Open All Hours...2

To continue on from previous: I have never much cared for the slanderous notion that women have colds but men always the 'flu, carrying with it as it does a false propagandistic message that women are ever the more resilient gender quite content to seek to run off a broken leg, whilst men will collapse to a sofa for a week if a toe should be slightly stubbed.

This is not, I must assert, a slander ever uttered in the Palladas household for H and I completely recognise our respective personal stances on such matters: should she sense the slightest blemish to the skin it is off to Harley Street by the first available train for tests for skin cancer, whilst I, au completely contraire will sit on any given set of signs and symptoms for at least a fortnight, in the generally false presumption that time is the only, as well as the great, healer needed and that if you ignore any illness for long enough it will pass away of quite its own accord. (Regular readers are aware of course that this course was once even tried by oneself with what proved in the end to be one's very own cancer. There are then acknowledged limits to this masculine inspired stoical approach to sickness, and very much 'Tip for the Day' is, therefore, that time alone as a cure for cancer simply does not cut the, or indeed any, mustard.)

But today the subject is not life-threatening malignancy but rather a far less awesome matter of a swollen and deeply painful elbow. (OK well actually we are making a pitch for possible abscess tending towards - if unchecked - peritonitis and even mortal extinction. But that is to jump too far too fast for the purposes of this tale.)

An ever-aching elbow one has learned to live with as the consequence of some lazy ergonomics. One ought not continually to lean on it whilst typing away, but one does, one has for many years. I lean, it aches. It's a simple transaction. But then some four days ago the ache came accompanied by some serious and painful swelling. Let us call it, what is surely is, a modern fangled disease: 'Computer Elbow'.

And what should a fellow do in such circs? Well clearly, to follow the masculine line and ignore it. Change perhaps for a while one's usual slumped posture and then wait for sensible and long-overdue environmental adjustments inevitably to work their magic. A perfectly reasonable and proportionate reaction and response one would say.

One would, however, not in this case be right. Reasonable certainly given the known facts, but proportionate not at all it has transpired: for swelling - inflation - has but masked infection, and whereas an inflated elbow may subside all by itself once the irritant causing the swelling is removed, an infected elbow alive and kicking with all sorts of bacterial nastinesses needs active, immediate and, as we all know, antibiotic treatment.

All that though is but the diagnostic and subject context. The heart of the matter here is how and why one has journeyed from a Friday morning annoying ache to a Sunday night of waiting for the midnight hour to strike in order to hoick down the last dose of the first day of treatment.

Friday then ack emma status report: feeling a bit ropey and aware that resting heart rate is well above the norm for either age or man. Put both down to industrial-strength hangover from previous night of delicious excessive alcohol. Think, therefore, to self-medicate with Ibuprofen and strong coffee, and reckon neither will do any harm to raging pain in elbow now in its second day.

Headache and hangover subside as these things do, but pounding heart rate and raging elbow pain do not. (Note this, but no more, for now.)

Saturday ack once again emma. Poor night's sleep of restless wakefulness due to ever-present pain, interspersed with fitful dreaming of loud tom-tom beats and dark skies lit by dazzling displays of red-hot fireworks. Decide to take a stroll round to local pharmacy establishment for a swift chat with the resident Drugs Czar Harold. Harold does not hold himself to be medically qualified, has no ideas above his station at all, but is for all that a thoroughly knowledgeable cove when it comes to minor ailments of all sorts. Check, therefore, with him then if there is more to do than knock back the odd anti-inflammatory and suffer in silence whilst time gets to its work.

Sound notion but one blown clean away sadly by Harold choosing to have the morning off and substituting a sweet child in his place. Said sweet child mayhap be solid enough for the purposes of a locum dispensing powders and potions but not, as it turned out, of any substantial use when it comes to the matter of sound advisement. For, says she wrongly, there is no other course of action required other than the analgesics. No mention whatsoever of the possibility of a true infection that uncapped will rage throughout the whole body at the blink of a horse's eye.

One specifies the eye of a horse as it was in the equine context that one next made some progress. For the mother of one of E's stable friends happens to be a G.P. in her leisure time; that is, the little time that can be spared from the endless task of caring for a horse. One does not, therefore, ordinarily seek to burden her more with off-the-cuff remarks about human sickness, rather focusing on how one's horse fares and what is the latest news on its tendency to chuck its young rider if in mareish mood - as these mares so oft are.

Prompted though this time by ever increasing levels of pain, one did ask in purely general terms what might be the reasonable parameters of thought and action in regard to an elbow on the turn. It was then that other dimensions, previously unconsidered, hove into view. Abscesses were revealed as an optional extra, with necessary accompanying elements such as urgent medical treatment of both topical and systemic natures: get it drained possibly and most certainly get on board at once with the antibiotics.

Thought provoking stuff you'll agree. For the moment though nothing more than cerebral contemplation and no actual action following. One could leg it over to one's own G.P. for the full professional view, but then one couldn't it being Saturday and one's own G.P. doesn't do weekends. There is, instead, a telephone answering service that does not take calls, or if it does rarely replies to the simple request for urgent medical attention: "If you are breathing please don't bother us; if you are not breathing please phone your undertaker and stop bothering us." That sort of thing.

The alternative access to health services of any nature would be a by a trip to A&E. Through natural native cunning we have all learned that since the introduction of the false target god of a maximum four hour wait to be seen, no matter how trivial the matter, going to A&E is no longer something one only does when a limb is hanging off, or one is truly desperate, but is a convenient alternative to hanging on the telephone attempting and generally failing to book a G.P. appointment.

That's rather like those hotlines for buying tickets to popular music concerts so loved by E and paid for by her father: miss the beat of 9.00 a.m., when the box-office or doctor's reception opens for calls, and all you'll get for the next three hours is the engaged signal. Until finally you do get through only to be told all tickets were sold within the first nine minutes, or indeed all appointments for the day within that same short time.

But call me of the old school if you will, I tend to prefer not to trouble the hectic lives of Casualty staff until and unless the aforementioned limb off-hanging desperate pitch is reached. In which case waiting until the Monday when G.P.s returned from their weekend yachting breaks or whatever seemed the only choice.

Until of course one suddenly recalled that the local new hospital has something all the rage in the health service these days: a 'Walk-In Centre'. Just the ticket then for someone who simply wanted to walk-in, see a doctor, get a script and continue on with his busy life. And by the Sunday morning with arm rapidly - nay very nearly visibly - swelling by the hour a trip to the WIC was definitely on.

A swift phone call first though to check that the service actually operates on a Sunday morning seemed in order. Not a heck of point in trying to walk-in through closed doors. So one phones the main switchboard number for information. The flow of such information goes something like this:

Good Self: "I believe you have a walk in centre service at your fine new hospital. Could you tell me if it is open at this hour?"

Surly Operator: "Yes, but you have to make an appointment first."

GS: "An appointment for a WIC? That most surely belies the nature of the thing! The clue is in the title - 'walk-in'. One cannot need an 'appointment' for walking in can one?"

SO: "Yes one can, in fact one must. So there. Tell them about it if you like. I'm just following orders! Here's the number for appointments." (That last very much said in call central traditional accent of taking it or leaving it being entirely a matter for myself and of absolutely no interest or concern to the call centre itself or to its surly staff.)

So one did take the proffered number, if with some distaste, and made this use of it:

Good Self: Dials number given

Automated message: "This is the number for making appointments for the wonderful new WIC."

GS [thinks]: I frigging know that, that's why I'm phoning you dolt!

AM: "In order to make an appointment you must speak to an operator. Unfortunately all our operators are busy at present. Please do not hang on in the vain hope of speaking to one of them. Please don't even think of leaving a message as we won't listen to it. Please hang up now before we hang up on you."

GS [swears]: Frigg that for a game of soldiers!

AM [presciently]: "No point in swearing. I'm just a machine."

Machine hangs up.

So back to the first number:

Good Self: What is going on here? Just tried your wretched appointments line and got nowhere. Please suggest a viable alternative option.

Surly Operator Two: "As my colleague just told you" [clearly a marked card me] "you must have an appointment for the WIC."

GS: This is arrant nonsense and you know it. My Bro. Geo., whose professional life is spent designing health systems and processes that actually work, could if he were here put you right on this. A 'Walk In' service is precisely that. No more and certainly no less.

(At this point one must confess one pushed the boat out a bit here. For the actual words uttered were along the line: "I happen to work for the health service and let me tell you...etc., etc." But if a tad over the mark on strict truthfulness a veritable miracle cure for the impasse.)

