The new world.

Fings ain't wot they used to be! Of course not, and how could they be! T'owd man is constantly telling me just how much the world has changed in the last 20 years or so; and that's official. There have never in the whole history of humanity been so many changes affecting us so quickly. The big thing is the internet of course. But apparently the scale of change is so big, so rapid, so far-reaching and deep, that we can hardly comprehend it. I think that humanity ought to give itself a pat on its collective head for coping as well as we do. But the strange thing is that we don't seem to notice the fact until it is pointed out to us!

And so it happens that we read the Bible in a rather different context from how we did in, say, the 1950s. Those of us in ministry or vicarages can get rather tired of hearing bishops who got to the top of the tree (they're dropping off now, thank the gods) by rising up through the ranks in the 1960s sounding off about how they made a great success of ministering in some big tough council estate, and how the church was packed etc etc. Yawn, I'm afraid; yawn. Telling us about that ad infinitum does nothing to help us who struggle in these days of indifference towards religion. It's a trip down memory lane, and has to be seen as that, before those of us around now start to feel performance anxiety when they bash on just that bit too long. But if we remember the content of my first paragraph, then we can perhaps relax a bit about ourselves.

Humber squiggle

We who are now in our in our 50s experienced some of the first chills to run through society. We'd been to university and colleges, some of us, and yet it was starting to be the case that there were not enough jobs of the right kind for graduates. But there was no comfort out there, because our elders were still stuck in the mentality that said that if you worked hard and passed exams, then your present and your future was assured. If things didn't go like that for you, then clearly you were at fault and needed a few lessons in self-presentation, and then all would be OK. But we young 'uns knew it wasn't like that. We could see the writing on the wall for the 'it's with...' approach; by which I mean that attitude to life which sees most things that happen as all down to something we have done. I could never so much as catch a cold without it being my fault for not wearing a coat on one occasion. Never mind that I experienced hypothermia in 2008 and didn't catch one after that, the British like to think that colds are self-generated. 'It's with [going on a bus] [having a young person in the house who goes to school] [having/not having the central heating on too early in the year]...' Being unemployed too - 'It's with [not working hard enough at school] [not going to the interview with a properly ironed shirt] etc etc...' It was a comforting world when you could take refuge in 'It's with...' Part of this was that you could read the Bible - those bits which are heavy on blame for floods and massacres and stuff included - and take comfort that it'll never happen to you, because you didn't do those things which brought it on.

Of course, there were some uncomfortable happenings, there were floods, and people did catch nasty diseases and all kinds of calamities. But there was a sense of it being possible to be master of your own destiny; more to the point, it was possible to point the finger at people you considered brought their misfortune on themselves.

So in many ways it's a great new world now! Less comfortable in many ways, but misfortune is so widespread, that if we have a touch of it, we no longer have to go through the self-blame ritual! Wonderful! We can blame someone else if we must, but at least we do not have to face the crippling feeling that out there people are heaping blame on us. We are just part of the great mass of unfortunates. What a weight off the mind! I'd much rather be quite poor and blameless than just a bit less poor and held responsible when I know I'm not.

I was going to go all theological and start to go on about how I see the effect of the new context in which we read the Bible, but I think I'll leave this one here: this is the silver lining in the cloud of low church attendance, falling sales, lack of respect for your profession, wotever: it's so widespread and so bad now that we know it's not your fault, it's a feature right across the whole western world! Rejoice, again I say, rejoice! Relax! Enjoy a bike ride across the Humber! Spend your time doing things of no benefit to the GDP and don't feel guilty! Wow - is this the dawning of a really, really new age?

Humber mud and self-help

Humber mud today, south bank

There are two sorts of people, those who read 'self help' books and those who don't. (But I really prefer, as I read somewhere recently: "There are two sorts of people, those who divide people into two sorts, and those who don't; I don't".)

I suppose there are some people who never buy a self-help book, and I imagine they think quite scornfully about those of us who do; the ignominy of having to resort to a book to help one get on with one's life; why not just... get on with it? And do they work anyway? Somewhere we have a book called 'Organising for creative people'; I did come across it the other day on a shelf, but I think it has now lost itself again. I remember though that it said something about creative people not being able to 'see' things that are filed away upright in filing cabinets etc; things have to be displayed horizontally with the titles visible, or we simply don't believe they exist any more. A bit like how I used to have to find transparent cake tins in which to put my home baking, since our boys would never look in an opaque tin; the stuff had to be immediately visible or the cakes, however much they liked them, remained uneaten.

