...Wonderful - perhaps the best - song by dear Nick Drake.
My Northern skies have, though, not this week been of the greatest. Leaden grey throughout, all camera equipment left languishing in the bag unneeded on voyage sadly.
Traveling to one Northern fastness on distant parochial duty, detouring back through another, one has been. R the first - drear and desperately run down. Magnificent views surrounding of Lancashire moorland, but within the place little but signs of physical poverty and a certain endemic ruin. Even the shops that were open and not boarded up were down-at-heel and thoroughly uninviting.
The church office where I was to pitch up is next to a grubby lightly-grassed and heavily strewn with rubbish area - called for some reason a 'park'. "Don't arrive too early," one was told. "You'll only be asked for money, drugs or sex." (The latter on a strictly cash on delivery basis of course.) As it happens, I was beforehand - hate being late for meetings - but to my considerable chagrin not one of the early-bird derelicts troubled me for anything.
Must be the dog-collar I imagine. Seems on occasion - this being one of them - to act almost as a Klingon cloaking shield rendering me invisible. Handy in those particular circs., but not on the whole something I relish. Up close and personal should the parson be. Rather as Robert Capa would say of photographs: "If your pictures are no good, you're not close enough."
Coming back down one passed through H on the other side of the Pennines. At risk of stirring up another War of the Roses I can only comment that it looked wonderful. No time to step out and sample any local accostings mind you.
And in between a passage across Saddleworth Moor. If you are of that generation it will forever be a name and place associated with Brady, Hindley and terrible, terrible evil. I am and it is. The sky is forever dark above that place, howsoever much the sun may shine. There is, though, one bright shaft there somewhere - a light from heaven that invisibly illumines the unknown resting place of Keith Bennett. His Mother can see it now from her eternal vantage point.
Her Northern Sky has been brightened at last.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Deep Fried Bananas...
...The first job this to-be cleric accepted in the working world was far from - though some might equally argue darn close to - that which he holds now as Rector to the faithful and to the faithless.
It was as a porter in what in those days was cheerily called still a 'lunatic asylum' that I earned an initial crust in some months between end of school and commencement of University. One of those old-school places indeed, isolated and set deep into wooded country on top of a steep hill, far away from other persons and places.
You could argue - and you would not be wrong - that it was built with the very notion of ensuring the 'mad' were out of sight as well as out of mind. You would also - were you in search of a spot in which to learn ease of heart and soul - give your frontal lobe for a place so beautiful, tranquil and naturally curative. (Young Wordsworth would have approved the place indeed. Older Wordsworth though might also have given the nod to the separation as much as the isolation.)
For myself I was quite at home at once. Not, I haste to advise, from the psychiatric perspective whatsoever but from the instant recognition that this was somewhere not at all far from one's very recent experience as a boarder at a minor - very - public school. Two institutions with but one face, by and large. (The one crucial, compelling and utterly delightful difference of course being that this latter place was stuffed to the gills with humans of the young and female kind in the guise of nurses to the infirm!)
Due separation between and betwixt staff and inmates was essentially the order of the day. Doctors in traditional white coats, nurses - be still my beating heart - in pale striped lilac with dark navy-blue belt and black stockings. Even porters had our grey coat to be worn over civvies at all times. (An attempt by oneself to liven the look with a discarded parental bowler hat not being met with much if any approval.)
We - the porters - resided in the Old Fire Station, where we rested, chatted and smoked all day when not actually on active service. Which was most of the day. The Old Fire Station was aptly named as it contained the Old Fire Engine - a relic from the days when it could not be relied on for the regular fire service to make it up the hill in time should flames engulf the place.
The Old Fire Engine though indeed old and by then utterly redundant, gleamed and shone from stem to stern. This was not through the labours of the porters naturally, but from the constant and loving attention of Old Harry. He - said Old Harry - would probably not even get a look-in in modern psychiatric medicine circles they being quite unable to care for the dangerously deranged, let alone offer anything to someone merely mildly loopy.
You could tell Old Harry was 'mad' because he was tall, thin, badly dressed, grinned too much at nothing and would from time to time rub his hands together with a quite manic fury as if intending to set a blaze going between his very palms.
That there were at least two psychiatrists about the place who would have fitted that very same description should not be overlooked in any general typology of insanity. Fair point perhaps that said psychiatrists did not spend many of their waking hours scouring the hospital in search of discarded cigarette butts from which to make one decent smoke, but on their wages the need was not exigent.
There were certain set and none too intrusive duties for porters to accomplish, the rest of our time being spent in search not of discarded tobacco but of tea and sex from the nurses. All right, so the tea came easy but the sex thing was altogether more testing. There were indeed parties in the Nurses Home and these were the very stuff of legend as they should be. On duty, however, those good gals were mostly too professionally proud of their officer rank to be won over by the allure of the NCOs that we porters were. Hierarchy mattered in the old NHS and three cheers for that say I still.
Mixing with patients was inevitable, if not actively encouraged. It was their home after all and we but guests therein, pottering or portering about as required. One young male inmate and I did become quite pally - both pretty bright, not entirely sure of the world around us but deeply curious of all that life might bring etc., etc. We would chat for hours in the mutually shared canteen, until duty or medication called either one of us away.
Our burgeoning friendship was duly noted and one day the summons came for me to attend a briefing with a head honcho psychiatrist dude, who dutifully informed me that although he quite liked his patient making some form of contact with someone not on the clinical side of the fence - from the rehabilitative point of view - he ought in fairness - howsoever much this might be a flagrant breach of confidentiality - advise me that the young fellow was current residing in the place - as an indefinite guest of Her Majesty - because some few years earlier he had - in a fit of pique it seems - murdered his dear Ma and his dear Pa!
This, as you can imagine, came as something of a shock to the system. For sure one had several peers who had opined parental slaughter as the only way forward - the next big thing. One had indeed, oneself, occasionally imagined a world in which no adults of any kind, let alone familial ones, existed. But to realise that one had been seated but across a canteen table from a youth - for he was little more - who had actually and forever taken this fell step into darkness and horror - was a trifle soul-fathoming and heart-puzzling to say the least.
