Short Stories

" Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad"

Euripides

The Hamster lay in his burrow beneath the Syrian Steppe. He could not see what was happening above his nest but he could hear. He could hear the rumble of tracked vehicles, the thud of guns, the screams of missiles and men dying in the hot sun of the dry Steppe. But it was all nothing to do with him. The accumulated wisdom of many generations of ancestors told him that a wise creature is one who lives apart even from his own kind, expresses no opinions, indeed has no opinions about anything, who guards his own burrow, gathers his own food, and lives out his short life in solitary safety. This was the Hamster's philosophy and it had served him well - until he met the Rats. 

There were three of them, quite ordinary Black Rats, surprisingly friendly but, their eyes b lazing with the fires of righteousness, quite manic in the darkening evening. With them they had a pair of Jirds, your cousins the Rats said, to act as scouts and guides. The Rats had come to the Middle East by ship, but the Jirds were natives - from down there, waving their paws towards the South East. Their mission? To seek and destroy. To seek for and to destroy what, the alarmed Hamster wanted to know. Snakes, the Rats answered in an excited unison. Their Masters' Intelligence agents had discovered an enormous colony of killer MacMahon's Vipers hidden not three kilometres from the Hamster's burrow. Their Control had fitted the rats with mouth pouches, rather like the Hamster's they thought, only theirs were filled with poison. 

When they released it into the Vipers' waterholes, it would destroy the terrorising reptiles and the Hamster would be free again from danger. 

The Hamster, much perturbed, filled his pouches. He ignored the water hole - like the Jirds he had no need of water - and scuttled back to his burrow fervently wishing that he had never met the Black Rats. Shivering in spite of the warmth of his deep home, he lay in his nest for many days until hunger drove him out once more into the night. Some irresistible impulse took him back to the Black Rats' waterhole. 

He found them all returned - two sad Jirds and three dead Rats. They had found no Vipers, no terrorist snakes of any kind, but they had poisoned the water holes as they had been ordered and many small creatures had died, too many to count. The rodent platoon fled back to this place where, forgetting that this was the the first hole they had poisoned, the Rats drank their fill and they too died, victims to their own deadly weapon. 

"What shall you tell your Masters when you return home?" the Hamster asked the Jirds. 

"That like men we have tried to play the role of the gods," they replied, "and that now, like men, we are become mad."

 

There is a story of a preacher who goes to an out of the way church to conduct the service. He is able to look around the church on his own beforehand, and puts a five-pound note in a donations box at the back. Then a handful of elderly people arrive, and he takes the service. Afterwards, one of them comes up to him and says, 'As you might realise, I'm afraid we can't pay a preaching fee; but we usually give our preacher the contents of our donations box. You're lucky this week: there's a whole five pounds in it.' That night, the preacher tells his family this story. They have a chuckle about it. But then the son says, 'Well, you know, Dad. If you had put more in, you would have got more out.' 

(An old story, retold by Andrew)

 

 

 

"I would mind." snapped the Bat, "I am a mammal like you. Beetles I can put up with - they taste quite good. But I don't consort with birds." 

"That, gentlemen, is enough." It was the Voice speaking in the darkness behind the curtain, through the crack in the door, from beneath the flagstoned floor, from the apex of the vault, louder than the loudest clap of thunder, more silent than the silence of the still feather. Whose voice it was depended on who was listening. It might be Bramha or G-d, Confucius or Amaterasu, Isis or Baku, or even Jesus. 

"This" continued the Voice "is no one creatures's space. It is sacred precisely because it belongs to no-one. It is made sacred because of the care and love of each for the others within it. We observe precious little of that love here, gentlemen." The bat began a shrill protest, but the Voice was not to be interrupted. "And by 'love' We do not mean 'like'. We do not expect you to find each other agreeable. We do not require you to worship the same gods, or indeed to worship any god at all. We do require you to look honestly at each other, to try and understand, even where you cannot empathise." 

The Voice paused. The Bat, the Mouse and the Beatle moved closer together, looking outwards with wonder and awe, no longer glaring at each other. 

 

 Once upon a time, when people built houses of brick and then took them down and used the bricks to build new houses as they needed to}, a newer brick asked an older one, 'What will things be like for us in this new house?' For it had only been in one building so far. 

