It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Internet is the greatest timesink going. It amazes me how important things can seem online late at night, and how trivial the following morning. And how I get sucked into staying up far too late, when I know I’ll regret it the next day.
Here’s what happened. I get a weekly delivery of healthy snacks from Graze. And very nice they are. They come in recycled cardboard boxes with lovely pictures on them. On their Twitter feed, people talk about how they use said cardboard boxes. I noticed one enterprising person made hers into postcards.
Now as it happens, I’ve recently signed up to Postcrossing, a lovely exchange site for postcards worldwide. I actually did this because I buy loads of the things and then rarely look at them or know what to do with them. So to start making my own postcards would completely undermine the original plan of using up the ones I’ve already got.
But anyway, I looked at this pretty picture and noticed something:
What really caught my eye was the pretty vintage hand-stamped reverse side. Ooh, I thought, I want to do that. I want to be artistic and quirky and recycling cool stuff.
So I would need at least one stamp that said Post Card. This turned out to be something of a rarity. I browsed Etsy and found exactly the set I wanted, and somehow managed to justify spending nearly $30.00 on this so-called economy, plus extra for the special sepia-tinted inkpad, only to find the retailer wouldn’t ship to the UK.
This should have put me off but in fact it had the opposite effect. It turned the whole thing into some kind of compulsive quest and I totally lost track of (a) the time and (b) the logic of this course of action as I browsed forums and craft sites trying to come up with the perfect stamping combo. I learned a lot about mounts, embossing, distressed ink pads, and almost talked myself into spending half a day mooching around local craft stores rather than pay £3.95 to have one little ink pad shipped out to me. It scares me to think how much clutter I could bring into this already overcrowded home on the pretext of being clever and re-using stuff.
Thankfully, sanity prevailed and I decided to sleep on the whole thing (better late than never). And in the cold light of day, I remembered that a lot of the people I send cards to on Postcrossing don’t particularly want pictures of food, they want pictures of my country and my culture, and failing that cats doing funny things. None of which Graze provide. Also, their lovely recycled boxes might well not survive lengthy trips by airmail.
A madness caught me. But it has passed. I shall go into the west, and remain Galadriel, settling for pre-printed postcards. And I might even have a bit of money left at the end of the month.
The fact that the Telegraph has found it necessary to shut down comments on their hagiographic coverage of reaction to Thatcher’s death is simply one of many examples of the deep resentment many people are feeling. Celebrations may be distasteful, and premature, since the divisive spirit of Thather’s legacy is still so much a feature of British politics, but they are arguably a legitimate expression of dissent from the narrative of triumph people are being coerced into accepting.
Fact is, Cameron’s reaction to Thatcher’s death has been extreme, suggesting that he welcomes it as a diversion from his own weakness and incompetence as a leader. It’s being used as an unpleasant and undignified diversion from the far more serious matter of the Coalition’s spiteful and ill-conceived attack on welfare. The Tories can fulminate until the cows come home about the undeserving poor, but they comprise a minute minority of those who will suffer under recently implemented benefit caps. It is becoming incresingly clear that for the last couple of decades the primary role of welfare has been to plug the gaping holes in a free market economy that, largely as a result of Thatcher’s attack on trade unionism and liberalisation of the labour market, no longer feels obliged to offer hard-working people job security or even a living wage. The crippling fiscal burden of a soaring housing beneft bill has become a necessity directly related to the Thatcherite policy of selling off the country’s stock of social housing, a policy that the Coalition now has the nerve to penalise the very people who are suffering its effects for by taxing them for over-occupying their homes while leaving pensioners, often a far more invidious example of such behaviour, untouched.
History is written, or at least revised, by the winners, but these triumphalist bastards haven’t even won yet. They are trying to claim victory by association by fawning on the memory of the Tory party’s most iconic figure. And, even if it wasn’t costing an absolute fortune, it would be a disgrace. Who cares about a library being set up as a memorial to the Iron Lady? If you’ve got that sort of cash to spare, it should be going on all the much-loved local authority branch libraries that are closing up and down the country, robbing some of Britain’s neediest people of facilities they badly need. Not least, a quiet place for children to do homework as an alternative to chaotic home lives. Such a policy is one of many that deprives people of the very social mobility Thatcher espoused as part of her creed of self-improvement.
