When the next big cup game or away trip comes
and there's a bus
and there's beer
and it's
like it should be again
Then
I will try and sing
O BANGOR I
twice as loud as I ever have before
because then
I won't be able to hear
that you are
not belting it out
And maybe somewhere
in the universe
the soundwaves will land
where someone needs them.
My dad wrote once something about a newspaper headline that read something like:
Miracle Baby Saved From Earthquake.
The gist was that this infant had been thought lost in the rubble of a hospital, one amongst thousands of deaths due to this natural disaster. But then, three days later, a dog managed to get beneath the collapsed nursery ward and barked the bark that meant ‘a human is here’, and the rescuers dug and carefully balanced precarious bricks, and pulled out a dusty but otherwise unharmed child.
God be praised, said the baby's mother. This is truly a miracle.
My dad went on to proper interrogate this.
As for me, in my blunderbussing way, I have some questions.
Like:
Where was God when the earthquake was brewing?
Couldn’t He have diverted it toward an uninhabited desert or somewhere else where there were no people?
What was the benefit for anyone for this to happen?
And, quite frankly, why did He let this happen in a country where the poorest people lived, like it always seems to?
I mean, are you omnipotent or not, mate?
Or are you just fucking with us?
Or as I put it:
God can’t, won’t, or isn’t.
Which fits better on a T-shirt.
The longer life goes on, and the more people we lose along the way, and the more confused I am about how people vote the way they do and how they are racist and weird and all of that, then I think I understand religion a bit more.
Without certainties, there is a black hole. Doubt breeds faith, because the ineffable and the aleatory are one and the same. Faith in a higher purpose shifts the responsibility onto a supernatural power, and one which we are not expected to understand.
If everything is part of God’s plan, then we conclude that the plan must be Good. We just need to have faith.
Moreover – and I love this bit – if you question God then he’ll fuck you up, like he did to Job for a bet with the Devil. He’s a proper prick, God. Seriously. A huckster. A self-centered murdering bully-boy arsehole. And the miracle melts away into chance and physics again.
His lad was alright, for a hippy, mostly, except:
Bringing Lazarus back from the dead to make a point when you could have saved him all the hassle is not a miracle, it’s a cunt’s trick. No wonder Lazarus never smiled again til he died again a few decades later. I'd have loved to be there when he caught Jesus up in Heaven again. Imagine that conversation.
Miracle My Arse.
Lola Cat landed awkwardly.
Poor little Lola Cat.
The leg was broken, said the vet.
And that could have been that.
But people rallied round online
Their hearts and wallets open
They crowdfunded a thousand pounds
For her operation.
Little Lola lost her leg.
A tripod, limping cat
She’ll adjust to it, you know,
Assured the relaxed vet.
Nervously the little cat
Came back and slinked and hid
And ate some treats, and had some fuss,
Recovered bit by bit.
Now Lola jumps and bounces round
And explores this and that
And sleeps and purrs and plays
Like any other cat.
There’ll always be the missing leg.
Life throws these things at you.
But Lola’s learned to live again
And one day we can too.
The guitar was instantly familiar although it had two too many strings.
I picked it up and battled with it. It was as much of a piece of shit as the bass version was.
It was £160 and I laughed because back then if you got one for £20 they’d’ve seen you coming.
You had one.
Another neighbour had a Kay for a bit, which I bought.
Then I had one.
I used to use the wall cavity as a kind of amplifier, but only for certain notes.
Not all of them would resonate. I learned why, much later.
Nonchalantly (I thought) I threw it on the bed one day – quite gently really – and the neck hit the wall, and split in half.
So now I had half a Kay Bass.
The neighbour then swapped his microphone for an airgun,
so that was the end of that band.
I might buy a Kay if I see one for maybe £50 or something.
Playing – fighting - that six-stringed guitar really did feel like coming home.
Like if it was pissing it down all the way and there was no telly cos there’d been a power cut and all you could do was to – quite gently – rest the headstock against the cavity wall and inexpertly try and play Police Truck by the Dead Kennedys.
I have been
shouting at bluebottles
(I was going to try and write more, but this pretty much sums it all up)