The older brick had been part of many houses, and had become wise with the years. Instead of answering, it asked another question. 'What were things like,' it said, 'in your previous place?'' 

'Oh, it was dreadful,' replied the first brick. 'The bricks on top of me were heavy and the ones around me would not carry their share of the weight. They were so selfish.'

'Well,' said the old brick, 'I am afraid that you will find things are exactly the same here, too.' 

Another young brick was then added to the pile, and it also asked the old brick, 'What will this place be like?' 

Again the old brick replied with the question: 'What were things like in your previous place?' 

'Well,' said the young brick, 'things weren't easy, but we shared the weight amongst ourselves and encouraged the ones who were having difficulties. We knew we had an important job and were glad to be doing what we could.' 

'Well,' said the wise old brick, 'that is what you will find here, too.' 

A recasting of a familiar story

 

I have a story to tell. It's a fable of sorts, so it comes in many different versions. Some people like to tell it about village which is visited by an indian holy man, and all the people living there gather at the village green to hear him speak. But I like to think that it's about a Unitarian congregation, who have invited the General Assembly President to speak to them on three occasions during the year. They don't really know anything about this President themselves, but they have heard that she has a large and thriving congregation, and that she is considered to be a very wise speaker. 

So they invite her to their church, and at the start of the session, she asks them, 'Do you know what I'm going to speak about?' 

Well, they didn't really give her a brief when they invited her, so they look at each other and shake their heads. 'No, we don't,' they tell her. 

'Well,' she says, 'if you're that uninterested in what I have to say, why should I bother?' And she walks out of the church. 

The congregation are rather nonplussed by this, but later in the year she returns to their church, and they all turn up. When she stands up, she asks, 'Do you know what I'm going to speak about?' They're a bit cleverer today: They've done their homework on the internet, and found out the titles of this President's previous talks elsewhere and some people have rung friends in other congregations to get an idea of the sort of things she usually says. So they nod to each other and say, 'Yes, we know what you'll talk about.' 

And she says, 'In that case, why do I need to say it?' And she walks out of the church. 

Strangely enough, later still, on the third occasion when this President has been invited, the congregation gather, and the President arrives. She asks them the same question: 'Do you know what I'm going to talk about?' 

This time, they've worked it out. The chair of the congregation stands up and says, 'Some of us know, and some of us don't.' 

'Ah,' she says. 'Those of you who know must tell those of you who don't.' And she walks away again. 

My own retelling of an old story

 

I have come here to be amazed 

- Goethe 

It stood in the yard of a small Georgian court - a flowering cherry, Prunus Ichiyo, tall with spreading branches and snow-dusted buds, like an Kyoto fan etched against a sky of new Spring blue. There was no garden there in the yard, just the tree. No-one knew who had planted it or how, in an old neglected part of Leeds with stones stained ugly black by two hundred years of industrial pollution, it had survived. But survive it had and become as much part of the life of Salamanca Court as that of Number 4's ninety year old Mrs Sewell. 

The tree reflected both joys and grief. In the chill sad days of early February it was hung with black streamers to mark the passing of Deaf Jonty, born, lived and died in Number 1. Pritam, dark eyed and beautiful, was born in March and the tree was decorated with blue ribbons. Although the quiet Guptas at Number 10 did not know why the ribbons were blue, they saw their baby son thus made welcome to the Court.  

Rosheen Sewell sat in her kitchen and looked fondly into the yard. In the lengthening June evenings the Japanese students of Number 8 put down a mat beneath the tree and, to the delight of the Latvian Balodis brothers at Number 5, practised their Aikido. July was hot and Rocheen and Caleb from Number 2 took chairs out into the shade of the tree and shared memories of long hours in a Yorkshire mill and the winter cold of sheep-herding on the Pately Bridge high moor. Children played round the tree through August and Gladstone of Number 9 got a bollocking from his dad for trying to carve his initials on its trunk. "Boy, we have to care for that tree. It's our piece of paradise in this grey land."  

She thought about Jonathan and Gary of Number 3 who held their September wedding party out in the yard. The tree was hung about with pink hearts and everyone got drunk and danced long after midnight. She remembered Middle-Aged-Mercy, the Quaker lady at Number 6 who last October hung a banner on the tree saying: "Save Our Planet" and all the neighbours threw coins into her Save our Planet Bucket. As if not to be outdone in generosity, the tree rained down purple-red leaves, a rich carpet spread over the cold black ground. 

