writing lull

The temporary unwelcome guest called The Migraine has significantly reduced writing output. The even less welcome guest called Paranoia reduced it even further. The new 'role' officially starts this Sunday, but then I am going on a course in Benedictine Spirituality and journalling at the Quaker Centre. I will write to you about it on my return, quite brilliantly if all goes well, disastrously if it doesn't. The course pack advises taking a favourite notebook or 'whatever you write with at present'. I thought about causing a stir and looking fantastically cool by taking my laptop and saying 'I Blog Darling'. Seemed a bit hypocritical since I've only just stopped referring to my Blog as my 'WebLog' and only learned what one was in April.
Anyway the official 'role' as Lay Pastor, already the subject of much confusion and mis-understanding and even some derision, starts on Sunday. The first week will be a bit of a flop, given that I will be 'comissioned' and then will disappear into the bosom of the Quakers is 'neither here nor there'(to borrow one of my Mum's favourite phrases). Full-scale psychological meltdown...and resultant Migraine already discussed swiftly followed glimpse of newsletter with my name on it under 'Team' as 'Hon. Lay Pastor': Mrs Jess Boulton.
You may remember a Post on here about something I couldn't share with you at that time, following the untimely conversation with God on the number 1E bus about boats, sea and fishes. You probably don't but my new 'Role' is its direct descendant. The pronouncement of Mrs Jess Boulton being a Lay Pastor has been met with a mixture of delight and dismay. The Verger thought that perhaps I was secretly affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists or the 'American' Church. This was because she had been Anglican and in this Church 'from the cradle', but had 'never heard of such a thing'. Would I, she wanted to know, 'be wearing Robes? would they, for example, 'need to refer to me as Pastor Jessie?'. I broke out into a sweat. I had the previous weekend been to a wedding of some Seventh Day Adventists, albeit in an Anglican Church, it was my first encounter with them and they were fabulous. However, I am not a Seventh Day Adventists. My contact with Americans is non-existent, dreadfully ignorant in fact. I know George Bush and now Sarah Palin, I've seen Michael Moore's documentaries, I'm not keen to be one. This enquiry into my credentials was the least of my worries. It was kindly meant. One man who shall be nameless but whom you have previously encountered with his Belgian/American ancestry and a wife from Hull was particularly unpleasant. Before admitting that he was 'picking on me', he grilled me mercilessly. Would I, he wanted to know, 'be preaching from a soap box on The Green'? Would I, he persisted, be 'taking Candlelit Church on tour and going global? Even this was preferable to the blank face and the 'whats that?'
Not only am I an object of mild but not particularly rivetted curiosity, it seems I am to be permanently associated with the one thing I would most have wanted to avoid. The Conservative American Right. Hallelujah Sisters!

.

feeling ill

A migraine, a slight cold, a runny nose and my medication doesn't work too well. My Temporal Lobe epilepsy flares up, I get migraine-like symptoms and dis-orientation, a bit of paranoia and an inability to do anything but sleep. For me this is a nightmare, I become convinced that I am a breath away from being locked up in a psychiatric ward, I lose perspective on everything. Soon my medication will be doubled. I will never recover. I will never live a normal life again.
Of course, two days later, a lot of sleep and some migraleve and I am back to my usual self. It is hard to for adults who have lived with ill health in a traumatic way in childhood to understand that ill-health is a sporadic and ordinary part of life. It doesn't always progress or become very particular to you. It just has to be lived with for a few days or weeks. I have learned that the only helpful thing to do is ring a friend and check my perspective. That usually takes two days anyway by which time I am convinced that the friend will bundle me in a car and take me to a doctor/psychiatrist/behavioural therapist/you name it...So I am usually almost better before I ring the friend who says 'its normal', 'you have a migraine'.

Forgiveness

Last night in our group we talked about 'forgiveness'. We based our conversation around Matthew 18. I found it really hard. Because I am reading about self-harm and all that it entails and when I think of my own story and the story of others I begin to worry that my own wholehearted approach to forgiveness could be seen as immoral. I sometimes think that my behaviour is immoral.
We talked very openly and very diversely about the centrality of forgiveness to the Christian Faith. We talked about how we marry these ideas to real life situations.

We all have known unforgivable things. All of us had slightly different take on the practical application of the commandment to forgive to our own situations, the people involved and those of others. One person, whom I shall call Penelope had a wonderful, moving story which made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. She had a Godfather, a Jewish man who embraced Christianity. He had been in Dakau Concentration Camp until the end of the war. I don't remember at what point he was imprisoned there. I think it was towards the beginning because I think he remained there for three, possibly four years. At the end of the war he was handed a gun with which to shoot his persecutors. He handed back the gun. He had told his God-daughter that revenge and unforgiveness is the beginning of hate. He didn't want his tormentors who were full of hatred to turn him to hatred. His forgiveness of them was a way of preventing the hatred from perpetuating. Penelope therefore grew up with a passionate commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation. She had even worked in Germany with various people who during wartime did terrible things to others and had terrible things done to them. She sees no way out of a commitment to forgiveness for any Christian. For her the distinguishing feature of a Christian is his or her determination to be open to forgiveness in any given situation. She extended this to being open to forgive those who are not repentant and indeed even forgiving them in our hearts regardless of their awareness or contrition. We all have a central tenet around which all aspects of our religion move. This is her immovable point. Forgiveness. She says none of the other religions have this concept as a central commandment. For me, this is what makes us complicated, I am ashamed of our decision to forgive unforgivable things, she declares it as the single thing that keeps her publicly proclaiming herself as a Christian.

