On, Or Indeed Off, The Rack...

...Grim news just in. The local offie may soon become the local offed. Been wondering for a while why stocks of decent malts have been on the serious wane, why discount upon discount has been the increasingly frantic order of the day.

Time was when a fellow bought his bottle of a week - or night of course - and that was that. Now, however, it has all become 'Half Price' this and 'Three For Two' that. (Handy on the wallet front of course, if not so helpful for the liver.)

When, though, the other week this morphed into 'Half Price And Three For Two As Well' - with the near implication that if even that level of generosity unmatched in the annals of British retailing was insufficient bait then you could have it gratis for the asking - one could not but sense a terrible doom approaching.

And so indeed it has come to pass, or nearly so. They are 'in administration', they may or may not be sold on a 'going concern'. Jobs will certainly go, which is deeply concerning, stores closing by the score in all probability. This will be grievously sad for the redundant of course, but as one who has done what he could over the years single-handedly to maintain a stonking great profit margin for the company, I too shall be singularly bereft.

H is of a different view. Whilst naturally sympathising with anyone facing loss of their job or their career, she is firmly of the view that anything that prevents me legging it round the corner for a couple of spare clarets ten minutes before closing time is to be warmly welcomed.

She has a point of course. Always does. But it's a beastly way for it to be made and I hope it does not come to that. Thirty-seven pints of lager for sixpence may be our local supermarket's idea of a good time, but it is not mine.

How Stitched Is Your Kipper?...

...Paul Merton prefers, one gathers, 'done up' to 'stitched up like a kipper' to describe being, as it were, shafted. Either way it is a compelling image, though its origins are pretty vague and unresolved it seems.

Its apposite usage can range from the fairly mild protest - out-thought by a cunning opponent in a hard fought game of bar-billiards - to the pretty sharp. Though not any comfort, perhaps, to the victims of the Bernard Madoff scam, they might very well remark in truth that their fate is much like that of the esteemed smokie in question - quite hung up, or out, to dry.

My lament today, however, is precisely the opposite. "Ten days, Rector," said Head Nurse I/C post-operative instructions, "and then go and have the stitches out." (H was there at the time and is able to confirm the accuracy of that reported statement. Signed affidavits available on request.)

Seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, not least having the weight of precedence that being the very same prescribed interval for stitch-removal with the first surgery. Being a fairly steep affair this second pass of the scalpel, steri-strips, gauze, bandaging et al., had been applied on top of the wound completely masking it from view. (Hence the earlier reported remark of same Head Nurse that it would be sense of smell not sight the guide to any infection!)

So down we pop this very morning, to Dr. P's den, for the appointed day and hour of stitch removing with his Head Nurse (another creature altogether from the aforementioned of the species). If one were to say that this was something to which one had not been looking forward with any joy in the heart, but rather a deeply nauseous churning in soul and belly both; that just indeed said, you might riposte 'What a wimp!' and I'd not attempt to disagree.

Were I, though, to be charged with mounting any self-defence, it would run along the lines of compelling childhood traumas re-visited. Were you to press me for details, then one incident long-ago and never yet forgotten would be called to give witness. Thus the evidence-in-chief:

Lying in a hospital bed, a lad some ten years of age and two days post-operative, two jolly and chatty nurses are come to change the linen. (Sort of thing that happened in those distant days. Hardly likely to occur now of course.)

Being chatty, their minds were not entirely on the job in hand - and quite as one would now find it still, one hardly need mention - so in flicking back the bedding without a care in the world, what did they inadvertently accomplish other than to catch one of my stitches with the top-sheet thence to whip out said stitch, re-opening the wound causing consternation and pain all round?

The pain of course was mine alone, though the consternation more generally applying. Attending physician being summonsed to attend, a new stitch was on the instant threaded in with no 'by your leave' requested or flesh-numbing injection offered.