In November Rocheen refused to go to a retirement home in Headingley. She did not want to leave the Court where her life and the lives of her neighbours seemed all bound together within the life of the tree. For Divali there were firecrackers and lanterns round the tree; the Levine boys dug a hole between its roots as a hiding place for their Hanukkah gelt. As the year neared its turning, Pagan Morganna made the Solstice fire outside Number 11 and the tree's branches turned dark red in the glow of the flames. In its Christmas coat of gleaming tinsel and silver bells, it lit up the cottages of Salamanca Court like a great Star of Bethlehem shining over them all. 

 

Pound, pound, pound, pound, my legs continued, mechanically, mindless, rhythmic. Pound, pound, pound, over 2 million now, the gluttony of time made the calculation easy. For while my legs laboured, my head was left with nothing but navigational checks and, even rarer, a decision. Which crossroad was I at? When did I stop for the night? Where did I stop for the night? Small thoughts that punctuated hours of vacuum. Monitoring the ever-changing view was the other task, oh so slowly, but changing, pound, pound, pound. 

For a moment my legs did stop, an allowable pause. A junc-tion, my head awoke, but this only required the topmost layer, other thoughts would not normally be broken by such a mun-dane event. But it was on this occasion, I was off the map, a significant milestone. I pulled from my raging loneliness and removed my gloves, in itself a painful operation. My hands constantly suffering from arteries constricted by tight rucksack straps and the bulky winter clothing. The map fell to its full length. Now there were only four left, just four pages to go, almost touchable, taking Cornwall now even further away. I remembered when the idea to 'go the pretty way' seemed fun and exciting, now it was a sour joke. I re-folded the map as the low ambient temperature froze out my remaining dexterity and kicked forward. 

A lonely uncomplicated farm pierced the mist, or was it rain? Dull corrugated iron shelters surrounded an old Land Rover and a small poorly lit dwelling. A small silent stand against sensibility. It did not notice me as I continued up yet another hill. I had such little left, once an incline was the opportunity for a good view, now it was just an increase in pain and a reduction in the rate of the change. The map showed the farm and little way beyond, a cross was marked, a church maybe? More likely a chapel up here. A few minutes later, as the road flattened, a subtle change on grey was the first indication of the likely building. As the detail increased, it looked more agricultural than a place of worship. A simpler construction would not have been possible, four walls and a dripping apex roof still fully intact. The doors and windows now just holes in the stonework. My pack was left sitting less the head torch. Al-though tired, my body still rejoiced each time it escaped from the payload, my stiff gait a djusting quickly to the change in my centre of gravity and reduced weight. Sheep had claimed the ground floor, but the light caught a staircase, solid, clean, and importantly not rotten. It revealed a clear wooden upper floor. The rucksack seemed twice the poundage, and once upstairs, its contents were soon sprawled across the boards, expanding well beyond the normal three-foot confines of the tent walls. 

That night I had no worries of wind fighting with stretching tent pegs, inquisitive animals or people, penetrating rain or cold. There, I just passed out on a warm flat floor with the luxury of space and of being inconspicuous.  

I was used to waking to daylight of course, a simple sign that it was time to start packing again. But before this, normally six, eight, 12 times I would lose my sleep to something, somebody, but usually nothing. Yes, daylight I was used too, but silence or sunshine I was not. I wormed across the floor to the window hole; as I did, there was not the normal painful complaints from each limb, the pins and needles from lumpy stony ground, the stiffness, not today, after just one good night's sleep, they moved freely. I pulled up to the ledge, my heart stopped, cocooned in the protection of my sleeping bag and stonewalls, yes my heart stopped. I had been fighting this miserable county for weeks and, for the first time, it gave in. Becalmed, its beauty opened for me at last. Overnight rain, my normal early morning curse, lifted away in warming wisps that danced down the valley. Glossed green shades, not greys, hit me - pricked by happy sheep and the brown of bark. The sky lit its world, it did not drown and darken its territory. A second valley telescoped away back towards the Cairngorms. My window, just one pace across, enlightened me more than any number of steps over that last few weeks. Nature was showing me her peace, all I had seen so far had been its supremacy. Now I could see why farmers hide for so long behind those iron sheets hit by the weather for weeks at a time. There was a reason for the suffering.  