This was a helpful revelation. What one woman can see as a shameful theology, another can prize as her salvation. She had an abusive Mother with psychiatric issues, mental health problems triggered by wartime circumstances. Penelope forgave and continues to forgive because she sees this as a consequence of her Mother's experience of life. She employs the 'to understand is to forgive' motto.

I did this for years, I had the same conviction for years. My family has been described by my sister-in-law as 'the most forgiving family' she ever knew. What she loves about my family, who are actually also her family, is that infinite capacity to forgive unforgivable behaviour. I think it is our downfall. The interpretation of the commandment to forgive in our family is that 'everything and anything will be alright.' It has been applied to eradicate rules of conduct. When everything is forgiven then nothing really matters and consequences are not considered.
We have an elderly man in our group, I'll call him Frank, who keeps us on our toes. He thinks it is all baloney, Christianity full stop is just total nonsense. The aspect of Christianity he most despises is the emphasis on forgiveness. He thinks it is immoral to forgive unspeakable acts. 'Why', he argues, 'should they get away with it'?

Our Priest, lets call him Bob, had some fascinating arguments. Forgiveness in the Jesus stories of Matthew is concerned with relationship, with the Church community, with unity and accountability. It is a corporate and not an individual matter. It is also concerned with justice and witness. Forgiveness is contextual. Forgiveness also includes an attitude of the heart, and a readiness to forgive should repentance ever be apparent. Not only this but he argued that we depend upon the grace of God to give us the capacity to forgive. In God's time, God will make it possible for us to forgive. It is not a quick fix and can be a lifetime commitment to be open to forgiveness and the possibility of it. He also argued, with Penelope, that we cannot forgive on behalf of another person or community. Their resentment, pain or experience is theirs alone or together and we cannot make that decision for them.
Bob has thought through the possiblity of going to the Palestinian border when he retires (although he hasn't talked it through with his wife!). There is a group of retired priests (mostly men I would imagine, since women have only been ordained for just over a decade...but we forgive them of course!) who stand between Israel and Palestine, taking no side simply being there as a witness. This is a unique opportunity for the Christian Church because of our theology of forgiveness in place of revenge. This presence leaves an openness to reconciliation an example of the choice which can be made.

A woman we shall call Pru, a good friend of mine, who knows many of our stories, spoke of the propensity of society to see those who forgive as easy targets. She spoke of the vulnerability involved in that decision. How easy it has been for us to become doormats. This led us to a view from another friend that the converse was true. We agreed that although this might be the case, we are still viewed as 'weak', as Jesus was when he refused to fight back and argued that those who killed him 'did not know what they were doing'. A lengthy discussion ensued as to the legitimacy of forgiveness when the person concerned does not understand that they have committed an act of cruelty. How do we forgive those who are not sorry, or are not aware? We were brought back to our attitude of mind and to prayer, to commitment to the potential of the human to forgive. Penelope even equated her humanity with her capacity and willingness to forgive. Inhumanity stems from the unforgiveness of communities who have never let go of old resentments. Inability or unwillingness to forgive led to war, she said. There was no justification in pullng people from current day into previous conflict. Controversially, given recent discourse around the Holocaust and the need for apology from people who were not there, she argued that we cannot legitimately apologise for something we did not do or forgive what we did not experience.

For me the prevailing question is what to do when a culture of abuse is living with abuses from the past which are dictating our behaviour in the present, and threatening through the continual forgiving of unrepentant abusers, to continue in the future? If I forgive the abusers, what becomes of the abused? Bob helped with Penelope by arguing that forgiveness can be important in our healing, in 'letting-go'. Here the healing of new relationship can take place. Any forgiveness is not an act of an individual in isolation but both a confrontation of an offence, an acknowledgement of that offence and a decision and willingness to start again. It is about new beginnings. The person forgiven must agree not to commit the same offence again, must acknowledge their own wrong and be willing to find new ways of being in relationship in the future. If this cannot happen then the relationship must be left in the past but we must continue to pray for our offender.

Our own relationship to our own personal behaviour was then examined. If we have 'sinned against another', which we inevitably have, we are called first to remorse, second to repentance and thirdly to new relationship and reconciliation. This is the pattern of the Christian life and is linked to the Crucifixion. Our own sin is forgiven and this sets us free from the life bound by the cruelty of our common humanity into a life which acknowledges human cruelty but tries not to participate in it.