Although cautioned that one was not actively at risk of slaughter from the fellow - not being of immediate blood relation (one could see why he had few if any visitors) - it is perhaps not surprising that from that moment one supped with a longer spoon than previous. Rather than meet and greet, I would nod and pass by. One could see the sorrow in his face, but one did not have the maturity to match the crying need.
From time to time the fellow would appear quite thoroughly 'wasted' - as was the word of the day - seemingly not merely away with the fairies, but utterly broken. Lethargic, shuffling, inert almost. Having a bad day? Trapped in some web of remorse? Not as such it turned out. For what one was observing was a man - a young man as ever - seeking to recover from and to make sense of a recent ECT 'treatment'.
Howsoever many hundreds or indeed thousands of volts would be passed through his brain in what could only be considered a pretty crude attempt to mend his mind, I know not. I too was not there long enough ever to know whether being deep fried that way did him much long-term good. All I could observe was the immediate harm.
Poor child. I cannot imagine his dear - if slaughtered - mother would have wished on him such suffering in search of a cure. Even then I think I would rather have prayed for him. Which I did and which I do still even after all these years. And I am equally sure she - his mother - did and does too.
Which certainty is the guiding light for all and for always. Love eternal - unfailing, undaunted - the ultimate, glorious, true madness.
It was as a porter in what in those days was cheerily called still a 'lunatic asylum' that I earned an initial crust in some months between end of school and commencement of University. One of those old-school places indeed, isolated and set deep into wooded country on top of a steep hill, far away from other persons and places.
You could argue - and you would not be wrong - that it was built with the very notion of ensuring the 'mad' were out of sight as well as out of mind. You would also - were you in search of a spot in which to learn ease of heart and soul - give your frontal lobe for a place so beautiful, tranquil and naturally curative. (Young Wordsworth would have approved the place indeed. Older Wordsworth though might also have given the nod to the separation as much as the isolation.)
For myself I was quite at home at once. Not, I haste to advise, from the psychiatric perspective whatsoever but from the instant recognition that this was somewhere not at all far from one's very recent experience as a boarder at a minor - very - public school. Two institutions with but one face, by and large. (The one crucial, compelling and utterly delightful difference of course being that this latter place was stuffed to the gills with humans of the young and female kind in the guise of nurses to the infirm!)
Due separation between and betwixt staff and inmates was essentially the order of the day. Doctors in traditional white coats, nurses - be still my beating heart - in pale striped lilac with dark navy-blue belt and black stockings. Even porters had our grey coat to be worn over civvies at all times. (An attempt by oneself to liven the look with a discarded parental bowler hat not being met with much if any approval.)
We - the porters - resided in the Old Fire Station, where we rested, chatted and smoked all day when not actually on active service. Which was most of the day. The Old Fire Station was aptly named as it contained the Old Fire Engine - a relic from the days when it could not be relied on for the regular fire service to make it up the hill in time should flames engulf the place.
The Old Fire Engine though indeed old and by then utterly redundant, gleamed and shone from stem to stern. This was not through the labours of the porters naturally, but from the constant and loving attention of Old Harry. He - said Old Harry - would probably not even get a look-in in modern psychiatric medicine circles they being quite unable to care for the dangerously deranged, let alone offer anything to someone merely mildly loopy.
You could tell Old Harry was 'mad' because he was tall, thin, badly dressed, grinned too much at nothing and would from time to time rub his hands together with a quite manic fury as if intending to set a blaze going between his very palms.
That there were at least two psychiatrists about the place who would have fitted that very same description should not be overlooked in any general typology of insanity. Fair point perhaps that said psychiatrists did not spend many of their waking hours scouring the hospital in search of discarded cigarette butts from which to make one decent smoke, but on their wages the need was not exigent.
There were certain set and none too intrusive duties for porters to accomplish, the rest of our time being spent in search not of discarded tobacco but of tea and sex from the nurses. All right, so the tea came easy but the sex thing was altogether more testing. There were indeed parties in the Nurses Home and these were the very stuff of legend as they should be. On duty, however, those good gals were mostly too professionally proud of their officer rank to be won over by the allure of the NCOs that we porters were. Hierarchy mattered in the old NHS and three cheers for that say I still.
Mixing with patients was inevitable, if not actively encouraged. It was their home after all and we but guests therein, pottering or portering about as required. One young male inmate and I did become quite pally - both pretty bright, not entirely sure of the world around us but deeply curious of all that life might bring etc., etc. We would chat for hours in the mutually shared canteen, until duty or medication called either one of us away.
Our burgeoning friendship was duly noted and one day the summons came for me to attend a briefing with a head honcho psychiatrist dude, who dutifully informed me that although he quite liked his patient making some form of contact with someone not on the clinical side of the fence - from the rehabilitative point of view - he ought in fairness - howsoever much this might be a flagrant breach of confidentiality - advise me that the young fellow was current residing in the place - as an indefinite guest of Her Majesty - because some few years earlier he had - in a fit of pique it seems - murdered his dear Ma and his dear Pa!
This, as you can imagine, came as something of a shock to the system. For sure one had several peers who had opined parental slaughter as the only way forward - the next big thing. One had indeed, oneself, occasionally imagined a world in which no adults of any kind, let alone familial ones, existed. But to realise that one had been seated but across a canteen table from a youth - for he was little more - who had actually and forever taken this fell step into darkness and horror - was a trifle soul-fathoming and heart-puzzling to say the least.
Although cautioned that one was not actively at risk of slaughter from the fellow - not being of immediate blood relation (one could see why he had few if any visitors) - it is perhaps not surprising that from that moment one supped with a longer spoon than previous. Rather than meet and greet, I would nod and pass by. One could see the sorrow in his face, but one did not have the maturity to match the crying need.