The morning cooking task was an unusual joy, interrupted by ever increasing returns to my window to check the vision. I remembered the cross on the map, the chapel, was this it? It didn't fit, more a farm, but with this one window I wanted to believe. Had somebody, a hundred years ago, built this altar to honour such perfection? To thank, to pray, to feel, so dwarfed so humble. I absorbed its strength, I sheltered, I felt, I cried.  

A different person started walking that day and a few hundred yards up the road in a damp enclosure, I found a chapel. Somebody else's chapel. It didn't seem to have the qualities of mine, the sustenance, the power. I passed it and as I continued, somehow again my feet became part of me, a whole me. 

Land's End to John O'Groats walk 1980.

 

From her quiet corner in the the Cloister Garth, where she had taken coffee out into the early morning June sun, she watched as the monk emerged from the gloom of the Infirmary Cloister, walked through the herb garden, passed the Prior's Staircase and, just before he got into the Great Cloister, turned sharp right and walked through the wall. The monk wondered why had the high round arched door been bricked up, and why had anyone thought the old stone staircase well replaced by pallid marble and black iron. Then his prescient mind's eye saw the fireballs of 1942 raining from the night sky, heard the crash of falling masonry and felt the acrid smoke in the back of his throat. He remembered then that what for him was a tragedy yet to come, for the young woman, whom he knew watched him from her place in the Cloister, it was already a piece of history. 

The girl spotted the pale face under the brown hood peering at her from a window high up in the Library, close to where he might once have had his cell in the monastic dormitory. She wondered why he had lately been so persistent in his appearances. Were they random or did they have a purpose? Perhaps he wanted to talk to her, but how did you talk to a monk who had died centuries ago? What could he have to say to her, who was not even a Christian, let alone a Catholic. 

The monk leaned against the stone windowsill watching the girl, silently challenging her to look and listen with him. He closed his eyes and flooded his mind with images of men afraid, women angry, young men hurling stones, young girls circling their bodies with belts pocketed by death. He heard mothers weeping for starving babies, a mob screaming and the terrible death march of children burying their virus stricken parents. He felt the anguish of centuries circling the globe in a never ending river of terror and pain. 

The door at the far end of the long Library room opened and the monk knew the girl had returned. He slid behind one of the fine old book presses and went into his cell through the portrait of a sweet faced seventeenth century Dean. The girl clattered past his doorway and then paused to stroke a venerable red Turkey binding. He could hear her thoughts quite clearly: 'How could people do.... Can't they see... Perhaps I could .... Perhaps...' The sound of a telephone, urgent in the heavy silence. She ran off down the aisle between the presses; another door banged and she was gone. The monk made the sign of the Cross and sighed. Was another pebble of understanding to be added to the defenses against the infernal flood? If only his work here were done and he could sleep again. Outside the window of his narrow cell, a blackbird sang.

 

I was five years old, but after breakfast and before suppertime, I hurried down to the riverbank to feel the Chattahoochee mud squish between my toes - until that dreadful, crazy day when the thick red Georgia clay came oozing under our door while the mighty waters rose. 

Teenager sitting on the back of a dirty motorbike, long hair and old blue jeans caked heavy with red earth - sun-dried, still sticky cooling desert sand - I watched the brown-skinned boys splashing in pools of rain left behind as torrents from arroyos rushed down to the Rio Grande . 

I first fell in love, truly, at age twenty-one, while walking barefoot over icy glacier's edge - blissfully hand-in-hand, laughing - to a mountain glade, where thirsty lips stained dark by sweet, freshly-picked blueberries kissed and a red sun set behind the snow-covered North Cascades. 

My lover and I sailed Freya - red and white and cutter-rigged - past the slippery otters' playground, dodging shoals to seek starfish and touch sandstone apple cores. Moored off Cabbage Island , we woke to find our sanctuary had turned to bubbling cauldron caught in the eye of a storm. Approaching 40, I ventured bravely forth from Darlington aboard a red rubber raft to ride, with oar in hand, the white water of the wild Skagit. From tow'ring cruciform aeries, eagle eyes peered down as I glided around rocks and bounced along on river magic. 