SO2: [suddenly a lot less of the 'S'] "Sorry, did you say you work for the health service?"

GS: [plunging on] "Indeed so my good woman...."

Hardly 'S' at all O2: "Well in that case Sir, you may simply go down to the centre and indeed walk in!"

GS: "What!"

O2: [more 'S' for sheepish by now] "We've been instructed not to tell people this, but to use the appointments systems. Please don't say you heard it from me!"

Good self decides not to pursue this mystery any further but simply to grasp the chance, howsoever illegitimately gained, and get right on down walking into the walk-in at a trice and a pace.

So one does attend this our brand new hospital. (All gleaming bright and shiny, yet still filled with as much if not more MRSA and Clos. Diff. than its worn down predecessor, though that is for a later tale.) Great stonking signs point one the way to go. Handy that if you've not been there before. (Sadly the one place not to see any sign or signage is actually over the doors that actually lead to the desired destination. Assuredly smart post-modernist architecture doesn't do signs on buildings as such, though sadly of course decrepit patients-to-be still need them.)

By then perseverance and unwilting intent, one does find the very portal at which to enter. Across the wide, deep and terribly tall atrium one spots two desks of a reception variety. The first is labelled 'A&E reception', that being enough of a clue that this was not the one for us. The other has 'Urgent Care Centre' on offer, which sounds about right as indeed it proved to be.

Smiling lady behind the desk - a nurse perhaps if in any way someone with a duty of triage she must be - asks the broad outline of the circs. that brings one here and, on being satisfied one is not a certifiable loon or salesman chancing his arm on an off-day, immediately stripes one down on a very long list indeed then points to a doorway through which to pass.

"You'll be needing this too," says smiling lady/nurse handing me a torn off piece of paper on which she has written in biro 'UCC'. "Sorry about that," she says. "But we've run out of proper slips so tell reception you got this from me and they'll let you in."

So a gatekeeper of sorts clearly, if not a stricy triager as such. No slip, no entry. (Can immediately spot an opening for some sharp young entrepreneur: stand at entry to building whispering to entrants "Wanna UCC ticket. Five fera pound.")

Anyways, into UCC and up to further smiling lady receptionist. Circs. once more explained, name entered on viciously long list and place then to be taken in Waiting Room. So far so anticipated. What though had been less expected was to find said Waiting Room so packed, so bursting even, with waiting souls as to make days spent in any Calcuttan 'Black Hole' a positive lark.

Designed for maybe a dozen folk in comfort, it holds now some forty plus people - all of whom look up with that resigned sympathetic look as anyone new enters 'Bet you thought like I did that this would be a breeze!' - plus assorted pushchairs, wheelchairs and more mewling infants than one could throw a bucket of water over. (If, of course, one were tempted to take such a fluid approach to mewling infants in general, which - perish the thought - one never would!)

Alarming more - a terrible test of the very spirit of the man - there was, among all this heaving mass of humanity, one empty chair. ('Heaving' is perhaps not quite the right word, implying as it does some small capacity for anyone to move in any way of which there was in fact none whatsoever.) Around the walls were plastered some seven or eight plucky fellows and fellesses, all of whom might have given their Granny for a sit-down, but not one of whom wanted to be the one seen to take the last seat available when others might need it more. (And who said there is no hope for England while such wonderful self-sacrificing, embarrassed behaviour stalks the land!)

Turn away now then if any sensitive spirit must, for I am about to confess that I did not share either the manners or the sense of necessary sacrifice, but opted at once for the seat! Shame on me? I beg - and if I have to I shall - to differ. None of the standers actually looked on their last legs, whilst I most certainly felt to be on mine. Quite suddenly awfully unwell, not far short of a fainting fit I could tell. Maybe the 'roar of the crowd' and no more, but glancing down at the item in question - the inflamed elbow - one began at once to see other possibilities.

For lo, the thing that but an hour previous had been but a localised swelling had spread to a raging, ballooned, red-as-fire stiffness from veritable stem to actual stern! Lummy, this was serious stuff. Whatever was on the go was clearly up and running big time, with every intent on reaching the finishing line darn pronto. Time to wait? Not so. (Bro. George would have been so proud of what comes next.)

Two options opened for consideration. The first, to wait one's turn patiently - over the hour one was told by smiling lady mark two would be a decent minimum - and hope not to expire in the meanwhile. Option the second - and selected - was a swift return to reception, reveal one's woes and to plead for special consideration.

Can you imagine then my fright? Not only had I demonstrated to the room my utter disregard for Golden Rule of Waiting Rooms #1 - 'Never Take the Last Chair' - but here I was completely flouting the Great Precept of any British queue - 'Never Jump To The Front'! It must have been my fevered state that so emboldened me to overturn all known, understood and accepted principles of moral behaviour without even a single care to the likely opprobrium of others.

But whatever the morbid cause, the effect was pretty electrifying, for no sooner had one revealed sufficient of the flesh to convey the circs. than smiling lady was out of her chair calling for the nurse to come see at once. Nurse having viewed one was, on an instant, ushered into the presence of a doctor who opined that though neither swift amputation nor speedy removal back to A&E was required it was, in effect and fact, quite like the Battle of Waterloo itself - a close run thing.

That being settled and the alternative treatment of the expected dose of industrial strength antibiotics being prescribed, I could not but ask about the funny farce that had preceded my arrival here.

"Ah," he said, in a satisifed manner and one could immediately tell one had asked quite just the right question of the right man at the right time. It would take a man of Bro. Geo's. expertise and experience fully to detail all that then came forth, but the jist of the man's thoughts ran thus:

When the PCTs were handed the job of providing out-of-hours primary care some few years back it was a monster of a mess. The Government had predicted - if one can use such a scientific word for hopeless, random guessing - that only some small percentage of G.P.s would choose to opt out of their previous continuing and continuous duties to their patients.

When, however, most G.P.s legged it out the out-of-hours doors faster than you could cry "The surgery is closed. Haven't you got homes to go to?", there was not the funding, the capacity or the required planning to establish a viable alternative.

As a consequence, out-of-hours services have more or less imploded, with few doctors - apart from those flown in especially for the purpose from Dortmund or environs - willing and available to do the work, too few premises in which to operate the service and little or no money to pay for it.

The cunning native, not content with this absence and demanding its full accustomed slice of the NHS pie, had meanwhile spotted that you could now get a half-decent or better service from A&E, what with the introduction of four-hour waiting targets and all. Previously put off by the prospect of being told to wait a minimum of three days in a draughty, dank department, they discovered instead smart premises, with running hot and cold drinks, some magazines published in this very century and a waiting time of less than the average Tesco check-out on a busy Sunday.

What, however, worked for them did not of course work for the system, and A&E departments up and down the land were forced into over-drive and, worse, over-spend attempting to keep up with a demand that never really should have come their way in the first place.

So initial strategic foresight on the part of the wonks having fallen traditionally short of the mark - the world having gone to a place it had no right to be according to their predictions - they were forced to have another go. And that other go was towards these new beasts 'Walk In Centres'. Need a doc but not a stretcher as such? Then walk this way. Well again they did, these cunning natives, though not so much walk as stampede. Show them a narrow side-track on a Care Pathway and the ungrateful horde trample it into dust, with scant regard for the beauty of the design of the thing. Build a nice clean Waiting Room for twelve and be outraged when it fails to hold the forty plus who actually turn up.

We can't have this rank disorder think the wonks, we must impose order and structure and make people behave as we would have them. So the wonks design an appointments system for their supposedly 'walk-in' service. People may come if they must, but if they must then they must 'flow' not stampede. Can't have demand dictate supply!

That might work if the appointment system itself actually functioned, but even if it did it wouldn't because down at A&E they are still wrestling with the walking wounded who have walked into an 'emergency' department when all, at worst, they have is an 'urgency'. For them the 'Urgent Care Centre' is a godsend in a largely godless world and blowed if they are going to stop referring people to it just because the wonks want appointments.

So now there are two ways of getting into UCC - by legitimate appointment and by the side-door of A&E on demand. These two streams collide of course, and any person arriving having dutifully booked to be seen at, say, 11 of the morning will find twenty or so others who expect to be seen before then having themselves been waiting since before dawn.

More shambles to add to the farce of chaos. And what do the 'managers' of the skewed system do to fix the muddle? Why, instruct their front-line telephone operators to lie to the public. Appointments only is to be the party line to peddle to the great unwashed, and if they don't know any better then for Heaven's sake don't tell them!

