Saints Days

Our first year ever in Gozo co-incided with the feast of St Peter and St Paul, the patronal festival of the village we were staying in, Nadur. Festa time.

I recall everyone getting very excited because a relic of St Paul's wrist bone had been loaned by a Maltese mainland church and was being paraded around along with some alabaster saints. I apologise if I run out of catholic language high-church chums; I've never been fluent.

This particular day also happened to be the semi-final of Euro 2000 and Italy, I think, were playing. The game went to extra time and then penalties.

There was one bar in Nadur showing the footie. In the square there were brass bands and elsewhere fireworks.

Excitement reached a fever pitch and so the procession did what all sensible processions should do in such cucumstances. They dropped the saints, the relics and the brass instruments in the street and crowded round the bar window to watch the footie. T-shirts and robes mixed.

Gozitans cheer for:

1. England
2. Italy
3. France
...

N. Malta.

Italy won, setting up a final against France.

The drunkest man I have ever seen went back to his taxi as he had a fare.

The procession continued.

It was a wonderful night. But not as good as the final. We got there early to get a seat in the bar and found that, due to the cheapness of Cisk, the local ale, for the only time in my life I was able to buy a round for the whole pub.

Introversion

There is lovely post here about what it is like being an introvert. It is very accurate as far as I am concerned.

Too Posh To...

I have become more content over the years with my middle-classiness. I embrace minimalism. I understand there is such a thing as poor wine. Chatting over dinner is a good thing. Armed only with a courgette and a sensible store-cupboard I can feed people. I am beginning to see the possibilities of tofu. It's sandals or socks but not both.

Yet for all my fifty-six years up to this point I have never, not even once, slept a night in a caravan. Today, barring accidents, that virginity is to be popped. It will be a static one with quite a few modern conveniences but it will be a caravan.

So ashamed. I'm going to end up in Iceland I can feel it. No, not the one with volcanoes; the one with freezers full of chicken nuggets.

Pray for me brothers and sisters. I need to be able to look Radio 4 in the face on Monday.

Learning Difficulties and the Minimum Wage

I have written here about Paul. My experience of working with Paul informs my understanding of the current debate about whether reducing the minimum wage would make it easier for people with difficulties to get on the bottom rung of the earnings' ladder.

It is a fascinating discussion. On the one hand the current legislation defines our desire as a society not to take advantage of people and to make sure that all employees are treated with dignity. On the other, the gap between the minimum wage and benefits for, especially, single people, does seem to reduce the number of low paid jobs available.

Paul was a guy who had severe difficulties and could only handle thinking about very low sums of money. The pocket money we gave him to hoover the church provided him with a small amount to handle and budget each week. All his other needs were looked after.

I think it is this last sentence that is important. If an employer is willing to take the risk, and invest the time, in a person of limited ability, where all that person's other reasonable needs are taken care of, why not allow an exception?

Because it would be exploited? Maybe. Does that make it wrong?

This issue is not as black and white as some are making it sound.

Tips for coping with life No 5892

It's always lovely to get thank-you cards. It helps you feel you did a worthwhile job. I was therefore delighted to find a thank-you card in my office pigeon hole today. It said:

Dear Steve,

Would it be at all possible for you to visit (name) at the BRI when you have a moment ... Thank you so much.

How can I refuse? So I learn yet another tip. Thank people for things they haven't done yet, in anticipation.

Sink or Swim

A note to explain the two images on the side bar. Newspapers are full of health scares and warnings which, as recently exposed by the Guardian's Bad Science column writer Ben Goldeacre, are usually based on flimsy evidence.

I have decided to update, as a service to readers, what things we should currently be avoiding or imbibing.

Holiday Reading

I was pretty tired when I went on holiday this year so the reading recommendation list has slightly more lowbrow on it than usual. That said there are a few books I'd be happy to endorse and lend if required. The scoring system is nothing to do with literary quality but merely an assessment of how much I enjoyed each book.