So the Iron Lady is no more. She seemed so eternal, yet my father-in-law outlived her. Or did he? There’s generally a taboo against speaking ill of the dead, but I have to agree with Paul Cornell’s recent tweet – “Except Thatcher’s not dead. She’s in every bloody atom of this so-called coalition’s Britain.”
Yes, she broke the power of the unions, and a lot of us appreciated that at the time. Believe me, I lived through the Seventies and I wouldn’t want to return to the three-day week and the piles of rubbish in the streets. She took on the miners and ultimately won, and arguably that had to be done. I’ve been a Socialist for most of my life and I still accept the reality that somehow Britain had to transition to a post-industrial future.
But the brutal welfare cuts being cynically introduced today by Cameron’s government (because that’s what it is, regardless of any pretence at Coalition politics) wouldn’t have been necessary if Thatcher’s policies hadn’t thrown entire communities on the scrapheap with little thought for their social cohesion and self-respect. If people have grown up in a dependency culture, it’s generally because her poliicies left them with little alternative. They were implemented at a time when, cushioned by North Sea Oil and the short-termist sale of public assets like social housing and utilities, we could afford to ignore their social and financial cost. Now those pigeons are coming home to roost and of course the Tories are trying to blame the largely mythical feckless poor, conveniently ignoring the awkward fact that a large percentage of the people claiming welfare benefits are working poor and that the generous arrangments for pensioners, whose Tory votes can be relied upon, are far more expensive than the miserly and humiliating provision for the unemployed.
Yes, Thatcher’s achievements were monumental, though we shouldn’t overlook the role played by what Anthony Eden famously called, “events, dear boy” in securing her a second term at least. She was the first female Premier, but it’s sad that she acieved her high office by emulating the worst aspects of the male sex rather than embracing what is best in the feminine. She died in relative dignity and comfort, a privilege that has been denied to many people in the NHS or the so-called “care in the community.” Obviously there will be grief on a massive scale, but I hope we won’t see an outbreak of Diana-like, mealy mouthed hysteria. She doesn’t deserve that, and we need our wits about us to deal with the paticularly cynical, poisonous brand of Conservative politics that is running the country these days. At least Thatcher knew what it was like to stand behind a shop counter and weigh out bags of sugar. She wasn’t just a blinkered Old Etonian, and she didn’t preside over a Britain where the Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury all had that particular distinction in common.
Shakespeare knew a thing or two about power. In Hamlet’s gravedigger scene, the euponymous hero holds up a skull and muses on mortality. The groundlings would have recognised his unnamed target:
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come
Has Oxford University had its sense of proportion surgically removed or do they just have the lousiest PR operation of any academic institution in the Western world? Just a couple of months after being faced with a court case after demanding that a postgraduate student should show evidence of £21,000 a year to pay his way, or sacrifice a place, they’re back in the spotlight for firing a librarian at St Hilda’s College. Her crime was to be in the building at the time when a group of students filmed a Harlem Shuffle stunt that later went viral on the Internet.
Quite apart from the breathtaking hypocrisy of an institution that publicly bans postgraduate students from taking paid employment whilst habitually offering them posts in its own college libraries, the disproportionate reaction, lack of explanation and general arrogance shown by the College authorities on this occasion shows a complete lack of understanding of the reality of student life
Students pull stunts. They always have and they always will. In the case of Old Etonians, student high spirits (to use a euphemistic term) can cause considerable harm to both people and property. Just ask Boris Johnson, who admitted his own tendency towards such behaviour in the notorious Bullingdon Club whilst at Oxford this week in an interview with the Radio Times:
This is a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness,” admits Johnson. “But at the time you felt it was wonderful to be going round swanking it up. Or was it? Actually I remember the dinners being incredibly drunken.”
He is reminded that one riotous Bullingdon dinner ended with a restaurant being smashed up and Boris and other members spending a night in a police cell. “Yes. And the abiding memory is of deep, deep self-loathing.”
Presumably such behaviour is acceptable at Oxford when indulged in by Old Etonians wearing tailcoats and gold-buttoned waistoats. It didn’t seem to harm the reputation of the revellers, including the present Chancellor and Prime Minister, or the University. Quite the reverse – such behaviour has been tolerated, even celebrated, as part of the rich pattern of Oxford life for as long as anyone can remember.
But when a bunch of ordinary undergraduates hatch a plot to make a seven-minute video of a dance craze, thoughtfully scheduled at 11.30 pm on a Saturday night to avoid disturbing studying students, they’re slapped with fines or worse. Moreover, they are treated like ignorant, naughty children who don’t even deserve the dignity of an explanation.
