this our brand new hospital. (All gleaming bright and shiny, yet still filled with as much if not more MRSA and Clos. Diff. than its worn down predecessor, though that is for a later tale.) Great stonking signs point one the way to go. Handy that if you've not been there before. (Sadly the one place not to see any sign or signage is actually over the doors that actually lead to the desired destination. Assuredly smart post-modernist architecture doesn't do signs on buildings as such, though sadly of course decrepit patients-to-be still need them.)
By then perseverance and unwilting intent, one does find the very portal at which to enter. Across the wide, deep and terribly tall atrium one spots two desks of a reception variety. The first is labelled 'A&E reception', that being enough of a clue that this was not the one for us. The other has 'Urgent Care Centre' on offer, which sounds about right as indeed it proved to be.
Smiling lady behind the desk - a nurse perhaps if in any way someone with a duty of triage she must be - asks the broad outline of the circs. that brings one here and, on being satisfied one is not a certifiable loon or salesman chancing his arm on an off-day, immediately stripes one down on a very long list indeed then points to a doorway through which to pass.
"You'll be needing this too," says smiling lady/nurse handing me a torn off piece of paper on which she has written in biro 'UCC'. "Sorry about that," she says. "But we've run out of proper slips so tell reception you got this from me and they'll let you in."
So a gatekeeper of sorts clearly, if not a stricy triager as such. No slip, no entry. (Can immediately spot an opening for some sharp young entrepreneur: stand at entry to building whispering to entrants "Wanna UCC ticket. Five fera pound.")
Anyways, into UCC and up to further smiling lady receptionist. Circs. once more explained, name entered on viciously long list and place then to be taken in Waiting Room. So far so anticipated. What though had been less expected was to find said Waiting Room so packed, so bursting even, with waiting souls as to make days spent in any Calcuttan 'Black Hole' a positive lark.
Designed for maybe a dozen folk in comfort, it holds now some forty plus people - all of whom look up with that resigned sympathetic look as anyone new enters 'Bet you thought like I did that this would be a breeze!' - plus assorted pushchairs, wheelchairs and more mewling infants than one could throw a bucket of water over. (If, of course, one were tempted to take such a fluid approach to mewling infants in general, which - perish the thought - one never would!)
Alarming more - a terrible test of the very spirit of the man - there was, among all this heaving mass of humanity, one empty chair. ('Heaving' is perhaps not quite the right word, implying as it does some small capacity for anyone to move in any way of which there was in fact none whatsoever.) Around the walls were plastered some seven or eight plucky fellows and fellesses, all of whom might have given their Granny for a sit-down, but not one of whom wanted to be the one seen to take the last seat available when others might need it more. (And who said there is no hope for England while such wonderful self-sacrificing, embarrassed behaviour stalks the land!)
Turn away now then if any sensitive spirit must, for I am about to confess that I did not share either the manners or the sense of necessary sacrifice, but opted at once for the seat! Shame on me? I beg - and if I have to I shall - to differ. None of the standers actually looked on their last legs, whilst I most certainly felt to be on mine. Quite suddenly awfully unwell, not far short of a fainting fit I could tell. Maybe the 'roar of the crowd' and no more, but glancing down at the item in question - the inflamed elbow - one began at once to see other possibilities.
For lo, the thing that but an hour previous had been but a localised swelling had spread to a raging, ballooned, red-as-fire stiffness from veritable stem to actual stern! Lummy, this was serious stuff. Whatever was on the go was clearly up and running big time, with every intent on reaching the finishing line darn pronto. Time to wait? Not so. (Bro. George would have been so proud of what comes next.)
Two options opened for consideration. The first, to wait one's turn patiently - over the hour one was told by smiling lady mark two would be a decent minimum - and hope not to expire in the meanwhile. Option the second - and selected - was a swift return to reception, reveal one's woes and to plead for special consideration.
Can you imagine then my fright? Not only had I demonstrated to the room my utter disregard for Golden Rule of Waiting Rooms #1 - 'Never Take the Last Chair' - but here I was completely flouting the Great Precept of any British queue - 'Never Jump To The Front'! It must have been my fevered state that so emboldened me to overturn all known, understood and accepted principles of moral behaviour without even a single care to the likely opprobrium of others.