John Grisham
The Appeal
A small town firm of lawyers takes on a multi-national to claim compensation for victims of a pollution scandal. When they win, big business fights back in the only way it can - by trying to buy the result of the appeal. Well plotted and good page-turner. May well have some basis in truth.
(6/10)

James Lee Burke
Pegasus Descending
A well written piece of southern states crime fiction. Nicely drawn characters.
(7/10)

Douglas Coupland
All Familes are Psychotic
All Coupland's families are anyway. A bunch of crazies convene to watch the only sane member of the family take off on the Space Shuttle. Three books in a row based in the southern states but the only one in which people actually get thrown into the swamp.
(6/10)

David Nicholls
One Day
Incredibly moving. There was a lot of fuss about this book when it came out and I now see why. The narrative device is to visit two people, who meet at university, on the same day every year from then on. If you've lived in the UK for the last twenty two years it's your history too. Well observed and beautifully written.
(9/10)

Caryl Phillips
The Nature of Blood
Overlapping tales from down the ages about blood links, racism and human spirit. Central story is based on a holocaust survivor. Glad I read it but tough stuff.
(7/10)

R.J.Ellory
A Simple Act of Violence
Ellory came to fame when Richard and Judy promoted A Quiet Belief in Angels on their Book Club. This is a crime novel about a murder which reverses the usual format. This looks like the work of a serial killer but investigation casts doubt on the theory and points to an even more sinister truth. I was greatly entertained.
(7/10)

David Mitchell
Ghostwritten
Mitchell's intellect, imagination and span are enormous. Just stops short of showing off in the way that, for instance, Umberto Eco or Thomas Pynchon often don't. These nine overlapping tales will have you picking back through to make sure you picked up all the links. Reminded me a bit of the film Babel and the style is like Peter Carey at his best.
(8/10)

John Grisham
Theodore Boone
Picked this up in a small bookshop when I was without reading matter. It is in an adult book cover but is, in style, a book for teenagers about a 13 year old who wants to be a lawyer. Fun little tale to give to the twelve year old in your family for Christmas.
(5/10)

Jonathan Coe
The Rain Before it Falls
Coe is a lovely writer and here he seems to try to mimic a female style (Mrs WWA thought so too). A study of melancholy over several generations using the device (a little over-used these days?) of something found left behind after a death.
(6/10)

I resolve once again to try and read more female writers over the coming year. Any recommendations?

Thought for the Day

You can still write inappropriate and politically incorrect jokes for a living but you cannot tell them. You need to put them on the lips of an unsavoury character in a work of fiction.

How To Manage a Mid-life Crisis

Another piece written for a magazine that never stumped up. I wrote in 2003 and was talking about a time some five years earlier. How things have changed.

Saturday morning. Content in my work, settled in my family life and fulfilled in my spare-time activity. I was drinking a coffee and listening to a new CD (Gomez, I recall). I was reading the paper. I had adopted my, ‘I’m comfortable with the world’ position, a rather curious combination of bum on chair and legs dangling over arm; the arm of the chair right, where did you get that imagination? It’s going to get you into trouble?

Strangely somehow, the thought wormed it’s way into my head, that I wasn’t happy. Next second it all went non-specific, autumn fruit-shaped.

Happened to you? ‘Not me,’ you strut. Can you strut verbally? No matter. You did. Some people stay content and focused all the way through to old-age without ever having personal doubts. Others die before they get to mid-life. Although if you are dead it’s scaring me to think of you reading this.

Average mid-life is thirty-nine, according to actuarial tables. I’ve heard of actuarial tables. A worrying sign of maturity don’t you think? It is, of course, ‘average’, in the same way as someone with their feet in the fridge and their head in the cooker on gas mark six is comfortable on average. Death can happen anytime.

I was drifting complacently through my forties when my self-worth went walkabout. What was going on? I grasped for ‘Sometimes I feel So Uninspired’ off the Traffic live album. That never usually failed. But no joy. It was all going so well. These things happen to other people. Why me? Why now?

The cause? Well I’d done the same job for sixteen years and wanted a change. The woman I fell in love with had her own full-time job and we saw each other less. I’d mismanaged money all my life but now it bugged me. My piano needed tuning. I was out of touch with young people although I’d been a youth worker once. I was unfit. I felt mortal; I never used to. I still wanted to achieve something. I’d supported West Bromwich Albion for thirty one years. My Dad had died. You get the message. My life wasn’t in a dreadful mess but somehow one of those things tipped it.

Some insignificant detail to the outside observer loitered on the street corner waiting for a life to mug. One straw; one snapped camel. All the values, hopes and aspirations that sustained me through my early life seemed irrelevant. One day I knew who I was, the next I didn’t. I used to have goals but they had either been achieved (hooray, well done) or begun to seem out of reach. Who wanted to score a winner at Wembley or play keyboards for Sting anyway?