But do self-help books work? I don't know, because I don't know what I'd have been like if I'd never read one. The ones I go for tend to be all about organising space and time, and getting rid of creative block, which for me are all aspect sof the same thing. Some people can create in a mess; I can't.

Humber mud, N bank

A self-help book I'm on with at the minute is quite old, from 1994, called 'The Artist's Way: A Course in Discovering your Creative Self' by Julia Cameron. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Artists-Way-Discovering-Recovering-Creative/dp/0330343580/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319919651&sr=1-1 I picked it up intending to tidy it away to a charity shop, but then started to read it, and working backwards I began to be impressed with it, as it suggested solutions which are things I already do and which seem to work; so I figured that if it recommended things that I already know work for me, then the things I haven't tried yet might also work. Thus the book recommends that every morning you write three pages of stream-of-consciousness stuff, which can be total rubbish, and somehow it is supposed to - supposed to - I'm not sure quite what it's supposed to  do; (that reveals me as a book-skimmer) - ah, it says it will lead me to a 'connection with a source of wisdom within'. Ummm! Just the kind of b*llsh*t to put me off this book. I even skimmed the last few pages to see what is supposed to happen to me if I follow this programme faithfully, and I saw the words 'sacred circle' and I was even more put off!! But I will try writing these 'morning pages' that are allowed to be total rubbish; no, I haven't reproduced them exactly here, no; they are supposed to be kept secret, even from me.

Tile yard, with car park

But the thing that I already do and helps me, that the book recommends, is to trot off on some physical exercise session. So today conditions seemed just right for a bike ride across the Humber in search of porridge oats from the health food shop in Hessle; quite the best porridge I know. Passed the tile yard on the south bank below the bridge, which is being developed as a tourist attraction; jolly good, but was it necessary to concrete over what seems to be a whole field for a car park? Aren't there greener-looking alternatives?

Some sadist in the bridge administration lot had decided that only the west path was to be open, and this meant that on the way back I even had to pedal hard in first gear in the teeth of a southwesterly to get me downhill.While out trying to stay afloat/moving forwards or whatever, you do at least get a bit of respite from the worry of wondering whether you ever had any good ideas.

Just the thing for the camino?

But I will try this self-help thing and report back on progress, and we shall see. I'm doing it for you, so you don't have to! In the meantime, I stuck a few pics on the blog from my ride to the exotic county to the north. No, I didn't get one of the tiger jump suits, tempted though I was; in thick fleece, just the thing for writing in, or anything, but....

"I have never seen the righteous forsaken..."

I got really irritated today. I suddenly exploded, 'I really think the Bible is a most irresponsible document. I don't approve of it putting about the idea that if you do everything right, then your life will go right too.' You know the stuff - the idea that 'you reap what you sow'. It crops us every now and again all over the place, in Proverbs, Psalms, and the notorious Deuteronomistic history, and I wouldn't know about the New Testament. Not that they don't have other ideas too, such as that the poor sometimes get a raw deal and we ought to be nice to them. But this 'I-have-been young-and-I-have-been-old-and-I-have-never-seen-the-children-of-the-righteous-begging-for-bread' stuff in Psalm 37. Awful. Even Augustine in his commentary on those psalms had to do some exegetical gymnastics and make it somehow refer to the eucharist, so he wasn't exactly comfortable with the plain sense.

Whitby keeps the fun in funerals.

I used to tell students that the book of Proverbs was suitable for children, as it might encourage them to work hard with its promise of reward for righteous living and hard work. The book of Job was like a night out at the theatre for adults where this view of the universe was challenged out of the hearing of children. At the end of the play, all is restored to hunkydory-ness, the ornaments are back on the mantlepiece not moving (I'm thinking of Bagpuss here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lol3fjAyoJw ) and we can get on with the business of bamboozling the children as usual. And then Ecclesiastes is a journal by a slightly depressive character looking back on his life, musing on these things.

But today it seemed to me that life would be a lot better if nobody ever got hold of such a preposterous idea in the first place; never teach something you have to un-teach. Why tell children something that is patently a lie? Are we afraid that if we don't dangle this notion before them, of hard work getting its reward in personal prosperity (job, house, holidays etc) they will just give up and find no reason for getting out of bed?

I think we ought to experiment for at least a generation and tell them the truth, then they won't be disappointed if life or nature or whatever has nor come up with the complete set of goods that we deem essential equipment for a happy, healthy and prosperous life. They'd be able to get used at an early stage to the idea of life having a large element of randomness, luck of the draw stuff; and they'd be given lessons at school in shrugging shoulders, as part of a new combined subject of philosophy, religion and PE.

Say this carefully.

But t'owd man heard me sounding off, and said 'But there is a further thought', and suggested that there is a use for the idea of people getting a just reward for their deeds; it often doesn't work for individuals, but it does work for societies. As a society, we get what we deserve. If our collective values find expression in celebrity culture and all that you find me harrumphing at on this blog, then society will go the way it does, and what a mess it can seem. If on the other hand our values were different, and we planted orchards and valued the making of things of good quality, looked after the old and the young properly, invested as much as we could in health care and wholesome living and good food for all, and... well you know what I think.... if we did those things, then society would reap what it sowed, and there would be better support and safety nets for individuals who experienced misfortune. So Proverbs, Psalm 37 etc does work across a whole society, but doesn't work so well in a highly individualistic culture.

Well done, old man! Barring natural disasters, I think he's really onto something.

But I included the pics here as I thought the blog might look a bit too earnest if I didn't bring in 'the holiday photographs' somewhere. And it is getting chilly so I invested in some warm things in M & S yesterday, as these were so useful in Spain's very cold spring last year too. I'm gradually buying things towards my proposed 'next camino', such as the 'heat generating leggings', which I think is the new term for long johns. T'owd man says that in 2013 I can either stick to my plan to do the camino, OR I can have a motorbike. I decided that the purchase of the long johns at least keeps my options open.

Living in the present

Cabbagey things hidden in nasturtiums

Oh I do love the now! I mean the age we live in. I suppose it is one of the worst times to live in a few ways; it depends where you live etc etc and whether you can afford to live at all. But I remember (here an anything-but-misty look comes over me) the 80's. Horrid times in some ways. My kids were little and that was lovely; I enjoyed being a mummy very much. But I could have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn't been so eaten up by the anxiety that really I ought to be out there doing some 'job', and I felt very much the risk of being called [here I trot off for a moment to Google 'cabbage', and with some relief find that it just means a vegetable now] a 'cabbage'. Those were the heydays of Laura Ashley and Clothkits and some very wholesome clothes where you could get the same item in both mummy's and daughter's versions, and I don't mean the kind of 'glam 6 year old' stuff of now; I mean there was a lot in the way of floral corduroy, and I did rather like it - at the time. But now and again, you'd see one of your mates out somewhere, and hardly recognise her, 'cos she seemed to have sprouted the Big Shoulders of Dallas and Dynasty as she tried to make her way in the World of Work, as it was called, while the kids were at playgroup.

My work today

I was in a bit of a difficult position, 'cos there was this pressure on women to Succeed, but we didn't yet have anything like a sense of disability rights, (rights! hell, I'd have been satisfied with the milk of human kindness; but we do need rights, 'cos of the hardness of the human heart) and so I only stood to lose, since I was not going to be a typist for a tycoon, nor a schoolteacher, nor any of the things where you went to Meetings (the things I feared most) and had to be able to hear properly so that you could come up with some incisive reply that showed that women really were a lot cleverer than men. There weren't really any jobs that didn't involve meetings except for things that were called 'menial', and I'd just come out of uni with a jolly good dregree and an MA that took me 18 months full time to achieve, and so I had a bit of hauteur about me, which I needed more than most people. And there was this drive to get women into education that was aimed at what were called 'women returners', who were assumed to be in need of some basic literacy training, as they obviously thought we didn't retain information for long.

So I felt perpetually uncomfortable, and never had the right answer to any question, and there was only ever one question that people seemed to ask me, and that was 'What do you dooooo?' when my kids were well old enough for me to be allowed to do something else in the daytime.

But now! Oh NOW! Oh wow! I'm only sorry I never stuck to my original intentions cooked up when I was about 6, which was to become a tight-rope-walking nun ("TRWN" for short). Still, maybe I have some of these elements in my life; vicar's wife/ biblical person/ windsurfing. You can see the continuity. Somehow I feel that it would go down a lot better now to be a TRWN that it would have done in the 80s, when there would have been questions about the career structure. It seems to me that NOW we are very much more accepting of people's individuality, in fact it is seen as a positive advantage to have a bit of a quirky CV.

Vita Sackville-West may have had one.

But how did I get here? It was because I was thinking today: Now what shall I do, I have these fruit flies threatening to take over the house because of all the apples lying about - tons of them - and I have this exhibition coming up for which I will need a quantity of embroidery - around three kilogrammes of the stuff, at least - so how do I choose what to tackle first? And I thought about all the women of the past making the choice between attending to the harvest - which is urgent - and attending to the embroidery - which is important. And I had a little smile to myself at the continuity with those women (omitting the 80's of course), and thanked the gods that I could feel comfortable without the Dallas/Dynasty padded shoulders or today's equivalent. Today IS much better than yesterday.