From time to time the fellow would appear quite thoroughly 'wasted' - as was the word of the day - seemingly not merely away with the fairies, but utterly broken. Lethargic, shuffling, inert almost. Having a bad day? Trapped in some web of remorse? Not as such it turned out. For what one was observing was a man - a young man as ever - seeking to recover from and to make sense of a recent ECT 'treatment'.
Howsoever many hundreds or indeed thousands of volts would be passed through his brain in what could only be considered a pretty crude attempt to mend his mind, I know not. I too was not there long enough ever to know whether being deep fried that way did him much long-term good. All I could observe was the immediate harm.
Poor child. I cannot imagine his dear - if slaughtered - mother would have wished on him such suffering in search of a cure. Even then I think I would rather have prayed for him. Which I did and which I do still even after all these years. And I am equally sure she - his mother - did and does too.
Which certainty is the guiding light for all and for always. Love eternal - unfailing, undaunted - the ultimate, glorious, true madness.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...
...not that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play - nor strictly 'today' as it was yesterday - but that two decades ago H and I were wed.
Bone china is apparently the gift of the occasion, on what basis I know not. Perhaps it is reckoned that after twenty years of marriage there will be precious little original wedding-gift crockery around (broken or hurled depending on the quality of the marriage).
And so how did H and I celebrate such a momentous anniversary? A day trip to some nostalgic venue? A romantic dinner out or even more romantic evening in?
You will not be slow in sensing some quite ponderous sarcasm in the above. For whatever we had proposed the Almighty disposed somewhat altogether differently.
The morning was to be taken up carting DJ [horse] to the osteopath - if you didn't you do now know that horses do osteopaths and osteopaths of a certain variety do horses. For their backs mostly of course, horses having large, complex and deeply vulnerable backs after all.
So off we set bright and early - E, DJ and I - in the horse-box jalopy, only to have said HBJ threaten to breakdown before we were two miles gone. Back to the yard therefore we limped, where plan B was put into operation. Self and H would limp HBJ to the garage for some instant TLC and repair.
Plan B proved a wipe out. Less than a mile into that one the thing died under me. Came to a solid and implacable standstill right by a convenient bus-stop. (Some waiting passengers did consider boarding, which clearly shows the sorry state of the local bus service.)
Plan C thence swung seamlessly into action - call the horse breakdown people. (High cost insurance, but a must-have in the world of horse.) About an hour they said and true to their word it was an hour we waited watching every passing motorist wonder who had decided horse-boxes should replace buses.
Give Plan C its credit, eventually HBJ was 'recovered' to the garage, H following on in the bog-standard jalopy to run me home. Garage mechanics ruminated along the lines of blocked fuel lines or filters.
Plan C though did not come without a price, one that I shared with Mr Breakdown - "I bet," I told him, "That my beloved spouse H will take the opportunity to remark when we are done at the garage 'Dearest, as we happen to be not some small mile from our very own IKEAesque store, shouldn't we brighten the day by dropping by and purchasing just a few totally unnecessary but irresistible items?'" (OK I invented the 'totally unnecessary' bit.)
Needless to say I won my bet, much to amusement of Mr Breakdown who was clearly tempted to suggest I'd been around the same woman for longer than was good for man or the beast in man - tempted but resisted.
So off to IKEAesque store for shopping and a luncheon. ('The Joy of Meatballs' - I doubt it would sell.) Home with packages just in time for Evensong and running E back to stable to feed horse.
Screaming row then broke out between H and E as to whether, in the absence of the planned osteopathic intervention, DJ should be ridden that day, her back being sore. H being of the view that any horse that is not ridden daily somehow goes at once into a steep decline. E, contrariwise, showing the wisdom of the ancients, maintaining that horses have lived happily for many millennia prior to the advent of man's riding them at all and that therefore the postulate of her mother was false, spurious and specious. (Not E's precise vocabulary you will understand.)
My contribution to this lively debate - aka toe-to-toe shrieking of a particularly shrill female variety - was to tell the pair of them to desist at once on pain of extinction and extermination. (And when I say 'tell' in truth it was more the manly bellow of the enraged moose than a quiet word to the wise.)
All parties thus thoroughly at odds with each other we later half-scowled our way through some rather pricey pink champagne purchased for the Great Occasion, before dispersing to watch respective must-see television: self to European Cup final and distaff side to sentimental film on the other channel.
Some patchy truce was achieved among the natives by bedtime, but not all-in-all the happiest of days.
Shame really, but at least no one was daft enough to play 'When I'm Sixty-Four' on the gramophone!
Bone china is apparently the gift of the occasion, on what basis I know not. Perhaps it is reckoned that after twenty years of marriage there will be precious little original wedding-gift crockery around (broken or hurled depending on the quality of the marriage).
And so how did H and I celebrate such a momentous anniversary? A day trip to some nostalgic venue? A romantic dinner out or even more romantic evening in?
You will not be slow in sensing some quite ponderous sarcasm in the above. For whatever we had proposed the Almighty disposed somewhat altogether differently.
The morning was to be taken up carting DJ [horse] to the osteopath - if you didn't you do now know that horses do osteopaths and osteopaths of a certain variety do horses. For their backs mostly of course, horses having large, complex and deeply vulnerable backs after all.
So off we set bright and early - E, DJ and I - in the horse-box jalopy, only to have said HBJ threaten to breakdown before we were two miles gone. Back to the yard therefore we limped, where plan B was put into operation. Self and H would limp HBJ to the garage for some instant TLC and repair.
Plan B proved a wipe out. Less than a mile into that one the thing died under me. Came to a solid and implacable standstill right by a convenient bus-stop. (Some waiting passengers did consider boarding, which clearly shows the sorry state of the local bus service.)
Plan C thence swung seamlessly into action - call the horse breakdown people. (High cost insurance, but a must-have in the world of horse.) About an hour they said and true to their word it was an hour we waited watching every passing motorist wonder who had decided horse-boxes should replace buses.
