COMING SOON

 

PROLOGUE

Each time I finish blogging a volume of the Lindchester Chronicles, I vow it will be the last.  But here we are again, dear reader, about to set off on a new adventure.  ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit,’ says the proverb writer, ‘so a fool returneth to his folly.’ 

I’ve never had a dog, but I’m guessing most owners haul the dog away and swiftly clear up, (before googling ‘How to get dog vomit smell out of carpet.’) We must not collapse the distinction between vomiting and regurgitation, however.  Regurgitation is a natural and wholesome process in the animal kingdom.  We have much to learn from the ordering of the natural world.  It behoves us to remain humble, and recall that God does not make mistakes.

If we are going to argue from nature, we cannot do better than contemplate emperor penguins.  Everyone loves emperor penguins, with their monogamous heterosexual lifestyle, so unlike those gay zoo penguins that one reads about.  The male emperor penguin incubates the egg, while the female goes off foraging for food.  This may at first sight look like a troublesome example of gender role reversal, but we would do well to remember that if an activity is undertaken by the male of the species, it is de facto more arduous and perilous.  The mother penguin returns from two months at sea with a belly full of fish, which she regurgitates for her newly hatched chick to eat.  Such a normal and beautiful thing!  I imagine mothers reading this find themselves wishing they could do the same for their own children.  Images arise unbidden of foraging through the aisles of Sainsbury’s, cramming their maw with donuts, before returning home to their clamouring brood.

We will leave the antarctic wastes and bring things closer to home by wandering through the fields of Lindfordshire.  What could be more soothing than the pastoral image of Daisy placidly chewing her cud?  As you may recall from school Biology lessons, this is really Daisy regurgitating a bolus of food into her mouth, which she re-chews and re-swallows.  Cows have a quite terrifying number of stomachs and digestive enzymes, the details of which need not detain us here.  To be honest, your author bunked off school on the day of that particular test, to avoid having to learn all that guff. I will skip nimbly from cows to dogs, and conjure a picture of a golden labradoodle (let us call him Bear) retching behind the sofa—and thence to the proverb writer.  ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit.’  Vomiting in dogs is caused by ‘dietary indiscretion’ (in Bear’s case, a rotting badger and two pairs of underpants).  Bad boy!  Leave!  I would argue that a dog returning to its regurgitation is less problematic, as this is probably just hastily gobbled food that never made it as far as the stomach.  Not being picky eaters, dogs are fine with that idea.  Hey, most of it still smells like food, and besides, they haven’t finished with it yet.

              All this is by way of an apologia.  Revisiting Lindchester may look like folly.  I daresay (caveat lector) there will be parts of this narrative that leave you grimacing with disgust.  But I keep going back because there’s stuff there I haven’t finished with yet.  Interestingly, if you read the next proverb in the Bible, it’s this: ‘Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.’  The hope of this fool is that she knows she’s a fool.  She may yet listen, change her mind, and amend her ways.  The man wise in his own conceit is beyond the reach of hope.  Armoured in the tower of his conviction, he will defend to the last any assaults on his rectitude.

 

It is not the business of this narrative to make the reader relive the first quarter of 2021.  Let other pens dwell on Capitol riots, inaugurations, and impeachments.  We will re-join our Lindchester friends on Easter Monday, just as the third lockdown in our Covid winter of discontent draws to a close.  The new paschal candles have been lit.  The endless snowy ghastliness of January, February, and March are behind us now.  We trudged for three months on short rations of hope, with nothing to look forward to.  Or so it felt.  Surely our spirits ought to have risen with every day that passed, every extra minute of daylight, every dose of vaccine administered?  For once, the government’s flightpath out of lockdown is holding firm.  Flightpath is not the right word.  The right word has vanished, like a picture from a wall.  We stare gormlessly at the space where it ought to be.  Oh well.  We’ll have to make do with flightpath, until the correct phrase reappears later on when we no longer need it.  Covid brain fuzz.  It’s as though some well-meaning buffoon has been tidying up our mental desk and misfiling half our vocabulary.

It feels like this whole year hasn’t really happened.  How can we still be here, twelve months on from the first lockdown when it was all Zoom and Zumba, and weirdly exciting?  Surely we drove a stake through the heart of 2020, so it could never come back?  We stood by our windows at midnight on New Year’s Eve as fireworks flickered in the clouds like sheet lightning.  Near and far the red stars, green sprinkles, and white flowers crackled and popped across Lindfordshire, declaring it was finally over.  How can it still be like this?  What if it replays endlessly, and we never move on?  Like that film, Warthog Day.  

But the end of lockdown is in sight now.  In another week, non-essential shops can re-open, and we will be permitted to sit shuddering in pub gardens enjoying a pint with pals we haven’t seen for months.  Many of us have had the first dose of the vaccine.  The worst is over and spring is here.  Look!  Daffodils and primroses.  Listen!  The chiffchaffs are back.  Why so glum?  We need not enquire why the long hair; but why the long face, people of Lindfordshire?  Are we not an Easter people?  Is hallelujah not our song? Hallelujahs famously get cold and broken.  We are hosanna people these days: hosanna, in the sense of ‘save us now!’  Hosanna at 3am when we lurch awake in dread.  Hosanna when we can’t face another day.  Hosanna when we are going under.  Let all our panicked hosannas clatter up to the highest heavens like pigeons, with SOS tied to their tiny pink legs. 

And we will fly too, dear reader, as is our custom.  This time we take things in a more dignified manner, a month at a time.  We will not proceed like a sparrow with a hawk locked on its tail.  Instead we will aspire to the dignified wingbeats of a heron. 

Roadmap!  That’s the word, not flightpath. 

A heron flying over is a fairly common sight in Lindfordshire.  You might even spot one in suburban areas, scouting for a nice peaceful garden pond where it can stand on one leg and think deep thoughts.  Sadly, it will get mobbed by jackdaws, who rouse a rabble of other garden birds in a great cacophony of alarm calls until the poor heron departs for a quieter life on the banks of the Linden.  I believe the jackdaws think that the heron is trying to steal their nesting material.  But frankly, if nesting material is left lying about, all bets are off.  I’m on the heron’s side.  After all, what is the writing life, if it is not long periods of standing on one leg thinking deep thoughts, punctuated by tiresome episodes of mobbing and twittering?

So come, dear reader.  Let us take to the air once more, and fly through these hosanna-riven Lindfordshire skies, towards the village of Turlham.  This is one of the rural hamlets of which Fr Ed is vicar, and where Neil is revamping Turlham Hall boutique hotel, with the help of Freddie Hardman-May.  We will catch up with them in due course.  But first, we will be making some new friends.