Now tell me that such a dire experience leaves no indelible impression on a growing boy, and I will advise you not to take up any career requiring any empathetic understanding of human nature or humane psychology. Allowing, though, that you are fit for more than bottle-washing or hole-digging for a living, you'll fully appreciate that from then on nurses, stitches and I have not enjoyed cosy co-existence. Taken separately I can tolerate all of the constituent elements - even my own self most of the time - but put the three in a room together, as it were indeed, then my stomach turns and my heart races.

So there we all were, this very morning, my whole self a-turning and a-racing waiting for esteemed Head Nurse to get stuck in. Mini-scalpels were made ready, hands - hers not mine - duly scrubbed and gloved, antiseptic swabs to gloved hand, blood-catching towelling as needed on stand-by, and so forth. And so off we go.

Only to report that when it came to it - when all bandaging, gauze and other dressings were finally removed, all bloodied steri-strips peeled away - behold there were no stitches waiting to be removed at all! Not one solitary one on view or offer! Whatever frantic sewing had occurred on the day [see earlier] had been entirely subcutaneous, with just the multiple layers of said steri-strips holding the surface wound together.

Now I am not one for randomly or unnecessarily critiquing decisions taken by surgeons. If no stitches were decided to be needed, then so be it. But when one is then given duff information about the management of the wound, with phony protocols provided for removal of phantom stitching, then I begin to baulk and to protest.

Setting aside any consideration of the internal battles one has had to fight in order to gear oneself up for an illusory nurse/stitch combo ordeal, I have also allowed myself to be perhaps somewhat more mobile than I ought these past ten days, confident that some stout thread was holding me in place. Well of course it hasn't and the upshot is that the wound has not properly closed, more steri-stripping has had to be applied with stern instructions given for another week of sofa rest and no - repeat no - showering.

Three weeks then it is to be with only a strip-wash between me and perfect, parish pariah status. One does what one can not to come over higher than a rancid kipper, resorting not merely to the finest deodorants known to man (Paul Gaultier is good) and eaus-de-Cologne (Chanel for me mostly), but also whole-body sprays of which there is not one decent brand I know of fit for a gentleman.

All very well in their respective ways, but not totally efficacious one can perfectly tell. H is beginning to take wider and wider sweeps around self by day, and even the cat is looking some askance before shifting quite to the further end of the bed at night. Phone calls are being received informing one that one's presence is not strictly necessary at parish council meetings, and if post and milk personnel are not actually depositing their respective items at the end of the drive before fleeing, one strongly senses that they wish they could

I am quite, then, the wholly unstitched and utterly undone, unhappy kipper. Never has been a favourite breakfast dish of mine. Don't now much care if I never again look one in the eye. Only room enough in this Rectory for the one of us is my final, unswerving view. Here I stand - well all right, lie on the sofa - I can do no other!

Foreign Travel...

..."You off to Rome then Rector?" With my present post-operative limp, making it to the garden gate-post is about the limit of my current venturing, so why then have not three but five of one's dear flock asked me this very question this week? Do I look equipped for foreign travel, when half-way down the High Street is quite beyond me?

Not though some cruel quip, a jest at my infirmity, but rather of course a quizzical wondering whether I'll be wanting to take up the latest offer from Il Papa di Tutti Papi of - well thus it seems to me - becoming a Catholic whilst yet remaining an Anglican.

No, is the present simple answer, certainly in advance of any opportunity carefully to scrutinise the as yet unpublished small print. Not really giving it much thought to be truthful at present, one's plate being somewhat full just now of other matters on which to chew as it were.

What, rather than any answering of mine, has me pondering is the casualness of the questioning. In the recent Woldean past - say any time over the last three centuries - such a consideration of defection (as it would be taken by all) would have raised burning passions on both sides. Indeed, the burning as such could, on rare but yet desperately sad occasions, be as literal as metaphorical.

Not now though. Folk have been asking as indolently as if just vaguely interested about one's possible plans for a short, reviving family holiday. "Oh, I hear Rome's very nice this time of year." That sort of thing and no more. So are they simply not bothered, totally indifferent even, whether I go or stay? Does, in fact, the whole Church shooting-match so little intrude into their lives that only utter indifference can give the full measure of their lack of any concern?