Unless, of course, you 'work for the NHS'. Remember that trick. It may come in handy!

Open All Hours...1

...H's late and wonderful father - and therefore by obvious extrapolation my father-in-law - was, as regular readers know, a G.P. of what was called 'the old fashioned school'.

Two things follow from that description in logical sequence. First, that the type of doctoring he provided is no longer the fashionable norm: it would not be old style if there were not a new. QED and so forth. Second - and this more a judgement than a matter of factual logic, though I aver it most certainly to be true - that his doctoring was better than that available, by and large, today.

Let us then consider some of the abiding qualities of the general practice of medicine that does differentiate the old from the new.

There was status, regard and respect. A G.P. of his generation would not expect to be shouted or cursed at in his surgery by angry, drug-fuelled patients; nor would he have found himself threatened or attacked on his rounds by roving packs of feral youths. On the contrary, not only society being more at ease with itself but also a doctor would then enjoy something of the aspect and perks of a minor deity.

Not quite doffed caps in the streets, or instinctive genuflection before the leather bag of authority and medicines he would carry; but if the actual sacramental action was missing the devtional thought would be present. Here passeth by a vocational professional filled with knowledge and saving power. To him therefore due deference be given and on him deference be stowed.

That there would be something of the native peasant cunning in this honouring is not to detract from the effect. Prayers to St. Luke - patron of healers - in late October for fine weather to complete the harvest and a warm winter to follow would be proffered as a matter of a bargain: grant us these wishes dear Saint now and you will not find us needing so much to disturb you when we are frozen, hungry and sick.

And if godlike form in being then as a priest in character. For the character of the priest may be perhaps in question - too fond of the whisky or the gaming tables perhaps - but as one ordained into the mystery of immortal or mortal, in this case, salvation the mission is ever more than the man. True enough a G.P. so befuddled with non-prescription alcohol - or even self-prescripted drugs - that he could not administer a decent injection without causing fright or hurt, would lose the grace of his office. But short of that he would be protected from disgrace.

Whether in depth and breadth of medical knowledge the old trumps the new is harder to say. There are advances in medicine that permit insights, understandings, treatments and even cures beyond the doing of the last generation. But whether the wisdom of use of these measures has kept pace with the knowledge of their existence is not so sure. But let us at least be certain that whatever tools were to hand for such as H's father, he would be utterly the skilled craftsman in all of them. His choices of treatment would not be taken from the latest drug sellers' manual or the computer screen, but be drawn from the head and the heart, and of the two choices I would opt for the latter any time.

And again reverting to the relationship of doctor to patient and patient to doctor, there were more clear and certain rights and responsibilities for each. It was not then that people would telephone the Fire Brigade because they would not understand the assembly instructions for an IKEA product. They would not summons the Police because a fuse had blown in their garage. Nor would they telephone for an ambulance or a doctor in the middle of the night to attend to a runny nose or a cat that had widdled on the carpet.

They would though phone in a real crisis or emergency and they would receive the right and only response - a house visit from H's father whatever time of day or night. (Not some automated telephone message: "If your right leg has fallen off press 3, if the left then 4" and so forth as it is today - or tonight.) H's father would simply not have comprehended or understood the concept of 'out of hours' doctoring any more than a priest would see his role thus. That was the vocational aspect. If a doctor was needed, then he as the doctor to his patients was their doctor at all times, in season and out of season.

All hours then were 'in' hours to H's father, for that was the chosen life of the G.P. as he knew it. There were surgery hours for the morning and the evening. There were day hours for house visits - every older housebound patient seen by routine at least once every week. And then there here were night or weekend hours either to attend him at his home where he kept a sub-surgery for that purpose or to be visited at the patient's home.

And was that heroic? As a professional of his time, not in the sense that is was unusual or 'above and beyond'; it was rather the accepted and expected norm. As a person then yes there was heroism in sacrifice, for it cost him quadruple heart by-pass surgery by sixty and an early death before seventy.

...This was intended to be but the prelude and introduction to a reflection on a modern piece of doctoring experienced today. That will come in the second part, but let this stand alone for now as a tribute to a good man, a thoroughly old-fashioned man.

No Laughing Matter...

You will have noticed - it has not indeed passed without comment - that there has been less here of late of tales of local jollity or peculiarity. Remote now seem the days of Patrick the absconder or feasting on badger pate and so forth. Some may argue - neighbouring voices not a few - that too much of a touch of Vicar of Dibley was never a good thing. Others, of a more bloodthirsty mind, have questioned whether H herself has been butchered in the Rectory cellar, it being so long since last she appeared in person here. (There is a point, perhaps, to the former thought, though none whatsoever I aver to the latter! H has merely been keeping her head well down since that unfortunate run in with the Colonel [see much previous].)

There was a change of note it is true and I can place the time and the occasion. It was on the news of the disappearance of sweet Madeleine McCann. That was then a shock and has not become the less with the passing of time or the bizarre twists to the tale. Above all, leaving utterly aside any question of who did what, she is still missing; possibly long while dead, possibly still long suffering some terrible torment. In either fate my God and my prayers remain close with her.

That is a shadow colouring all. It is, one may say, but one further loss, just one more crime, in a lost world. And it is not a symbol of anything - it is too wretchedly real to be anyone's or anything's symbol - but only a terrible thing in itself.

There are though symbolic connections in other forms and ways. We learn today that a thirteen year old boy has been charged with the murder of a man in Birkenhead, the victim subjected to - we are told in the news - a random and vicious beating at a Bonfire Night's party. Attacked with burning wood plucked from the fire, knocked senseless until - whether dead or yet, more horrid, still alive - his body is thrown on the fire to be found in the embers the next morning. And the whole thing - of course these days - recorded on someone's mobile phone.

I was talking to E about this today as we drove her to school. I said how it reminded me so terribly of the world of 'A Clockwork Orange'. She agreed that there could be hardly any harsher, more ghastly, validation of Burgess's and Kubrick's vision of a dystopic society in which UV - 'ultra violence' - was the playful norm. For they did 'play' at violence in the film and in the book - it was all a big game and a laugh to the Droogies - and that playfulness made the story all the more compellingly repellent.

And then a moment later - by symbolic happenstance - Malcolm McDowell was on the wireless talking about the film then and now, saying people who first saw the film some thirty or more years ago would leave the cinema physically wretching from what they had seen, repulsed and horrified, but that nowadays the audience would rock with laughter for they 'got' the dark humour of the piece.

He may be right that modern viewers are more cinematically literate, that they have the cultural sophistication to garner laughs in dark places. Possibly so, but I would fear that should this film ever now play in a Birkenhead cinema the laughter would be from simple, brutal enjoyment of the vicious violence, not some comedic distancing from it.

There was another great old film you may recall: 'The Devil Rides Out'. He does indeed. No laughing matter.

All At Sea....

Do you - did you rather perhaps - know of Donald Crowhurst? 'In Deep' the other evening on the television would have given you the story well and poignantly told.

You could call it the tale of a 'Mr Pooter Goes To Sea', but written as tragedy by a Joseph Conrad and not as a gentle hoot. For a man died - suicide most certainly - and many others suffered, his family most of all. It should really have been a story in a book, for then there would have been no real agony, mental dissolution or pain for so many. A 'Lord Jim' and an 'Almayer's Folly' in one.

As a character in a book, you would cast Donald Crowhurst as a fallible Everyman who stumbled, then took a wrong step on - or perhaps rather off - a path, who then found there was no returning but a necessary, relentless continuance into falsehood until the heart, the mind and the soul was in utter darkness. Conrad again.

A fall from grace, as men - though not God - may see it and with that a last fall into the obliviating sea.

He was mired into and in deceit, spiritually and mentally caught in a trap of his own making. Fixated on symbols and portents in his clear madness, appropriate then - intended maybe - that he came at the end to the still slough of the Sargasso Sea, whose corporeal weeds symbolised the chains that bound him.

Does that sound overmuch for a man who faked a journey round the world, who pretended he had raced with others to gain a prize he could never have won? For that is how the world largely would recall and call the man - a fake and a faker. But watch do please 'In Deep' and you will find a far sadder and more morally, humanly complex story - again if only it were just that and no more - of one man, who could indeed have been one of so many, who was in every sense all at sea in his life and perhaps in his death.

There was a significant end note - separate perhaps as belonging to a more readily recognisable world of goodness and generosity, yet in some way - I am sure utterly - empathetic as from one mariner to another, one other sailor who knows too how perilous the sea can be beyond mere physical extinction.

