Captain Ahab - Nineteen Years On

...'Tis now precisely nineteen years since last I read Melville's 'Moby Dick', the book I am now once more close to completing.

How do I know so exactly the date, when barely can I recall the events of last week?

It is this. When last I journeyed with Ahab and his crew on the Pequod's last voyage I could not have been a parent, else I would have only remembered this of him that he, so obsessive in his quest for the White Whale, could spurn the desperate plea of the Captain of the 'Rachel' to join in the search for a missing son, lost when their boat encountered that terrible beast.

The risk of his own crew, the terrible daring of his own life, the insistent demand to catch the terrible fate that awaits him - none of this now matters or signifies. Ahab spurned a parent in distress. That is all I know of him and all I need to know.

It is, of course, between then and now - those nineteen years - that I have lived as a parent myself and, as such, would give all and anything to a fellow parent in distress.

There is that bond of being, to which no other can compare. And thus, today, when Gordon Brown speaks of his sorrowful empathy with David Cameron and his family in their loss of their beloved son Ivan, I fully understand the parental empathy that impels his words. He lost his first child. He knows the hurt as no other can.

The Psalmist writes of 'the deep that sings unto deep.' There is no greater profundity than this.

'Lights, Camera, Action!'...

There are not a few who, somewhat in general scornfully, would compare the parsonic with the thespian calling.

There are some overlaps one must admit: an amount of dressing up for the occasion, the ability to hold an audience's/congregation's attention for more than the statistically average three seconds, a certain bravado in style and perhaps - dare one own for both callings - a love of being in the public gaze. Beyond that though I will not go.

An actor may well talk of his or her 'vocation', but though I doubt not the person's sincerity I will not take as comparable - certainly not equal in either merit or significance - the ploughing of the field for the Lord's harvest and the treading of any boards for an evening's entertainment.

Does that sound pompous tosh? Am aware it might, but let it rest as it is. Truth enough that the majority of the theatrical or the film crew - as it were - would merely and more humbly aver that they are simply doing what comes naturally. If I were to say, in any riposte, that my belief in my calling is doing what comes supernaturally, then that must be a matter to judge for Him and not for me.

'Tis entirely possible He held His head in His hands on His hearing of my intention to don the dog collar in His name. I cannot tell. One mustn't - as my late and dear Abbot once said - be constantly looking over one's shoulder at the shadow of one's vocation. Leave it alone and try not to fret was his wise advice.

But could the one have been the other? Had not the theological urge taken grip, would I now be lined up for some part in a desperately intense French film with acres of remorse, nudity and regret, or else some block-busting, Oscar-winning, dollar-minting Hollywood epic? Can't say for sure, but whichever would stand me in greater chance of snogging Nic Kidman on set would get my vote! (How venial is the man!)

Note carefully that there are few enough, if any, major filmic types who did not start young. Not necessarily professional and public performance, but an urge at an early age to don a costume or two from adult clothes to hand and thence to burst forth into the drawing room - or back parlour according to taste - with some skit or sketch to lay before the doting parents and the dozing relatives come Christmas or other festive family gathering.

That though not for me. There were but two moments in early life when the 'bug' might have taken hold, but for obvious reasons to be revealed it did not. The first - and so very precious memory - was the time that the late and wonderful Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's fame of course), I and a few school mates staged a sound recorded recreation of some of the very earliest moments from the original Dr. Who series.

All, naturally, wished to be the Doctor as such, only as PNMJ - check the book for the reference to 'worst poet in the galaxy' and I can assure you he was! - owned the tape machine his was first refusal on the star part. Douglas got to voice a Dalek, rather well as it turned out, and I but the poor fellow who screamed a lot before falling to his death in some implausible studio chasm.

The second - as memorable but for more painful reasons - was a staged school French play, in which I was to be the night porter whose entrance temporarily disturbed the dastardly deeds of a pair of burglars. The plot - such as there was one - required one of the burglars to thwack me about the head with a mallet, thus rendering me silent.

Now even in those pre elven-safety days it was not quite the thing to brain a child with a solid lump of wood. (Some masters may well have employed such disciplinary measures in the privacy of the classroom; but that was a different matter and not something we all felt - both victims and abusers alike - to lay before any wider, less comprehending audience.)

As, therefore, a protective measure - and adding to the visual fun of the thing - I was to be equipped with a WW2 Tommy helmet. The blow was to descend downwards and the padding to absorb the impact. That of course was the plan not - it transpired - the execution.

On the night, 'Robber Two', somewhat carried away with the excitement of the occasion, dealt me a mighty blow to the side of the head, where the usefulness of the helmet was strictly limited. Determined not to cry in pain and thus ruin the whole performance, I could not but somewhat actually pass out. The rest is a blur.

Seeing my collapse, the master/director hovering in the wings apparently had to rush onto stage, swoop me in his arms and carry me off to Nurse who, as ever, was on stand-by for any eventuality.

The audience - parents mostly - apparently howled their delight at this. Not as collective sadists as such - though the point is moot given that they all had dispatched their 'precious' off-spring into the maw of fell boarding school life - but in reasonably assuming this all to be a part of the proceedings. Well it jolly well wasn't!

