Fatcow
| LITTLE BOY PETERHaving spent a couple of blogs contemplating my early conversion to a perverse religious faith I thought I'd pause a moment and look at some of the consequences of that Damascene journey.There I was, a quivering little urchin with droopy shorts and a running nose, sitting at my desk facing hatchet-face and her billowing skirts and praying that the bell for play time wouldn't be too far off.I should imagine (though, spookily, I can't remember this) that my mother who had been fairly recently widowed would be weeping and gnashing her teeth and falling to pieces at home.Then I would have considered my brother, still barely old enough to think, being all of eighteen months younger than me, who would be doing something or other playful whilst I've got to be facing hatchet-face who had then power of life and death over us schoolchildren.And that power was awesome.There was also the possibility that one or other of us would do something sinful that would incur her wrath, and then the decibels would be unleashed.She would make it quite plain in multi-syllabic contempt, that the miscreant was set fair for hellfire and damnation.And if that wasn't enough she had a little stick with which she could beat us.Now I was only five and I'm sure she never touched any one of us with that stick, but she did show it to us from time to time.She did demonstrate the swishing noise it made as it flew through the air.She did make it thwack with painful certainty onto a pile of books which, she probably said, represented the human bottom.Yes, she had considerable power, all right, and if that wasn't enough to make us quake in our shoes there was the greater power of the Headmistress who was in constant conversation with God, being one of that Deity's best friends.What power hatchet-face didn't possess that headmistress did have, in spades.It was like a pyramid of power with us at the bottom.And being at the bottom we were urchins, unworthy of life, unworthy of love, unworthy of anything nice.Yet we could be saved, and for that reason she told us about the Holy Bible and all the wonderful things written in it.She would even hush her tones as she described such wonders as a six hundred year old Noah hacking away at timbers and building a boat fit for elephants to ride in.Six hundred years, she would say, and we blessed with a mere three-score-and-ten if we were lucky.Three score and ten, she would point out, was a lot less than six hundred, so Noah must have been a very good man indeed to be blessed with so long a life, and active still, capable of sawing planks and making arks.I suppose it was during moments when she imparted such information that she let it drop that she herself had already exceeded the famed three-score-and-ten by quite a margin as a consequence of being practically perfect.And the proof was at hand: it was obvious to all of us as we quaked in our seats that she was at least a hundred, and probably nearer a hundred and fifty.All this possibly reminded me that my dad had been quite young when he passed away, certainly on a voyage to Heaven, where he would be found by me in the future sitting on the right hand of the old man with the grey beard who'd made everything. |
| And the proof was at hand: it was obvious to all of us as we quaked in our seats that she was at least a hundred, and probably nearer a hundred and fifty.All this possibly reminded me that my dad had been quite young when he passed away, certainly on a voyage to Heaven, where he would be found by me in the future sitting on the right hand of the old man with the grey beard who'd made everything.Yet my dad, I thought, must have been particularly sinful if he died so young, for longer life is a gift from above as a reward for being good and kind and honourable and all things like that.He'd been in his forties, and must have sinned.My mum told me he died because he smoked too much, so I concluded that smoking was, therefore, a sin and best avoided.But back to my early life.On Sundays hatchet-face could be seen on her way to church.My mother took me and my brother to church because the indoctrination offered at school, with morning assemblies in which we sung hymns and listened to the Headmistress's ageless wisdom first thing every day, and daily religious instruction lessons, clearly wasn't enough to save my feeble soul from the fires of hell awaiting me down somewhere or other where I'd be best not going.Hatchet-face went there, all right, in her best billowing skirts and smelling more like roses than ever.She went with a man, no doubt a personal servant because teachers didn't have ordinary lives she'd suggested as much more than once and no doubt needed a servant to attend to their more esoteric requirements.After Sunday lunch (roast something or other, with mint sauce and Yorkshire puddings and a great deal of cabbage) it was time for Sunday School.We didn't have to make the big climb back up the hill to Church.Instead, in a moment of uncharacteristic generosity, my mother sent us to the local Baptist Church where our indoctrination would have a different hue to it.It involved a great deal of singing, and a man who stood at the front in plain clothes and told us to "make a joyful noise" unto the Lord.I made a joyful noise, all right.To misquote the comedy of Eric Morecambe, I usually contrived to sing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, and at a huge volume.This was a welcome release from hatchet face as well as from that morning's Church and I took full advantage of it.It was there that I taught the rest of the world that it might be best for humanity to avoid my singing.Welcome release it may have been, but it was all part of the indoctrination, though I didn't see it as that at the time.It was all part of the necessary path that would lead, in the fullness of time, to a place either up there or down below, and down below was best avoided.The thing is, the events described here are in the region of sixty years old, yet I was led to believe that there was a place for the virtuous to meet and greet each other, and there was another place filled with rogues and vagabonds who were crying for mercy and the soothing of their endless pain for all of eternity.This was told me by good men and women (the owning of a hatchet face was never a crime, and the billowing skirts almost negated the worst impression that those features impressed on me, anyway).I was a grubby (possibly, though I did have to bathe once a week) little tyke, and who was I to call the platitudes and words of apparent wisdom anything but true and honest accounts of reality?After all, they were being poured over me day in, day out, by those whose elevation I would never reach.I was firmly down there and they, God bless them, were on a higher plane.You see, the reality of it all was quite clear and plain, despite apparent contradictions in the real world.God was in His Heaven and I'd be damned lucky if I ever made it there, but I'd lose nothing by trying. |
| God was in His Heaven and I'd be damned lucky if I ever made it there, but I'd lose nothing by trying. |
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