I saw this as my own identification with the abuses and cruelties of others. We had a corporate responsibility to forgive, because we sin corporately too. Christian Theology will argue that we are set free by Christ's death from that pattern of revenge and hatred which binds us to war. Forgiveness as demonstrated on the cross is an unarguable part of this. I need to find ways in which I cherish and am grateful for Christ's action in my life which has given me a different way. I cannot judge people who have not been given another way. We concluded with the well-known idiom 'there, but for the grace of God, go I'

Evil

The worst thing about evil is the way in which it seeps underground and nourishes its plants, watering its roots. Evil doesn't kill things before it comes into bloom itself. It fosters its own growth until it kills healthy plants suffocating them with its tendrils.
Evil attempts to pervade healthy things, it desires to infect healthy people, tries to seep away nourishment from healthy landscapes poisoning the rivers as it does so. Evil stops at nothing. It spreads underground in a network of open sewers leaking effluent into our taps and the very food that we eat, it tries to enter our bloodstream. Before we can understand how or why our relationships begin to falter, evil has begun its attempt to ensure that trust is destroyed, it seems we betray each other but we don't know why. The worst thing about evil is you cannot see where it came in and you cannot make any claims with any evidence about where it started. It is deception and delusion and calculated dishonesty. We do not see where the contamination starts, until it seems as though it is too late. It has crept in stealthily through the back door, tried to steal your friends. A convivial gathering in warmth and safety, and now the room has gone cold, the warmth evaporates but you can't find the draft, can't blame an unclosed door for the dispersal of all that joy.
Evil is known by its successes, by the triumphant theft, it gains its joy from the demise of others. It gloats over futures thwarted, talent supressed, relationships destroyed and delights in depriving people of their own happiness. It will soak into our shared existence without us knowing. It is invisible until the lines show, the faces crease, the bitterness and resentment begins to develop. We have bile in our mouths instead of sweetness. We notice it when we start to look at people differently. We are shocked to realise what has become of us.
Hannah Arendt speaks of the banality of evil. I am rarely so persuaded by theological arguments so wholeheartedly. Evil is banal. Evil breeds in the most ordinary places. It is made from the stuff of our lives and what people choose to do to them without our consent or knowledge.
We shouldn't ever berate ourselves harshly when we come close to evil. Most people would have run from it if it didn't wear such friendly disguise or such a banal demeanour. Evil decieves us by hiding behind something innocuous. If something creeps up unexpectedly upon us in disguise as a friend or a lover, a parent or a priest, a teacher, or any person we respect then we cannot be expected to know that here is the leak in the vessel. This can be the open door, the cold wind blowing. How can we know where trust is in danger? We leave it exposed because that is the nature of trust. It thrives in open places. We risk everything when we trust and that is why we honour trust left in our safekeeping.
If our trust is almost destroyed, its lifeblood nearly drained we have not chosen this. It is removed, snatched from our possession without our permission. What can we do with evil. How do we point at it and say it started here, this is the hole through which it crept?
Sometimes we do find the leak, we do see, we realise. When our eyes are open and the evil becomes transparent it often looks so ordinary, so well-meant, so charming.
But evil is not charming. Evil is pernicious, vile and banal. It is there in the middle of an ordinary day waiting for us, in a phone call, a devious lie, an anonymous letter, a tiny theft which is the precursor of another. Evil is a thief. Evil is a common or garden thief. It is so hard to acknowledge it that mostly we don't. I have never been keen to discuss evil before. Hannah Arendt knew about the Holocaust and she knew about the evil use of banal things. You can, after all, foster evil by refusing someone food, by stopping them from drinking. You can choose evil by ignoring an injustice. You can steal a letter, write libelous things under the guise of a kind warning. You can choose to believe a liar by ignoring your God-given instincts because you choose the fantasy first and the reality second. Evil is on our doorsteps. Evil appears in anything as simple as a bottle of milk. A poisoned bottle of milk; a stolen milk bill which leaves it unpaid and the person without milk and labelled irresponsible. It is a sharp knife deliberately left in the washing up, a severed tendon, a careless stitch, a tetanus infection and an invisible culprit.
This invisible poisoner, thief, planter and cruel plotter has followers who do the same, this kind of evil depends upon denial and accusations which distract. To you: "Who would do such a thing? Poisoned milk? Are you sure? You must have left it in the heat. "Poor you, how sad, you have been poisoned!" and to another "poor thing, she thinks she's been poisoned!" and to a group, "I must look out for her, she is poisoning herself, How needy she must be that she is deliberately going to hospital.". To you: "I must buy you a special box for your milk!", to the group "I have bought her a box for her milk, poor thing!, to the public: "Don't praise me for buying the box for the milk" I am only an ordinary person, looking out for a vulnerable soul." To you: "there you can see, you are not being poisoned, your box has been protecting it from intruders, it has a key and everything!". All the time the box is contaminated by poison by the poisoner themselves. To you: "poor thing you are in hospital"; to the group:" she is vulnerable, even though she has a special box she still thinks she is being poisoned.", to the public "paranoia is a terrilbe thing'. And so on, and so on, until this sustained poison does indeed poison us, we no longer know who is poisoning us, we think perhaps we are imagining it. We had thought we knew our adversary but we cannot be right, this person is so kind. Soon, everyone pities you for your madness, they no longer trust your judgement and you no longer drink milk though it sustained you for all of your life. You stop eating anything at all, no longer able to trust it, you become frail, weakened, the people around you stop eating too, they become frail and weakened. The poisoner starts to sell these milk boxes in bulk. To you: "I have paid with my own money for some more boxes, you never know where or when the poisoner might strike". As the poisoner sells the boxes, they are taken as gifts, taken in trust, their milk is poisoned. To the group: "you can never be too careful, when people are delusional", the public "a mad person is on the loose, the devil is at work'. slowly all the milk is poisoned, we have been deprived of our life blood, our sustainance. We no longer eat together, in case it has been poisoned, in case one of us is the poisoner. The giver of gifts at least cannot be the poisoner, and so we join the poisoner, sure of our safety, they at least know where it began.
Whole communities are starved slowly, allegiances to the poisoner formed, innocent people secretly, covertly, invisibly violated in public in an apparently legitimate way for apparently legitmate reasons. They have been played with, lied to, stolen from, they have been cleverly manipulated because of their trust, power has been abused.
All evil starts with this tiny banal deliberate innacuracy, the slight intonation, the tiny double-meaning which can be taken anyway you choose. Evil makes us think we have chosen it. But it has poisoned us.
So far, so bleak, but the banality of evil is nothing next to the triumph of the human spirit, the courage of faith, the insistence that we should foster trust, truth and feed each other regardless of the risk. We should never honour evil with claims that it is powerful. There is no power so strong as a shared human desire to trust again and to point at the evil in all its weak, self-concerned despicable stench. Evil violates us, it takes us to places that we have not chosen to go and gives us no way out. Human love gives us a way out of that imposed exile from our homeland. Love thrives with truth, honesty and trust, seeking the joy of others, the fruition of lives, the unity of communities. Evil is banal in comparison.