One could enquire of course, theorising in advance of the data being as much to be avoided in the nave as in the laboratory. Not though being up to much vox popping at present, I shall merely hazard a reasoned guess at the general state of mind and heart of my inquisitors.

Continuity is what is most wanted here at present, craved even. Too much turmoil both near and far has wearied the spirits these past few years. If then people felt threatened by any change - change qua change - they would be at once in stolid and solid opposition. That then they are completely relaxed about the whole thing can only mean that they see it as a very little thing. This is not indifference, just seeing very little difference.

Fr. Pat down the road at St. Alphonsus does a good Mass, whilst we here at St. Boniface do a pretty decent Communion I opine with some justification. He has his Solemn Vespers, we our Choral Evensong. He'll be not the last to allow that our traditional language of the liturgy outstrips his by some country miles for majesty, awe and wonder. (We on the whole try not to give a theology lecture to God the Father - "You this", "You that" - as must he from the rubrics as given.)

I never fish another man's pond, but it is patent that a certain number of Fr. Pat's sheep, duly branded with the petrine seal, do occasionally stray over to our meadows and pastures, seeking - as they would put it - some temporary respite from the woe that is the Nu Mass. "The Mass is the Mass is the Mass, Rector - no offence." None taken of course. "But I just need one Sunday in a while when I'm not asked to jig up and down to some happy-clappy 'People's Gloria' or give complete strangers a beaming smile and a hug."

In Fr. Pat's defence - man could speak for himself of course were he here, which of course he isn't so he can't - he's no happy-clappy cove himself and would have none of it at all were it up - or is that down? - to him. 'Tis, as ever the way of these things, the workings of his dread Bishop for whom the whole Vat. II thing was a complete eye-opener. Fair enough perhaps, just regrettably he's never really calmed down since.

Still keeps banging on does the Bish - or so Pat will tell me over the third whiskey, yes Irish in his honour - about 'engagement' and 'being Church' - whatever indeed that last should mean! (Pat and I have long given up searching for any clues. Gone as far even as the bottom of the bottle itself in search of an answer to that, but with no luck - if uproarious fun on the way - in making any head nor any tail of it.)

Trouble is, from Pat's perspective and with my entire sympathy and understanding of the man's intractable plight, with his Bish it is, as it were, 'Bish, Bash, Bosh' all the way. Man must take command and control at all times, in season and jolly well - or indeed badly - out of season too.

We too, of course, do have our centralising tendencies from time to time, with sudden flurries of paper edicts descending like some new variant Biblical plague. Keep your head down, make a few nominal assenting responses, but don't actually do anything and the spotlight moves on eventually. That generally sees off whatever it was that the Palace had - briefly - on its mind I find.

For poor Pat though there is no let up. Weekly Sit. Reps. are demanded, theological auditors are posted far and wide to inspect and approve - or not - progress, mandatory conferences are convened. The whole tone of the thing being the futility of resistance.

Pretty wearing all round that must be, and though Pat is a doughty worker in the vineyard of the Lord, one can tell that he just wishes he could be left alone once in a while to bring in the harvest without endless oversight of his viticultural skills or constant requirement of reporting Ph levels in the soil.

If then I am at present and for the foreseeable future in no way inclined to set sail for Rome on the back of an offer I feel perfectly at ease in refusing, it is in main part that I see no need for the journey at all, and in no small part I much rather prefer being Captain of my own small vessel to slaving in the galley of a dreadnought.

"I give the orders round here," I can cry whensoever I wish. The fact that I hardly ever do is not the matter in hand. It is the liberty to do so that counts. For the sake of the Lord and my continued easeful existence, please do not snitch to my Bish this take of mine on modern Anglican diocesan life as parsonically personally lived. He would awfully mind. He might even act on his minding. That would mean change. Worse than foreign travel is change.

Alas Poor Nanny...

...how all too often do we hear, when Guvment imposes yet more strictures on our lives (all of course in our 'best interest'), the cry go up "More Nanny State!"?