Not so long ago, I stood still beside Lough Corrib, smiling at a parade of swans floating by proudly, without a care, ent'ring twilight's open door. I recalled the arc over Tara , brightly-coloured - and dreamt, too, of the harsh drystone beauty of Aran and Inish Mor.

 

Cynthia and Tom met in Birmingham. She slipped on the newly washed marble floor of the entrance hall in the hospital where they had both recently started work and fell literally into his arms. Three months later they married and when Cynthia presented Tom with the first of their two children she retired to become a full time wife and mother. 

Tom, an ambitious but lowly laboratory assistant, studied biochemistry part time and got a first class honours degree. By one of those unlikely but happy coincidences, he presented himself at the University Careers office just as the Professor of Biochemistry phoned to say she had to have a new research assistant in a hurry - the previous assistant having yesterday been inconveniently run over by the Vice-Chancellor's Deux-Cheveaux. Tom proved to be the perfect man for the job. Devoted to his master, Science, he drank deep at the well of Academe, published a couple of well received monographs and eventually was appointed to head a department of his own. 

Through the lean years Cynthia economised and, although the children had everything they needed, she herself made do and mended. Tom bought all the books he wanted, went to all the conferences that interested him and dallied with female post-graduate students. Whenever he found one he particularly fancied, rather like an excited schoolboy taking home his first girlfriend to meet his mother, he would take her home for lunch "to meet Cynthia." Cynthia would smile, say not a lot and serve the lunch while Tom and the lady indulged in riotous conversation on arcane biochemical matters. Cynthia was widely regarded in the University as awfully nice and very worthy, but just a bit dull and dowdy and boring. 

When aged 52 Cynthia died from an aggressive breast cancer, all the neighbours came to her funeral, but few of the University wives. Left alone after the wake, an inconsolable Tom hunted through Cynthia's cupboards and boxes trying to find there something of her to ameliorate his pain. Already half out of his mind with grief, he found only old clothes painstakingly repaired, meticulously kept accounts, letters he had written her. Guilt descended on him, an all enveloping blanket of self disgust and absolute despair. He surveyed the ashes of his important career and the spent glory of his important thoughts, and he wept. 

Cynthia had not looked for martydom, Tom was not a monster, but now he rapidly descended into a melancholic alcoholism - a deserted and disillusioned wailing Mary. His quiet Martha who had loved both God and her neighbour lay cold in her grave, but warm and vital in the hearts of her children and everyone whose life she had touched and served. Whose was the good or the better part? Not Tom's, that's for sure. Long ago Jesus had nominated Mary, but I always did suspect that on that occasion Jesus got it wrong. 

 

The Secretary bird sat disconsolately in the empty saucer-like nest she had made high in a massive old oak tree. She thought about her chick seized by a marauding eagle and her mate who with clipped wings had struggled into the air, lost the thermal on which he was riding and crashed to a cruel death on the razor wire which topped the fence of the dreadful menagerie in which they had been trapped for the past five years. She had soared upward and then laboriously had crossed the boundary fence to an uncertain freedom. She walked across the Norfolk Brecklands, fifteen miles a day until she found, near South Dereham, "The British Raptor Sanctuary" where the Man welcomed her, gave her fresh food and some little hope for her future. 

A Posse of British Raptors - a broken winged Barn Owl, two tailless Sparrow Hawks, a club-clawed Goshawk and a rather less than enthusiastic purblind Kestrel - listened to her soft mewing cry. She was a conspicuous bird, almost four feet high, elegant in her grey and white and black plumage with long black knee britches, quilled headress and orange eye patched face. They envied her her exotic beauty; they feared she had more than her fair share of fresh food brought to her by the Man; they mocked her African song; they despised her hunting technique - although she had wings and a beak for Horus' sake, she ran after her prey and stamped it to death! 

Sitting quietly in an adjacent tree, another immigrant outcast watched and mused. He was a young Spanish Griffon Vulture brought to the Sanctuary from Belgium where, searching for food many hundreds of miles from his home in the Pyrenees, he became separated from the rest of his flock and was found distressed and exhausted wandering in a park near Ghent . An exceedingly nervous bird, terrified of an imagined attack from his own shadow, he nowadays rarely finished his dive from his nest to the raw meat put out for him, but soared back empty-beaked and hungry to the safety of the tree-top. He had to be hand fed and so had become the butt of the Posse's cruel jokes. 