I know Oxford has a collegiate system, and within it colleges have a high degree of autonomy, so it is arguably a mistake to infer general policy from the actions of individual institutions. But frankly, that’s pretty disingenouous these days. As an academic institution, Oxford University has a worldwide public profile and it is looking increasingly arrogant, insular and snobbish. I declare a personal bias – the three weeks I spent as an undergraduate at St Hugh’s in 1977 were among the most wretched of my life, and I left and pursued my academic career elsewhere. But a lot of institutions have improved beyond measure in their transparency and accountability since the 1970s. It looks as if Oxford isn’t one of them.
Back in 1981 I wrote an essay about my own experiences, and why I left, as part of my degree assessment in English and Education at York University. Its final sentence was, “The really disturbing thing about Oxford University is that they can afford not to care.” How sad to see evidence over 30 years later that this might indeed still be the case.
After the first week in ages where I got to the gym four times, I’ve succumbed to the most dreadful cold. People talk about being in bed with a cold, and I suspect it’s often an exaggeration, but on this occasion I really am. Raging temperature, aches and pains, the lot. I haven’t even felt like reading very much, though I’ve been working through a book about the Enlightenment in Edinburgh when I’ve felt up to it.
My son just called and, as always, wanted to talk philosophy. I’m afraid I politely declined. I’m in survival mode right now.
At least I’ve only been missing out on some pretty terrible weather here in England. What happened to Spring, please?
Decisions, decisions…I treated myself to theme customisation on WP and now I can’t decide whether to go with the version with my own Cornish field photograph on the background, and the Anthony Sher/David Tennant header, or the nice, classically restrained one with the plain green background and the Thames Pageant scene header.
Basically, do I want to be outed as an RTD-era Doctor Who fan, or not?
She said kiss me or would you rather
Live in a land where the soap won’t lather?
Billy Bragg “The Only One” (from Workers’ Playtime)
You know you drive me up the wall
I need to see your face that’s all
You little sod, I love your eyes
Be everything to me tonight
Guy Garvie (Elbow) “Station Approach”
Glossary: Billy Bragg is an Essex Boy through and through. His reference to soap concerns the difference in the domestic water supply between the north of England and the South East, which geologically is on chalk deposits. This results in lime-rich water, poor detergent performance and coating of scum in the bathwater.
Guy Garvie is 100% Mancunion and proud of it. “Station Approach” refers to the road leading down from Piccadilly, Manchester’s main train station, into the city centre (and more generally, the sense of coming home to a community where you belong). My son always puts it on as we leave the motorway and arrive back home after he’s been away at college.
Traffic on the M25
Bill Oddie follows the way of Ecky Thump in “The Goodies” (BBC TV)
A few months ago, several thousand BBC employees had to emigrate from the South East of England to the North, when the BBC moved its main centre of operations up to the Media City Centre in Salford, near Manchester.
The word “emigrate” isn’t used lightly. Strange as it may seem in so small a country, there are deep-seated and profound cultural differences between the south and the north of England. Arguably, the cultural fault lines are as deep as those separating Scotland, Wales and England, and the first two of those have good claims to being independent nations. Some of the main prejudices are that Southerners are arrogant, effete and insular, always assuming that people will visit them rather than venturing out of their own London-dominated enclave. Conversely, Northeners are accused of being ignorant, nosey, vulgar and mired in a culinary wasteland dominated by fish and chips, mushy peas and tomato ketchup.
Southerners are unfriendly, sometimes to the point of not knowing their own neighbours. Northeners are forever on the doorstep wanting to borrow the proverbial cup of sugar. Southerners are sophisticated, familiar with international cuisine and dismayed by the thought of eating salad cream rather than mayonnaise. Northeners haven’t even heard of cappuccino.
Of course, these are all laughable generalisations. But they persist. When the BBC relocated, there were rumours and jokes in Private Eye about trains to Euston being packed with exiles on Friday evenings. I’ve a foot in both camps. Though my Lancashire ancestry goes back several generations – I’m from Blackpool, for God’s sake, and you don’t get more vulgarly Northern than that – I married a North Londoner, and my parents spent their happiest years in the Home Counties. My nearest living relatives ended up in Billericay, Essex and Woking, Surrey respectively.
I actually prefer the South. We hope to retire there. It’s hard to imagine a bunch of people less snooty and stand-offish than my husband’s large, close-knit extended family. We gather at Littlehampton for a beach picnic once a year without fail, and there are usually four generations present. I don’t particularly like the idea of community on your doorstep, though I still think fondly of the Lancashire neighbour whose kindness sustained me when my mother died (She didn’t just draw her own curtains when the funeral procession passed, she went round knocking on doors to make sure all the neighbours did likewise). I can assure anyone with doubts on the matter that cappuccino and balsamic vinegar are well-known North of Potters’ Bar, but I do think that there tend to be more good-quality, reasonably priced restaurant chains in the South East (Bill’s of Lewes, for example, and the wonderful Cook range selling very nice, admittedly posh frozen meals – we only have them up here in Formby and Harrogate). And I can remember my husband’s Auntie Peg remarking, in our holiday accommodation, “They’re posh here, they buy their Weetabix from Waitrose.”
So, where do the prejudices come from? And is there any truth in them? In the case of so-called stand-offish-ness, I think there is, but note the “so-called.” In my personal experiences, people from the South are not unfriendly, but they could be called reserved. They won’t barge in unless they’re reasonably sure you want to know them better. A lot of it, I suspect, is due to sheer density of population. The fact there economic activity tends to concentrate people in the South East of England makes houses smaller, commutes longer, roads and public transport alike more congested. All this makes people value what privacy they do have. What hits me every time I travel through Southern suburbia is how many new homes are being built (though still nowhere near enough) and how cramped they are. This affects people in all kinds of ways. Your working day is longer. If you’re lucky enough to get a seat on the train, and most aren’t, you’ll learn to tune out distractions and maximise your reading time. And you may well resort to audiobooks on the Tube.
None of these social pressures are unknown in the North of England. In fact, upwardly mobile suburbs like Didsbury in South Manchester generally replicate them. But I think they are less ubiquitous and less intense. And I also think this affects the way travel is perceived. I can remember, when I was growing up in a small Lancashire town, thinking that Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath must be very exotic places. Now I know how crushingly ordinary much of South East commuterland actually is. I also used to make the mistake of thinking that everywhere down there was pretty close together, and having no concept of the vast North vs South of the river divide in the minds of not only Londoners, but people who live in the South East of England generally. But once you’ve queued to go through the Dartford Tunnel after a long day, you begin to understand why to someone in Surrey or Sussex, the North of France seems more accessible than Manchester. We Mancunians say it’s only two hours on the train. And it is, to Euston. But it’s the trekking around after that you need to worry about.
I didn’t realise, fully, how tiring driving in the South East really was until we spent a day visiting my husband’s family in Enfield, then dropping off our son at college in Colchester and, finally, driving to his parents’ old bungalow near Littlehampton. The experienced left me utterly drained. I would probably have found a trip between Kendal, Ilkley and Harrogate a lot easier.
I suppose the moral of this tale, if there is one, is that you don’t really understand anybody until you’ve tried walking in their shoes, so to speak. Of course, none of that will stop me making jokes to my DH’s cousins about hitching up the husky dogs to come and see us, and it won’t stop DH himself saying, “You can take the girl out of Blackpool, but you can’t take Blackpool out of the girl.” Particularly when he spots me reaching for the salad cream.
I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
Hamlet, Act I, Scene II
In magazines, they always talk about celebrities “battling depression.” It sounds reasonable, but if you’ve had depression yourself you’ll know that it’s a concept that could only come from outside personal experience of it, because when you’re depressed you can’t summon up the energy to battle anything. The best you can hope for is to fool yourself that you’ve beaten it, until it sneaks up on you (usually sometime after lunch in my experience) and you realise it’s been snapping at your heels all day.
Depression’s such a strange affliction. It’s probably caused in many cases by overthinking and over-worrying, but if you’re prone to those habits it’s not generally easy to stop. A couple of decades ago, my spells of depression consumed and paralysed me, to the point of having panic attacks in the street, but now we seem to have reached a modus vivendi. I’m on a maintenance dose of Fluoxetine, which makes me feel inadequate as a human being – I know that’s irrational, diabetics don’t (I assume) feel that way about needing daily insulin, so what’s the difference? It’s just a chemical imbalance in the brain. Some reputable people claim that it’s all part of a dark, pharmacological plot to make creative people into conforming zombies. Well, I’ve been reading James Joyce’s biography and, though he gave the world some amazing books, it doesn’t sound like a very happy life. Creating stuff was often agonizing for him and not much fun for his family either. He self-medicated by means of alcoholic binges. I’d rather be on pills than live like that.
I spent much of the last year trying to get off them and succeeded to some extent. I’m now on 50% of the dose I was on twelve months ago. On the whole I feel better for it – more alert, more intellectually engaged (although, having said that, I managed to finish an MA course on the higher dose). But once I dipped below 20mg a day, things began unravelling. I forgot people’s names, I could never find things, I slept badly and every job, particularly cooking, for some strange reason, became a mountain I just couldn’t climb.
It’s more complicated than simply feeling miserable. I think Hamlet put it best, “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem all the uses of this world.” In one compartment of my mind I know my life is good, and I’m truly grateful for it. Interesting job, nice kids doing well, good marriage, kind friends and enough money to buy everything I need and a few things I just want. All that adds up to happiness, and the fact that I can be intellectually aware of this and yet feel utterly hopeless is proof that there is, literally, something wrong with me.
It’s very diurnal. Mornings are mostly okay. Then a little black cloud appears on the horizon and gradually gets bigger until it blots out concentration, focus, enjoyment and the ability to hold a logical conversation. My nearest and dearest tell me I become ridiculously sensitive, over-reacting to perceived slights and criticisms, and I’m sure that is indeed the case. By mid-afternoon all I want to do is guzzle chocolate and go to bed, preferably at the same time. I feel like phoning my husband and tearfully begging him to come home early just to cook the tea. It rarely gets quite that bad, though
I “battle it”. Of course I do. But the battling has to be done when you’re still relatively well. Once it strikes, it’s probably too late. I know what I need to keep well – regular workouts, sunshine, healthy diet and at least nine hours’ sleep a night. I know what I shouldn’t do – the Internet any time after nine in the evening is invariably a mistake. And chocolate never helps as much as you think it will. Nor does retail therapy. It just means that when the credit card bill arrives, you’ll have even less respect for yourself than you had before and you’ll probably have no clear recollection of what you bought or why it seemed so essential at the time.
Strategies – I expect everyone has them. One of mine is to put every book I fancy I cannot live without onto my Amazon wish list, and if I get to payday without financial meltdown I can have up to two items. It’s surprising how often you look at what you nearly bought on impulse a couple of weeks ago and find your lack of sustained interest in it quite remarkable. But I wish I was as disciplined about stopping myself from going out at four in the afternoon for a cappuccino and a slab of Café Nero truffle cheesecake.
I’m not expecting my depression to go away any time soon. It just becomes less debilitating – partly because of circumstances (teenage and young adult children rather than toddlers) and I get better at controlling it. If I need to stay on pills for the rest of my days, I’m just glad those pills are easily available to me. I would like to feel completely morally neutral about them and have no sense of inadequacy whatsoever, not to reproach myself and struggle to deny the truth about myself. Depression is always a balancing act between challenging yourself to do what you are able to manage and recognising when to let the waves break over you, rest and just go with it for a while. Nobody’s ever quite figured that one out, as far as I know.
Nevertheless, I keep trying. I owe it to myself and my family not to give in. And to love myself, enough but not too much. My life is good, far better than many people’s these days. Just as when it’s cloudy you know the sun is still up there shining away, I recognise that as the fundamental truth, even when my silly old brain is telling me the opposite.
Northern Quarter bar Compass have confirmed that they will throw an alternative Jubilee street party this Monday.
The quirky Manchester venue, which attracts hipsters like a craft beer festival at a former flannel shirt warehouse, is chosing to commemorate the 21 year and 5 month reign of Norway's King Harald V.
"You've probably never heard of him", said Compass manager Milo Popping.
On a bit of a whim this morning I trawled Spotify for some of the spiritual music that I’ve found helpful and comforting over the years. My search led me to this video, which I listened to with conflicting emotions.
If I had to pick one person whose influence shaped my college years and early adulthood, it would be the British evangelist David Watson. I was at York University from 1978 to 1981, a time when the church where he was Rector, St Michael Le Belfrey, was a powerhouse of evangelical renewal. I was converted within a week of arriving at York, a ripe apple just waiting to be plucked off the tree. It’s no co-incidence that tha catalyst was Graham Kendrick’s song Paid on the Nail, an anthem to our complete unworthiness when compared to the infinite love and sufferings of Jesus Christ. But, at the risk of sounding unduly cynical, if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else.