The essential point is true, we are hemmed in on every side with exhortations to do this or imprecations not to do that. That the this and the that are blindingly obvious to any sentient being and also matters that should be for individual determination alone, is the added element that so grates as it should.

Were I, for example, to say to you "Here is a cliff edge, please do not fall off it" you might do no more than urge me to change my medication, as clearly I must be nuts if I feel it either necessary or useful to offer such advice to my fellow man and woman.

If, though, to that I were to add (in persona Guvment): "To achieve the objective of fewer cliff-top accidents here is half a truckload of cash. Go away and come back with publicity campaigns on the dangers of cliff-falling, bring me shocking tales of people who never ever considered falling off a cliff and are clearly shaken by the notion that some people might, give me scare stories about people who nearly fell off a cliff but didn't because they were in Norfolk at the time, run round the whole country urging folk even to stay safe at home avoiding sight of anywhere with a cliff in it, provide me with costings for erecting fencing around the entire coastline...and so on and so on; if indeed that were to pass, then your objections would rightly be profound and prolonged.

Succinctly put, you would say: "Shut up. We know about cliffs", adding "That's half a truckload of our cash you've just spent on this nonsense!" I - still in propria persona Guvment - would condescendingly riposte "We have statistics that show cliff-falling is the seventeen-thousandth most common cause of death in this country. It is, therefore, an important public health 'issue', and since we introduced our campaign the number of deaths from cliff falling has fallen by half. So there!" (From two to one in fact.)

To which bossy inanity, we might only grind our teeth in impotent rage. Though of course we wouldn't, having taken to heart the anti-teeth grinding campaign of last year. ("Save the NHS. Stop grinding your teeth and spare the dentist!")

This rant comes courtesy of an enforced detention, last week, in the waiting room of an otherwise laudable dermatology clinic. There we all patiently were waiting - indeed and long - to have our respective bits billed and cooed over by the attendant physicians, in a tiny room filled with folk and utterly also crammed to the very rafters with posters on all sides lecturing us on aspects of our health utterly unrelated to our being there and - for most if not all - completely alien to our blameless lives.

Terribly sharp posters they were, replete with high-production value images and nifty straplines, giving us all the gen we never needed about the perils of unprotected sex, the woes of the demon drink and the terrible consequences of non-prescription Class 'A' drugs. All very rock and roll of course, but if this tiny and frail Granny by my side were prompted by what was not so much before her eyes as in her face to have, as it were, a pop - well then, good luck to her I say!

My favourite among the offerings might be the very, very large and over-glossed photographs of certain favoured fruits and vegetables that we were to eat at pain else of imminent decay unto death itself. We here in The Wolds may not be the most literary of folk, but we are literate on the whole and certainly, as we are most of us skilled and fervent growers of our own produce, need no reminding of what precisely an apple looks like or its lawful proper purpose.

But no, the Gold Star award for most toe-curlingly crass poster on display that day showed three young and clearly awkward chaps of the male persuasion, sitting together in some sports changing room with all the relaxed ease of one of those early fashion shoots for men, circa 1963. (You know the sort of thing: jaws firmly set, staring - with both serious and concerned mien - into some invisible middle-distance, as if intent on eradicating world poverty through their choice of casual knitwear.)

All in all, three of the least gay men you might ever encounter believe you me. And the wretched strapline that told the story - though most certainly not theirs? "Play safe. Whatever your game!"

'Nanny State' is once more your cry. But hold, no. The sentiments are indeed absolutely sound, 'tis the Guvment wasting yet more of our precious and deeply limited health funding on totally unnecessary and ineffective nonsense. Quite so. Point taken and agreed entirely. It is, though, the slanderous slur on the figure of the nanny qua nanny to which I shall and do take exception.

Granted there have been nannies of the species so taken in drink themselves that you'd scarce escape safe in your perambulator as they tottered by the very brink of the cliff. Granted too that there have been some terrible martinets who had rules for every occasion, each with elaborate sub-clauses and condign punishments attached to every uncrossed 't' or undotted 'i'. (The latter - with some exceptions of course - is more the style of this or any Guvment. But do note the difference: when Guvments speak no bugger takes a blind bit of notice; but when Nanny commanded she also controlled. "Do this or else", with the 'else' no option at all.)