Give Plan C its credit, eventually HBJ was 'recovered' to the garage, H following on in the bog-standard jalopy to run me home. Garage mechanics ruminated along the lines of blocked fuel lines or filters.
Plan C though did not come without a price, one that I shared with Mr Breakdown - "I bet," I told him, "That my beloved spouse H will take the opportunity to remark when we are done at the garage 'Dearest, as we happen to be not some small mile from our very own IKEAesque store, shouldn't we brighten the day by dropping by and purchasing just a few totally unnecessary but irresistible items?'" (OK I invented the 'totally unnecessary' bit.)
Needless to say I won my bet, much to amusement of Mr Breakdown who was clearly tempted to suggest I'd been around the same woman for longer than was good for man or the beast in man - tempted but resisted.
So off to IKEAesque store for shopping and a luncheon. ('The Joy of Meatballs' - I doubt it would sell.) Home with packages just in time for Evensong and running E back to stable to feed horse.
Screaming row then broke out between H and E as to whether, in the absence of the planned osteopathic intervention, DJ should be ridden that day, her back being sore. H being of the view that any horse that is not ridden daily somehow goes at once into a steep decline. E, contrariwise, showing the wisdom of the ancients, maintaining that horses have lived happily for many millennia prior to the advent of man's riding them at all and that therefore the postulate of her mother was false, spurious and specious. (Not E's precise vocabulary you will understand.)
My contribution to this lively debate - aka toe-to-toe shrieking of a particularly shrill female variety - was to tell the pair of them to desist at once on pain of extinction and extermination. (And when I say 'tell' in truth it was more the manly bellow of the enraged moose than a quiet word to the wise.)
All parties thus thoroughly at odds with each other we later half-scowled our way through some rather pricey pink champagne purchased for the Great Occasion, before dispersing to watch respective must-see television: self to European Cup final and distaff side to sentimental film on the other channel.
Some patchy truce was achieved among the natives by bedtime, but not all-in-all the happiest of days.
Shame really, but at least no one was daft enough to play 'When I'm Sixty-Four' on the gramophone!
Monday, May 21, 2007
Let Them Eat Carrot Cake...
Well actually, "Let them eat rich, expensive, funny-shaped, yellow, eggy buns" would have been a more accurate translation of the historic dietary advice, had indeed Marie Antoinette ever said such a cruel thing: the poor have no peasants' pain? Then let them have the brioches of the rich.
Allowing then that these are the wrong words of a wronged woman, I am this evening of a mind they are much deserved. And to whom should they be uttered? Why, vegetarians of course.
As a committed carnivore I regard the lentil brigade much as I do some obscure religious sect - to be tolerated as barking, but only so long as they don't come knocking on my door.
If veggies can't stomach a Mars Bar because of its animal product content, then let them eat carrot cake say I.
Far better for them of course, and shame on Masterfood for their craven surrender.
Allowing then that these are the wrong words of a wronged woman, I am this evening of a mind they are much deserved. And to whom should they be uttered? Why, vegetarians of course.
As a committed carnivore I regard the lentil brigade much as I do some obscure religious sect - to be tolerated as barking, but only so long as they don't come knocking on my door.
If veggies can't stomach a Mars Bar because of its animal product content, then let them eat carrot cake say I.
Far better for them of course, and shame on Masterfood for their craven surrender.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Fuming Once More...
Solomon did not have an easy time of it when called to judgement. Neither sometimes do Rectors.
Simon Jr., undertaker to the village, has never felt much neighbourly love for Andrew the ironmonger. Nor, in fairness, has Andrew for Simon. (I have heard that their mutual antagonism dates back to an early primary school playground incident where both had pined - surely too young for such things - for a certain Hazel - now long since moved away - their pre-pubescent rivalry, though mutually thwarted she preferring a third boy altogether, having blossomed - if that is not too fair a word for such rank a growth - into an indwelling adult hatred no amount of Xtian preaching on the significance of the Second Commandment - my contribution to social cohesion of course - could shift.)
By unhappy fate, these two antagonists have their respective trade emporiums next door to one another in the High Street. (You might not think that, apart from a certain chilly micro-climate, this would be the cause of much friction, the two trades being essentially separate. You would though be wrong.)
They are - the trades - distinct indeed, but it has come to my attention that Andrew Ironmonger has found a distorted if genius way to taunt Simon Undertaker and that it is on this 'harassment' as Simon sees it I am being now asked judge and decide.
Happy would I be to leave civic authorities to arbitrate on civil matters, but though the one has indeed appealed to the Council, the Council has replied to the one that it is none of their business. Which is fairness and statute it isn't.
So what then is the matter in hand that drives me tonight in search of a solution?
It is this. Andrew Ironmonger has taken to arranging certain items of his stock on his - lawful - frontage that intend - and clearly they do if you were to see them - to mock the trade of his lifelong rival. He has placed dustbins with a chimney - for the burning of domestic rubbish - not merely hard against his - again lawful - fence, but also directly beneath the boarded sign that advertises Simon's serious services.
You'd have to see it to see it, as it were, but the message is clear: "Don't be paying over the odds for a pompous and costly traditional funeral. Buy one of my dustbins and have a do-it-yourself cremation at home."
The sleight is intended, the sleight is irksome and - in truth - the sleight is hugely funny. (Please, please don't tell Simon I said that!)
Simon has been round this evening to pour out - over an empathic malt - his woe. "Can't you do something Vicar to make Andrew see the error of his way and come to repentance?" (This appeal to core Xtian values is undoubtedly genuine on Simon's part, he who has always leaned to a rather lean view of Xtian love - oodles of justice and nary a spit of mercy - but it cuts little gospel ice with me.)
"I will ask the Lord in prayer", I reply, which is my way of cutting short any awkward, nay tedious, conversation. (No one could object to any such statement from a Rector.)
So, what shall I say to Simon tomorrow? Having, of course and actually, prayed about the matter?
