Well, am I?

comic thought re: God-bothering – what if god was like Catherine Tate and every time you pour out your troubles s/he says:

-  am I bovveted?  Am I?

That’s the spirit of the age!

TTFN

The Ford Fiasco (TM)

It’s raining this morning – and the Ford Fiasco[1] which I hired has to go back. I’m kind of sad to see it go because I only just got used to the damn thing. Here’s how it went:

Guy picks me up in a big flash car. He says:

- Do you like this car?”

- Yes”, I say politely. “It’s very nice.”

- It’s your upgrade”, he announces triumphantly. “We didn’t have the Peugeot you ordered – so you get this!”

I experience a mixture of emotions, of which smugness is uppermost. Then he starts explaining the controls to me and, oh crap, it doesn’t have any of the lovable features I am used to, like – well, an ignition key, or a handbrake – and it has all or these whizzy controls and gizmos and gadgets and, I’m sorry guys, it’s the perfect penis-mobile but I’m just not into that – and guess what? As soon as I’m let loose on it I go and stall the bloody thing. So there I am on St Margaret’s Way in the rush hour, Friday night, and I can’t start it. Seriously. The simplest of operations – you might think – and I can’t do it. And like Bruce Almighty I’m banging my fists on the wheel and yelling “start!” but unlike Bruce I don’t have all of God’s powers so I have to sit there and call the Helpline on my mobile and guess what? I have four lovely options to choose from and my call is important to them and I’m sitting there with my hazard lights on just hoping nobody prangs into the back of me and finally I talk to someone who tells me how to depress the magical combination of pedals and insert the electronic gizmo which will start the bloody thing.

Personally, I think the rot set in when they did away with starting handles.

So now I’ve just got used to it and it has to go back. Oh, and guess what? There’s a miniscule scratch on the paintwork and I’ve no idea how it got there but you just know they’re going to charge me some insane amount of money to fix it.

*Sigh!*

On the plus side – a big plus – after people prayed for me I had the best day ever with my current group of students. I was on the ball, I knew what I was doing – and I was even able to talk to one or two in private about some of the problems I’d been having. So, all in all, a great day yesterday.

But hey! We need a car.

Enjoy the day. And whatever you do, appreciate what you have and stop beefing about what you don’t have!

P.S. Getting excited about the possibility of being on the Fourth Plinth. If I get it, we should get a minibus or something and a whole group of us go down to London and somebody video it. I’m considering doing the 108 rounds of Sun Salutation to raise money for MIND. Watch this space!

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[1] Actually it was a VW Passat. I think that’s the noise you’re supposed to make when it passes you at 300 mph. “Pass-aaaaat!!!!??”

PPS I love this car!

A disappointment

Oh yeah – forgot to blog about a literary group which was a great disappointment.  leicester Casuals or something.  Sounded like there was oing to be lots of debate and people reading stuff out – the challenge was to write an encounter between someone of no faith and a person of faith, and I already had something written (ie part of The God Illusion).  Wel, there was a small group of perfectly pleasant young women who welcomed us nicely – but no-one else read, there was no debate and they didn’t seem to know what to make of my reading.

*sigh!*

I’m a Steak…

I am a backwards Keats. A Steak…Ok I know it should be staek, but you can’t begrudge me a vowel shift, can you? Why? Because I do everything late in life. I got married at age 36, had children at 36 and 39, and now in my fifties I am discovering my vocation. A little late for me? No. That’s how it is. I am the tortoise: I am Piglet. Slow and steady wins the race. Piglet may be timid but he comes through in the end.

