Storyteller’s World

Into the last week of Lent, and it now feels very much like overtime. It’s Day 41, and Saturday will make 46 days in all. You can see why people count the six Sundays as being “outside” Lent, and therefore exempt from the rule of Lenten abstinence. I don’t imagine there was any more virtue in us abstaining from alcohol on Sundays as well; it just seemed tidier, or more serious, or something, to go that extra mile (or six).

Meanwhile I’m lining up the bottles so I know where they are on Sunday morning. Checking that I know where the corkscrew got put away. Thinking about possibly substituting an early morning glass of wine for the usual cup of tea.

Liturgical and theological purists will doubtless be shocked and scandalized, but there were good and sufficient pastoral reasons for conducting a baptism service today, rather than next Sunday. One was the number of candidates - seven - which would have been difficult to fit into any of the scheduled Easter services. Another was the pressing need not to arrange an additional service next Sunday, when I’m already leading four of the five services in this benefice.

Of the seven candidates, one was an infant, and the others, aged from 4 to 14, were six children of one of our parish families. But they were only the youngest six: their four older siblings were all baptized by my predecessor.

This is the only family this large that I’m aware of in the parish, though less than 100 years ago it was quite common. A few years ago I conducted a funeral at which I was introduced to a sister of the deceased, whose name was Decie (pronounced Dessie).

-That’s an unusual name, I said.

-Yes, it’s short for Decima.

-Good heavens! Were you really the tenth child in the family?

-No, the twelfth, actually.

Trying a change of template, for change’s sake. This one’s called plaintxtBlog, by Scott Wallick.

Out of the Journalling Jar:

What you and Mum talk about when you’re alone.

Oh, no, Sun. Just because you’re an adult now, doesn’t mean you’re going to find that out after all these years.

Well, not really.

Just quite a lot of what you need to know about the media treatment of it. It comes, as ever, from that treasury of wisdom that is The Simpsons, the episode Homer the Vigilante.

Kent Brockman: Hordes of panicky people seem to be evacuating the town for some unknown reason. Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside?

Professor: Mmm, yes I would, Kent.

I mean, who would ever have even thought about stopping eating eggs or chicken, because a swan had died in Scotland, unless the TV news had suggested it?

Well, it’s Day 37 of our dry Lent (though, as you may remember, we gave ourselves one day off to celebrate our wedding anniversary). It’s proved to my satisfaction that I’m not an alcoholic, whatever Tui might sometimes have thought. It yielded some interesting spiritual fruit; so interesting, in fact, that a Lent that began with a spiritual high suddenly turned into a wipeout with the backache and the cold/flu providing an all too powerful distraction and disincentive to “Spiritual Things”. This is an interesting growth point for self-knowledge and perseverance, too.

Going without drink hasn’t been as hard as I feared. But one of the ways we managed it, was by going without some of the social events that we might otherwise have had. We haven’t been proactive about inviting people, or getting ourselves invited. We haven’t suggested pub lunches or chats. This in itself might not be such a bad thing: perhaps it’s OK to give up some of the trivial social encounters for a time, as well? But at any rate, with just over one week of Lent remaining, I’m looking forward to that first glass of wine on Easter Day, and the succession of pub lunches missed during these six weeks.

Startling news from the BBC that living with a man can make women fatter, while living with a woman can make men healthier and leaner. It’s all a question of assimilating your own eating habits and preferences to your partner’s.

I’ve got a vague feeling that I need to find a place for this in my marriage preparation. Or perhaps I don’t need to? Most couples today are living together already when they come to arrange a wedding. And perhaps it’s just my imagination, but yes, I think the brides-to-be really are plumper than they used to be when I started. And there was I, just thinking it was about more plentiful diet generally.

Reading Proust is a lonely occupation. The occasional posts I’ve written about the experience haven’t yielded anything in the way of comments along the lines of, “I found just the same thing”, “My favourite section was such-and-such”, or even, “I tried once but gave up about volume 3 page 350″. Has anyone out there ever read A La Recherche? or tried to?