The race winner - Robin Knox-Johnston - on learning of what had happened, knowing too the circumstances, donated his prize money to Donald's widow. That is a fine thought to celebrate when next reciting the Benedicite Dominus.

Up In Smoke...

...Infrequent, as you know, are my forays to Town. Not my sort of place at all, too many unhappy angry people jostling for space. So many sad, mad stares; mumbled voices of grizzly protest at some perceived injustice. A desperate sense of imminent violent outburst. And all that before even one alights from the train!

But go one must on occasions. The Bearded Bard does so like keeping close to the front-line that he must from time to time summons the troops for a purposeful chat about 'Whither This...' or 'Whether That...' And he being the one whilst we are legion, it does of course make logistical sense for us to travel to him rather than for he to assay some mighty, endless round of visitations.

Also thereby minimising the risk the bearded one should ever come a-knocking on the Rectory door some unannounced, unexpected and generally unwelcomed evening. If that sounds harsh and not a tad uncharitable to an honoured guest, it is more a sound notion that should he ever thus appear out of the blue then H, E and I would all fall at once into a terrible funk, rushing round the place to iron the spare bedding or slaughter a fatted calf, whilst the while casting a mental eye over the Parish accounts to check they were not too egregiously muddled to pass muster or audit. (He wouldn't care to be the cause of so much frenzy, nor we to be the frenzied.)

So to Town one travelled, practising the engaged and thoughtful yet questioning with a twist of concerned look that we clerics tend to adopt when confronted with a subject of which we know little and care less. (Non-Exec Board members could learn much from their local pastors.)

Chat duly done (one does not linger, it was something about re-engagement through innovation or innovation through re-engagement - one or the other I forget quite which) I hastened to treat myself to a visit to the most tiny, poky and gorgeous old emporium of all things tobacco, in order to recharge the pipe jars with a suitable mix of wondrous fragrances, aromas and tastes. I could - and often do - have these items posted up-country like a Somerset Maughan demi-hero taking supplies from the river station, but a chance given to visit in person is a chance taken.

One used, before these beastly new laws of prohibition, to sit and sample; to puff a small Churchwarden of best baccy before buying. Now sadly of course one may not and purchases are reduced to the merely functional - an ounce of this and a twist of that, if you please.

Chat though has yet to be banned - it will surely come, soon no doubt conversation between two consenting adults will be revealed to be highly carcinogenic - and thus ordinarily a certain light banter on the downward spiral of the world and all its ways would lace the moment.

Not yesterday though. Oh no it didn't at all. Poor X - a lugubrious cove at the best of times - was totally down at mouth and out of sorts. Not a smile flickered, not a light josh flittered. 'Til, indeed, at the asking of a generalised question on the potency of a certain Turkish blend came the astonishing reply "Frankly Sir, I really have absolutely no interest in the matter whatsoever."

Well, knock me down with a pipe spill! One at once sensed that this rebuff signalled not a narrow personal disinterest in a boringly dull customer - as indeed one might have so been perceived - but more an utter world weariness and an aching of a torn soul.

"We've all just been given our redundancy notices, Sir. The shop is to close at the end of the year. I have served loyally for X long years and at the advancing age of X have little if any prospect of future employment. All, after all, may come to nothing and be lost."

O Lord. How one mourned for the fellow. Has happened to Bro. Geo. twice these past ten years (the first time on a Christmas Eve of all things rotten!), and one knows how much it hurts. A real pain of rejection and loss, a terrible sense of unwantedness, all coupled to an absolute fright about what if anything a future might hold.

The jars are filled, but the pipe remains unlit. Cannot quite yet face a good smoke thinking of the poor fellow and his uncertain fate.

Herman's Hermit?

We read with due sadness of the death the other day of Josef Stawinoga, the Wildman of Wolverhampton.

Who he, you might be asking though if you were you'd clearly not be keeping up with the world of social networking, for this fellow - some thirty or more years a tramp living on a roundabout in said town - had become something of an Internet phenomenon because someone had chosen to create a Facebook page in his honour.

Unclear how the fellow would have regarded the thing itself. Possibly loved the attention, but somehow one so much doubts it. Marooned by self-imposed exile on his road-bounded island, this Josef seemed quite to be wanting nothing but isolation from everything and everyone.

A veritable hermit then it seems. And possibly so for a purpose. For a fellow Pole - for such was Josef - who did talk with him in early years said he believed Josef had been a Nazi - SS even - soldier in the War. Did he live then in solitude to escape or perhaps to face his demons?

Were there scenes of brutality, scenes in which he had been a player, haunting his mind and soul; driving him to flee other men from whom he was parted by the part he had chosen?

In truth such speculation is not kind to the man, as none of the above might be the truth or anything near it.

One can though imagine something of the kind, for it is said that the pilot of one of the planes that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, on being discharged from the forces, became a Carthusian monk to then spend his life in silent, separate prayer for the world and all its doings.

I have met and conversed with a Carthusian monk, who when asked would not speak on the matter, yet his silence was telling of a certain truth, that after the cry of battle and the rattle of so much cruel death, perhaps only the silence of the Charterhouse or the roar of the ringroad is the place in which to hear the small, still voice of the Lord.

Back To The Future...

...from the BBC tonight:

"Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said. Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge. The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology. People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added. The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures."

Can't say I've ever checked what HG Wells had to say on the subject. Likeable fellow, but not desperately sound on humanity writ large has always been my view of the man.

Have even less idea of the bona fides of the above Oliver Curry cove and not, therefore, in any position to say whether he is or is not a priori talking nonsense. You could, though, imagine it couldn't you? Whether or not the actual mechanics of selection would finally effect a definitive line between two sub-species must be questionable, but the philosophical principle of the 'uppers' seeking to differentiate and distance themselves from the 'unders' sounds plausible. ('Little Britain' versus the rest? Don't we all instinctively assume we are all the latter and none of the former?)

But does not the very concept strike at the heart of the Golden Rule of evolutionary thinking - that the fittest alone survive and others to the wall of extinction they must go?

Why then should the 'unders' survive at all? Handy perhaps as gardeners in life or avant garde table-legs in death, but if truly trolls then evolutionary theory would have them die off surely, not survive because they might be of some use to others.

The assumption, of course, is that goodness will reside with the uppers alone, the unders mere bestial bad brutes. Take a squint through the columns of the newspapers and you might not dispute that assumption. But sometimes it takes a special kind of beauty to be truly ghastly and evil.

The 'unders' may forever be in search of nicking my wallet or gunning me down for the very fun of it; but perhaps only an 'upper' would want my very soul too. And are these not the greater enemy against whom our dear Lord warned us?

So who would be more pure than an angel yet more proud than a Lucifer?

Best not meddle in such things methinks. Social evolution may be heading that way, but not sure I want the biology of the thing to keep pace.

Brothers In Arms...

...Of all the tales to emerge from the recent wondrous rugby World Cup is this inspiring story of two men separated by all that God could throw at them - the one French, the other an Englishman - yet united in a sporting brotherhood of the finest kind humanity can forge.

They met, these two great nationalists, in Toulouse at some stage in the tournament. They drank, they chatted, they shared their passion for their sport and their respective teams - as indeed rugby though not of course football fans can do in such circs.

And in the course of the conversation the Frenchman revealed that he had two treasured tickets for the final in Paris, much to the envy, naturally, of the Englishman who did not.

But then the Frenchman said "Now look here dear chap" - forgive me if I do not attempt either the accent or the style - "I assume - nay I am certain of it - that my great team will be a finalist and yours will not. That being so, you can imagine my sheer delight in being there to cheer my team to its pre-ordained victory. If, however, fate should fall the reverse and your heroes will be there whilst mine shan't - aha, aha, aha, - then I shall give [emphasis on the 'give'] you my tickets, as you are a fan of the sport and I shall know how much it would mean to you to be there in my place."

This generous offer - more perhaps within the realm of fantasy than imagination - led to the exchange of telephone numbers, though not, in the mind of the Englishman, would it result in more. But it did. For no sooner had England qualified for the final and France not, than the 'Jean de' Toulouse was on the blower saying he was on his way to Paris and would 'Jonny' Englishman care to meet him at a named bistro in order to take charge of the two promised tickets.

Tickets were duly handed over and no money, howsoever strongly pressed upon the good fellow by our boy, would be taken in return. Not one Euro, not one sous.