A few days later he flew low above the ground close to the running Secretary Bird. She did not turn him away, but left for him a dead mouse and a grass snake, and there was no swooping shadow to terrify him. Guided by the sound of her running feet the Kestrel joined the strange pair and found a short tailed vole which the Secretary had stunned and kicked in his direction. As they made their daily sorties like some dignified avian Battle of Britain Flight emerging modestly out of a misty morning, the Posse shrugged its collective wings, turned its collective ire upon a flight of young marauding buzzards who were creating havoc amongst the older raptor residents, and finally left the Odd Trio to enjoy their lives together in peace. 

 

The Dragons were going home. They had, it was said, done a good job. Eyes gleaming and nostrils aflame, they swept through and swept away the noxious detritus of the Old City and left it like a skeleton stripped clean and white by vultures. They left it silent and empty, jagged and stark against the sun bright sky, disturbed only by lazy wisps of smoke which gathered and lingered around the fire cleansed concrete and stone. 

The Inhabitants, those who had survived the plague, were making a new settlement on the plains to the east of the old city and would not return. In their place would come the slaves newly released from the chemical mines far across the ocean to the north who would refurnish and refurbish from the raw materials the dragons had rescued from the cleansing and had stacked in great piles around the edge of the city. Nothing clean and free of bacteria was to be wasted - waste and theft were capital offences - and slaves who complied with all the emergency regulations could look forward to a distant manumission, unless of course they were female. Females were held as slaves in perpetuity, by their masters or by their husbands if their masters had had to give their slaves up to the Resettlement Committee. 

"Why do they all put up with it?" asked Blue Dragon Apprentice. 

"Safety." said Blue Dragon Site Manager. It was rumoured that Blue Dragon Site Manager's rapid rise to seniority was largely due to his not wasting the Rulers' time with unnecessary chat. 

"Is safety worth losing your freedom for?" persisted Blue Dragon Apprentice. 

"Yes." replied Blue Dragon Site Manager 

"I don't get it." Blue Dragon Apprentice wrinkled up his already wrinkled forehead, leaned back with all his weight on his rather short scaly tale, and waved an ungainly front foot at Blue Dragon Site Manager. The effect he was trying to create of a mature, sophisticated, university educated dragon, which he was not, was sadly lost on Blue Dragon Site Manager who had closed his eyes and was now beginning very softly, by dragon standards, to snore. "I mean, well, you know, if anyone tried to make a slave of me, I would fly off into the Waste Lands, and catch mowbats for supper, burn down the forest, and boil up the rivers until all their water supplies failed, and then They'd die of thirst, and..." 

"No They wouldn't. They'd shoot you first." 

"I'd like to see anyone try." Blue Dragon Apprentice almost shouted at the boss dragon. "I can out fly any of Them. I can kill with fire at a distance of a hundred metres. My talons will tear out their throats and I will bite off their legs and arms. We're the most dangerous creatures on this planet, the most powerful in the whole of the universe." 

Overcome by his own eloquence his roar disappeared into a monstrous squeak and, too embarrassed to notice what he was actually doing, he grabbed and began to swallow a passing mouse. Even more embarrassed he coughed loudly, spat out the mouse and mumbled it an apology. The mouse shook itself, brushed its whiskers and exuding quivering outrage from the pink of its nose to the grey tip of its tail, limped away into the undergrowth. 

Out of the approaching dusk other dragons came to join the pair - Yellow and Green, and one Silver-Dragon, Surveyor 1st class. 

"This freedom thing," Yellow Dragon Explosives said, "it can get you a lot of grief." 

"How?" demanded Blue Dragon Apprentice. 

"Well, take Earth for example. The Inhabitants have got freedom, all kinds of freedom, all over the place - free democracies, free elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of action - so long of course as they stay within their laws or don't live in one of those tyrannies they also go in for. And then, there's the really dangerous one." 

"What's that then?" 

"Freedom to choose to do nothing about anything they don't fancy, or about any problem which they don't care to face. Hey! Get your ugly great tail off my foot, you horrible little reptile." 