What did I do about it? Well panic, frankly. I do a lovely line in panic. My God it’s all gone wrong, I’ve wasted my life, I’m a loser, pass the scotch. Well a small one wasn’t a bad idea but as rational thought was the best bet I didn’t choose to base any major life changes on the solutions arrived at whilst in its company.

Then I did some thinking. I’m good at ideas and details but rubbish at strategy and long-term goal-setting. Shopping for supper is about as long-term as I get.

Where to think? Up a mountain? I was scared of heights. In the company of men down the gym? I didn’t belong to a gym. Formal arrangements? Join a supportive group? Sounded a bit AA. Long car journey? An undisturbed retreat house? These last two were nearer the mark for me.

But eventually I chose my own house, during a day off work, when everyone else was out. Not that you care but there are two teenagers who share our place too. Used to be cuddly; now they’re blokes. I chose to think about the problem in the same place as I had been when I came across it. I re-draped my legs across the arm of the chair and put the Gomez CD back on.

I tried to write down, how I was really feeling. Yuk. Feelings. Horrid things. What were my emotions? What were the issues, problems, circumstances that prompted the crisis? Hey, crisis. Perhaps this is one of those mid-life crises everyone talks about. That realisation helped, in a perverse sort of way, like the chronically sick being told the name of their inoperable cancer. Bad image. Sorry.

I got those feelings bagged though. Pulled the critters out into the open and let them see daylight. I realised that despite family and home happiness I was fundamentally down. Unmotivated. Wandering lonely in a crowd.

To get deeper into the subject, I listed things that were my hopes, goals and ambitions twenty years ago. They were almost all material – house, car, holiday sort of things. I owned lots of stuff now. Not wealthy, but I didn’t have dysentery and I wasn’t covered in flies. Shouldn’t I have been more grateful?

And successes? There was that solitary football trophy. I had one other medal, for being a runner-up in the 1979 Birmingham Insurance Institute Quiz Final. Sad or what? I reckoned I was an OK father and a decent husband. I had a few bits of published writing, one of which won a competition.

I also wanted to think through the things that were really important to me, avoiding the material world. My car might have been essential but its importance would fade and eventually my only thoughts about it would be to do with replacement. I listed important relationships, places of worth or belonging, situations in which I was valued for myself (some) rather than my appearance (hardly any) or possessions (that drumstick from the 1974 Uriah Heap tour was still precious though).

Finally, I listed things I still wanted to achieve. Not just work-related matters. In fact for me it was fast becoming apparent that work was the problem and that a complete change of direction, nagging away in the back of my mind for some time, had now taken over and would be the only way to recapture motivation.

At an early stage I told someone about it. I chose someone who normally encouraged me. Some of my friends are draining and would have responded to my depression with several reasons they had to be more depressed. That wouldn’t have helped.

I also avoided talking to a particular mate who had already had a major change of career and coped admirably. I guessed he would make matters seem more straightforward than they were. This was my problem and to deal with it I needed empathy, not inferiority. With some friends, a problem shared is a problem doubled.

I told my partner. I didn’t think she was the right person to talk things through with but I didn’t keep her in the dark. Avoiding the truth with a partner provides soap operas with many a storyline but totally stuffs up real life. Why wasn’t she the right person? Simply because she knew me so well she would have been too involved in the consequences. I needed to establish my desired outcomes before seeing how they worked in with hers.

It was time to deal with my list. This sounds like I was systematic. No way. Many of these things happened at the same time, on top of each other, sometimes all fighting for attention, on other occasions leaving my mind with its usual ‘vacant’ sign up.

What about those feelings? In isolation they were poor indicators of what to do. Taken together with a sober assessment of the facts they were helpful. I am the sort of person who begins sentences with ‘I think’ rather than ‘I feel’. I made a few statements using my less preferred way of beginning. I also tried to imagine how my friends and family would feel about this. It’s a bit management-speak, but they were all stakeholders in my process of change.

I had a list of old ambitions. Some achieved, some now impossible. What remained? Mainly things I no longer wanted to do. So I had moved on.

I looked at my list of values. I also tried to add some strengths. I make a nice cup of tea but since I had no desire to work in a café this was without merit. But I could write. I was reasonably articulate. I could organise a project. I could get the best out of creative people. Those things would come in handy.

In their book Play To Your Strengths (Piatkus 1992) Donald Clifton and Paula Nelson define a strength as, ‘...an inner ability, something that can be displayed in a performance, versus a material possession or a title.’ The thesis of their book is that if you focus on what you do best success will follow. It can read as a weensy bit patronising but the exercises are helpful. I guess some people are rubbish at everything but I’ve met very few of them.