Some way into Volume 5 (the penultimate volume, in the edition I own - but it’s also probably the shortest, and the last one is much longer), I hit a barren region in which the narrator is expatiating endlessly on his feelings of jealousy about Albertine, whom he claims no longer to love, and is keeping virtually a captive in his home. It kind of reminds you of John Fowles’ The Collector, but without the simple good humour and general sanity of that book.

Was I the only person to find this not so much tedious as sickening?

At the same time, there are occasional laugh-out-loud moments, where I’m never sure whether Proust is intentionally funny, or it’s the desperate laughter of a man gnawing his head off to avoid having to listen to Vogon poetry. It’s times like this that you feel the need to compare notes, or maybe be part of a reading group; though I’m pretty sure that none of our local reading groups has ever tackled Proust either.

So I was particularly pleased to find, following one of the links I’ve already posted, Daniel Epstein’s article in New Criterion, which is largely his own testimony to the experience of reading Proust. I’ve often faced this question about introductions to literature: read them before you read the work itself? afterwards? or not at all? In this case, I might not have found it especially useful before now, but it’s certainly just what I need at present to encourage me and nerve me for the next assault.

When visiting a world and culture as alien as that of A La Recherche, it’s helpful to have a sympathetic guide who can point out and describe some of the things you might want to look out for, and explain some of the things you think - but can’t quite believe - you’ve been noticing.

Interesting article about how Microsoft has become so lumbering, huge, monopolistic and closed, that it is stifling its own innovation, not only that of others:

Windows Is So Slow, but Why? - New York Times

Thanks to John Naughton for the link.

This is the latest topic to come out of the Journalling Jar.

It’s an interesting one, given that I’m reading Proust which is all about memory, and also that I’ve often wondered about my earliest memory and realize that I don’t really have one. Early memories are so influenced by later memories, stories told in the family, photographs you look at down the years, and sheer creative imagination. Some of the things that seem to be very early memories have a kind of blur about them, like the soft focus image of an aging film beauty.

Is early memory influenced by whether or not your childhood was a happy one? Because this is something I’ve also never understood. There was nothing whatsoever about my childhood that could have made it unhappy; but I don’t look back on that time and think of it as happy, either. Some of the work I’ve done with Anamchara suggests I may have absorbed Mum’s depression and negativity during my early years. It was a time when she was having to care not only for a husband working long hours, and a demanding toddler, but also for a difficult elderly father-in-law (in his 60s, forsooth!) who had suffered a stroke and used to smoke in bed, on one occasion setting the blanket on fire in the process. She herself had grown up an orphan: her own father died when she was just 4, and she spent her school years in a children’s home during the week while her mother worked. (Such was the way things happened in the 1920s and 30s.) And suddenly, as a new bride, she found herself looking after three men with hugely different needs and demands on her. I shouldn’t be surprised if she found it depressing.

It’s in this context that my early memories include a domestic scene in which Dad is there, probably on a winter evening between tea and bedtime, and is drawing pictures for me. It’s warm and cosy, perhaps the fire has been lit and I’m in my pyjamas and dressing gown. One of my favourite pictures, often requested, is “Bakerman running”. Somewhere in the same group of memories is a toy car which I earnestly desire, but am told I can’t play with apart from these carefully controlled times, in case it gets broken. I don’t remember this car from later childhood. Was it a relic of Dad’s own youth which didn’t survive much longer? Or was disposed of? Because it was made of lead and not suitable for a small boy who might put it in his mouth? Thus are memories composed of as much speculation as actual recollection.

Mac OS X Tiger on the iMac comes with Photobooth and built-in webcam, which inevitably gets played with when more important things should be done.

Hence this self-portrait (one of the least hideous of the special effects the program is capable of producing) as some kind of Zaphod Beeblebrox:

This is what comes of being called Foureyes throughout school.

I’m going to wake up in the morning feeling well.

But at the moment it’s still a dream and a distant memory, compounded of niggling backache still, and the catarrhal aftermath of the longest-lingering cold I’ve had for years.

With swathes of the families in the congregation missing from the Family Service, because of school holidays, leading the service and speaking felt very exposed. With luck (grace?), it didn’t feel as bad to anyone else as it did to me.