Good news

Jan is coming out of hospital probably today. I was so relieved when i heard that I burst into tears and couldn't stop crying.
We have more time.
Relief

clots

Now referred to as 'several clots'

sadnesses

Left to right: My niece Lucy, her daughter Lily-May, my sister Jan (Grandma) and my late Mum June (Great-Granny)

I was at Church on Sunday, recovering from my first visit to Mum's grave since she died. My first momentus stay with my Dad on my own. Some terrible truths, some difficult realities, some poignant photos and books full of tributes to my Mum. Some desperately difficult conversations.
I lived to tell the tale and then couldn't tell it
Communion was very healing and then I came home. Dad rang and said 'have you heard about Jan'. I stopped breathing and thought she was dead. He said 'she has had a heart attack'. She hadn't as it turned out. She has a clot on her lung. She has been in a high dependency unit.
I visited her today and the poem below is for her
This is part of my survival
We will not be beaten by life

One question

I am wordless
She is breathless
I am crushed
She is clogged
Her lungs
Her heart
Endless catalogue

Therapies and specialists but just one question
How long?
Too long?
Not long enough?

Enough already

Small comforts clutched and held
Survial things
Tiny things
Moments
Rage flung into emptiness

and just one question

Desperate jokes spill into absences too painful to hold in silence
Sobs for the missing vocabulary
Sentences that don't fit together
Tears meant for the funeral turn up early
Bravery stays behind

She belonged to us before she belonged to this
She is ours first
Yours last
Thieving disease
Keep your hands away from my family
Give her back
To us
She is ours

Grieving disease, haven't you have had your share?
One brother-in-law, reduced to ashes
One nephew, his son, wrists screaming for survival
One sister, his wife, drowning in her sorrow

Gluttonous disease
Shameless disease
One question
How much longer?

One grave devoid of grass
One mother four months in the grave
Her child my sister
Clogged and breathless
Awaiting the same

One question

Insomnia

I am a sporadic insomniac, which could be a good name for a band.
The Sporadic Insomniacs are coming to Wembley.
Sometimes I sleep wonderfully
Sometimes I don't sleep at all. Tonight being one of those times. It is 02.54 and counting. The trouble with insomnia is that it makes you obsessed with watching the clock. This being the most unhelpful thing of all. I tried marmite on toast: hopeless. Reading: hopeless. Thinking over the day with my Dad and my peace-making exercise: hopeless.
I am warming towards the idea of a hot milk. Usually a last resort. Think the Peace-making exercise alongside visiting my Mum's grave for the first time since her burial may be culprits.
Although blogging may well be the answer. At least I can keep an obsessive eye on the bottom of the screen...02.58.
I had loads of things to write about, but this isn't one of my more creative bouts of insomnia, it is just plain, mind-numbing, eye-aching, leg-itching, sheet-tangling, stomach-rumbling, toilet-visiting, water-drinking, toast-making, head-whirling sleeplessness.
I'm going