Setting aside such aberrations - there are always some in every trade - the average and wonderful Nanny is perfectly adept at adopting a measured laissez faire approach to the teaching of and the learning about risk and consequences. If young Charlie falls out of a tree and bangs his nut, then young Charlie will take the more care the next time he sets about a similar venture. If equally young Matilda doesn't mind her manners on this occasion but hogs the limelight at playtime, young Matilda experiences the sorrow of life sans friends and mends her ways accordingly.

Nannies the world over do give instruction in good manners by demonstrating the virtue in their own presence and behaviour. Some of the more sparky ones will even shimmy up trees to show how it should be done, but failing that will gently opine on the need not to rely on dead-wood for a tree-top perch. That far and no more. The rest is up, as it should be, to the childish learner.

'Nanny State' is, at bottom, a plain contradiction in terms. Guvments simply do not do proper, lawful, sensible nannying. Never have, never could. They don't - cannot - as the modern idiom has it 'get it'.

More Nanny less State, say I tonight.

Unnatural Acts...

...no, not that. We do not do that sort of endless and futile controversy in St. Boniface and environs. Much to be said on both sides and most of it best left unsaid, is my firm and unwavering sentiment.

But if not Biblical or other injunctions on the morality - or not - of certain sexualised practices, to what then am I referring in speaking of an 'unnatural' act?

'Tis this plain and entire. No man should ever be awake, conscious and fully alert in an operating theatre. One excepts, of course, from this general injunction the surgeon, the anaesthetist, the nurses and all general ushers-in and swabbers-out. Their full, undivided and spot-on attention is naturally both required and expected.

What is, though, unnatural is for the patient not to be utterly zonked and out of it for the duration. From the perspective of the medical crew, a totally comatose patient must be a boon and blessing both. No leaping screaming off the table when the local anaesthetic fails to do its appointed thing. No awkward questions such as: "Sister, you have just said to the sawbones currently deep inside my leg 'It's not working is it?' Can I take it from your remarks that you are doubting the efficacy of the whole show?" No generalised and off-putting chuntering about anything and everything in a vain attempt to allay the growing sense of foreboding and utter terror.

Just restful and inert peace and silence in which to carry sawing, hewing, hacking and sewing to one's heart's content, without let, hindrance or other intrusion and interference from the person being so sawn, hewed, hacked and sewed. (You try keeping still and silent in such circs. Can't be done I assure you.)

They say that when you wake from a general anaesthetic the pain you experience is the very pain you would have felt had you not been unconscious at the time of sawing etc., etc. That is as maybe, but if on the other hand you have been totally with it throughout, it is most certain that not only do you cop the pain when the local wears off as eventually it must, but also you are left seared and scarred by every pounding moment of wretched memory.

Tell me that is within the order of nature and I'm decamping to Sodom and environs forthwith. They do things differently there I am told, and so long as one of the differences is not forcing people to experience their own surgery anything else can take care of itself.

Second Cut Is The Deeper...

...despite the song, yes indeed first cut deep but second cut deeper.

For swifter than the very swift itself (or is that the swallow, never could tell the two apart) one's latest hero of the medical profession - Mr S, consultant surgeon to the gentry and other distressed folk - has opted for the seen today and the sawn the day following.

Then that the seeing of the fellow was yesterday, you'll gather that the being sawn takes place this very day around 3 pip emma. More of a hack than a saw in truth - flesh but no bone involved - but the metaphor is strong so let it be.

H, bless her, has promptly abandoned some afternoon gathering of one of her fearsome committees for the promotion of whatever good cause it may so be of the day, to drive me hither and thither. (Astute readers - one has no others - will have already anticipated that, as it is the leg that is the thing in question, motoring as such will be a thing out of any question for some while to come.)

This is all to the good of course, though one could wish some weeks have passed, the wound is once more healed and the pain but a distant memory. No time-travel permitted sadly, one must resign oneself to being the 'Wimp with the Limp' for the duration.