But whatever the morbid cause, the effect was pretty electrifying, for no sooner had one revealed sufficient of the flesh to convey the circs. than smiling lady was out of her chair calling for the nurse to come see at once. Nurse having viewed one was, on an instant, ushered into the presence of a doctor who opined that though neither swift amputation nor speedy removal back to A&E was required it was, in effect and fact, quite like the Battle of Waterloo itself - a close run thing.
That being settled and the alternative treatment of the expected dose of industrial strength antibiotics being prescribed, I could not but ask about the funny farce that had preceded my arrival here.
"Ah," he said, in a satisifed manner and one could immediately tell one had asked quite just the right question of the right man at the right time. It would take a man of Bro. Geo's. expertise and experience fully to detail all that then came forth, but the jist of the man's thoughts ran thus:
When the PCTs were handed the job of providing out-of-hours primary care some few years back it was a monster of a mess. The Government had predicted - if one can use such a scientific word for hopeless, random guessing - that only some small percentage of G.P.s would choose to opt out of their previous continuing and continuous duties to their patients.
When, however, most G.P.s legged it out the out-of-hours doors faster than you could cry "The surgery is closed. Haven't you got homes to go to?", there was not the funding, the capacity or the required planning to establish a viable alternative.
As a consequence, out-of-hours services have more or less imploded, with few doctors - apart from those flown in especially for the purpose from Dortmund or environs - willing and available to do the work, too few premises in which to operate the service and little or no money to pay for it.
The cunning native, not content with this absence and demanding its full accustomed slice of the NHS pie, had meanwhile spotted that you could now get a half-decent or better service from A&E, what with the introduction of four-hour waiting targets and all. Previously put off by the prospect of being told to wait a minimum of three days in a draughty, dank department, they discovered instead smart premises, with running hot and cold drinks, some magazines published in this very century and a waiting time of less than the average Tesco check-out on a busy Sunday.
What, however, worked for them did not of course work for the system, and A&E departments up and down the land were forced into over-drive and, worse, over-spend attempting to keep up with a demand that never really should have come their way in the first place.
So initial strategic foresight on the part of the wonks having fallen traditionally short of the mark - the world having gone to a place it had no right to be according to their predictions - they were forced to have another go. And that other go was towards these new beasts 'Walk In Centres'. Need a doc but not a stretcher as such? Then walk this way. Well again they did, these cunning natives, though not so much walk as stampede. Show them a narrow side-track on a Care Pathway and the ungrateful horde trample it into dust, with scant regard for the beauty of the design of the thing. Build a nice clean Waiting Room for twelve and be outraged when it fails to hold the forty plus who actually turn up.
We can't have this rank disorder think the wonks, we must impose order and structure and make people behave as we would have them. So the wonks design an appointments system for their supposedly 'walk-in' service. People may come if they must, but if they must then they must 'flow' not stampede. Can't have demand dictate supply!
That might work if the appointment system itself actually functioned, but even if it did it wouldn't because down at A&E they are still wrestling with the walking wounded who have walked into an 'emergency' department when all, at worst, they have is an 'urgency'. For them the 'Urgent Care Centre' is a godsend in a largely godless world and blowed if they are going to stop referring people to it just because the wonks want appointments.
So now there are two ways of getting into UCC - by legitimate appointment and by the side-door of A&E on demand. These two streams collide of course, and any person arriving having dutifully booked to be seen at, say, 11 of the morning will find twenty or so others who expect to be seen before then having themselves been waiting since before dawn.
More shambles to add to the farce of chaos. And what do the 'managers' of the skewed system do to fix the muddle? Why, instruct their front-line telephone operators to lie to the public. Appointments only is to be the party line to peddle to the great unwashed, and if they don't know any better then for Heaven's sake don't tell them!
Unless, of course, you 'work for the NHS'. Remember that trick. It may come in handy!
This is not, I must assert, a slander ever uttered in the Palladas household for H and I completely recognise our respective personal stances on such matters: should she sense the slightest blemish to the skin it is off to Harley Street by the first available train for tests for skin cancer, whilst I, au completely contraire will sit on any given set of signs and symptoms for at least a fortnight, in the generally false presumption that time is the only, as well as the great, healer needed and that if you ignore any illness for long enough it will pass away of quite its own accord. (Regular readers are aware of course that this course was once even tried by oneself with what proved in the end to be one's very own cancer. There are then acknowledged limits to this masculine inspired stoical approach to sickness, and very much 'Tip for the Day' is, therefore, that time alone as a cure for cancer simply does not cut the, or indeed any, mustard.)
But today the subject is not life-threatening malignancy but rather a far less awesome matter of a swollen and deeply painful elbow. (OK well actually we are making a pitch for possible abscess tending towards - if unchecked - peritonitis and even mortal extinction. But that is to jump too far too fast for the purposes of this tale.)
An ever-aching elbow one has learned to live with as the consequence of some lazy ergonomics. One ought not continually to lean on it whilst typing away, but one does, one has for many years. I lean, it aches. It's a simple transaction. But then some four days ago the ache came accompanied by some serious and painful swelling. Let us call it, what is surely is, a modern fangled disease: 'Computer Elbow'.
And what should a fellow do in such circs? Well clearly, to follow the masculine line and ignore it. Change perhaps for a while one's usual slumped posture and then wait for sensible and long-overdue environmental adjustments inevitably to work their magic. A perfectly reasonable and proportionate reaction and response one would say.
One would, however, not in this case be right. Reasonable certainly given the known facts, but proportionate not at all it has transpired: for swelling - inflation - has but masked infection, and whereas an inflated elbow may subside all by itself once the irritant causing the swelling is removed, an infected elbow alive and kicking with all sorts of bacterial nastinesses needs active, immediate and, as we all know, antibiotic treatment.
All that though is but the diagnostic and subject context. The heart of the matter here is how and why one has journeyed from a Friday morning annoying ache to a Sunday night of waiting for the midnight hour to strike in order to hoick down the last dose of the first day of treatment.
Friday then ack emma status report: feeling a bit ropey and aware that resting heart rate is well above the norm for either age or man. Put both down to industrial-strength hangover from previous night of delicious excessive alcohol. Think, therefore, to self-medicate with Ibuprofen and strong coffee, and reckon neither will do any harm to raging pain in elbow now in its second day.
Headache and hangover subside as these things do, but pounding heart rate and raging elbow pain do not. (Note this, but no more, for now.)
Saturday ack once again emma. Poor night's sleep of restless wakefulness due to ever-present pain, interspersed with fitful dreaming of loud tom-tom beats and dark skies lit by dazzling displays of red-hot fireworks. Decide to take a stroll round to local pharmacy establishment for a swift chat with the resident Drugs Czar Harold. Harold does not hold himself to be medically qualified, has no ideas above his station at all, but is for all that a thoroughly knowledgeable cove when it comes to minor ailments of all sorts. Check, therefore, with him then if there is more to do than knock back the odd anti-inflammatory and suffer in silence whilst time gets to its work.
Sound notion but one blown clean away sadly by Harold choosing to have the morning off and substituting a sweet child in his place. Said sweet child mayhap be solid enough for the purposes of a locum dispensing powders and potions but not, as it turned out, of any substantial use when it comes to the matter of sound advisement. For, says she wrongly, there is no other course of action required other than the analgesics. No mention whatsoever of the possibility of a true infection that uncapped will rage throughout the whole body at the blink of a horse's eye.
One specifies the eye of a horse as it was in the equine context that one next made some progress. For the mother of one of E's stable friends happens to be a G.P. in her leisure time; that is, the little time that can be spared from the endless task of caring for a horse. One does not, therefore, ordinarily seek to burden her more with off-the-cuff remarks about human sickness, rather focusing on how one's horse fares and what is the latest news on its tendency to chuck its young rider if in mareish mood - as these mares so oft are.
Prompted though this time by ever increasing levels of pain, one did ask in purely general terms what might be the reasonable parameters of thought and action in regard to an elbow on the turn. It was then that other dimensions, previously unconsidered, hove into view. Abscesses were revealed as an optional extra, with necessary accompanying elements such as urgent medical treatment of both topical and systemic natures: get it drained possibly and most certainly get on board at once with the antibiotics.
Thought provoking stuff you'll agree. For the moment though nothing more than cerebral contemplation and no actual action following. One could leg it over to one's own G.P. for the full professional view, but then one couldn't it being Saturday and one's own G.P. doesn't do weekends. There is, instead, a telephone answering service that does not take calls, or if it does rarely replies to the simple request for urgent medical attention: "If you are breathing please don't bother us; if you are not breathing please phone your undertaker and stop bothering us." That sort of thing.
The alternative access to health services of any nature would be a by a trip to A&E. Through natural native cunning we have all learned that since the introduction of the false target god of a maximum four hour wait to be seen, no matter how trivial the matter, going to A&E is no longer something one only does when a limb is hanging off, or one is truly desperate, but is a convenient alternative to hanging on the telephone attempting and generally failing to book a G.P. appointment.
That's rather like those hotlines for buying tickets to popular music concerts so loved by E and paid for by her father: miss the beat of 9.00 a.m., when the box-office or doctor's reception opens for calls, and all you'll get for the next three hours is the engaged signal. Until finally you do get through only to be told all tickets were sold within the first nine minutes, or indeed all appointments for the day within that same short time.
But call me of the old school if you will, I tend to prefer not to trouble the hectic lives of Casualty staff until and unless the aforementioned limb off-hanging desperate pitch is reached. In which case waiting until the Monday when G.P.s returned from their weekend yachting breaks or whatever seemed the only choice.
Until of course one suddenly recalled that the local new hospital has something all the rage in the health service these days: a 'Walk-In Centre'. Just the ticket then for someone who simply wanted to walk-in, see a doctor, get a script and continue on with his busy life. And by the Sunday morning with arm rapidly - nay very nearly visibly - swelling by the hour a trip to the WIC was definitely on.
A swift phone call first though to check that the service actually operates on a Sunday morning seemed in order. Not a heck of point in trying to walk-in through closed doors. So one phones the main switchboard number for information. The flow of such information goes something like this:
Good Self: "I believe you have a walk in centre service at your fine new hospital. Could you tell me if it is open at this hour?"
Surly Operator: "Yes, but you have to make an appointment first."
GS: "An appointment for a WIC? That most surely belies the nature of the thing! The clue is in the title - 'walk-in'. One cannot need an 'appointment' for walking in can one?"
SO: "Yes one can, in fact one must. So there. Tell them about it if you like. I'm just following orders! Here's the number for appointments." (That last very much said in call central traditional accent of taking it or leaving it being entirely a matter for myself and of absolutely no interest or concern to the call centre itself or to its surly staff.)
So one did take the proffered number, if with some distaste, and made this use of it:
Good Self: Dials number given
Automated message: "This is the number for making appointments for the wonderful new WIC."
GS [thinks]: I frigging know that, that's why I'm phoning you dolt!
AM: "In order to make an appointment you must speak to an operator. Unfortunately all our operators are busy at present. Please do not hang on in the vain hope of speaking to one of them. Please don't even think of leaving a message as we won't listen to it. Please hang up now before we hang up on you."
GS [swears]: Frigg that for a game of soldiers!
AM [presciently]: "No point in swearing. I'm just a machine."
Machine hangs up.
So back to the first number:
Good Self: What is going on here? Just tried your wretched appointments line and got nowhere. Please suggest a viable alternative option.
Surly Operator Two: "As my colleague just told you" [clearly a marked card me] "you must have an appointment for the WIC."
GS: This is arrant nonsense and you know it. My Bro. Geo., whose professional life is spent designing health systems and processes that actually work, could if he were here put you right on this. A 'Walk In' service is precisely that. No more and certainly no less.
(At this point one must confess one pushed the boat out a bit here. For the actual words uttered were along the line: "I happen to work for the health service and let me tell you...etc., etc." But if a tad over the mark on strict truthfulness a veritable miracle cure for the impasse.)
SO2: [suddenly a lot less of the 'S'] "Sorry, did you say you work for the health service?"
GS: [plunging on] "Indeed so my good woman...."
Hardly 'S' at all O2: "Well in that case Sir, you may simply go down to the centre and indeed walk in!"
GS: "What!"
O2: [more 'S' for sheepish by now] "We've been instructed not to tell people this, but to use the appointments systems. Please don't say you heard it from me!"
Good self decides not to pursue this mystery any further but simply to grasp the chance, howsoever illegitimately gained, and get right on down walking into the walk-in at a trice and a pace.
So one does attend this our brand new hospital. (All gleaming bright and shiny, yet still filled with as much if not more MRSA and Clos. Diff. than its worn down predecessor, though that is for a later tale.) Great stonking signs point one the way to go. Handy that if you've not been there before. (Sadly the one place not to see any sign or signage is actually over the doors that actually lead to the desired destination. Assuredly smart post-modernist architecture doesn't do signs on buildings as such, though sadly of course decrepit patients-to-be still need them.)
By then perseverance and unwilting intent, one does find the very portal at which to enter. Across the wide, deep and terribly tall atrium one spots two desks of a reception variety. The first is labelled 'A&E reception', that being enough of a clue that this was not the one for us. The other has 'Urgent Care Centre' on offer, which sounds about right as indeed it proved to be.
Smiling lady behind the desk - a nurse perhaps if in any way someone with a duty of triage she must be - asks the broad outline of the circs. that brings one here and, on being satisfied one is not a certifiable loon or salesman chancing his arm on an off-day, immediately stripes one down on a very long list indeed then points to a doorway through which to pass.
"You'll be needing this too," says smiling lady/nurse handing me a torn off piece of paper on which she has written in biro 'UCC'. "Sorry about that," she says. "But we've run out of proper slips so tell reception you got this from me and they'll let you in."
So a gatekeeper of sorts clearly, if not a stricy triager as such. No slip, no entry. (Can immediately spot an opening for some sharp young entrepreneur: stand at entry to building whispering to entrants "Wanna UCC ticket. Five fera pound.")
Anyways, into UCC and up to further smiling lady receptionist. Circs. once more explained, name entered on viciously long list and place then to be taken in Waiting Room. So far so anticipated. What though had been less expected was to find said Waiting Room so packed, so bursting even, with waiting souls as to make days spent in any Calcuttan 'Black Hole' a positive lark.
Designed for maybe a dozen folk in comfort, it holds now some forty plus people - all of whom look up with that resigned sympathetic look as anyone new enters 'Bet you thought like I did that this would be a breeze!' - plus assorted pushchairs, wheelchairs and more mewling infants than one could throw a bucket of water over. (If, of course, one were tempted to take such a fluid approach to mewling infants in general, which - perish the thought - one never would!)
Alarming more - a terrible test of the very spirit of the man - there was, among all this heaving mass of humanity, one empty chair. ('Heaving' is perhaps not quite the right word, implying as it does some small capacity for anyone to move in any way of which there was in fact none whatsoever.) Around the walls were plastered some seven or eight plucky fellows and fellesses, all of whom might have given their Granny for a sit-down, but not one of whom wanted to be the one seen to take the last seat available when others might need it more. (And who said there is no hope for England while such wonderful self-sacrificing, embarrassed behaviour stalks the land!)
Turn away now then if any sensitive spirit must, for I am about to confess that I did not share either the manners or the sense of necessary sacrifice, but opted at once for the seat! Shame on me? I beg - and if I have to I shall - to differ. None of the standers actually looked on their last legs, whilst I most certainly felt to be on mine. Quite suddenly awfully unwell, not far short of a fainting fit I could tell. Maybe the 'roar of the crowd' and no more, but glancing down at the item in question - the inflamed elbow - one began at once to see other possibilities.
For lo, the thing that but an hour previous had been but a localised swelling had spread to a raging, ballooned, red-as-fire stiffness from veritable stem to actual stern! Lummy, this was serious stuff. Whatever was on the go was clearly up and running big time, with every intent on reaching the finishing line darn pronto. Time to wait? Not so. (Bro. George would have been so proud of what comes next.)
Two options opened for consideration. The first, to wait one's turn patiently - over the hour one was told by smiling lady mark two would be a decent minimum - and hope not to expire in the meanwhile. Option the second - and selected - was a swift return to reception, reveal one's woes and to plead for special consideration.