The other dragons startled by the sudden change of subject looked up. Blue Dragon Apprentice, having lost all interest in the finer points of Freedom, had rolled over so that his tail had indeed fallen across Yellow Dragon Explosives's foot while he stared up at the darkening sky and counted, very sotto-roar, the night's newly appeared stars. 

"Oh, sorry about that," he said, and moved his tail to one side. "I think I was just exercising my freedom to consider other matters. Everyone keeps going on about Earth, and it's getting boring." 

Yellow Dragon Explosives glared at him. 

"I've been there." the Surveyor said. "I was sent to do a survey and see if there might be anything we could do to help." 

"Why isn't it allowed?" backstitched Blue Dragon Apprentice, "And who said you could go? And how did you get there? And if you can go, why can't we all go?" 

"It's not allowed usually" said the Surveyor patiently "because it is the only planet in the Universe where dragons are not safe. The first dragon was born on earth thousands of years ago, but not from an egg. He was an idea that sprang from the imagination of one of Earth's story tellers sitting beside a fire in the middle of a clearing in a forest. If we were to meet any of Earth's inhabitants now, they might remember that dragons are only a figment. The egg that was never laid would crack and the baby who was never born would fly up to the stars and be lost for ever in the darkness of the eternal night, and there would be no more dragons. 

"It was the Governor himself who sent me to look around and make a report. I flew solo through the Universe like some miniscule silver shooting star and none of their telescopes bothered about me, probably didn't even notice me" 

"Brilliant! What did you find then?" asked Green Dragon Engineering. 

"I found a planet which seems to have been abused by its Inhabitants for more than two hundred years. The frozen Arctic tundra is beginning to melt and will sooner or later release tons of methane gasses into the atmosphere which is already dangerously polluted by CO2. The Polar ice caps and the glaciers are melting and one day there will be too little white ice to reflect the sun's excessive heat back into space; the seas will rise and drown land and people; the desert will cover a whole continent and land and people will starve. The survivors will try to escape to the cooler lands of the north and the south and will kill each other for what little food and fuel that might remain, and their civilisation will perish. 

"Their politicians say 'We must do something, very soon.' Its people say 'Oh yes we must.' But just like one of their own holy men they don't want to give up anything nice just yet. The rich don't want to lose their luxuries; the really poor now only just about survive and if they give anything up they'll just die a bit sooner. Like Yellow Explosives said, the truly free are free to do nothing. The tyrants refuse to do anything, other than buy more personal aeroplanes; the tyrannised and the slaves can't do anything even if they wanted to." 

"You're being mega-pessimistic about all this." commented Blue Dragon Apprentice. 

"In all the circumstances in which we work, pessimism is appropriate." The Surveyor's voice was tinged with impatience. "What is our first rule when we are setting up a new assignment?" 

"The Rule of Worst Case Thinking - while hoping for the 

best, always prepare for the worst." chorused the rest of the Dragons. 

"Quite." said the Surveyor. 

"What about Technology?" Green Dragon Engineering demanded. 

"Have you met Technology?" the Surveyor asked. " OK, he's a genius, marvellous ideas, amazing ingenuity, builds fantastic machines, but not always in the right place and at the right time, and not always quick enough. And he's not always even facing in the right direction. There's presidents and politicians, frightened out of their tiny minds at the thought of draconian regulations and rationing, who now are preaching that Technology will save their world. But you know the old saying: 'They who put their trust in Technology risk breaking their necks as they trip over his discarded crowbars, nuts and bolts.'" 

"Is there no hope at all?" Yellow Dragon Assistant Surveyor spoke very quietly. 

"Not much, as far as I can see," said the Surveyor, "unless there's a deal of clear sighted thinking, a collective will freely arrived at, some kind of miracle really." 

"Come on lads," Blue Dragon Site Manager had woken up again, "Forget Earth. We'll be sent for when we're needed for the Great Clean Up. Long journey for us tomorrow. Earth's Inhabitants'll have to fend for themselves for now." 

"God help them then." muttered Yellow Dragon Assistant Surveyor and, with their great claws beating a ragged tattoo against the stone road, the members of Dragon Clean Up Squad Number 58 disappeared into the night. 

 

The Rabbit limped across the blackened stubble to the patch of low Autumn sunlight underneath the old tree which spread its leafless branches thickly across the corner of the field. He stretched out his limbs gratefully on the still warm dusty earth, closed his eyes and quietly, gently, died. 