Firm purpose of amendment tonight - do not on any account burst out laughing!
Simon Jr., undertaker to the village, has never felt much neighbourly love for Andrew the ironmonger. Nor, in fairness, has Andrew for Simon. (I have heard that their mutual antagonism dates back to an early primary school playground incident where both had pined - surely too young for such things - for a certain Hazel - now long since moved away - their pre-pubescent rivalry, though mutually thwarted she preferring a third boy altogether, having blossomed - if that is not too fair a word for such rank a growth - into an indwelling adult hatred no amount of Xtian preaching on the significance of the Second Commandment - my contribution to social cohesion of course - could shift.)
By unhappy fate, these two antagonists have their respective trade emporiums next door to one another in the High Street. (You might not think that, apart from a certain chilly micro-climate, this would be the cause of much friction, the two trades being essentially separate. You would though be wrong.)
They are - the trades - distinct indeed, but it has come to my attention that Andrew Ironmonger has found a distorted if genius way to taunt Simon Undertaker and that it is on this 'harassment' as Simon sees it I am being now asked judge and decide.
Happy would I be to leave civic authorities to arbitrate on civil matters, but though the one has indeed appealed to the Council, the Council has replied to the one that it is none of their business. Which is fairness and statute it isn't.
So what then is the matter in hand that drives me tonight in search of a solution?
It is this. Andrew Ironmonger has taken to arranging certain items of his stock on his - lawful - frontage that intend - and clearly they do if you were to see them - to mock the trade of his lifelong rival. He has placed dustbins with a chimney - for the burning of domestic rubbish - not merely hard against his - again lawful - fence, but also directly beneath the boarded sign that advertises Simon's serious services.
You'd have to see it to see it, as it were, but the message is clear: "Don't be paying over the odds for a pompous and costly traditional funeral. Buy one of my dustbins and have a do-it-yourself cremation at home."
The sleight is intended, the sleight is irksome and - in truth - the sleight is hugely funny. (Please, please don't tell Simon I said that!)
Simon has been round this evening to pour out - over an empathic malt - his woe. "Can't you do something Vicar to make Andrew see the error of his way and come to repentance?" (This appeal to core Xtian values is undoubtedly genuine on Simon's part, he who has always leaned to a rather lean view of Xtian love - oodles of justice and nary a spit of mercy - but it cuts little gospel ice with me.)
"I will ask the Lord in prayer", I reply, which is my way of cutting short any awkward, nay tedious, conversation. (No one could object to any such statement from a Rector.)
So, what shall I say to Simon tomorrow? Having, of course and actually, prayed about the matter?
Firm purpose of amendment tonight - do not on any account burst out laughing!
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Doldrums?
Well, yes in truth. The world does seem on hold until we discover what has happened to dear Madeleine McCann.
Why do I not say 'until she is safely returned to her family'? You know why as well as I.
And yes I am affected by her close resemblance to E at her age. Bright, blonde, cute. This makes her no more special, but it does impress both H and I to our very soul.
We once, when E was about four or five, briefly lost sight of her on a visit to London Zoo. It was in a general play area and E went off to romp on the swings. She ran and vanished behind a shrubbed area failing to appear on the other side.
Seconds became a minute or more before we spotted her somewhere else altogether.
A silly parental anxiety perhaps.
A week later, though, we learnt that a foul pervert had been arrested in that very spot attempting to lure children to some wretched doom.
Not doldrums then, but some empathetic pause. Some holding of breath and many, many prayers.
Why do I not say 'until she is safely returned to her family'? You know why as well as I.
And yes I am affected by her close resemblance to E at her age. Bright, blonde, cute. This makes her no more special, but it does impress both H and I to our very soul.
We once, when E was about four or five, briefly lost sight of her on a visit to London Zoo. It was in a general play area and E went off to romp on the swings. She ran and vanished behind a shrubbed area failing to appear on the other side.
Seconds became a minute or more before we spotted her somewhere else altogether.
A silly parental anxiety perhaps.
A week later, though, we learnt that a foul pervert had been arrested in that very spot attempting to lure children to some wretched doom.
Not doldrums then, but some empathetic pause. Some holding of breath and many, many prayers.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Fuming...
...This just in from 'Command and Control Centre' (aka Bishop Tom's Secretariat).
It would seem that by the first day of July in the year of our Lord 2007 (or 2011 if we are to be bullied by scriptural scholars) I must, on pain of most dire punishment, desecrate our lovely village Church.
An odd thing you would think for the very defender of the local faith to be thus instructed. For do we not have sufficient of said desecrating forces at work in society, without it being a commandment that I should be forced to swell their numbers? Are there not already enough of the yobs to smash windows, pee in the cemetery, scrawl graffiti in the sanctuary?
It seems not, for I am told that by said date I must install a large 'No Smoking' sign outside the West door, giving full details of the unlawfulness of lighting up inside together with assembled judicial penalties for any who dare so do.
Now many things sacred and secular have happened within those holy walls down the centuries: fights and frights of many types. Fornication has even been rumoured in recent times - and, for myself, I would have no trouble in believing that to be so. Not approving, just accepting it has probably occurred.
But in all the years of service I have yet to encounter a person so stupid - or to preach a sermon so boring - that sees someone reaching for their Silk Cut Light. (Colonel X did once put his empty pipe in his mouth in some absent moment during an extended Easter Vigil, but one sensed that even that was merely an unconscious need for a comfort dummy rather than any preparatory move to fill the choir with the reek of rough cut.)
This missive, therefore, has me fuming literally and metaphorically. I stand within my den puffing away and raging at the inanity on nanny state - and, it would seem, nanny state religion.
This order - I determine - shall be resisted to the last. No such monstrous sign will deface my place of worship, whilst there is breath in the Rector's body.
With luck I shall be the first cleric in the land to be arrested for failure to comply with such nonsense. E will cringe naturally and I'm not sure that H will give the move her entire support.