Can you imagine then my fright? Not only had I demonstrated to the room my utter disregard for Golden Rule of Waiting Rooms #1 - 'Never Take the Last Chair' - but here I was completely flouting the Great Precept of any British queue - 'Never Jump To The Front'! It must have been my fevered state that so emboldened me to overturn all known, understood and accepted principles of moral behaviour without even a single care to the likely opprobrium of others.
But whatever the morbid cause, the effect was pretty electrifying, for no sooner had one revealed sufficient of the flesh to convey the circs. than smiling lady was out of her chair calling for the nurse to come see at once. Nurse having viewed one was, on an instant, ushered into the presence of a doctor who opined that though neither swift amputation nor speedy removal back to A&E was required it was, in effect and fact, quite like the Battle of Waterloo itself - a close run thing.
That being settled and the alternative treatment of the expected dose of industrial strength antibiotics being prescribed, I could not but ask about the funny farce that had preceded my arrival here.
"Ah," he said, in a satisifed manner and one could immediately tell one had asked quite just the right question of the right man at the right time. It would take a man of Bro. Geo's. expertise and experience fully to detail all that then came forth, but the jist of the man's thoughts ran thus:
When the PCTs were handed the job of providing out-of-hours primary care some few years back it was a monster of a mess. The Government had predicted - if one can use such a scientific word for hopeless, random guessing - that only some small percentage of G.P.s would choose to opt out of their previous continuing and continuous duties to their patients.
When, however, most G.P.s legged it out the out-of-hours doors faster than you could cry "The surgery is closed. Haven't you got homes to go to?", there was not the funding, the capacity or the required planning to establish a viable alternative.
As a consequence, out-of-hours services have more or less imploded, with few doctors - apart from those flown in especially for the purpose from Dortmund or environs - willing and available to do the work, too few premises in which to operate the service and little or no money to pay for it.
The cunning native, not content with this absence and demanding its full accustomed slice of the NHS pie, had meanwhile spotted that you could now get a half-decent or better service from A&E, what with the introduction of four-hour waiting targets and all. Previously put off by the prospect of being told to wait a minimum of three days in a draughty, dank department, they discovered instead smart premises, with running hot and cold drinks, some magazines published in this very century and a waiting time of less than the average Tesco check-out on a busy Sunday.
What, however, worked for them did not of course work for the system, and A&E departments up and down the land were forced into over-drive and, worse, over-spend attempting to keep up with a demand that never really should have come their way in the first place.
So initial strategic foresight on the part of the wonks having fallen traditionally short of the mark - the world having gone to a place it had no right to be according to their predictions - they were forced to have another go. And that other go was towards these new beasts 'Walk In Centres'. Need a doc but not a stretcher as such? Then walk this way. Well again they did, these cunning natives, though not so much walk as stampede. Show them a narrow side-track on a Care Pathway and the ungrateful horde trample it into dust, with scant regard for the beauty of the design of the thing. Build a nice clean Waiting Room for twelve and be outraged when it fails to hold the forty plus who actually turn up.
We can't have this rank disorder think the wonks, we must impose order and structure and make people behave as we would have them. So the wonks design an appointments system for their supposedly 'walk-in' service. People may come if they must, but if they must then they must 'flow' not stampede. Can't have demand dictate supply!
That might work if the appointment system itself actually functioned, but even if it did it wouldn't because down at A&E they are still wrestling with the walking wounded who have walked into an 'emergency' department when all, at worst, they have is an 'urgency'. For them the 'Urgent Care Centre' is a godsend in a largely godless world and blowed if they are going to stop referring people to it just because the wonks want appointments.
So now there are two ways of getting into UCC - by legitimate appointment and by the side-door of A&E on demand. These two streams collide of course, and any person arriving having dutifully booked to be seen at, say, 11 of the morning will find twenty or so others who expect to be seen before then having themselves been waiting since before dawn.
More shambles to add to the farce of chaos. And what do the 'managers' of the skewed system do to fix the muddle? Why, instruct their front-line telephone operators to lie to the public. Appointments only is to be the party line to peddle to the great unwashed, and if they don't know any better then for Heaven's sake don't tell them!
Unless, of course, you 'work for the NHS'. Remember that trick. It may come in handy!
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