Lucy and Anisha, on their way home from school to the farm cottages on the ridge above the field, found him there, looking already as if he were returning to the earth on which he lay. For a moment they gazed at him, and then hurried away. They returned with Lucy's own small spade and a piece of fine Indian cotton, from Anisha's treasure box, embroidered with an image of a blue skinned, four-armed dancing Shiva, a belt of skulls at his waist and a cobra, symbol of divine power, around his neck. 

They took it in turns to dig a grave deep in the soft dry earth under the tree. These were country children who had little fear of death; they wrapped the stiffening body in the delicate cotton and then, carefully and reverently, lowered it into the hole they had dug. They filled in the grave with the thin brown dust and stood for a moment, solemn under the tree.  

As they passed the small grave, each day the girls checked that it was undisturbed. The long Autumn rains had turned Summer's dust into damp mud and the Rabbit lay safe beneath his loamy pall. In January the first snow fell; the frosts were hard and the blown white flakes lay blanket thick under the tree until March. As the snow melted Lucy noticed small green shoots pushing through the dark brown earth; weeds perhaps, the girls thought. 

By the end of April it was obvious that what they had thought was some old weed was growing into a strong thick stemmed plant. Spring gave way to Summer and the plant pushed its way upwards in a clump of a dozen spikes, with tiny grey-green narrow leaves, bases and sheaths tinged with violet. As full Summer approached it flowered, covering one side of each spike with a mass of heads - pale green upper petals like pointed shells, brown lips tinged with pink. Nothing else grew in that patch of dried up earth, just the plant now maybe 18 or 20 inches high and shining like a cluster of far away pale stars in its drab and shaded home. 

The girls were puzzled - they had never seen flowers like this before. Anisha's father brought a local botanist to look at this miracle of new life. It was, the young man said, a rare wild orchid, a Violet Helleborine which did well in woodland and in shaded places, but in this old patch of untended barren earth, its success was quite remarkable. 

"It was because of the Rabbit who died." said Lucy, "His bones must have fed the plant." "And the Lord Shiva." added Anisha. "First he danced at the Rabbit's death but now he is dancing for the birth of a new life." 

 

"... they shall mount up with wings as eagles ..." 

- Isaiah 

Overlooked by the college gardeners, a small colony of nettles had tucked itself close up against the South West corner of the Chapel. The caterpillar walked slowly along a nettle leaf unceasingly munching, his small body undulating like a ripple on a tiny green pool. Without pausing in his mastication he watched a black column come into sight. Up the long path, over the bridge and past the West Facade of Gibb's Building, sixteen boys walked two by two, top-hatted, black gowned and jacketed, stiffly white collared. Unnoticing of the caterpillar, they went quietly into the Chapel. 

'They look a bit like a giant version of me,' thought the caterpillar, 'quiet, disciplined, purposeful.' and he folded his long black body dappled with white over the edge of his leaf and slid into a hollow in the nettle stalk. From the Chapel came the sound of boys' voices, high and clear like the fluting of black birds calling to their loves in the misty morning of a new Spring day. The music rose into a great crescendo: "God is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved ..." 

The caterpillar liked the singing but wondered what this word 'hope' could have to do with him. He remembered the silken shelter of the nest he and his many newly hatched bothers and sisters had spun beneath a large nettle leaf. But, attacked by parasitic Tachinid grubs, all but one of his siblings had died, and she had long left him for another nettle plant and now hung inert in her yellow chrysalis suspended from beneath the leaf which once had fed her. The only thing the caterpillar knew he could expect was this kind of living death - 

there seemed nothing to hope for. He sighed and nibbled with little enthusiasm at a particularly succulent young leaf. 

Late in the May evening the caterpillar was disturbed by the aroma of cigars and the conversation of two men standing in the light of the Porch lamp. 

"Sober looking little fellow." the first voice said. "Almost funereal, all that black." 

"But what a beauty that sobriety hides." commented the second voice. " In May Week he'll spin his own shroud; six weeks of limbo and then a Summer miracle - from the caterpillar's empty tomb will fly an Inarchis io. That's a Peacock Butterfly to you, Provost. Wings of red-rust with peacock tail jewels, yellow and purple, white and blue. