Be gentle to bible bashers

Please don’t send the firing squad on the strength of my title.

All I am pleading for is a little less zealousness on one side of the fence and more compassion on the other.

These early morning walks of mine, 0800 hrs, become more surreal every time I take foot into hand. Today I was only making a dash to buy some catfood when someone pulled up next to me (medium height, male, black of skin and hair, good looking) and said “Good morning”. I smiled, returned the greeting and thus ten rather boringly interesting ten minutes were spent – at least we kept walking in the process. First he explained to me that the Book of Solomon deems it bad luck to be greeted/or greet (no idea) your neighbour first thing in the morning. Thanks pal, luckily you are not my neighbour.

And then he went the whole hog – verbally. He had quite clearly seen a light that so far has escaped me. To be instructed in the gospel, and I am not squeamish, is a tall order for me – at any time of day or night. Since I like to indulge people I kept smiling, kept eye contact, yet ventured demurely that God never “wrote” a word; that the bible is pure human invention, shouldn’t be read as gospel but with interest and an enquiring mind.

It got worse: He then asked me if I had ever heard of some German doing miracle works in Africa. I hadn’t. Which prompted the question whether I had heard of Picasso; the only point in the conversation at which I might have looked at him with some contempt. Anyway this German Picasso of the world of the resurrected had apparently freed fellow humans from wheel chairs and the grave.

The crowning glory of this most unfortunate encounter was when I was reassured that he would never make a German feel bad by mentioning Hitler; or how did he put it so delicately: “Hitler wasn’t even German”. I hope, and I am not vindictive, that this guy is going to run into a well educated Austrian who’ll put him straight on the intricacies and finer points of history.

I wonder who I am going to meet next.

U

Gushing

It’s 0630 BST, Sunday morning, and I have fallen in love – with a word, a sound.

Sententiousness.

Say it out loud and – and even if not musically inclined - it’ll roll off your tongue most deliciously. My challenge being how often one can casually drop “sententiousness” into today’s conversations without appearing more out of kilter than previously realised.

U

Broken toys

That didn’t take long, did it? Ten days after its launch and the Collider is in casualty.

Handing grown men working weapons or a machine to recreate the big bang is as sensible as giving a toddler a pair of scissors and a sharp kitchen knife to keep him quiet and out of mischief.

Beloved Orwell, if only you were around to blog on this and other issues.

U

Codswallop

The path to happiness is the road to self-delusion.

I don’t know what it means but it sounds plausible in that somewhat tipsy bon mot way.

As nature will out, in a moment of reckless boredom, why not throw a morsel to your friends, and you’ll all get to know each other anew.

According to temperament they will smirk, laugh, ignore, raise an eyebrow, take bait, discuss, sulk, snort, retreat to the kitchen to do the washing up, offer you the name of their therapist, tell you to get out more often, ask when they can come again, be very English and observe the clouds in the sky; be very Irish and break into song, dance - and tears; be very Russian and throw glasses and crockery – dance and break into even more tears; be very French, smoulder and smoke; be very Italian, charm, flirt and invite you for a walk down the dusky orchard; be very Swiss and enquire as to the time; be very German, open more bottles of wine and beer and hope we’ll all live another day. And let the Spanish get on with cooking the tapas to mop up all the leakage. 

As to the rest of the world’s population let me know …

U

The waiting game

Godot – the grandfather of our virtual age? If he had known would he have put in an appearance?

One of the benefits – maybe theee benefit - of being dead is that there’ll be no more waiting – for anything or anybody. Conclusion: Hope does NOT spring eternal. It evaporates with your last breath.

I just phoned one of my nephews and godsons to congratulate him on his 14th birthday. Lorenzo is of that rare breed able to delay gratification - indefinitely. He is the one who will still have presents, unwrapped, under the Christmas tree when the needles start falling. So even at three in the afternoon he was not able to give me full tally of his birthday bounty. Instead of which he is doing his homework. Should his parents worry? Will he be the next Godot? Mind you, and I am not a child psychologist, him being somewhere in the middle of many siblings he might have no other option to carve an eccentric niche for himself.

Which reminds me, VOASF: This morning I came across someone who – whilst fond of other people’s children – is of the more oldfashioned “seen, but not heard” (in restaurants) type school. He is considering setting up a web site called “herod.com” for likeminded adults. I sincerely hope this brings as much a smile to your face as it had me laugh out loud.

U

Nil desperandum

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times Fiction Editor, has confirmed a long held conviction of mine: The English and Russians are incompatible. 

British understatement is all good and well, even amusing at times, but and this is a big BUT: To state that he can’t make it to the end of Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”, indeed any Dostoevsky, is a bit … what? I quote Kemp’s suffering “Dostoevsky’s fiction, with its hysterias, hallucinations, feverish goings-on and characters with nonstop mood swings, affects me.”

It affects you? What a shame. Why read, indeed become a fiction editor if you can’t stand a little gore, shattered hopes and nerves, heartache on the written page? Indeed why live at all? Does anyone want to go to their grave having lived an insipid life? Leaving my own heritage aside, there is more to life than being fucking polite and together at all times.

Anyway, Peter Kemp, take it from me, you read and re-read Dostoevsky at age 16, all of it – no sooner, no later. And, sorry to ram this home: You will, no doubt, sit dutyfully through all the gore, blood and underage achings as performed on a stage in Stratford-upon-Avon. Let’s hope that at least good old Will manages to not unsettle you too much for comfort. Lastly, do you read the Bible’s stories? Dante? Fairy tales?

U

Sodom and Gomorrah

Since these days one cannot open one’s mouth without falling foul of the politically correct, may I say that my subject line refers to how it was used in my family, meaning ‘chaos’. I like both precision and simplicity, so I call my son’s room a “pigsty”.

Earlier today I questioned my judgment: Knowing his girlfriend was visiting later in the afternoon I aired his room, changed the sheets, vacuumed like Dyson himself. Am I with it any longer or am I turning into one of those Jewish/Italian mothers – in a sort of houseproud German fashion? This is why my family doesn’t know about my blog; you can appease friends because they like you, you can appease your foes because they don’t like you, but family eats you alive.

By way of example: I come from a cake eating, coffee drinking country. I don’t have a sweet tooth, so I try and avoid cake without wishing to give offence to the hostess, I don’t drink coffee. Well known. My mother phones me on my birthday. She asks “Have you baked a cake?” On the whole I believe that body language and eye contact enhance and strengthen human bonds but the phone does come in useful at times. You can roll your eyes, pull a grimasse and exhale a muffled sigh without offending anyone. I answered truthfully and she is disappointed how little her firstborn follows in the well worn path of many a pastry.

Also she wants me to return to my earlier perfect self. Extolling to her the virtues of how I am now fell on disapproving ground. However, a few days down the line her wish might come true: Ursula raising from her ashes once more; most wonderfully helped by a great piece of gossip which came my way earlier today. 

U

No rear view

My sweet (tiny of stature) Italian neighbour, two houses further along, knocked at my door midday, handing me a bag of freshly picked beans, blushingly asking me whether I’d do her a favour. I never decline doing favours; it’s my favourite occupation and keeps me most efficiently from what I should be doing.

She had finally plucked up the courage to park her car in the most frightfully difficult to reach garage ever. Only now she couldn’t get it out again. My local reputation goes before me: I will squeeze my rather long car in and out of spaces alongside the curb which even men, by virtue of gender usually not spatially challenged, would have difficulty with.

Always up for a challenge, and mightily pleased with myself, I reversed her car out of the garage, manoeuvred it round a courtyard the size of a handkerchief, through a gate built at the most astonishing angle in relation to width of the drive.

Then I was reminded of what REAL life is like. 

Try driving backwards, between two brick walls being so phantastically narrow that both side-view mirrors had to be folded down; as handy as taking out your contact lenses when playing darts.

There is a lesson in there somewhere: Not least, like with everything in life, DO hold your nerve. And Italians make phantastic espresso.

U

Recycling

“It’s not easy to go green” one of my environmentally ambitious fellow bloggers states.

Au contraire, Paul; for some people it is very easy to go green – with ENVY because of greed. Unfortunately not a condition that afflicts me; otherwise I’d be as well off as some of my mean, tight fisted, saving-for-a-rainy day friends who are now in the grip of sweat pearls inducing paranoia, due to the conjured-up fear of the “credit crunch”. Yes, I too wonder where the next BMW will come from once my seventeen year old Citroen will go into retirement. I shan’t go down this train of thought any further since I don’t want to alienate any of you. Just relax guys; you’ll eat.

Where was I; colours. Yes I like green. Yellow being my favourite. And earth is dark. When I moved house last year I took my compost heap with me – that’s probably the nearest I have ever come to being mean; a lot of people don’t understand compost heaps and I had put so much effort and pride into mine (stopping short at naming all the busy worms) and you wouldn’t leave a pet behind, would you? The removal men had shifted a lot of rubbish in their time but that was a first for them.

It gets worse: I have to move decaying egg shells, vegetable peel and lawn mowings once more. My landlady has just given me notice because she wants the house back for her daughter. Let’s leave aside that I am heartbroken because this house and I clicked so well and is perfect for guests and all those parties Felix is planning, I had relied on a long term rental. If any of you know of an unfurnished house with a (walled) garden and quirky features, a veranda thrown in for good measure, somewhere in the vicinity of where I currently live, let me know (max rent £1,200/month, no – not including services; remember, this is England). Meanwhile pass me a handkerchief to mop up my tears.

U