Catchy title you'll agree. A chart-busting hit single to come? E thinks not - she being well-versed, as teenagers must be, in what does and doesn't hit the right note with the music-buying public - but I shall ponder and muse and perhaps scribe. Won't be up to much else for a spell, so might just give it a go. Who do I want as a producer? Do we go big with the horns or keep it simple? Which label shall I sign with?

Are there any decent bass-players left, or have they all gone off to make cheese?

Houses Under The Sea...

...T. S. Eliot, bless his fine silk socks, certainly knew how to bandy words about to a fine and proper purpose. All the rights ones and all utterly in the right order. Is there, indeed, any higher Lit. Crit. one could offer the fellow?

Not alone in thinking this I, for have just read that Eliot has been voted the nation's favourite poet in some recent vox. pop. poll or other. Hope for this benighted land of ours then? Well, perhaps best not be too chipper on the back of that alone, for as someone has pointed out - with probable due cause - that may only be because of the author's nominal association with the popular music-hall event 'Cats.'

But if so, then so. A start perhaps, a point of departure even. ('Departures' and 'points' - time/space combo thing - very Eliotesque indeed.) Does one, therefore, picture folk taking feline-type jumps, as it were, from a good foot-tapping tune straight into Prufrock and environs? It could happen. Must ask chum Adrian in that august pile the Office for National Statistics for some relevant data on the matter. Nothing those coves there don't know about our lives it seems.

Actually, a bit of a worrying thing all round this pandemic collection and collation of personal info by all and sundry and their respective computers. Why, only yesterday some jovial sounding fellow, telephoning from one of our larger supermarket chains, asked whether my decision last Friday not to buy the usual biscuit suspect by way of custard creams, but opting rather for the novel and untried caramel crunch item, signalled any fundamental shift in my purchasing habits. Cheek of the man to ask, and horror to me that he had the lowdown on my recent shopping outing in the first place!

The crisper response, of course, should have been to tell said fellow, his masters and their till-linked computers to be off and out of my life pronto. A man's biscuit is his castle and all that. That though the afterthought, as always in these affairs. On the other hand, my actual rambling reply how wonderful it was for him to remind me that we must have a packet of said caramel crunch about the place as I had plain forgotten the purchase entirely, did at least have the happy effect of my being written off as a complete lost cause to the annals of customer research and the phone call ending pronto. (I imagine his computer needed a good re-booting after that exchange, which is a pleasing thought.)

Anyway, back to Eliot. 'Four Quartets' is where we all end up. All poetic roads lead there, don't you find? (Beethoven's last and Eliot's all - the perfect zenith of human creation.) 'East Coker', in particular, one has in mournful mind today on hearing the terribly sad news that Ramsgate Abbey is to close its doors after a century and a half of habitation and prayer. Too few monks, too many empty cells it seems. Quite of lot of that about one must accept, and with heavy heart. They are not to disband, which is promising, but they are to decamp.

Thus spoke Eliot:

"In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto."

Could not have put it better had I tried indeed. The monks are asking that whoever buys their glorious Pugin pile will nurture and care for it, respectful of its past and eternal purpose. One can only hope so, though one fears a call or a conference centre at best: "Good morning Sir. Just a quick call about your snack preferences today...." Bah!

When The Going Gets Tough...

...the tough do not, of course, sound the retreat.

They do, however, sometimes opt to go on retreat, an entirely different matter indeed. One could call it re-charging the somewhat depleted batteries ahead of the impending battery, and the one so calling it would not be wrong.

Tomorrow then we flit for a while back to the old stomping ground of Quarr Abbey for a few fine days in good company with the original Men In Black. A few days hardly enough to slough off the layers of worldly goo that so attach to self, but long enough to - one hates to use the buzz word but it does so ring the right bell - 'reconnect' with one's inner monk.

A month, perhaps, would be the minimum required to atune in even some small way to the pace of the place, though if you are not a dollard entire then but one moment can hit you plain between the eyes with its spirit.

No month available, but a good week of time to bridge between now and next Monday's CT scan.