I now had an idea of how I was feeling and thinking, a diary of achievements er, achieved and a very small list of what I stood for and was good at. I dreamt on. Remember, ‘To daydream properly takes immeasurable amounts of imaginary time’ (It’s on a Dan Reed album although he might have been quoting someone else and I don’t do research).

I looked at the list. I marked each idea for achievability, time required, financial commitment and realism.

Edwin Bliss wrote a couple of natty little paperbacks called Doing It Now and Getting Things Done. They’re time management books. In the latter (Warner books 1991) he talked about velleity. This means, ‘...wanting something but not wanting it badly enough to pay the price for it.’ Everything I listed as a new ambition needed to be something I both wanted and could see myself making the effort to get/do.

I could see myself training others because I like helping people do things better. I liked it more than I liked doing things myself. I had an internal value that made achieving the goal possible. I did not have the will to become a gardener. I like finished gardens but couldn’t ever see myself investing the necessary time. It was a wild-life park behind my house and I wouldn’t change it.

What was my new ambition? Several categories:

To have a career change. I needed to go talk to a specialist (that would be a careers advisor then).

To go self-employed as a writer and trainer. The Bank Manager might want a say. (My bank manager was called Tracy; does anyone else find that threatening?)

To make the most of time with my partner. We needed to work out how to use our diminishing time. Talk about how to make each other happier.

The West Bromwich Albion defence were beyond the scope of mortals and, recalling one of my previous occupations, I prayed. Sadly, by the time you read this, the answer to the prayer will be all too apparent.

If you do a similar exercise, be realistic. If you really would like to climb mountains put, ‘Join climbing class’ on your list and work it from there. No-one should take up climbing on the Matterhorn. I went to some evening classes on writing skills.

Failure has been described as the back door to success. Someone else said there are no problems in this life, only opportunities. If a mid-life crisis is keeping you company right now please welcome it as an opportunity to do something new and successful. Take time to think it through. Get in touch with your feelings. Make a list of your old and new ambitions. Add a touch of your own strengths and values and shake the whole thing down until you really know who you are and what you want. And then do it. Oh yes, that’s the hard part, but it is fun.

Steve Tilley is a former insurance clerk who became a clergyman who turned into a trainer and a manager, back into a minister and now spends at least part of his week writing for a living.

Barbecues - a rant

I wrote this a few years back for a men's magazine which went bust before I got published, or paid. I have refined my views since but I like the pace and the anger.

It’s the first warm weekend of the summer; a Bank Holiday maybe. Tribes of intelligent humans head to the park, where the Council, provide at divers places, small barbecues, the general public for the use of; shrines to listeria and botulism.

Apparently, one of the causes of the rapid increase in human intelligence was when our ancestors started cooking food.

Intelligent? Pah! These barbecues are concreted in; that’s right, they’re not portable. Well that doesn’t stop Mr and Mrs evolved intellect trying to nick them does it? Why? They’re in a beautiful spot already. Now some are missing and others are bent. Nobody leaves them clean.

Intelligent? My arse! Every sunny afternoon, almost without exception an argument of the, ‘You’re parked too near my barbie’, or ‘Your kids are kicking footballs into my burger’, type will break out. I’ve seen fists. No joke. Fists.

Intelligent? Oh please. These people arrive with packets of economy beef burgers. Bull seepage mangled, diluted, added to onion and served in a crusty bap. The difference between these and a cow-pat is hard to call.

Intelligent? It’s a culture desert. No-one listens to Radio 4. The left-open car doors release the strangled anti-crooning of boy or girl-band. Radio 1 eats out.

You’ve probably gathered that I am a snob; a popular culture terrorist. My barbecue consists of an oil-drum, divided down the middle and welded back together the wrong way round. This is serious cooking kit. A man can take on the world with a welded-together oil drum. I do fish. And I make my own barbecue sauce (the three reddest things in the cupboard added to a tin of chopped tomatoes and some onions – always interesting). And we have salad. We’re going to live longer than you; yes we are. I do however draw the line at tofu; or is that line the drawers with it? Never could remember.

Barbecues spoil the neighbours washing, cause the house to smell of charcoal if you leave the window open and are the one thing guaranteed to persuade the most culinarily inept male to don an apron. They are the extension of the rule that most fun things become more fun if you do them outdoors. Divisive? But of course. I have no idea whether I love ‘em or loathe ‘em. All I know is that I do ‘em. The only barbecue in the world worth being at is your own. Everybody else’s suck.

A Million Small Glances and Light Touches - A Very Short Story

Just occasionally you catch someone’s eye in the street and you don’t both look away.

Keith was standing just to the edge of the crowd in the boutique. Samantha was browsing and he had left her to it. His mind wandered. He felt her reassuring touch and squeezed her hand, not looking or really paying attention. Then he saw her.

Samantha was making her way across the store intently grasping a pair of faded blue jeans and asking an assistant for directions to the changing rooms. So he was standing there holding the hand of a stranger.

The passing stranger in the street presents so little time to make a verdict. Dress sense, personal hygiene, a smile and deportment are all you get. And yet. And yet. How often, within those mini-encounters, do those of us happily linked to permanent partners take a moment to sketch out an alternative life?

Keith hasn’t let go quickly enough. He feels his hand becoming sweaty but the person it is linked to is still a mystery to him. How on earth can he make eye contact? Should he indeed. Well should he? And if he doesn't, how can he escape?

Jann - A Short Story Part 10 (the last)

Rick turned out to be a real gentleman. He took the rap. It was his idea, he said, his scheme. He merely enlisted Jann’s help to hand over the documents. She didn’t know they were falsified. She thought Rick had been chivalrous in hiring expensive jewellery for her to wear. He lied through his teeth to protect his partner. Jann knew she’d been stupid but also knew she’d been loved.

The jury were split. They agreed on Rick’s guilt but not even a majority could convict Jann. She got away with it.

Rick went down for nine months. Jann agreed to leave her job with a good reference. When Rick gets out of Winson Green prison next week she will be in the car waiting for him. She still doesn’t know what she will say yet. He’s been faithful to her but he’s a crook. She can’t yet bring herself to admit that she is too.

(Started on a train to London in about 1998 and finished recently. For Jann, who asked me to use her name in a story)

Jann - A Short Story Part 9

The cheque arrived, eventually. Rick and Jann were married. They had a nice honeymoon, upgraded their car, treated the kids and extended their wardrobes. They settled down. They probably both intended their life of crime was over. If they now left it behind them they were unlikely to ever be traced.

Was it greed? Was it a desire for a thrill? Was it the little kicks from the against-all-odds pregnancy threatening their finances. Nobody knows, but they decided to go again. Same stunt, different places, new rented property, false name.

The discovery of their fraud was as fortuitous as Jann and Rick’s meeting. In a small hotel many miles from their home a relationship, no, an affair, had begun. Sue and Tommy, clerks who worked in insurance call-centres, bored with their own lives, booked a hotel room for a long lunch hour. Over a post-adventure cigarette they chatted about their work and came up with the coincidence that a current claim for jewellery theft Sue was handling looked remarkably like another one Tommy had dealt with a few months earlier. Back in the office Sue brought the record up on her database and made a call to Tommy. She pulled on the thread and all Jann and Rick’s trails unravelled.

Jann - A Short Story Part 8

They had it photographed professionally. Then they returned it.

Two weeks later they took out an insurance extension for the new inheritance (from a loving aunt). They used Rick’s name. They evidenced the policy with the photos and the valuation - £30,000.

Whilst their love grew and the minor frauds kept the extra money trickling in they did nothing. In fact they waited patiently until the second year of the insurance and then reported a burglary to the police. They broke a bedroom window, from the outside, and ransacked Rick’s bedroom. Although he and Jann lived together by then he had retained his own rented property. Arriving home later Rick phoned the police at once and then phoned Jann and told her what had happened. She feigned surprise excellently and even told her kids for the first time.

‘It’s terrible,’ Rick explained to the police and later the loss adjuster, ‘It’s so unusual for me to be out these days but we were celebrating our engagement. What a thing to come back to.’

Jann - A Short Story Part 7

It was a few weeks later that he raised the matter again. If many little scams had succeeded why not one big one? Rick sketched out his plan. Because Jann trusted him she perhaps looked a little less carefully at the details than she might otherwise have. Whilst staring into his eyes she was poor at listening. Still, the plan seemed pretty good. It never crossed her mind to be suspicious that this lovely, trusting romantic had been spending so much time working out a major fraud. After all she was also a loving, trusting romantic and she had been on the fiddle – just a little but a little fiddle is still illegal.

It worked like this. For special occasions certain jewellers would hire out expensive diamond necklaces against a large deposit. Rick dreamed up a special occasion and took Jann to hire the piece. It was beautiful and she dreamed of wearing it round her neck. But this function was non-existent. Instead of a weekend at a house party they drove as far away from home as they could and in another city arranged for the necklace to be valued by a small jeweller.

Jann - A Short Story Part 6

Last year Jann met Rick. Their friendship blossomed over their mutual interest in a Latin-American dancing class once a week. To a drink after Wednesday’s class was added a meal on Saturday nights, then the cinema on Mondays and by October Jann’s double bed occasionally had two occupants again.

As lust turned to love Jann became increasingly comfortable with Rick. She was perhaps aware that a distinct lack of trust had caused the break-down of her marriage and a couple of other relationships. Rick was different. Not pushy. Definitely a romantic at heart. She sometimes found flowers waiting for her when she got home from work. She was whisked away for weekends in the countryside – discovering at the last minute that the children’s weekends had also been taken care of with visits to school friends. Since the kids liked Rick that meant the world to Jann and, on one weekend away after a few glasses of wine, she trusted Rick with the details of the fraud she had been running.

Jann - A Short Story Part 5

Over the next few years she made several similarly bogus claims. Not being greedy she restricted her fraud to amounts of money she knew would remain uninvestigated. Most villains get cocky. Not Jann. She exploited all her near neighbours, although of course she intercepted the correspondence so none of them ever knew how much money they were making. She never used the same insurance company twice. Reaching the end of her list of neighbours she began to use addresses beyond the last house in various streets. And she misspelled the name ever so slightly each time. Companies using postcode-linked computer packages would simply assume a building programme. It was to Jann’s advantage that centralised insurance offices, based around call-centres, were many miles from her town. It would have been very unlikely for someone from the company to live in her town.

Jann - A Short Story Part 4

At the same time she informed her bank that she might be using her maiden name from time to time now her marriage was well behind her. The cheque arrived three days later. She took it to the bank and paid it in. The next day she destroyed all references and files for the policy held at the office. Premium two hundred and fifty pounds. Claim seven hundred and fifty pounds. Profit five hundred pounds. Holiday beckoned. All she had to do was look out for the renewal notice and cancel the policy on the grounds of a cheaper quote being obtained elsewhere. As the senior member of the office staff she knew her junior colleagues would ask her if they came upon any paperwork.

Jann - A Short Story Part 3

Eventually she knew that the only way to find out if it was flawless was to try it. She wasn’t a gambling woman; she genuinely couldn’t see the risk.

On a boring March morning, whilst drinking her second cup of coffee, she processed a new household contents proposal. It was just like any other household contents proposal except she had filled it out herself the night before. She included an ‘all-risks’ extension for a few items of mid-priced jewellery – one to five hundred pounds, used her maiden name and her next door neighbour’s address. She knew her neighbours’ insurers and so avoided them. And she processed it. Her cash became her company’s cheque.

Untraceable back to her. A fictitious policy for a fictitious person’s property. She ignored it for six months and then phoned through a claim; seven hundred and fifty pounds for two rings.

Jann - A Short Story Part 2

It is a nine-to-five job that Jann usually does from eight-thirty to six. She word-processes. She accounts. She premiums and she claims. Once upon a time she would have been called a clerk. Now all the staff are encouraged to call themselves Insurance Brokers. Jann has a piece of paper which she sweated for in her late twenties whilst raising the kids and coping with her ex-husband’s increasingly demanding drinks’ budget. It says ‘Jann Appleby ACII – Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute’ and of it she is rightly proud. She is a proper Insurance Broker.

Jann can’t tell you when she first had the idea for the scam but the trouble is that she had it. She had it and it was deliciously, delightfully devious. Better; it was undetectable. Had her idea involved some element of risk she would have left it alone. It didn’t, so she didn’t. She tried to leave it, but in the early hours of a summer morning, sleep over for the night, she would play around with the idea, looking at it from every angle, creeping up on it and trying to surprise it, but it remained obstinately central to her thinking. No matter how hard she prodded and poked this idea it still retained its shape. It worked.

Jann - A Short Story Part 1

The following short story has never seen the light of day before. It will appear in ten short parts over the next ten days.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury please retire to consider your verdict.

And listeners, for you to ponder, if the hero of the story is a villain and the villain gets caught is it a happy ending?

Jann isn’t much of a villain really. Single Mum. Forty – ish. Good mother. Good neighbour. Kind to animals. All her life she’s been honest, ever since her own Mum caught her stealing biscuits from her Gran’s pantry. She could still remember the telling off.

But honesty is relative. Jann isn’t honest as the day is long but certainly her morals reach the mid-afternoon. She has standards - take a pen or two from the office but hand a wallet in to the police if found in the street.

Jann works at the insurance brokers on the High Street. ‘Dobbin and Ferse’ they’re called although David Ferse has long since departed and even his son has retired. Somehow ‘Dobbins’ doesn’t have the businesslike dignity the retention of Mr Ferse’s name suggests.

Dylan Moran

Those who expected the surprisingly articulate wordplay of an unhealthy drunken Irishman were not disappointed.

From the gods at Bristol Hippodrome Moran's stage presence last night was still remarkable. When he pauses to cough or drink (red wine) it's really for his benefit, not comic effect. 'I eat chocolate on stage because I can't smoke. I keep eating it, telling myself if I go on long enough I'll reach the good chocolate.'

At this rate I'd give him ten years.

Moran is a genuine wordsmith. His observational comedy reached for metaphors no-one else on the current circuit could possibly invent. He describes a restaurant meal as 'like onions fighting on a plate' and a particular snoring noise as 'like two rhinoceroses f***ing in a large bowl of crisps.'

He rambles, but tells a story of life in 2011 from the point of view of a someone who observes from outside and sounds a little lost. He chronicles the battle between his unreconstructed self and the way he is required to conform. His dinner party food would be 'nice.' 'What is the point of starters? I'd put chocolate bars inside a chicken.'

Many of us wondered how close to the truth the comic character he played in Black Books, Bernard Black, was. It's getting closer by the day.

RIP Gil Scott-Heron

I can't get the embed code to work but do take the time to click on this link to a live version of my favourite song by this wonderful artist.

http://youtu.be/0SPj8PRf9Zw

Mick's Metaphor of the Week

'You're so far up his arse you can't see the wood for the trees.'
(The Apprentice)

Luke 17:1-10

Our leadership team have been reading through Luke's Gospel in our meetings for the last year or so. I'm fascinated that some of my colleagues can't wait to get on to something else - as if a thing became boring merely by doing it slowly. I am loving our slow trawl; making connections I wouldn't otherwise make and being able to dig a bit deeper at times.

Yesterday, after spending several weeks looking at Luke's stories and teachings about wealth in 14-16, we came to chapter 17.

Now at first glance this is a ragbag of sayings and teachings of Jesus which Luke has arranged and positioned for a particular purpose. The difficulty is assessing the purpose. I'm not going to say anything about that, firstly because I'm not sure I know and secondly because it looks as if the teaching which follows will be doing that more than the teaching which has gone before. In other words it introduces a new section.

Let's remind ourselves of the passage:

Jesus said to his disciples: 'Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around your neck than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. So watch yourselves.

'If a brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying "I repent," you must forgive them.'

The apostles said to the Lord, 'Increase our faith!'

He replied, 'If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, "Be uprooted and planted in the sea," and it will obey you.

'Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, "Come along now and sit down to eat"? Won’t he rather say, "Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink"?

'Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, "We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty."’

Geza Vermes, in his little book The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, takes all the things that Jesus said and separates them into that which is clearly the authentic teaching of an itinerant, first-century rabbi and that which may have been (may have, not has) added to by an editor or invented for the benefit of a current situation. One of the things he says is this:

Compared with the solemn tone of the Gospel, the use of the millstone imagery in rabbinic literature is humorous ... If Jesus ever said anything humorous, the evangelists and the early church saw to it that no trace of wittiness would survive.

So our passage has four ideas:

If you cause someone young in the faith to falter you may as well commit suicide by drowning.

If your annoying brother keeps getting things wrong keep on forgiving him over and over and over.

If you have a little faith you can get a tree to grow in the sea (it will mark your grave?).

No way should you be kind to servants.

Can you not see that a good stand-up could mine these four ideas for comedy gold? Once upon a day these sayings were a little light relief in Jesus' various heavy teachings. Put together and without the comic timing they turn into an evangelical sermon:

• Cause no offence
• Take no offence
• Be simple and earnest in faith
• Remember you are a servant

I think I prefer my Jesus to be a rabbi with a twinkle in his eye.