I was so needy – for family, for connection, for boundaries, for meaning. My family life had failed me completely and I was launched on a confusing and frightening world. Sexuality, above all, terrified me – the very idea of becoming physically intimate with another human being, so the chaste, emotionally febrile fellowship of the Christian Union was the ideal environment for me.
There was much at St Michael le Belfrey that was deeply appealing – especially glorious, powerful worship that inspires me to this day, the beauty of the Anglican prayer book wedded to the genius of Andrew Maries in creating sophisticated melodies that could perform emotional open heart surgery on you while convincing you they were entirely spiritual (Incidentally, a secular equivalent that has had a similar effect on me more recently is Murray Gold’s work on Doctor Who – I’m trying to resist the temptation to sneer that at least he’s more honest about what is going on). St Mike’s was a beautiful building filled with mostly young people on fire for the Lord and singing their hearts out. I will never forget the absolute joy of walking into the city of York at sunset on a Sunday evening, the Cathedral bells ringing, with a group of student Christians. I went on missions in the summer vacation, serving quiche to tourists we’d dragged in off the street. The people, the friendship, the music and the beautiful setting conspired to give me many rich and wonderful memories. The YouTube video brings them flooding back.
Nevertheless, I think St Mike’s did me as much harm as good when all things were considered. In 1984 David Watson died of cancer and my faith took a painful hit. How could God do such an awful thing to someone who had served him so faithfully? By then I was in much less happy personal circumstances myself, struggling to make my way in a lonely world after graduation without any backing from my family.
I just didn’t get it. David Watson was still relatively young, full of life and charisma. Why had God let it happen? Many years later, a member of the team who’d gone on the road with him in those years showed up at my church and said crisply, “Well, of course he’d get bowel cancer. He didn’t look after himself. You should have seen the way he ate.”
I can see now that there are certain people who are utterly addicted to pouring themselves out on the alter of their convictions, who don’t look after themselves and often, directly or indirectly, put huge pressures on others. I can also see that the communities they head up often implode under the pressure of their contradictions, and tend to survive only be implementing some fairly draconian procedures to stop people thinking for themselves. But I’m looking back now with the perspective of thirty years. At least half of that was spent either at St Mike’s or a church that resembled and admired it in many ways (perhaps less so now than when I was an active member of the fellowship).
In 2000 I had a midlife crisis of sorts. What was fundamentally going on was that the real me was screaming to be let out of its evangelical straitjacket. There were catalysts – Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy, which gave me a version of atheism that managed to retain a sense of the sublime, my then-rector’s deeply unpleasant stance against gay people, and my children’s questions as they grew up. Most of all, I knew at some gut level that it was either the church or my marriage, though it was never said in as many words. I chose the latter and have no regrets. But I can still remember sitting in a park several miles away one Sunday morning, overwhelmed with tears of grief and guilt because, for the first time in 14 years, I was not in church.
Since then I have studiously avoided anything spiritual, deeply afraid of getting sucked back in. I am no longer the rootless, dependent person that provides such easy fodder for a certain type of Christian fellowship. I still live in the parish where I stopped worshipping 14 years ago, and work at the church school. People tell me it’s changed and suggest I give it another try. But I can’t help reflecting on the series of marriage break-ups that have ripped through the set of Christians I used to hang out with, and the irony that my relationship with a “non-Christian”, the subject of so much anxious prayer and censure at the time, is the one that has survived. Or that when I was mentally ill, the Church sent two amateur counsellors to advise me, and one of them was in the throes of splitting up with her husband (Of course, they didn’t tell me that at the time).
I now find myself, in middle age, missing that spiritual dimension to my life, particularly when depression hits me and I can’t sleep. I feel certain stirrings that might, eventually, lead me back, most probably to the Society of Friends, since their silence and lack of dogma deeply appeals to me, and the Quakers I have met over the years have generally impressed me with their honesty and spiritual discipline. I still feel deeply allergic to most of the manifestations of organised religion, particularly the more evangelical wing of Christianity.
But watching that video was a strange, and very emotional experience for me. I could see what drew me in, and a part of me wanted to protest that, like the cake in Portal, it’s a lie. That promise of peace masked many years of emotional turmoil for me. I don’t know if, even now, I could separate the good from the harmful in it. It would be like trying to eat leavened bread without the bubbles in it. An odd simile, I know, but the Christian church is full of bread and wine symbolism, and sometimes the unproved dough is exploding over the rim of the mixing bowl. Now I think I prefer it quietly contained, but still adding life and fragrence to the whole.