Pure, selfless, international, sporting altruism that was.

Hope for us all? Not necessarily, but if that can happen then pretty well anything else for the good might.

A 'Vive La France' may very well be in order here, and that takes some saying round these parts I can tell you!

Disgusted of Maidstone...

...Well, you would be - disgusted that is - if you lived there. Not with the place itself, which though never visited is doubtless no better or no worse than it should be, but rather its hospitals.

You will, doubtless, have read of the recent appalling mortal brush with C Diff. there and, as have I and Bro. Geo alike, more or less gasped at the very shame of it.

What also you may have read is the very different experience of H's treasured mother when once a young nurse at Barts.

That story is buried somewhere in the archives though if I, as author, cannot find it there is little hope, expectation or requirement that you, dear reader, should.

So here once more is the tale of how once hygiene was done and done well in the early days of the NHS.

Some fifty or so years back, H's mother had opted for a nursing career as quite the thing for a growing gal of that time. ('Twas not finally to be, for she was eventually to ditch the nursing for the doctoring, ascending the medical professional scale to dizzying heights before retiring as Consultant Professor of Radiology. That though was for later.)

As a student nurse one of the requirements of the post, apart from doing everything required at once and perfectly, was to reside in the nurses' home of Barts. There at rest one night after a day's ceaseless and dedicated toil, she was woken from her slumbers around midnight with a call that Matron wanted to see her at once on the Ward.

Fearing the worst - that a minor oversight on her part such as forgetting to plug in some hapless patient to their saline drip had resulted in a slow agonising death - she dressed furiously and legged it at once to the Ward to be met by the fierce and unrelenting face of a Matron on a mission.

Matron had, indeed, been on a mission: to make a sudden, unannounced swoop on her - very much 'her' - Wards at the midnight hour just to make sure that her - again very much 'her' - usual daytime high standards of conduct (staff and patient alike of course) were being kept in her nocturnal absence.

Sure enough she had spotted a gross lapse and one that merited instant attention and rectification. H's Ma thence as she entered the Ward, wondering who on earth she might have inadvertently slaughtered, found Matron positively incandescent with silent rage pointing at a most awful sight.

For there at the end, as it were, of the point, was a bread bin in the Ward kitchen and outside of, instead of its only rightful place inside, said bread bin was a loaf of bread. Few words were needed: yes the Ma had been the last to use the bread in preparing a late-evening snack for a hungry patient - a good and terribly outmoded thing in itself of course - and yes, she had omitted to replace it in the correct and hygienic repository of the very bin appointed for the very purpose and no, she couldn't fathom what had caused her to be so remiss, foolish and unheeding of proper process.

Two persons that night caught it severely in the neck from Matron. The H's Ma for one naturally, but so too the Ward Sister who had not spotted and rectified the thing herself as she as 'manager' - a word not then known - oughta.

Condign punishment, therefore, was something like thirty lashes for the nurse, but a round fifty for the Ward Sister for her even greater failure of duty. (We are, of course, talking tongue lashes rather than the more literal cat o' nine tails variety, though by report Matron's tongue in such matters was far sharper and wounding than any knotted cord.)

That was infection control in the health service fifty years ago. A loaf of bread not properly stored was such a terrible breach of hygiene that it brought down the wrath of the God or - worse - His plenipotentiary on Earth of the time Matron.

Come a long way down since then I fear and what a desperately long way back up again it is.

Iron Man...

...there we were, the two of us, closely scrutinising the wares on offer, handling the goods, testing the machines. Finally, independently, our respective choices were made.

"Oh," said the young lady shop assistant. "You both want the same one do you? I'd better see if we have two of them in stock."

And off she went with a soft, yet giggling, smile as if humorously struck by the sight of the pair of us among her electricals, as it were.

A tense moment indeed! For what if she were to return announcing she had but the one? Would we two men have to go head-to-head in contest for the right to buy our new iron?

For the new iron was our mutual intent, and who said men hate shopping? (What we men actually despair of are the women folk who destroy irons by using them at too high a setting when ironing synthetics, thence depositing sticky nylon goo all over the blade of the thing!)

Ever eirenic and wanting to establish a situation-defusing human rapport with my fellow hunter-gatherer of steam irons, I turned to ask him if he too were the ironer in his household. He - a youngish, if overly portly, Asian gentleman - raised up his face in sad empathy: "Ah, yes. My wife says she cannot iron and when she does have a go makes such a terrible mess of it I have to agree with her."

The very words that would have come from my own lips had the question been posed to, rather than by, myself. For H has long professed utter ignorance in the ironing department, and whenever pressed - as it were - to prove her mettle by having a bash makes a complete hash of the thing. On purpose of course, of that I am as sure as doubtless my companion of the moment is of his own dear spouse.

Not exactly a clever trick by any measure of subtlety - not at a level of chicanery that could convincingly throw a horse race - but an effective one for all that. Five minutes of watching a treasured shirt suffer the indignity of H's feeble, yet disastrous, attempts to knock it into any wearable shape - cuffs all over the place and the front a corrugated mass of cloth - and I'm back on the case at once, with H bowing to, and bowing out before, the mighty male. (The bow hides the self-satisfied smirk, but none too well!)

Mercifully, for the sake of peace on earth and within departmental stores in N., our young lady helper was spotted returning with a pair of the chosen irons.

"There you are boys. Happy ironing," she said.

And I could tell from the knowing voice that here was a third cunning female who practiced the same dark art at home: "But Kenneth, you know you're so much better at it than I am."

A moment of some personal humiliation you might ask? Not at all, either of us would have replied. There had been a fine passage of masculine bonding 'twixt the two of us, for we knew - though unspoken - that we had each chosen the particular iron we both had because, as seasoned experts in the field, we had spotted the neat and nifty shape of the thing - simply perfectly crafted for those tricky cuffs. That was our silent pride in our art.

H would never understand either the shape or the pleasure in it we men enjoy. It's primoridial and quite gnostic. It's an iron man thing.

Signs and Portents...

This from the Beeb today. (Official health warning yet to arrive from Diocesan HQ. Bit odd, when you consider how swift them Elven Safety folk ordinarily are to act.)

Dog collar clergy 'risk attack'

Members of the UK clergy are being advised to take off their dog collars when they are on their own, to reduce the risk of being attacked.

National Churchwatch, which provides personal safety advice, says vicars are attacked more often than professions such as GPs and probation officers. The organisation's Nick Tolson said all clergy should consider the advice, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The group also produces security advice for churches and churchworkers. Mr Tolson said: "When they are on their own, and when they are off duty - for example when they are doing their shopping in Tesco on their own - there is no need for them to wear their dog collars.

"All that does is to attract people who see the dog collars, and if they are motivated towards violence, it puts them [clergy] in a very difficult situation."


...not sure the Bearded Bard (Arch of C.) himself ever ventures into Tesco as such for the week's shopping. See him more as a farmer's market sort of green cove if and when attending to his own domestics.

Leaving though that aside, the advice is probably sound in as far as it goes - which is not very far indeed. Forsooth, it's hard enough encouraging chaps and chappesses to wear the badge of trade in the place of work itself - Church, Chapel or how so you - so anything that further tends to advocate mufti is not that welcome.

Are we really to beat the retreat for fear of a sound beating? I hope not, though owning that clerical assault is rare not rife in The Wolds.

But then again, were one blind or sight impaired - as one now says - one wouldn't here not carry a white stick for fear of it drawing down violence.

And could that be, you ask, anywhere? Well, sadly yes. Two young feral thugs have just been sentenced for murdering a disabled man. They beat and kicked him to death. (Hardly news anymore - and how wretched is the world become that one can say that?)

The victim, who was partially sighted, was asked by one who came to help him after the attack that was the next day to be the cause of his death from brain injury, why he didn't carry a white stick.

'Tried that,' he said. 'But had to stop because people took it as a signal to hit me.'

No, I shall not be desisting from the dog-collar out of fear, and should someone wish to pick a fight on that basis then they will be learning hard and fast the true meaning of 'muscular Christianity'!

"Suicide Is Painless..."

...as the song goes. From the 'M.A.S.H.' theme tune if you recall. Not a sentiment I would ordinarily accept or embrace.

Yet a dream has me pondering.

I'm in a hospital, a patient clearly so something must be wrong. Drastic action required. In this case - or at least in this dream - suicide by self-shooting is the great leap forward.

Have to be careful - as one does in such circs. - that no one else should be hurt, so can't hang around with loaded pistol in the ward as such, but must seek unoccupied corridor.