This is how it is. I am standing on the beach. The tide has retreated, so far out that I can hardly see it. Everyone else is surfing, sailing, paddling, splashing. They’re all having a great time – and I can’t get out there. I can’t walk that far, and I don’t have transport. There are mud-flats and rock pools and the sea is now totally inaccessible. I should have just swum out there like everyone else when I had the chance. Except that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t do the strokes. So I stand on the shore and shade my eyes against the setting sun, watch the swimmers as they wave… but are they waving? Surely the movements are wrong! They’re not waving, they’re calling. They need help. And I can’t help them – I’m stuck here. I can’t do anything – and, if I’m honest, I don’t want to do anything. They’ll be OK – they just need to tread water and let go of their windsurfers. No boats can get them back, they just need to hold on and trust the waves to bring them to shore. I stand and watch. Sooner or later the tide will turn and I will feel it at my feet. Sooner or later the tide will come in and I will float. Soon it will sweep me off my feet – and I will be swimming.

One and Other

This is the slightly bizarre name (no doubt the product of many focus group discussions – can’t you just tell?) for what people are doing on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.  If chosen I shall be up there with someone from Ambridge (nearest tube: Mornington Crescent).  My plan at the moment is to do a mix of yoga and poetry – perhaps 108 rounds of Sun Salutation interspersed by poems.  I shall have to give some thought to amplification – all you can take with you is what you can carry.

There are potentially drink and drugs tests involved – not unreasonable I guess but freaky nonetheless.

Additional: now that I’ve got into the whole thing (since being selected) I’m coming round to the name

Lots of god-bothering…

… that’s the theme of this weekend.

Saturday, we went to a “newcomers meal” at Holy Trinity which seems to have established itself post haste as our new home.  There was an interesting mix of people there – the associate minister (a woman), some people who had moved from other churches or other areas, a student, a couple of ex-prisoners, one homeless guy – and us.  The event was hosted by a married couple (he did the cooking, she made the last-minute chick pea casserole after we had thought to tell them we’re veggie.)  It was interesting.  One guy confided in me at the end that he had lied about living in New Parks and was in fact on the streets.  I said he should tell someone and went home feeling bad that I hadn’t done anything to help him.  Turns out he did tell someone, so that’s good.

So: an interesting social mix.  Better in that sense than our last church where we constantly felt like the church refugees because everyone else was so bloody rich (our fault, not theirs, I’m sure, but still…)

And so to this morning.  The moment I sat in the pew: bam! I was confronted by all the issues I have ever had about the church, all at once.  That’s more issues than the Readers’ Digest!  Then the vicar announced that when praying before the service they had a sense of someone coming who would be feeling insignificant.  “Wow!” I thought, before promptly dissolving into tears, “That sounds like me.”  And then (I swear this is true) I thought “Yeah, it sounds like me but I bet there’s someone more important out there who that’s meant for.”  I did!  So afterwards having dripped my way through the rest of the service I asked for prayer and it was a bit hands-on, emotional and freaky and set off a lot of my “uncomfortable alarms” but I think helped nonetheless.  Also talked to new vicar and addressed some of our concerns about being from a multi-faith perspective.  So far, so… OK, I guess.

Here’s the thing.  I have started at this church determined to be up-front with people about who I am and what I believe.  So I tell everyone I teach yoga and that I believe all religions are paths to God.  So far no-one has freaked out.  I don’t mind people disagreeing with me: what I do mind – more than mind, what upsets me and sends me sprinting for the exit – is disapproval.  At the first hint of disapproval all my sirens start screaming.  That’s just the way it is.  I read somewhere that disapproval is a form of violence – that might seem a little extreme but I know what they mean.

We are at a crossroads in our life.  Mark is not making any money, things are drying up for me, I need to publish stuff, the children need to move on in their education – and in all of this, going to Holy Trinity seems like a part of the answer.  So, if you pray, pray for us – and if you don’t, think of us.

Now and at the hour of our death.

PS  Was reminded of watching our mother die – Elaine preached on death and resurrection and talked about watching her parents die.

Think once, think twice…

Here’s the thing: deep in my core, down in the place where my soul would be if I had one (only joking! I’m not a vampire – or is it reflections they don’t have?) – anyway, deep in that place, I felt the earth move. You know how they say it does? Except not in that way. This was more like a landslide, or an earthquake. Scary. Well, I tracked it down to something that probably happened when I was a baby – and then I came to a stop, as you do when both parents are dead and nobody else is around to tell you what happened. Well, that was the first thing I felt on waking – and the second was this. The second was the realisation – no, the memory – of what daily life is like. Like a prisoner waking from a sweet dream and seeing the walls around her, the echo of the gibbet on the floor, all the memories of long incarceration coming back. So. The prison of my life. What’s that like? Tell the truth, I feel bad complaining: I mean, we don’t starve, we’re not homeless – nothing like that. Oh, shit – now I feel like a total wimp. It’s just that –

OK let me tell it like this. Imagine you have a problem. You spend time thinking about the problem; you come up with a solution, you spend time and energy on the solution – and there! Problem solved. And for about two seconds you sit back and relax, before the same bloody thing surfaces again, like giving you the old one-two. You duck the first, but the second hits you square in the jaw. You know? And so you deal with that and then, bugger me, something else comes along. And so it goes. It’s like a plague. Sometimes in my darker moments I think – you know these blue plaques they put up for people? Famous people, when they’re dead? Well, instead of a plaque, I’ll have a plague. Sarada Gray died here of the plague which, although she was cured seven times, never left her alone. That’s my life. Same bloody problems, over and over. Karma. I guess.

Take head lice. These tiny black hyphens in your hair that can ruin your life if you don’t get rid of them: they proliferate like plague germs and then you’re crawling and depressed and nobody will sit with you. So you get rid of them, by combing and washing and disinfecting and boiling bedclothes and then, for about two seconds, you’re free before one tiny unseen egg, nestling in a burrow so close to your scalp, breaks open and starts to lay its own eggs. And so on. There’s no solution. Except, go back in time and don’t get the bloody things in the first place. That’s it. So that’s my life. You get the picture?

I know these aren’t real problems. They aren’t real – but they are. I’ll regret saying this, but I’d swap for a real problem, like being in a war or something. No, that’s rubbish – of course I wouldn’t. That’s an idiotic thing to say – don’t write in! It’s just…

I’ll tell you what it’s like. It’s like being a sink with a huge plughole and no taps. Or a field with hungry crops where the sun never shines and the rain never rains and there’s no fertiliser. It’s like being Africa. I know, I know – it’s an insult even to think of it. But it’s how I feel. You have to express how you feel – no? Even if it’s pathetic. So every morning I go down and look at the mat where the post should be and when it eventually comes bringing us demands for bills we have already paid or else have established through phone calls and letters and visits that we don’t owe in the first place and we are starting to think about threatening them with a solicitor – when these items come in the post, the post which never brings even one letter containing the words: We are pleased to say, or We are happy to accept your story; letters which contain somewhere in them the word publication, that miraculous word not preceded by the phrase not suitable for; I leave the post undressed on the hall table and heave a sigh which is an echo of yesterday’s sigh, postponing my hopes for another twenty-four hours, climbing the stairs to work on my next story.

My manuscript sinks with a sigh

my hopes echo

That was the start of a poem I wrote about it. So that’s my life. Want to swap? Huh? Well, you can’t. You think you could step into this? Huh? You couldn’t hack this in a million years. It’s my life, baby, and I’m holding onto it! So go live your own!

Now, where’s my bike?

Developments have developed..

Wow!  I have been busy – last time I blogged was about a fortnight ago.  I have been up at the chalet and am about to go again.  Going to do some decorating and writing.  Stories are coming on well and I’m going to send off a couple more.  Last Tuesday, went to Word with Steve and friend Kirty, did my poem about the modernists.  Went down well.  My ambition now is to become one of those booked acts who are the star rather than one who does open mic slots.

I’m waiting for a taxi to take me to the woods.  Yesterday we – no, wait, yesterday was Bank Holiday and we went to see “Knowing” which I liked.  I thought it devoid of cliche which, considering it is a blend of disaster and sci-fi, is saying something.  Nicholas Cage is someone I usually like watching.

On Sunday we went to Holy Trinity Church (first time for me) and we may be going regularly.

I am now waiting for my taxi to the woods.

See you when I get back

Liz