Space invaders
DRIVING in Sheffield is an art. There are so many hills and narrow, winding roads that you eventually learn to navigate the gaps like a Regency nonesuch in a sporting curricle, driving “to an inch”. I know about Regency bucks from my devotion to Georgette Heyer novels rather than from watching Breechesdown.
This is a generational thing, like preferring real books to Kindles, though I dare say there’s now a subset of people devoted to an actual Kindle rather than the Kindle app. Something to do with the smell and feel of a real Kindle, probably.
After seven years of driving round Sheffield, I have an accurate sense of exactly how wide my car is. This means that, when I’m driving through some other town, I occasionally alarm oncoming traffic. I can also spot people who have never driven in Sheffield. They stop when it’s clear to me there’s loads of room for them to get through. I never sound my horn impatiently, though. This is because my car horn is only capable of a peevish little meep! sound rather than because I’m so Christian.
Collateral damage
THIS life generally goes better if we are able to approach it with an “absolute co-operation with the inevitable”, as the Jesuit priest Fr Anthony de Mello put it. I have come to accept that my car will never emit a dead-raising bejasus of a blast; so I co-operate with the inevitable by never leaning on my horn. (Unless I’m creeping up behind one of my sisters in a car park before a family gathering, obviously, when all bets are off.)
I also accept that I have a deep-seated hatred of being told off. I try to sit with this humorously and kindly rather than resist it. For example, on one of those narrow, winding Sheffield roads there’s a 20mph limit. This is policed by one of those light-up signs that not only tells you your speed, but rewards or punishes you with a facial expression. You get a frown if you’re travelling at a mere 1mph over the speed limit. If I’m not alert, my mood is ruined by being told off by an electronic sign. Motorists coming the other way are left wondering why I’m giving them two fingers.
Unconditional welcome
I CONFESSED to the Bishop that I get shirty when the sign scowls at me. I got a look of kindly patience (perhaps with a hint of “Yes, I did marry a madwoman 40 years ago”). I put my aversion to being told off down to a fear of judgement. It stems from my Nonconformist upbringing. “When I was sinking down, sinking down before God’s righteous frown” goes the hymn.
Behind the types and shadows of human and electronic frowns lies the reality of God’s annihilating scowl. I grew up believing that the first expression we encounter on God’s face is a frown. The first word was “No” rather than “Yes”. The “Yes” was only forthcoming after we were saved, when the clouds of judgement parted, and the sun of salvation shone: “Behind a frowning countenance he hides a smiling face.”
It’s a bit of a game-changer if we believe that the first expression is a smile, and the first word is “Yes!” A “YES!!!” like the shout of football supporters when their team wins on penalties. That would be a very different kind of inevitability to co-operate with. What if it is inevitable that we are always welcome, always loved; and that our sins and failings are simply not on the radar in the moment of our arrival home?
Change of perspective
I WAS interested to see that among the first appointments made by our new Prime Minister was James Timpson as Prisons Minister. Perhaps this signals a new era in which the British public are no longer sick of experts. I think it’s now generally accepted that experts bring more — I don’t know — expertise to the table.
If I ever got trapped in some dystopian nightmare as Prime Minister, my first panicked thought would be: “How quickly can I surround myself with experts and high-calibre thinkers?” Obviously, I’d be tempted to appoint my best friends to newly invented positions, like Minister for Glamour, and Chancellor of Bespoke Fragrances. But no.
Like Aunt Jobiska’s lavender water, my politics have always been tinged with pink. This means that I’ve had to make a mental about-turn now that my party is in power. It’s a lot easier to be a nay-sayer on the virtual opposition benches, adopting a permanent stance of resistance to anything coming out of Downing Street.
I remember this from 1997. I feel a bit like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice: “It is such a spur to one’s genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying anything just.” Hence the about-turn — which is just another word for repentance.
Heaven in ordinary
THERE is nowhere that a co-operation with the inevitable is more crucial than in the face of our own mortality. How many and varied are our strategies for dealing with our lack of control. Half the time we’re not even aware of them. Certain things tip us off, if we pay attention: our feelings when we visit a care home, maybe, or those surges of impatience with elderly relatives who keep their phone switched off to save the battery.
What are these feelings telling us? That we, too, are on the same path to decline and death, but that, right now, we are braced against it with every fibre of our being.
Yet there’s a grace that attends a close brush with death. Every lovely detail of this world is lit up, and tenderness floods our lives. There are moments when we find ourselves walking down an ordinary street, trailing astonishing billows of glory.
Catherine Fox is an author, senior lecturer, and academic director of the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.