Asleep in the Churchyard, part 2.

Notre Dame burns. No one dies. Days later terrorists destroy churches across Sri Lanka killing hundreds of Easter Sunday worshippers. The different reactions to these two events will haunt me. It is true, of course, that churches and Death quietly slip their hands together when no one is watching and that, perhaps, is why I'm reluctant to embrace it. The church that is.

 Meanwhile in the Night Planted Orchard everything is in full cry. The cherries are clusters of white fireworks. The apple-blossom buds are fat pink and white cherubs. The pears are almost done. The quince blossoms are blousy and rival any magnolia. In the extraordinary April heat, the mixture of scents is a joy. Best of all, the fruits on the medlar are already fattening in the sun, reaching for the light like the beaks of birds, or miniature Gaudan pinnacles. There is an argument over who said 'God is in the details', but nature, it seems, can build a cathedral on every branch whenever it feels like it.

Quiz Night

I was dissapointed with the pub. The room was too new. The bedding was crisp and clean. The window opened and closed without the clasp falling apart in my hands. There was a saniflo but it worked and didn't need to be trained not to flush every two minutes. There was no mould on the walls to study. The iron worked and there was no plastic melted to it. All in all pretty dissapointing for 50 quid.  There were even two whole mini-packs of biscuits and - reader - they were in date. There was nothing to complain about and, to be sure, I'm keeping the name of this place to myself.  The beer was good. The steak and ale pie was good. Good times in the Heart of England and Tuesday night, it transpired, was Quiz Night.

That meant that the bar was packed. I ate my dinner off a window sill on a tall stool and even that drew stern stares from people who thought that a lone man taking up a whole windowsill was a bloody liberty. I noticed that a lot of business was being done. People came in for a quick pint which lasted an hour and gave quotes for patios and tractor repairs. The same people discussed local council business and the Easter market, complained about the amateurs selling eggs from bird-tables on the high street and undercutting the shop with their mucky pet hen's doin's. I made a mental note to save change to buy some on the way home. They complained about the new take-away. They clustered and settled how the vote would go for an outsider's planning application. They started to fade away.

Groups began to coalesc out of the throng. Tables of five and six. One family with seven members got into an argument, with Mum refusing to pay extra for the two teenage girls swallowed in their phones.

"Not paying for them, they aren't bothered with quizzes." 

"Well make sure as they keep them phones to their selves."

"What's the jackpot lark, Geoff?"

The landlord smiled. 

"No one's winning that tonight," he said.

 There was a noise. It sounded like the noise special effects guys use when a bad guy gets double-tapped in a movie, if you have the speakers inside your head.

Thwack Thwack.

"Alright. Ooops."

I stopped a vase from rattling on the windowsill next to me. People raised their heads from where they'd tried to hide them inside their shoulders.

"Welcome to the Redacted Arms Quiz Night. Hilary is coming around with the pot, sheets and pens and here's a reminder of the rules as we've got strangers in. Are you playing sunshine? The Question Old-Timers always need a ringer."

Silence. I looked up. Everyone was looking at me.

"Oh, no but thanks for asking. Carry on."

"Oh right well we will carry on then, seeing as how you're alright with it, like."

There was a scurry of laughter.

"Only joking, sunshine. Right. No phones. No rude team names. No cheating on the scoring. Don't wait for breaks to get your beers in. Are we ready?"

"Need a minute."

"Rutland Raiders, need a minute. Shall we give them as has won six times this year already a minute?"

"No!"

"Question One."

 *

It was a serious business. There was a break for more drinks. There was a break for an appeal against one of the questions. Someone left and came back again and Hilary photographed the team's answer sheet, 'just so you aren't tempted to cheat'. Every question in one section brought a groan from one table or another. For example: who was the all-time top scorer for the Redacted Town football team, what local government agency changed its sugar beet regulations in 2018; what was the highest chart position for Peter, Paul and Mary's last UK single? Bowls of chunky chips floated across the room. The till rang. A question about  Gardener's Question Time drew an instant laugh from the whole room for reasons that defeated me. After that the questions became more complicated including a TV film tunes round which involved two notes from each tune. There was more to it than simple questions and answers. It was like a giant, social, boozy crossword puzzle, complete with cryptic clues and tricks to fool the unwary. Finally, with a flourish, came the jackpot question. Five questions actually, one about local history, one about popular culture (post 2010), one about popular culture (pre 1970), one about gardening lore and one about cars. No confering.

"Right, remember we only check the answers if someone think's they've got all five. No takers? Janice. Might have known. Janice love you always say you have and you've only the got the gardening one."

"Hey hold on, I got the one about draining the old duckpond."

"Anyone else thinks one and one is five? No? Good. The jackpot now stands at two hundred and eleven pounds. (Applause)."

I took a last pint to my extra-crispy, un-mouldy room, ate my last biscuit and turned out the light. The sound system shook my bed.

"Right-O, are we all ready for the second half - where's that soft bloke on 'is own gone... to bed has he?'

Asleep in the Old Churchyard

One of the perils of booking a service through third - or possibly fourth and fifth parties - is that the provider of that service has free rein to stuff one royally at the last minute. With Lady Snoutingdingle's long planned weekend away in tatters, we trawled the last-minute sites to find somewhere to stay. In our younger day, we would have piled into the automobile and headed for the hills, going as far as the traffic would let us and then availing ourselves of the services of those nice ladies they used to have in Tourist Offices who knew every B&B for fifty miles and would sort you out in a jiffy. These days, with the Old Hunter unable to 'do stairs' our options are a bit more strictly limited. We found somewhere in the Peak District. A charming chapel conversion.

In a graveyard.

Naturally we assumed that the aforementioned graveyard would be a few old headstones, half hidden in the grass, wobbling distance from a pub. Not so. It was a full-on graveyard in current use, surrounded on all sides by high walls, and a forbidding wrought-iron gate at the boundary. It was well tended, and flowers were struggling out of hibernation in the bushes and on the trees. I couldn't help thinking that the winking eyes of the flowers were, in fact, composed of bits of long-dead persons hauled from their sleepy hollows by unrepentant roots. In the sun, it was beautiful and the chapel was beautifully appointed. In the rain, its charm faded a little. At night, with no external lights, those watchful blooms seemed even more like eyes than before.

The Old Hunter loved it, of course, not least when he returned from some foray with a large peice of bone. I assume that it was not human.

By far the dominant feature of the graveyard was a magnificent Horse Chestnut tree. It filled one corner and coated the floor with both conkers and the old skins of conkers which the Hunter muttered about as they stabbed his paws. She had nine trunks, each too thick to wrap my arms around, and each trunk reached up over a hundred feet, like a great crown festooned with pyramids of flowers. I wondered what kind of soil might breed such a tree, but of course, the graveyard was richly endowed. I looked up at the tree and it looked down at me with a million tiny, blinking eyes. In the way of such co-incidences I have recently become besotted with a traditional song by the Wailin' Jennys whose version* contains the lines:

But were I at rest 'neath yonder tree
Why would you weep, my friends, for me?

When I sleep in the graveyard, I can only dream that some part of me will become something so magnificent whether it be a tree or a song.

*other versions are available.

A Wolf By The Ear

Visiting the battlefield memorials at Manassas, I saw this quotation by Thomas Jefferson.

"But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go"

This is from a time when people were trying to reconcile irreconcilable tensions. Their compromises attempted to maintain an impossible balance which slowly failed. Today is the equinox and like the equinox, the balance of light and dark forces can only be temporary. In the USA, in due course 600,000 people died when that balance collapsed.

Go Slow

A curious, creeping change is coming in America. The first time I noticed it was at breakfast time in my hotel. The coffee was cold. Coffee is a big deal in Breakfast Time America. On a previous trip there was on one occasion no coffee at all and you would have thought someone had died. This time, though, was different. The lady who manages the breakfast-bar came out. She nodded and uh-huhed at the cold coffee situation and then insisted that she'd just changed it. Her colleague came and backed her up. Nevertheless, everyone agreed that the coffee was cold. I was fine, I was drinking the robust version which did seem to be hot and in plentiful supply. The milder version was the problem and then the decaff ran out. The serving lady uh-huhed again and walked away to get more from the kitchen at a speed that I can only describe as reluctant. After a few minutes, more decaff arrived. A little later, the other coffees were replaced. I'd never seen such reluctant service. It reminded me of a tired UK cafe on a bad day in the 70s.

It happened again. I ordered coffee in a museum coffee bar. The server scowled at me strangely but delivered me my coffee, took my money and conspicuously didn't say thank you. As I sat down a couple complained about the coffee refills on the side. The husband only spoke Spanish. The woman spoke good English. The server explained in patronising tones that her coffee was cold because she'd put creamer in last. She should have put creamer in first. She also had a colleague and her colleague also backed her up. For a time. As the lady explained that the second coffee poured using the correct procedure was also cold, the server started on a long explanation about how the coffee pot was fresh. At this point the husband was flipping the serving handle. No coffee was coming out. The second server discovered that she understood Spanish and started to chat with the couple. After a few moments she turned to the first lady, spat 'refill the damned coffee' and stalked away.

The coffee makers of the world have transformed many miserable days for me and so I place them on a special pedestal. It's sad to see service fading in this way. I suspect, but cannot prove, that it's a consequence of the war by the elites on underclasses of all kinds.