But if lonely martyrdom is required then lonely martyrdom it shall be!
It would seem that by the first day of July in the year of our Lord 2007 (or 2011 if we are to be bullied by scriptural scholars) I must, on pain of most dire punishment, desecrate our lovely village Church.
An odd thing you would think for the very defender of the local faith to be thus instructed. For do we not have sufficient of said desecrating forces at work in society, without it being a commandment that I should be forced to swell their numbers? Are there not already enough of the yobs to smash windows, pee in the cemetery, scrawl graffiti in the sanctuary?
It seems not, for I am told that by said date I must install a large 'No Smoking' sign outside the West door, giving full details of the unlawfulness of lighting up inside together with assembled judicial penalties for any who dare so do.
Now many things sacred and secular have happened within those holy walls down the centuries: fights and frights of many types. Fornication has even been rumoured in recent times - and, for myself, I would have no trouble in believing that to be so. Not approving, just accepting it has probably occurred.
But in all the years of service I have yet to encounter a person so stupid - or to preach a sermon so boring - that sees someone reaching for their Silk Cut Light. (Colonel X did once put his empty pipe in his mouth in some absent moment during an extended Easter Vigil, but one sensed that even that was merely an unconscious need for a comfort dummy rather than any preparatory move to fill the choir with the reek of rough cut.)
This missive, therefore, has me fuming literally and metaphorically. I stand within my den puffing away and raging at the inanity on nanny state - and, it would seem, nanny state religion.
This order - I determine - shall be resisted to the last. No such monstrous sign will deface my place of worship, whilst there is breath in the Rector's body.
With luck I shall be the first cleric in the land to be arrested for failure to comply with such nonsense. E will cringe naturally and I'm not sure that H will give the move her entire support.
But if lonely martyrdom is required then lonely martyrdom it shall be!
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Maddy's 'Black Flash' Eye
Note the particular 'black flash' that Maddy has in her right eye.
If you see a child who could be Maddy, don't be afraid to ask and to act.
If you see a child who could be Maddy, don't be afraid to ask and to act.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
For Maddy...
We pray for the safe return of Madeleine McCann. I cannot rest each moment wondering what horror or what agony that poor child is enduring at that and at this second.
That same thought you can see etched on her mother's stricken face and in her heart. Her soul is tormented by thinking what is happening to her child as she stands, as she sits and as she lives. It is as if she cannot allow her life or that of the entire creation to continue because of what is happening in some unknown elsewhere.
Somewhere on this earth is her daughter. A place, a spot where she is. No one but those who have taken her know where that place is. It could be one mile, it could be a thousand miles away from Kate, from you or from me.
God is in that place too. His eternal vigilance never falters. His love endures. But her parents' sorrow knows no end, no bounds and no place to be.
The news tells me that millions of children are trafficked each year - for servitude, for slavery or to slake sexual depravity.
This is our human world. It stinks to high heaven, or rather to darkest hell.
That same thought you can see etched on her mother's stricken face and in her heart. Her soul is tormented by thinking what is happening to her child as she stands, as she sits and as she lives. It is as if she cannot allow her life or that of the entire creation to continue because of what is happening in some unknown elsewhere.
Somewhere on this earth is her daughter. A place, a spot where she is. No one but those who have taken her know where that place is. It could be one mile, it could be a thousand miles away from Kate, from you or from me.
God is in that place too. His eternal vigilance never falters. His love endures. But her parents' sorrow knows no end, no bounds and no place to be.
The news tells me that millions of children are trafficked each year - for servitude, for slavery or to slake sexual depravity.
This is our human world. It stinks to high heaven, or rather to darkest hell.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
All You Need...
...an excruciating moment - though not realised as such until long after the moment - was having a personal request read out at a school assembly. Losing somehow a treasured possession, it was granted that a master would make a public appeal to the gathered oiks.
"Has anyone seen," the master intoned. "The popular music single - by that inescapable combo - what was it again Palladas Maj? Ah yes 'All You Need Is Love'. An entirely misguided and deviant view I must say, but then when were my sound views on life ever heeded?"
Howls of mocking laughter rent the Hall. All one needs is love? Oh ho, ho we chuckled - myself included naturally to hide my shame. As if that were all we cried - unknowing adolescents, who nothing knew of love and so very little of life.
I never did recover the disk. Some fiend would have nicked it and kept it for himself. But I did learn not to refer to love as the guiding, dominating universal force until and unless sure of my ground and my audience.
Pal. Min (Bro. George that is) though not directly caught up in this little farce has been similarly affected in life. He too will give a wide berth to any notion that love - howsoever defined - is the thing. Best not go there and all that.
So imagine then my surprised delight, or call it delighted surprise, to receive this very telephone call from said emotionally constipated Bro.
He had, it seems, been running one of his training courses - like he does - and being a wizened old trainer not missing any trick had asked his audience early doors to have a chat about 'core values' and 'principles' and so forth. It's a standard way - I am told - of getting them to feel good about themselves and - thence - good about whatever the subject in hand.
Taking 'feedback' as one does, Bro. George had asked people to sing out some phrases, words, thoughts, etc. The norm would be such matters as 'empowerment', 'choice', 'rights', 'dignity' and so forth. All good stuff in themselves of course but essentially utterly predictable.
What, though, happened on this occasion had the Bro. very nearly on his knees and most certainly on the phone this evening to me. For a nurse - spotted from the off as intelligent yet as hard-boiled as any long-serving professional - has been the first to cry out.
"Love," she said. "That should be at the very heart of all that we do. That is not all we need, but if we have not love then we have nothing."
I fully can understand why the Bro. needed to tell me this tonight. And I fully understand and accept why both of us were not, as we spoke, a little tearful at the sheer wonderment of it.
Can there be such people who, having spent thirty or more years enslaved to the grinding system that is our health service, can still emerge with that passionate belief in the central significance of why anyone does what they do?
Yes it seems, there are.