A crowd gathers - as it would these days - to enjoy sight of man blowing his brains out.

There was a droll cartoon some many years back of a chaplain attending a possible 'jumper' - man threatening to hurl himself off a high building roof. Police say to chaplain 'Talk him down Vicar!' As man comes flying down to his doom chaplain cries out through the megaphone 'Left leg up a bit!' Not hugely amusing if you've ever known a friend - as I have - die this way, but you see the essential humorous intent: it just wouldn't happen that way, therefore it's funny. What sadly these days wrecks the humour are reports - not infrequent - of people yelling 'Go on, jump then you saddo' and other such heartless comments.

Anyways, so there I was in the dream attempting to inform the voyeuristic mob why self-immolation was the way to be - or rather essentially to cease to be.

A rank failure all round it seemed, as people just drifted off leaving me alone with an absolute peach of a young woman. Someone one knew, someone one didn't quite remember ever having understood until this moment how much one desired this gorgeous creature, but now indeed a woman perfectly prepared and willing to be so desired.

Gosh and all that jazz. Was the chance of some carnal congress with such a one, skin as smooth as glass, a better bet than instant annihilation? One should jolly well cocoa!

That premise though firmly established, Miss Smooth-As-Glass promptly announces she fancies - nay definitively intends - visiting said hospital Chapel ante the carnal congress thingy.

Bit of an unwarranted distraction from the the main event, who would not dispute; but, ever the gen'leman, one must but oblige. So we swing open the door of what proves to be a tiny room, though gloriously furnished with all sensual trimmings even - I kid not - a couch avec shedloads of the most softly seductive cushions...and so forth.

Not so much too much information, as too many radical contradictions even for a dream. Surrealism is all very well in its place (Real Madrid - 1 : Surreal Madrid - Fish... and so forth) but this was way pushing it.

I make my excuses and flee - as it says in all the best tabloid headlines. Dreams? I'd rather face French rugby's Chabal homme-de-homme, as it were, than such febrile nonsense.

Herr Freud, you may have the night off!

Remembering Rosemary...

Some modern scientific cove has just demonstrated what the Ancients knew all along - not to mention The Bard's poor, dear doomed Ophelia - that if you need a little boost in the flagging memory department then a dose of rosemary is quite the thing for you.

No doubt this modern scientific cove has found some wondrous chemical process to account for the marvel, using properly rigorous experimental techniques - RCTs and all that jazz. Impressive those these experiments are for proving this and proving that, personally I've always been more impressed by the older heuristic model of learning, which boils down to the 'suck it and see' approach. (Rather bold this really, and not just 'hit and hope' as oft mooted by the unwise - "Go on Dave, you eat that strange new berry and if you're not dead within the hour we'll know it's safe to eat." "Right ho captain!")

You do ponder how such a generic, observational method worked in practice regarding our rosemary.

Cue the Agora, circa 445 BC:

"You seen old Damocles," they'd say. "Anyone else noticed his memory has sharpened shedloads these past months? Used to be quite incapable of carrying two thoughts in his head at any one time and now he's reciting whole chunks of Herodotus with no effort whatsoever."

"Well, yes indeed, now that you mention it I have. He was round the other night to give me news of the latest ideas coming from that dangerous chap Socrates. One to watch I must say! Quite a corrupter of the young in my book - Socrates not dear Dam of course. And yes, there he was - Dam not Soc - giving it large on some of the most convoluted concepts this side of the Peloponnese, when I can recall at school he could barely function without wax tablets to remind him what day it was. Wonder what's going on here?"

"All seemed to start," someone would note, "after he inherited that rosemary farm from his uncle. Keeps going on about how this mere herb can transform one from a dullard to a maestro. I had assumed this was all just a rather vulgar sales pitch, but now I wonder if he's actually on to something. Apart from a cornered market in rosemary of course."

Get that reported in the Athenian Times and sooner or later some reader will write in with a tale of how his cousin Paulinus wouldn't have made it through the Academy without daily doses of said herb to help him memorise all those endless rules of rhetoric or reams of dusty grammar. A body of evidence grows, success is the key - it actually works - and thence it becomes a known thing. Rosemary for memory. QED. (Or the Greek equivalent, which at this early hour quite escapes me!)

Well, anyway, howsoever we came to figure the thing, I can only aver that my chum Cedric must have been weaned on the stuff from early infancy and now a grown man can only surely feast on it twice daily.

For Cedric runs one of those tele-communication retail premises, so handy when one has forgotten how to access one's messages or else dropped the wretched mobile device down some passing well or other accident. A quick pop in to see young Cedric and all is sorted in a trice, with a smile, a chat and a whoosh as the next imbecile is helped to connect to the world.

Now one was chez Cedric's the other week in search of a new machine for the missus. Not that H, as such, was in need of an upgrade or whatever the term is, but rather that dear [!] E having been lent said H's phone for the duration of a music festival came home blithely announcing "Oh, and mum's phone's been stolen." Meaning of course nothing more than that she's lost it somewhere, somehow. Put it down and forgot to pick it up again. (Not enough rosemary in that one's diet clearly!)

Had the man himself have been there, then there would have been no problem striping this one down on the insurance. Rules may be rules, but our Ced knows ways of circumventing them in order to keep the customer satisfied and solvent. 'Gave it to your daughter, who promptly loses it 'cos she's a divvy teenager and you come in here hoping to claim on insurance, no frigging chance' the rule book would have said. (As indeed it did.)

To Ced that though would have been but the beginning of a process of negotiation on one's behalf with the suits at head office, the upshot of which would doubtless have been self leaving the shop with state-of-the-art, best-in-show, free new phone and the suits routed.

Trouble was that day our man was not there! He'd been summonsed for some management shindig - I trust to something like early rounds of the 'Manager of the Year' roadshow - leaving a worthy, but by no means adequate, staff officer in charge for the day and one by no means a match for the suits. 'New phone wanted? Then in the circs that's fifty quid to you and no arguing.' That sort of thing. With no Cedric to assist no other choice was there but tearfully - well not literally of course - to pay up.

In passing - and as well as parting with fifty of Her Majesty' finest banknotes - I also bought myself a cheap yet handy device, namely a wind-up phone charger. Can you believe it? First the wind-up radio and now the phone charger. Brilliant for those awkward, nay near desperate, moments when one is trapped half-way down a cliff having toppled over the edge for some obscure reason and mighty, mighty keen to summons help via the phone only to find the battery is dead and not a three-pin socket with charger to hand. Could happen any day one reckoned.

So the gadget was bought - and duly found to be broken! The crank handle had fallen off just from looking at it! Must return it of course, though not today let's wait until Cedric is back with us once more. (Funnily enough, whilst I'd been waiting for the suits to speak two other customers came in asking "Where's Cedric then?" and on being told he was away for the day opined that that was a shame as he was so kind and helpful etc.)

And so then yesterday one did return to said Cedric's place happily to find the man at home once more. Explained the circs., said casually yet truthfully "Wouldn't have happened if you'd been here" to which, mirabile dictu, said Cedric said: "That's very kind of you [one's name given!] to say so."

Now pause a moment to reflect. This fellow must see a hundred or more people in a working day and our meetings are but twice or thrice a year. All right, one might reasonably expect one to be recognised and recalled as a general type or even as a person in one's own individual right. But for him to have my name to hand that way!

You don't get that from a bucket of rosemary. That comes with class.

Introibo Ad Altare (Aut Hortum) Dei...

...I may have mentioned this before, but whereas you will find me a great fan of gardens per se - places in which to sit at ease on a fine summer's day (though not this dank year clearly), pondering the wonder of creation and the perfidy of the created [see previous], armed only with a largish Pimms and a languid mien while one simply is not does - the act of gardening itself has no personal appeal in the slightest.

Sadly, of course, if one has the one - a necessary prerequisite indeed for being at ease in one, one not being able totally to relax in another's ("More tea Vicar" is not a myth I can avow!) - yet lacks the spare change of upwards of a couple of hundred a month to employ some local ferret of a fellow to lean heavily on a hoe whilst not quite managing more than the odd swipe at a weed per hour, despite - or perhaps because - said ferrety fellow is paid more than handsomely by that very same hour - one is forced to defend against ever-threatening chaos (a good working definition of a garden for sure) by deploying any spare time a-hacking and a-hoeing oneself until the back is bowed, the spirit fails and a good lie down the only salve.

This summer having been as frantic as it has been wet, opportunities between monsoon-esque downpours to leg it into the menacing jungle that is our portion of Eden, with weapons of mass destruction to hand for culling the unwanted growth - which is all one really ever contributes - have been few. Too few by far in fact, for though one can give thanks and praise for not having to buckle down this particular freeish yet sodden day to a-mowing or a-chopping, 'tis but a short-term gain for a long term loss.

The Psalmist may have the view that leaves, as grass, will wither in the wind, etc., all by themselves; but clearly King David was too burdened with outdoor servants ever to have noticed the extended human effort required to assist natural forces of entropy. Nor indeed can one attempt the noble Quentin Crisp line on indoor detritus ("Leave the dust for five years and it will get no worse").

That was tried with the hedge for some six years, but the wretched thing kept on growing, refusing rankly to comply with the lawful command of homeostasis and reach some optimum size and no more. Eventually the whole thing was curved over like some great green surfing wave - quite picturesque in its way perhaps but earning an episcopal rebuke for some strange yet of course compelling reason.

Anyway, Canon Pewter was over for the weekend and bless the old salt entirely volunteered to take all Church jankers for the duration, despite being officially retired. "Like to keep the brain ticking over," he offered as an excuse. A worthy and a fine sentiment - not to mention most welcome - though am not sure that in his particular case there might not be rather too much tock these days and not quite the needed balancing amount of tick, for Mildred simply had to pop round after the Morning Service to enquire whether we had gone completely over to Rome just yet, and on being asked by H why the question replied that she [Mildred] had had to assume we must have done, as why else permit a pure priest of a fellow to say the full Tridentine Mass before the assembled and impressed if stunned flock for whom Latin of any kind is a closed book and a cause for some fright.

Ah! A bit tricky that one and deserving of a fulsome answer. Mercifully though I was not in the required position to give it to the difficult satisfaction of Mildred as, Pewter in charge, I had been dispatched to the farthest vast clump of long-neglected wilderness that was our back rockery to get stuck in - by H of course, who positively insisted at breakfast that this must be so; who lurked even over the Sunday sausages with shears in hand as if to make sure there could be no mistaking her meaning or her intention. (When ever was there thus!)

Blowed then if I was to return from this arduous exile merely to be harangued by Mildred. Weeds may not be good company, but they do have the singular vantage - shared by the entire vegetative world - of soulful silence, most quite unlike Mildred when fully bent on an extended rant.

H having imposed thus on me, H could jolly well come up with some satisfactory rationale for Canon Pewter's liturgical anomaly. As and when - or perhaps more fittingly if and when - the garden is returned to its pre-lapsarian pristine condition I will venture in to ask her [H] what excuse she gave, and then later check with Pewter what on earth or by Heaven he thought he was doing!

But first this next weed. A good long lean on the hoe required first for this beauty I can tell!

Vermin...

From the BBC tonight:


Man admits urinating on ill woman

A Hartlepool man is facing jail after he urinated on a disabled woman who lay dying in the street. The 27-year-old shouted "this is YouTube material" as he degraded Christine Lakinski, 50, who had fallen ill, magistrates heard.

Miss Lakinski, who suffered a number of medical conditions, died from natural causes, an inquest found.

Anthony Anderson, of Raby Road, who admitted outraging public decency, will be sentenced at Teesside Crown Court.

Hartlepool magistrates heard how, on 27 July, Miss Lakinski was making her way home with a box of laminate flooring when she fell ill and stumbled into a doorway.

Anderson had smoked a cannabis joint and been drinking when he and two friends spotted her.

He tried to rouse her by throwing a bucket of water over her, before urinating on her and covering her with shaving foam. The incident was filmed on a mobile phone.

She was later declared dead at the scene, the cause of death being given as pancreatic failure.

Lynne Dalton, prosecuting, said: "Although his actions did not contribute to her death it was appalling behaviour that robbed her of any dignity in the last hours of her life."

She urged magistrates to transfer the case to crown court for sentencing, claiming their maximum powers were insufficient.

Anderson's solicitor did not oppose the application and his client will be sentenced at Teesside Crown Court on 22 October.

After Wednesday's hearing, Miss Lakinski's brother, Mark, said: "We will await the outcome and just hope he gets what he deserves."

...What he deserves indeed. It does make me think of those wonderful medieval Doom paintings in Churches, vividly reminding sinners what eternity of vile punishment they would face in Hell if they did not repent.

Also too, the perfectly proper Hebraic motto of tooth for a tooth or eye for eye: let the punishment fit the crime. Inmates of whatever prison this vermin is sent to please note.

Oh, and also the person who filmed all this on his mobile phone. Let him too suffer in the same way.

Our Lady of the Gates of Grace....

...It was quite humbling to hear, the other week, that dear Maurice was shortly to be taking himself off on pilgrimage. Never really saw him as the type. The annual Parish trip for a day's retreat at our neighbouring Priory perhaps, but not an extended hike to some further place of sanctity involving tiresome travel and uncertain beds. Not his thing at all, I would have said, if asked.

But then I wasn't asked, I was told. Mildred had telephoned apologise for and to explain her husband's irresistible absence from last weekend's monthly Finance Committee meeting. A thing near miraculous in itself that the old buzzard would turn down the chance of attending one such spielfest, for put 'Finance' and 'Committee' into a single sentence and usually you would have the fellow positively salivating with glee - the effect not dissimilar to my own fondness for the coupling of the words 'Nicole' and 'Kidman'. (Ah dear lady!)

"Pilgrimage!" I exclaimed in awe. "Yes Rector. It's his weekend for Lourdes. Does it every year. Good for him I think to keep in touch, don't you think? His playing days are long gone and the subscriptions are getting a bit steep on our pensions, but when he walks through them gates of Grace I know he's smiling inside and out."

Fair bit puzzled by all that I had to admit. Didn't realise that you had to stump up a regular payment of any material kind, prayer being all needed to maintain the connection to the place in my book. As for the playing of it - that left me for dead. (The 'gates of grace' motif though was touching. Must use the image in one's next homily.)

But best not to press in such circs. So I didn't. The Finance Committee came and went, and, it must be said, 'twas all the more tedious for lack of Maurice's usual spirited challenges to the chair over some arcane audit procedure or motion to dismiss various - and seemingly sometimes random - committee members for flagrant, if invisible to all but Maurice, rule violations.

And so then spotting the old man this morning I had to ask "How was Lourdes then?"

"Pretty dull the first day - bit of a procession if you ask me, which you just did - but perked up no end on the second. I love the amateur game though don't you? Bring two villages together, give them their one day of glory and watch them play with a passion to shame the pros."

One had to reel, it made so little sense. Now 'procession' I could grasp, one has seen the very moving photos of crowds of the sick and their helpers wending their way to the salving waters. So why that should be seen as clearly not a good thing was beyond me. And as for the rest, I'm sorry I hadn't a clue.

Not wanting though to be found wanting, as it were, I fought for anything else to say, coming up somewhat lamely with "Must take you a deuced while to get there."

"Not at all these days Rector. You'd be amazed. Bus to N, fast train to Town, then a short hop on the Tube and I'm there in under three hours."

Now I may be too long hidden in the rural depths to know much about modern international travel, but even I know that the London Underground does not yet - nor ever likely should - stretch as far as la belle France.

Said so indeed, then wished at once I hadn't. Old Maurice gave me the kind of withering yet pitiful look usually reserved for the poor fool who had tried to last the year as Parish Treasurer without his - Maurice's - backing or support. Happened twice in living memory and on both occasions the respective poor fools failed miserably: the one ending up with a two-stretch for fraud (it was just a technicality, nothing malicious - just very true that there was some serious money missing come Lammas Day) and the other who chose to emigrate rather than face the public's rank opprobrium.

"Since when is St. John's Wood in France then Rector?" thrust Maurice in my very face.

It was then that the the penny dropped and the light shone bright once more. For yes surely this could be the one, true answer. That single tablet of LSD one had taken as a student had indeed - as forewarned it might - so deep-fried the brain that all since had been a continuous, fallacious hallucination. I was not Rector of my own Parish, but a mental patient in some asylum for whom the nurses have long since given up any hope of recovery.

But even hallucinations must be answered, especially the ones positively rocking with mocking laughter in one's - imaginary - High Street, with a throng of cheeky neighbours - dream creatures all for sure but irksome for all that - beginning to gather round.