Peace-making

I went to Cornwall on an extremely odd whim. I had an instinct that I must 'make peace with my Dad'.
I will let you know if I achieved my objective in a few weeks
I think I may have cracked it
But am not entirely sure
I find we have shared ground
and I am yet to see this as a good thing

Grinding

Mr B is Grinding again
Its not as exciting as it sounds
If you've ever slept with someone who Grinds all night you will know exactly what I mean
His incisors are like spatulas

Claire with an 'i'

Claire with an 'i' has itchy feet again, I don't think she's that keen on England either, generally speaking she is somewhere else. Either way, she has randomly booked herself in for a trek up a Ugandan mountain in January. She may have done it on a whim I think because now she's panicking. She "...can't even get up the stairs without having a heart attack", obviously a lie because her bedroom is upstairs. But, she has convinced herself that she'll never make it if the Gorrillas are at the top (of the mountain, not the stairs)she is praying they will be 'going local' and hanging out near the bottom so the trek isn't life-threatening. Claire with an 'i' is as over dramatic when she puts on a few pounds as I am. I must remember ask her if she has the same relationship with Muesli and Porridge oats as I do. She swears she has put on so much weight that she can hardly walk, which is another blantant lie. I, on the other hand really am such a lard-arse that getting out of the front door is significant challenge. Especially since the onset of the crescent-shaped fetish.
So we thought we might get fit together. She is going to join a gym, she says. No, I scream, don't do it. You are right she says instantly. She'll hate it she says, its a waste of money I say, its boring she says. The ladies waiting to book a wedding join in, those treadmills they say, try walking they say. Silence. Walking? Thats a good idea we say.
Where shall we walk, we say, when will we have time, we say. Try walking to work they say. Tricky for me, that one. Tricky for Claire with an 'i' too, unless she had those weird leg extensions and she's taller than she'd choose already. Where shall we walk then? Up Parson's Hill they say. I don't know if you've ever walked up Parson's Hill but I'd rather be on a tread mill with a blindfold personally. Its not the French Riviera or a Ugandan mountain put it that way.
Sensing a dead end, the bride to be intervenes, perhaps out of a sense of public duty. Try a class she says with a classic, unpretensious, smile from her smooth, young, cheek-boned face. She didn't judge us, you could see that, but she reallly wanted to help. Yes, says her Mum, in an encouraging tone, Salsa, Becky does Salsa. I know for a fact that Salsa is dull. I try being willing and have harboured a secret desire to return to Ballet but the floor to ceiling wall to wall mirrors make me look like Dawn French in the Darcy Bussell sketch and if you haven't seen it lets keep it that way. Ballet? I say tentatively. Claire with an 'i' almost ruptures her unwanted stomach laughing and I realise that my ballet days really are over. Jogging and cycling are out for me because my gargantuan arse makes me unstable. We have a good canal network locally, most jogging and cycling takes place around those because they are our most attractive landscape feature round here. You get the picture.
I am unashamed to be an avid Woman's Hour fan. There was a horrifying account this morning which made me want to eat crescent shaped indulgences without shame and turn down all offers of humiliating exercise regimes. Research now shows that women now face increasing pressure to have attractive bumps during pregnancy. The despicable magazine people air-brush them into an acceptable shape. Furthermore women are expected to be thin all over, gain no weight but still have an perfect shaped baby bump. The radio piece was about the horrifying fact that an estimated 1 in 20 pregnant women are currently suffering from an eating disorder. It is worse than this of course because eating disorders demand secrecy. Women, whatever their cravings are denying them so that they can be thin all over but still have perfect bumps. Is their no end to this nonsense? It is all blamed on Demi Moore and an extraordinary photographer. Because Annie Leibovitz took a photo of Demi nude complete with bump. At the time of its release the magazine had to sell copies covered with paper because it was so controversial. These powerful women made it acceptable to show our womanhood in all its glory. What I do know of these women is fabulously feminist. They are doubtless mortified to be associated with a change in culture which forces us into an unatural shape literally and metaphorically.
I'm off to buy something life-affirming to eat

Muesli

I've started eating Muesli again. Vile stuff. I had started buying the most expensively packaged box. It seems that I believed it would somehow make Muesli alright. It was the most beautiful packaging I've ever seen. It came in a lovely duck egg blue matt cardboard with a stylised leaf motif pattern entwining it. It is recyclable, organic, dust-free (whatever that means), toasted leaves of corn, whole hazelnuts as opposed to unfulfilled ones presumably, slivered almonds blah, blah, blah. It has an essay on the back in a trendy silver embossed typeface singing its own praises. In the end though, I am a mug, and its just Muesli. Could have made it myself of course, but, oh that box! All the boxes are exquisitely designed, I even bought the cranberry one because I liked the colourway but the contents were still vile. Between you and me I've tried all the different colours. The Chocolate and orange box, with the inevitable juicy raisins and succulent dates smattered with golden sultanas. There is a whole array of Farrow and Ball paint pallette colours and absurdly sensual adjectives for what is basically and heap of shrivelled fruit, shiny bald nuts and chaffinch food. I got through most of them to spite Mr B who ridicules me everytime I try Muesli again. He sees me approaching the cereals because I've "...given up bread" (again) and groans. It is on an equal footing with my porridge fantasy. In the wake of my intended porridge regime (my Mum swore by it) I always have so many different types of oat left that I have to make massive batches of flapjacks to use it up. Before we left for France I had almost eaten my way through all the different colours, and had decanted them into some beautiful glass preserving jars. The same jars beloved of designer Terence Conran in the Essential House Book, but as you will quickly have realised I have unconventional ideas about what is Essential, and what isn't. Anyway the Muesli family looked pretty lined up together on my Habitat shelves. I was pleased with its 'rustic' appearance. With one jar left, the decanted hazelnut one from the duck-egg blue box I was feeling pleased with myself. I had started gloating at Mr B. He hadn't believed I could do it, I had passed the Muesli barrier, hadn't he seen that all the colours had been eaten, etc etc until his ears bled. But there has been a set-back.
The set-back is crescent shaped and made almost entirely of butter the scent of which would reach us in our Burgundian apartment before we had even opened the wooden shutters. For all its romance, living above a French Patisserie, even for one week had its disadvantages. It makes even expensive designer Muesli for middle-class toffs look like horse food all over again. When you've languished in your husband's elegant pyjama top on the balcony tearing the gentle downy dough of a fresh -from -the -oven croissant. When you've slathered hand-made confiture into its folds and then torn into an artisan loaf of bread, lyrically called a 'flute'. When you've discovered Creme de Marron, which predictably sounds dreadful translated as Chestnut Jam (Mr B viewed it with suspicion, but then he is from Norfolk)...Muesli no longer seems like an option. Its like dreaming that you are stroking the pectorals of one of the delectable Olympian swimmers and biting his biceps and then waking up drooling on a greasy pillow wearing the pyjama top of your bed-mate for fourteen years. The fourteen years referring to the sharing of the bed with this particular mate and not the wearing of the infamous pyjama top or even drooling on a greasy pillow for well over a decade.

On a lighter note

Reverend Rebecca, aka Jackie O, but that is another story, has a dog called Father Ted who can open the fridge and help himself to chocolate mousse or an assortment of savoury pickings and has taken to picnicking on her bedspread, gorging himself.
Never a dull moment

Humble pie

First night back at Candlelit Church. I was strangely hermit-like until tonight, lying low and pretending I wasn't really home. For all my griping about England, my wondering at how I ended up in Brum, the people never fail to delight me and humble me. That is why we stay. The people I know from my work at Church have genuinely changed me. When Iam working at Church doing what I do and being who I am I always think that 'working' is an inadequate and innappropriate word. This is because it is pure joy. I love it so much that it transforms me. Being with these delightful people and hearing their stories, being changed by them, shaken up by them, challenged and touched by them. I can never understand how they wake me up and keep me where God has told me to be. If only they knew that I would not be there if it weren't for the knowledge of God's call to me in that place at this time doing what he gives me to do with the gifts he gives me to do it with. I do it for love, yes, but really I do it because he told me to. It seems so much less noble when you see it for what it really is, a reluctant obedience. I have enjoyed having time away from our Church, although I couldn't keep away from Church while 'on the Mainland'. Nipping in and out of 'Mass' and the Feast of the Assumption like a fraudulent Catholic. I tried to convince myself I'd got it wrong. That we should be travelling the world, doing thrilling things, we didn't need to stay here. The world, forgive the use of the word, is our oyster.
But it is always like this with me and God, I try to talk myself out of it and then an extraordinary person will floor me with their certainty about the Church's need of me. On this occasion, knowing nothing of my yearnings to be free of this vocation, a simply remarkable young woman of 17 picked a perfect time to remind me of why I must be where God has placed me. She looked me in the eye and said 'you and this Church, you saved my life, thank you'. She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me with undeserved gratitude. If you knew her story as I do you would find it impossible to understand her survival. Only a miracle would have kept her alive. I feel so small and inadequate in the light of her gratitude because all I did was say a squeaked and angry 'yes' in a frankly very bolshy and petulant manner to what I thought was God's most unreasonable request. I always thought that if I had only known the joy of it, the warmth and the love, peace and bliss that would come from that one absurd decision not to walk away it should have been easy. But the wrestling and sulking didn't stop there at all, I still resist, I still sometimes fantasize about fleeing. Even with the countless and priceless gifts I am given by these people, I still think my work here is dispensable. I wish for a simple, standard, more predictable, less unusual job, somewhere more exotic than the industrial Midlands. Couldn't God have made me a different character, a more tickbox human being in a more interesting landscape? But there she was, genuinely convinced that the Church has saved her life. If I am a part of this Church then it is true that my being here has helped God to save her life.
What was I thinking? How do I live with myself? I don't really, I just about tolerate myself and even that isn't easy.

cat-scratching

One of the cats, real name Rosie, affectionate name Minnie, is incensed. She is unable to make the connection between the arrival of new sofa covers and the sudden disappearance of the sofa into a cat-proof room with a shuttable door. It is her sofa and she tried sending me to Coventry for a considerable time, not realising that living around here most of us have survived that once if we're lucky, several times if we're not, already. She has given up with the cold shoulder treatment and is now whittering at me, nagging, following me around the house using an irritating tone. The other cat, real name Tabitha, affectionate name Mimi, is unconcerned. As long as she has opportunity to put her bum in our faces twice daily and bat our faces like ping pong balls...in a loving way, she isn't that bothered. She is more pragmatic. As she sees it life is life and there is always the fur rug on the bed. There is also the cat bed in the spare room, donated by another feline who was above these things. It is supposed to reside on the radiator but she insists that she prefers it on the bedstead. Mimi/Tabitha is quite content with her lot, she didn't even bother ignoring us when the sofa disappeared.
As a consolation prize in the absence of the sofa I bought them another one of these cat-scratching posts. I don't know why because we've been down this route before and it is always treated with disdain. This one is a weird contraption that spins in the middle. We doused it in catnip and they were grateful at least for that but have refused to use it because it fails to be a sofa.
I think Rosie is over-reacting, which she generally does, she is after all allowed supervised times on the sofa. She never takes advantage of this, she demands to be drooling all over my lap and picking my linen trousers to bits. I idenitify with Rosie.

A piece of grit

Some British people never, ever go 'abroad' to Europe. Or as my half-Belgian'/half-American/British citizen friend with a wife from Hull would say: "some British people never visit The Mainland". I wouldn't put it past him to say 'visiting The Mainland' just to be contentious. But then that is what I like about him. The funniest thing is the way no one says anything in response, mostly we nod politely. When you grow up on an island called Great Britain it doesn't immediately occur to you that he is visiting somewhere else. It takes a while to process it. Saying I'm "visiting The Mainland" really does put us into perspective though. When I 'visit The Mainland' the first thing I notice is that the weirdest thing about living in my homeland, on this tiny island is that it is so bloody small. The ostentatiously named 'Great' Britain is a tiny piece of grit. I don't understand how we all fit onto our little piece of grit, or even why we love it so much with its diabolical sandwich shops and hairdressers that impair our vision. Most people who don't go into mainland Europe probably don't go because they can't afford it. Perhaps other people never visit The Mainland because they know they won't want to come back. I don't blame them really. It is easier not to have seen it than to know what you are missing.
I have lived on this piece of grit for 36 years now. Well, how have I done that? The most overused sentence in my head since my return from The Mainland is 'you should be grateful for what you've got, you are a spoiled brat, if you didn't have Democracy and Healthcare and clean water and sanitation then you'd have something to moan about'. Unfortunately for all the truth of this I am still sulking like a child denied a new toy. On the Italian Border it seemed so idyllic that I found myself saying "they must have their problems'. I mean, it can't all be Focaccia baked in a wood oven with sea salt and rosemary can it darling? (I can't tell you how good that was)
When I got back The Guardian had a piece in it about some Roma Gypsy girls who had drowned on the Italian Amalfi Coast. Their bodies had been washed up, corpses covered in towels and then abandoned while a couple observed them curiously and continued to put on suncream and eat their picnic. A couple of weeks on The Amalfi Coast has been on my wish-list for years, but I feel a bit uneasy about it now. In France they have terrible problems with Racism apparently, you name it, anywhere in the world there is something. When we finally got home on that dreadful snail of a train from The Old Smoke there were reports about Russia invading Georgia, President Mugabe being President Mugabe and endless other horrors. For two weeks we had only occasionally caught sight of a headline or two on a newspaper or on TV and we discovered that we'd won the Olympic cycling while drinking peppermint cordial and eating sorbet by the sea. Unfortunately because we were busy pretending not to be British we failed to celebrate wildly. Subsequently this has really hurt because we had pipped the French to the post when the medal was meant to be theirs.
It is moments like this when we are on The Mainland and we suddenly feel patriotic and terribly, terribly English or suddenly get a glimpse of the world's ugliness even in places of exquisite beauty that I try to remember when it takes me four days to dry my washing because of the endless rain.

and another thing

Why must my hairdresser ignore my pleas for a hair cut where I can see out of both eyes? He calms me down with false promises and then sends me out blind in one eye staggering like a pirate,walking into doors. Today he even admitted that he didn't care. Cheeky bastard. "Fabulous" I heard myself say as he held up the mirror, and then wondered if this was because I could only see half of my face and I was looking at the back of my head anyway. He only did it at 12.30 and I already have a hair grip in at 4pm.
But then...I do look fabulous, half of me

oysters

I've not met many Brummies who are passionate enough about oysters to have told me about it. Nor have a met many Midlanders with a particular taste for them. I think we might have one oyster bar for the few incomers who visit the 'posh' bits of the Second City, and many of us living in Brum are people who have claimed it as our home rather than 'Brummies born and bred. I am unsure about the point at which a newcomer becomes a Brummie, but I'm not aware that we ever do. So, I can't generalise about Brummies and oysters but in my experience a Brummie, 'born and bred' or newcomer, won't talk to you about oysters, tabasco, lemon, darling...it just won't happen. An Oyster to a Brummie is first thought of as a thick slab of potato, dipped in fish batter and deep fried to a crisp, probably smothered in curry sauce. If this proves not to be the case then they will think of it as a strange type of indulgence which will cost you a packet and not fill you up. They won't judge you over it, but they won't get it either.I have heard plenty about oysters. I think I tried one once, because you have to if you grow up in the Surrey hills, you tend to bump into someone rich enough who hauled some in on their yacht. I must have loathed it because I never tried it again.
I am in a minority group of my own. A Southener from the Home Counties I rarely, thankfully, meet my own kind, although there are a couple of real Brummies who are as foodie as the best Surreyite. I turn to them for moral support at times like the one I'm about to describe.
This isn't about oysters. It is about the point at which a culture decides what is reasonable, extravagant, pointless. How do we decide to put value on something? Something like service or quality?
I realise that I have reached the grumpy old woman stage because I really am cross about this incident in the inappropriately named sandwich shop Upper Crust. By all appearances this is a simple and unremarkable incident, be warned it is doubtless that my Surrey-girl core has been re-activated by two weeks in Foodie France, where everything is 'simply divine'. You might think it ridiculous to be so upset about it.
It went like this: girl buys large slab of 'pizza slice', which isn't pizza or slice it is slab of cheap bread mix with tomato concentrate topped with soap. Girl is slight and looks like she has a small appetite. Seems reasonable when she asks 'can you please cut it in half'? So far, so ordinary. Person 'serving' agrees sullenly before being randomly summoned by her supervisor to go on a break. Person 'serving' simply mentions that she will when she has cut the so-called 'pizza slice' in half. Supervisor bites off head of person 'serving', shrieking at her that she must take a break immediately and screeching hysterically that 'we don't cut pizza slices in half' over and over again. I'd been looking for an excuse to bite someone's head off myself to be honest and maybe I was jealous. However, instead, skinny woman and me catch each others eyes (in my case she only caught one of mine thanks to hairdresser Anthony's most recent experiment with my fringe but don't get me started). I roll my one eye, she rolls both. I drop it into conversation that 'I've just been to France and there they have service' like the Surrey girl I can't help being. I get asked whether I want a drink with my 325 calorie brown bread with plastic re-hydrated ham, cheap margarine, over-ripe tomato and wilted cucumber sandwich. I want to scream 'if I wanted a drink don't you think I might have thought of that on my own', and say 'no thank you' through pursed lips instead. I wish her luck and totter off with some Hagrid sized bamboo twigs from TK Maxx and a new water jug because from now on I'm going to do it the French way and drink water with my sit-down lunch. Today of course I swallowed a sandwich on the run in one gulp, without a drink because I was too proud to admit that I wanted some water but was too mean to pay £1.75 when I could 'make it at home for nothing'.
This place, it gets under your skin.

Post-Holiday Blues

We had such a great time. So completely wonderful. The right balance of everything. We came home on Saturday evening and on Sunday I was inconsolable. Today I was on top form getting back into my life and the future. Tonight I woke up with a horrible sadness. There are so many things to say.
On the answerphone on our return there were twelve messages, ten from the fish man saying that I forgot to pay him, one enquiry about an RSVP I hadn't sent, and one from my sister Jan. I realised tonight that the absence of a message from my Mum should have been the thing I noticed. As it happened the first conversation I had on my return was with my sister and concerned the hard fact of her cancer refusing to bugger off and of her chemo, in her surgeon's words, 'killing her' and therefore being stopped. She had a brave and positive outlook on how she wants to spend the rest of her life 'however long I've got'. She has been told unequivocally that it will definitely come back even though it is currently in remission. We don't know when or where but the facts remain. Grappling with the solid truth of these words only re-enforced an inner knowledge and a widely acknowledged one. My sister has terminal cancer, there are no magic answers and we must all face our loss and hope that it takes a long time before it hurts her further and kills her. So listening to her speak blinded me to my Mum's absence on the answerphone, her passionate interest in everything we did. I hate telephones, as anyone will tell you, but I missed her voice.
On holiday me and my sister were in text contact about her scan and so I knew even on holiday for certain that the cancer hadn't gone, I knew anyway, you just do somehow. She let me know the scan results while we were away, I couldn't settle and asked her to tell me. The night that I found out I woke up after a really happy day screaming 'no, no, no!'. In my dream someone was stealing something of such importance away from me and I was desperate that they wouldn't take it, there was a figure in the doorway and I was begging for mercy. The screaming was so loud that it even woke up Graham (bear in mind that earthquakes and tornadoes have failed). The next day I carried on as normal.
Our minds must store these things away. After a constructive and positive peaceful day today tonight I find that suddenly I can't sleep and I can hardly be surprised. On holiday I let it all fall away as much as I could in my conscious moments. The landscape seemed to absorb it better than this one. Without the sea and the sky and the trees it crushes my breath which is simply breathing 'please, not again, not yet'.