And thank the Lord of Love for that. For He is indeed all we need. Amen.
"Has anyone seen," the master intoned. "The popular music single - by that inescapable combo - what was it again Palladas Maj? Ah yes 'All You Need Is Love'. An entirely misguided and deviant view I must say, but then when were my sound views on life ever heeded?"
Howls of mocking laughter rent the Hall. All one needs is love? Oh ho, ho we chuckled - myself included naturally to hide my shame. As if that were all we cried - unknowing adolescents, who nothing knew of love and so very little of life.
I never did recover the disk. Some fiend would have nicked it and kept it for himself. But I did learn not to refer to love as the guiding, dominating universal force until and unless sure of my ground and my audience.
Pal. Min (Bro. George that is) though not directly caught up in this little farce has been similarly affected in life. He too will give a wide berth to any notion that love - howsoever defined - is the thing. Best not go there and all that.
So imagine then my surprised delight, or call it delighted surprise, to receive this very telephone call from said emotionally constipated Bro.
He had, it seems, been running one of his training courses - like he does - and being a wizened old trainer not missing any trick had asked his audience early doors to have a chat about 'core values' and 'principles' and so forth. It's a standard way - I am told - of getting them to feel good about themselves and - thence - good about whatever the subject in hand.
Taking 'feedback' as one does, Bro. George had asked people to sing out some phrases, words, thoughts, etc. The norm would be such matters as 'empowerment', 'choice', 'rights', 'dignity' and so forth. All good stuff in themselves of course but essentially utterly predictable.
What, though, happened on this occasion had the Bro. very nearly on his knees and most certainly on the phone this evening to me. For a nurse - spotted from the off as intelligent yet as hard-boiled as any long-serving professional - has been the first to cry out.
"Love," she said. "That should be at the very heart of all that we do. That is not all we need, but if we have not love then we have nothing."
I fully can understand why the Bro. needed to tell me this tonight. And I fully understand and accept why both of us were not, as we spoke, a little tearful at the sheer wonderment of it.
Can there be such people who, having spent thirty or more years enslaved to the grinding system that is our health service, can still emerge with that passionate belief in the central significance of why anyone does what they do?
Yes it seems, there are.
And thank the Lord of Love for that. For He is indeed all we need. Amen.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Not Fade Away...
...Stress and strain or early onset dementia? You the jury decide.
Two events in three days have me puzzling the matter.
Event the First: empty coolant reservoir of jalopy inadvertently filled with brake fluid whilst preparing for a long family day's trip to Badminton. (Rescued by laughing local garage!)
Event the Second: mobile telephone dumped into rubbish bin along with other detritus cleared from said jalopy towards the end of the long family day trip to Badminton. (Commiserated by local service station, but bags sent to compressor. Phone and all numbers lost forever.)
Both events are well outside the usual parameters of forgetfulness. Semi-consensus view, at present, leans towards urgent need for a rest. We shall see.
Two events in three days have me puzzling the matter.
Event the First: empty coolant reservoir of jalopy inadvertently filled with brake fluid whilst preparing for a long family day's trip to Badminton. (Rescued by laughing local garage!)
Event the Second: mobile telephone dumped into rubbish bin along with other detritus cleared from said jalopy towards the end of the long family day trip to Badminton. (Commiserated by local service station, but bags sent to compressor. Phone and all numbers lost forever.)
Both events are well outside the usual parameters of forgetfulness. Semi-consensus view, at present, leans towards urgent need for a rest. We shall see.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Staying Put...
News just in from Prinknash.
They are not, it seems after all, entirely quitting the place - simply moving back into St. Peter's Grange, their monastic home on the same site before they built the 'office block'.
This is good to know that monks will continue their presence in the locality.
"A local Abbey for local people." And a proper League of Gentlemen!
They are not, it seems after all, entirely quitting the place - simply moving back into St. Peter's Grange, their monastic home on the same site before they built the 'office block'.
This is good to know that monks will continue their presence in the locality.
"A local Abbey for local people." And a proper League of Gentlemen!
Sheltering House...
...News reaches us that Prinknash [for pronunciation try 'spinach' with appropriate amendment] Abbey is to close - or at least the community is to move elsewhere - there no longer being sufficient monks to make a go of the place.
This is terribly sad news. Not so much in the loss the place - the external aspect of the Abbey is that of an ugly block of flats jammed into a pretty hill - but that there are clearly no longer enough men willing to have a crack at the monastic life.
In the report it is said that the building is to be converted into 'sheltered housing.' Very worthy no doubt and a local asset in that regard. But as a sheltering house of the living spirit of worship and witness that was much more the thing.
If ever the world needed monks it needs them now.
This is terribly sad news. Not so much in the loss the place - the external aspect of the Abbey is that of an ugly block of flats jammed into a pretty hill - but that there are clearly no longer enough men willing to have a crack at the monastic life.
In the report it is said that the building is to be converted into 'sheltered housing.' Very worthy no doubt and a local asset in that regard. But as a sheltering house of the living spirit of worship and witness that was much more the thing.
If ever the world needed monks it needs them now.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Grassing Up...
...Gardening [see previous] is not a Palladian strength. 'Outdoor housework' is the most creative I can ever feel on the subject. Perhaps in large part my reticence is based on the garden being simply a 'spare' room, one that one would love to dedicate more time to and in but simply hardly ever visited the pressures of life and busyness being too pressing.
H did sufficiently harangue me last month on the decayed state of the outdoor room's furniture - some elegant if unused tables and chairs fit for summer's evening dinner parties that never quite seem to happen - for me to dedicate two entire weekends to stripping then varnishing the lot. (And yes, it 'does do what it says on the tin', but what it doesn't say on the tin is that if you wear sandals whilst using you will find feet indelibly stained with the splashed stuff!)
That apart - plus a few annual musings on the glory of home-grown fruit, musings that rarely if ever come to any fruition in themselves [see very previous] - the one hot spot has been a renewed determination to make of the front lawn something other than a dry desert or blasted heath or some combination of the two.