"I may not have been the sharpest blade in the seminary kitchen drawer," I replied thus most haughtily, "But I can assure you that dear Bernadette Soubirous was never spotted anywhere near North London! So how can your journey to Lourdes have taken you there! Tell me that!"

"Lord's Rector, not Lourdes!", was the howling-with-glee response. "Did you think I were at Lourdes? Ah wait 'til Mildred hears this. She'll be splitting herself."

Oh how we all laughed. All but myself that is.

'Hail Mary,' one silently intoned, 'Full of grace, get me out of this fix please!'

Graceful as ever She is, at once Maurice desisted in his mockery. "Come and have a beer Rector, you looks like you need one, and I'll tell you all about MCC and me. Greatest place in the world - you wait twenty years to get in then are rewarded with some of the hardest seats in Christendom, and most of the worst portraiture in the Western world under one roof. Makes you proud to be British!"

"Osama bin Laden is virtually impotent"...

...As a headline it has, you must admit, more or less everything.

The universal monster - and he is that - now suddenly revealed as merely a man who simply - in the coined phrase - can't get it up no more.

You wonder who spilled those beans? A Mrs bin Laden - if there be such a one - would be a strong contender as a sound reliable source, though you would have to question how readily she might let the news slip given the likely come back on herself.

"Hey you, missus, what you been doing telling the world I ain't no good in the piston department no more? You want instant death you shall have it."

You can see the point.

So a girlfriend blags all? We get that here of course. "I bedded five-a-night sex-monkey football god Kevin - but I wish I'd stayed in to finish the decorating 'cos it was an utter washout if you know what I mean." No doubt the archives could raise a dozen or so such revelations.

But yet again over here the totty in question generally is penalised for such smears with just the withdrawal of all season ticket privileges, rather than summary execution.

So if there is someone in the foothills of the Afghan-Pakistan border feeling a trifle let down, shall we say, by big boy my guess would have to be that she too wouldn't want it mooted about thus for fear of ritual stoning or somesuch.

You can tell, mind you, that he is on the wane in that way. How else would you account for the newly-minted black beard that five years ago was shadowy grey throughout? That, I tell you, is a mighty, mighty clue. Show me a man whose beard has miraculously transformed from old-man silver to caveman black and I'll show you a man whose wand lacks that certain sparkle.

There is though, just one other angle to consider that may resolve all puzzles here. And the clue is in the word 'virtually'.

Now two things we all know. The Internet is everywhere, including the Afghan caves. And second 90% plus of men on this planet have used the Internet, plus trusty webcam, to do a bit of virtual wand-waving at some unmet female - mostly - from the other side of the planet.

Some opine this is the very end of all civilisation as we know it, whilst others prefer to see it as the ultimate in safe sex. (Methinks they both be right.)

A 'good friend' once told me - it must have been the fifth malt that brought the matter to our conversational attention, though I acknowledge that to be no excuse - that in such circs. a gentleman - allowing him still to be one - must first, of uttermost importance, confirm that his correspondent is indeed the busty, lusty female she claims to be and not some teenage male nerd pissing himself with laughter at some other's hapless expense. That way You Tube lies.

So there you have it I believe. The universal monster has been at it on the airwaves, or rather more to the point failing to be at it, found himself the patsy for some aforementioned teen male loon and is now thus the subject of global lampooning.

'Al Qaida: my part in its downfall' - Spike Milligan would have been so proud.

Nepal Airlines - one to avoid!

Call me an oldstick-in-the-mud with no soul for adventure, or else one lacking in appreciation of the rich cultural diversity that is our human heritage, but I don't take kindly to the sacrifice of a couple of animals as a substitute for a proper re-wiring of the electrics on an aeroplane.

This from the Beeb tonight:

Goats sacrificed to fix Nepal jet

Nepal's state-run airline has confirmed that it sacrificed two goats to appease a Hindu god, following technical problems with one of its aircraft. Nepal Airlines said the animals were slaughtered in front of the plane - a Boeing 757 - at Kathmandu airport.

The offering was made to Akash Bhairab, the Hindu god of sky protection, whose symbol is seen on the company's planes. The airline said that after Sunday's ceremony the plane successfully completed a flight to Hong Kong.

"The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights," senior airline official Raju KC was quoted as saying by Reuters.

The persistent faults with one of the planes had led to the postponement of a number of flights in recent weeks. The company has not said what the problem was, but reports in local media have blamed an electrical fault.

Lightfoot, G.

You recall Bilbo Baggins at his farewell party - towards the very beginning of 'Lord of the Rings' if you need a clue - who could not decide if he should refer to the plural of Proudfoot as 'Proudfoots' or as 'Proudfeet'? (His indecision causing as much offence as any choice he might have made, as it turned out.)

Well, I have had a similar moment of name confusion this very day to report.

One had - this is the occasion and the context - to leg it - but one among too many chores - in to town in order to have a new key cut for the side door of the horsebox.

Why so, you reasonably ask? Was not the old key sufficient unto the day?

Well no, as you ask, it wasn't; for the head of it, succumbing to metal fatigue, had snapped off in situ but a few days past and although it had failed in the open position, which was a mercy, one knew at once that the key could not be left unreplaced, not so much because one feared unlawful intrusion but more that the other family with whom the box is shared would not fail to lock the door should they find it not locked, thus locking us out.

You follow I am sure.

So in between doing the horse bed - a different thing entirely from fixing the horse box - the women folk being on a weekend jolly to Burghley's three-day event leaving me with, inter alia, equine cleaning jankers - not to mention dashing to the local DIY emporium in search of the perfect and safe weedkiller for the beweeded front path, pausing only in flight to take condign medication against a raging toothache and to soothe the fevered brow of the 'beloved' sister-in-law (aka 'Countess Dracula'), who having turned up for the duration allegedly to assist the poor Parson promptly fell sick with a heavy cold - thereby adding rather than subtracting to one's already heavy burden of office - there one was legging it in to town as aforementioned in order to have the key replaced.

Where the Proudfoots or 'Feet even in all this you ask once again?

Coming to that.

An ancillary effect of so much dashing had been, not surprisingly, so little eating and drinking - or even plain refueling. (The traditional eight-second pit stop for 'human petrol', which all sadly one has mostly the time for.)

Spotting, therefore, one of those juice bars that so proliferate these days one was about to sprint past, when one had one's Foot/Feet moment of the day.

For, in a highly clever marketing mode, this particular bar had hoisted a sign bearing some obscure song lyrics and offering a free concoction of said juices to any who could guess both singer and song.

Well at once one was on the case - never can resist what must surely be an easy challenge, for one was as familiar with the tune of the thing - even the timbre of the singer - to be able to hum it at once with the very sound of it echoing in the mind.

But could one actually pin it down? Like heck could one! It wasn't him and it wasn't him and it simply couldn't be him one puzzled - and one was, it transpired, quite right on all three counts - but it was Canadian - correct again and it was oh so long ago. True too it turned out.

Finally though one knew one was stumped. The final definitive answer was beyond recall. Buried in the memory for sure and safe keeping, but not for resurrection to active consciousness this side of Dooms Day.

It was less the lapse in intellectual recall that hurt: memory being one of those moveable feasts one more and more finds - you put it down for an instant and it is plain gone, much in the way of car keys or spectacles.

But it was more that one knew that here was a window on a closed yet special past. There had been a time - though clearly one knew not where or when - when this song had been special, some now forgotten past that was clamouring to be remembered. (A bit like the Proudfoots really - happy to be mentioned, but not unreasonably cross that they could not be precisely named.)

The choice then was simple - and what a tribute to astute marketing - either to approach the juicing personnel and say "Look here chaps, I know you're not here for the good of your health, but to make money. Setting though that aside for a moment - a highly personal moment - and not wishing, either, to spoil your impromptu and splendid competition - do you mind telling me what the answer is without me actually buying one of your amazing, nutritious and wondrous cups of fresh pressed fruit?"

Either that, or the more socially astute and commercially sensitive choice of saying rather "OK. I admit I'm foxed. I know I know the answer, but it's not to hand or tongue. Here is my order and my money for a mug of juice and now, while you're at it, could you tell me who it was who sang the song I can sing but not precisely place?"

The latter of course was one's only possible route. And the answer is as in the heading above. 'Twas dear old - by now for sure - Gordon Lightfoot singing 'If You Could Read My Mind' some near thirty-five or so years ago.

Pretty damn decent song as it happens then and now. (And the mug of juice was pretty damn fine too it must be added.)

Wonder if he ever married and had children. Would they be the Lightfoots or the Lightfeets?