So what, by a tender age, had I learnt of the acting craft? That he who owns the kit - 'The Producer' - calls all the main shots. Check. That 'The Director' of the whole piece may think he's in charge but isn't. Check. That metaphorical death or, worse, actual physical pain was all that I, as 'Actor', could expect for an outcome. Checkmate.

Not, on the whole, what these psycho-babble coves call 'positive reinforcement' all told vis a vis life in the limelight. No, sadly, were any snogging of the always fragrant Nic K ever to occur - and of course it will not - it will have to be for real and not for film. I can live with that premise.

Veni, Trimbli, Vici...

...Have you been caught up in the whole 'Trimble Nation' phenomenon, the swaying tide of opinion regarding the fragrant and achingly bright Miss Trimble?

We in The Wolds are fairly phlegmatic folk all told and not prone to easy adulation of transient celebrity types. But even here, and certainly within the Rectory, of late there has been much crying up of she who has - finally and dare one say it barely? - led her Corpus Christi team to victory in this season's 'University Challenge.'

Sad to see and read that some mean types have taken to deriding, nay scorning, Miss Trimble's special charism of being smart and knowing stuff. In spades it must be said. I'll have none of it. Lord alone knows how invested in pig ignorance are far too many of our young people. I will have an example of good learning applauded.

And thus one announces an eponymous neologism in honour of a fine young woman and a tightly-fought, near-lost contest:

'To trimble' v.i.: to cause or to suffer anxiety by hesitating on the very verge of much deserved victory.

'Much Trimbling in the Marsh' one recalls from the days of wireless. Keats' 'trimbling heart' is another literary reference.

Paramount though, as we classicists will know, is the maxim ascribed to the warring yet uncertain Caesar, J.: 'Veni, Trimbli, Vici.'

You carry on banging that button dear lady. When you know - and who should not in an educated country? - that the chap in the picture can be none but Dante, then you sing out loud and proud. Put a smile on Paxo's grim face and be assured The Wolds is on your side.

The Thousand Yard Stare...

"Gentlemen of the jury, the interest aroused by this case and the lobbying that has taken place over it are presumably well known to you."

Dear Demosthenes, up to his old tricks from the outset. Of course politically founded lobbying was paramount within an Athenian trial - before, during and afterwards - but Demosthenes would merely wish gently to remind the jurors that he knew it to be so, not in any way seek to make an alienating fuss in his opening speech.

The contextual clue of course is in the opening phrase, for where now would one hear reference to an all male jury? Would Demosthenes indeed have managed a 'Ladies and Gentlemen...' with a perfect Rumpolesque warmth, positively welcoming on board representatives of the 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' species?

I suspect he might, with perhaps some practising first. For is that not the mark of the true - if slightly slippery - orator that he (or indeed she) can make a compelling case out of any old set of materials to hand?

A backhanded compliment to the historian A J P Taylor was that he could successfully argue any case of historical causality before a band of eagerly scribbling students, only to return the following day to lecture quite the opposite with equal weight, thus causing consternation and dismay to same scribblers? His entire intention no doubt, and no bad thing for their independent intellectual development would be my view on the matter.

By why he - Demosthenes not AJP - tonight? 'Tis this. If I have regrets in life, one would have to be not ever grasping the ancient Greek tongue. We at school were, fairly arbitrarily, divided into Greeks and Germans. My lot falling to the latter, I can now reasonably enquire of any Herr or Frau the whereabouts of the nearest pharmacy should one ever be needed when out and about in Bavaria. I am, however, by consequence entirely reliant on translations when it comes to making my way through the delights of Herodotus or the difficulties of Aristotle. I do not feel, in that, I have had the greater part of the bargain.

Leaving though behind the regret of not being able to grapple with the original texts, there is little I find more soothing after a hard day's rectoring than to settle down with an ancient Greek author's thoughts on the world as it was, is or might yet be.

Particularly after today and, thus this evening, in especial Demosthenes. There are folk enough gifted at the the full art of public oratory, but I am not one such. Addressing a steaming conference horde on such a topic as 'The Rural Rector - a resource for troubled times?' is neither my choice nor my delight. The question is properly moot - these are troubled times and Rectors do have work to do therein - but I much would rather be out being as resourceful as I might than standing before several hundred of the steaming conference types trying to put that into words.

"Watch out for the thousand yard stare," has been Bro. George's advice on the matter. "If you see that in their faces you know you've lost them." He, being the sort of professional cove whose life is oft wrapped up in such matters, knows full well his onions here. You can sense yourself flying with the sheer wonder of your rhetoric, but when you glance down at the assembled steamers and see their eyes lost into some remote middle-distance, utterly oblivious of your presence and totally deaf to your implorings, well then it is time to wind up and to sit down.

Not saying it was quite that bad today, but in truth not that far off. So no Demosthenes me that for certain. Do I read him then, the assured and smooth speaker whose words echo down the centuries, with some envy? Not at all. I relish the charism he had, rather than growl for that which I do not.

But more on this, for yes my key consideration is that debate is but the beginning; perhaps not even a necessary matter and for certain not a sufficient. For my reading this evening has been interrupted by a woefully distressed telephone call from the wife of one of my farming parishioners. I knew he had been suffering down the years from the financial pressures of his life - little enough money in pigs at the best of times, and these are pretty well the worst of them - so I was not surprised, though of course saddened, to hear her tell me he had broken down completely and been taken away for some much needed medical treatment.

What shook me though from any post-conference blues were her words to describe his pre-admission state. "I knew I'd lost him, Rector, when I looked in his eyes and saw the thousand yard state." It was only then that I recalled the true and desperate origin of that phrase. Not dull conferences, but shell-shock in the trenches during the First World War gave rise to it. That was when they knew a soldier was down - his eyes fixed into some far-distant horror, unable to let go if it.

So are we now come to this, that men - and women too - are to be so crazed by the strife and strain of seeking to survive in the bedlam of economic meltdown that they too will crash as war-torn soldiers once did? Yes they are, is all that need be said. What then the totally average rural Rector is to do to help is not something I'll be asking dear Demosthenes to consider, howsoever an accomplished orator in matters of state. Higher forces for invoking tonight in something so personal and so pressing.

The Right Kind Of Snow....

..."The worst snow for eighteen years" they have been telling us, and they are correct.

Not that, ordinarily, I am much moved by the weather as such. It more or less just is, and whatever it is one must do what one must do. Not a terribly Wordsworthian approach to the whole 'grandeur of nature' thing I own, nor indeed the type of 'take it or leave it' approach that would find much favour with dear David Attenborough true enough.

But there it is, the wheels of the parish must turn in rain, wind or shine. A pity of course for any wedding occasion marred by monsoon downpours. My own expressed line on this - that in China such a day would be seen as the Gods raining down blessings on the happy couple - is not one that, all in all, cuts the celebratory mustard I do find. (H has indeed strongly suggested I refrain from such a 'damp' remark, though habit tends to overcome sage advice.)

I even recall a fellow seminarian who let it be known that he was rather keen on 'clouds'. Not in any old hippie way - 'Wow clouds man, they're amazing' - which at least would have been acceptable from a certain class of aspirant: the older convert from paganism so oft found abroad nowadays. No, this chap actually meant that the physics and the chemistry of clouds held a special place in his view of the world and, as such, was worthy of both deep study and endless mention. (Should you ever need someone to empty a room or to close a party on time, then hire Rev Dave X to come and start talking on the particular - nay unique - structure of the cumulus cloud in Spring. Works every time believe me.)

But on this 'worse for eighteen years' thing I am totally on top of my facts here. I do speak though not as a meteorologist but as a parent, or rather at the time as a parent-about-to-become. For it was this season and time some eighteen years ago the we [H and I] were waiting for dear E to decide it was time to be born.

There was a mutually acknowledged concern that a certain Wednesday was the projected 'D' for delivery day, Wednesdays belonging to 'Morse' of course in those days and neither of us terribly keen to miss an episode! But more than that, come the appointed time came also the snows in huge drifts and flurries. The blocking of roads, the inability of hospital staff to reach their places of gainful employment or of ambulances to get outside the gates of their yards - all these were truly and personally troublesome matters.

Staring outside at four feet and more of the white stuff had me gasping at the thought that a home birth, entirely unaided but by self and a manual, was a distinct possibility. ("Just get ready to catch - might shoot out like a lemon pip" was the not so supportive advice of the midwife on the end of the telephone.)

Given then the strong possibility that any travel to the appointed hospital would need to be a self-help affair, it did strike me to check the car was as prepared as it could be for such a difficult journey. Well need I say, it wasn't. The battery proved as dead as all dead things heaped together in a large pile in a dead end going nowhere. Like the car.

This then was the Tuesday evening gone eight o'clock. Morse was not due for another twenty-four hours, but H was strongly intimating that E was on her way!

This then is the nub of it - if you have kept pace - only the local garage could possibly supply a new car battery at this point, and that garage was long shut for the evening with proprietor John Boy (one of those lovely English nicknames completely mis-naming the great, ugly, but sweet gentle giant of a man he was) long gone to his home some many miles away. Many miles away in the snow, of course.

But cometh the hour had to cometh the phone call to John Boy. Nor else a choice. Circs explained, to his everlasting glory the man said at once he would borrow a tractor from his Bro. John Boy down the lane, and drive in through drift, flurry and the freezing night in order to find and fix me the battery I, the car - and H and E - needed.

The story's climax should have me driving through blizzard storm to get H to the hospital on time. Truth though is rather the more mundane. E - a lifetime habit - showed no interest in being timely, rather waiting a whole further two weeks to show herself to the waiting world and the expectant parents both. By which time all snows had gone, roads were clear and the weather utterly unremarkable.

John Boy's kindness and selflessness though have not be forgotten these eighteen years. When the time shortly will come to buy E her first car it will be from his lot we choose. (Might even suggest she gets herself a spare battery. You never know when you might need one!)