Whosoever built the rectory clearly did not take account, when laying out the front lawn, that the house itself blocks most of the sunlight most of the year. Add to that three large trees - preserved by Heaven and the local council from any alteration - and you end up with near total, enduring shade resulting in much that is bare and what is not bare no more sward-like than a good covering of moss can make it. Which is, you understand, very little.
Not quite sure how or why, but it suddenly became a life imperative to rescue this barren land this year. Vast quantities of specially shade-loving grass seeds have been added to a deeply and lovingly prepared and nourished top soil, all carefully and consistently watered each day at dusk.
The result has been quite alarming! For there, behold, is a grass-green lawn with little seedlings shooting up all over the place. Passers-by have become quite accustomed to finding their Rector stooped over his lawn uttering kindly and encouraging noises to the growing verdant swathe. (Such slightly deranged behaviour in a cleric is always to be encouraged, giving as it does a faint air of other-worldliness, which is generally - if often mistakenly - taken by others as an odour of sanctity.)
The downside though is of course that one becomes as fiercely protective of this growing yet vulnerable progeny as any lioness of her cubs. Ever vigilant and poised to strike at need, mighty roars are let out should any creature dare to venture too close to the precious being - me not lionesses that is.
Post- and milk-persons have swiftly learnt no longer to assay a shortcut to the front door across the grass. Window cleaners have been taught through example not to leave their buckets there either. But if lawns as well as liberty demand the price of eternal vigilance, then sadly one cannot always cough up the cost.
For on returning to the front parlour the other moment for one more watchful gaze, imagine my shock and horror to see a clear line of seedling-damaging footprints right over the whole thing from one side to t'other. The vanishing back of a junk mailer - evidence backed up by the sight of acres of such junk freshly landed on the porch floor - had me at once legging it out the front door to confront and condemn forthwith the assailant.
That my utterly reasonable and rational ranting at the fellow as to his loose behaviour in general and unwarranted incursion on my little lawn in particular was met with no more than a shrugged shoulder and a not so murmured - truly he said it - "Am I bovvered" - so made me wish that on a wide interpretation of 'muscular Christianity' I would have been within my rights to have decked him on the spot!
But I have recognised the oik - a not so fragrant youth from a not so fragrant family in a neighbouring - and yes, far less fragrant than our own - village. And a plan of revenge is being plotted even as I write.
For they possess an allotment in which they grow much produce. (They also have an allotment shed in which I am sure they hide much contraband, though that is another matter.)
I shall sneak over in dead of night and sow ten packets of the hardiest grass seed I can find. No more marrows or parsnips for them - just endless, indestructible lawn!
H did sufficiently harangue me last month on the decayed state of the outdoor room's furniture - some elegant if unused tables and chairs fit for summer's evening dinner parties that never quite seem to happen - for me to dedicate two entire weekends to stripping then varnishing the lot. (And yes, it 'does do what it says on the tin', but what it doesn't say on the tin is that if you wear sandals whilst using you will find feet indelibly stained with the splashed stuff!)
That apart - plus a few annual musings on the glory of home-grown fruit, musings that rarely if ever come to any fruition in themselves [see very previous] - the one hot spot has been a renewed determination to make of the front lawn something other than a dry desert or blasted heath or some combination of the two.
Whosoever built the rectory clearly did not take account, when laying out the front lawn, that the house itself blocks most of the sunlight most of the year. Add to that three large trees - preserved by Heaven and the local council from any alteration - and you end up with near total, enduring shade resulting in much that is bare and what is not bare no more sward-like than a good covering of moss can make it. Which is, you understand, very little.
Not quite sure how or why, but it suddenly became a life imperative to rescue this barren land this year. Vast quantities of specially shade-loving grass seeds have been added to a deeply and lovingly prepared and nourished top soil, all carefully and consistently watered each day at dusk.
The result has been quite alarming! For there, behold, is a grass-green lawn with little seedlings shooting up all over the place. Passers-by have become quite accustomed to finding their Rector stooped over his lawn uttering kindly and encouraging noises to the growing verdant swathe. (Such slightly deranged behaviour in a cleric is always to be encouraged, giving as it does a faint air of other-worldliness, which is generally - if often mistakenly - taken by others as an odour of sanctity.)
The downside though is of course that one becomes as fiercely protective of this growing yet vulnerable progeny as any lioness of her cubs. Ever vigilant and poised to strike at need, mighty roars are let out should any creature dare to venture too close to the precious being - me not lionesses that is.
Post- and milk-persons have swiftly learnt no longer to assay a shortcut to the front door across the grass. Window cleaners have been taught through example not to leave their buckets there either. But if lawns as well as liberty demand the price of eternal vigilance, then sadly one cannot always cough up the cost.
For on returning to the front parlour the other moment for one more watchful gaze, imagine my shock and horror to see a clear line of seedling-damaging footprints right over the whole thing from one side to t'other. The vanishing back of a junk mailer - evidence backed up by the sight of acres of such junk freshly landed on the porch floor - had me at once legging it out the front door to confront and condemn forthwith the assailant.
That my utterly reasonable and rational ranting at the fellow as to his loose behaviour in general and unwarranted incursion on my little lawn in particular was met with no more than a shrugged shoulder and a not so murmured - truly he said it - "Am I bovvered" - so made me wish that on a wide interpretation of 'muscular Christianity' I would have been within my rights to have decked him on the spot!
But I have recognised the oik - a not so fragrant youth from a not so fragrant family in a neighbouring - and yes, far less fragrant than our own - village. And a plan of revenge is being plotted even as I write.
For they possess an allotment in which they grow much produce. (They also have an allotment shed in which I am sure they hide much contraband, though that is another matter.)
I shall sneak over in dead of night and sow ten packets of the hardiest grass seed I can find. No more marrows or parsnips for them - just endless, indestructible lawn!
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