But a bit of a digression - just look at the pics of the harvest - crab apples, perhaps the most beautiful of fruits, here cultivated varieties 'Golden Hornet' and 'Gorgeous', and some quinces. (And out in the garden, I was wondering why some fruits grow with a deep waxy shine, and others grow with that velvet bloom. HOW does it happen, and what is the assumed natural advantage of one or the other?) But you will notice a wonderful aluminium thing containing some of the crop. One of our friends once asked what it was, seeing it hanging on a hook. I said it was designed primarily to be a container for water that you sling round your body when you go out to pick flowers; Vita Sackville West probably had one, I should think. The friend looked unconvinced, and said that to him, the thing really looked like an elephant condom, and I'm glad to say, the name has stuck. If only he were around now to name that pink thing above.

On a cloud

I did something different today. I just did a 'Blog Page' which allowed me to babble on a bit more extensively about Sarah and Hagar. I think you can get to it by looking at the menu at the side, and it is there at the top right, 'Sarah and Hagar explained on a cloud'. It contains the 'blurb' that I sent in to Southwark when I delivered the pieces to them, and which I gave to the very nice Will Harrison  from Lincoln diocese's in-house mag, Crosslincs, which can be read online:

 http://www.lincoln.anglican.org/page.php?n_@DC_40

Preparing to sail

and in which I am to appear, next issue if there is room (well it IS the Christmas edition, so that's very apt - will there be room for me? As there will be a new bishop rightly taking up a lot of space; and we have high hopes of him poor thing; bet he's as nervous as I am at the thought of next year's exhibition. I must pray for him whenever I get the collywobbles. Funny, he was consecrated on Sept 21st in London, the day after I got my prize. We go in a kind of tandem, his new life and mine.)

So if it is of interest, do go to my very first Page.

I'm really happy that I've managed to complete a yearly task which holds terrors for me, creating the SOTS Autumn Address List and other related lists. Otherwise, today is the day I hope to really get to grips with the washing up, and tiding up my lair in readiness for my year of hard labour. Once I'm on the water, I'll be fine. Much love to all my readers! Please pray for me!
Viv
XXXX

Music hall

T'lads'll go ballistic! They're always telling me I grumble too much about things I can't change, and that I ought to count my blessings etc etc. I've been looking round the vicarage wistfully, thinking 'Wouldn't it be nice if there were just SOMETHING you could say about this place, such as it has some charming feature/ is spacious / has lots of cupboards... just SOMEthing.




It DOES have a lovely garden, but most of the year one lives inside, looking at a desk or sewing machine. I heard recently of someone moving into a vicarage where they have been able to put their grand piano in the hallway, and so I thought 'Don't get downhearted, Viv, do the same!' and so you can see from the pic that I have tried to stop my grumbles and make the best of it. What, you mean you can't see it? I'd better provide a close-up.

First steps

It's my lucky day today! I wasn't sure, as it took me 6 hours to get home from London, though the train was not crowded and seemed so spacious I thought I must have gone into first class by mistake. But when I got home, I knocked a toilet roll in to the loo, but caught it before it hit the water!

Pink bag and scarf at the BL

I spent a little time in the British Library cafe, which is so handy for Kings Cross station, since I had failed to find out the train times correctly and had to kill an hour and a half in London; funny, I had to do the same thing in Hull only last Tuesday! I must do this again, but preferably only at the London end so I have time to wait for my train in the lovely cafe (by far the best place to wait for a train from Kings Cross; to reflect on, savour the days away, and prepare for the homeward stretch), where I decided not to open my laptop, and instead unrolled and perused my new dress pattern designed by the Carolyn Denham of Merchant and Mills http://merchantandmills.com/patterns-dresses/ This one, the Panel,  is no. 7 on the list, and no. 3 was the starting point for the Sarah and Hagar dresses. Carolyn cuts patterns beautifully (presented in traditional cardboard form), unlike a lot of the dowdy offerings in the more usual paper pattern outfits that just make one yawn or cringe, and often both.

More practice needed

But the piece de resistance of today's pics is surely this one of grandson Eddie taking his first steps. Well, not literally his first; actually about his 6th, 7th and 8th. It's a bit blurry, for obvious reasons - he was moving and I was excited.

I'll have to stop now as I have work to do tonight.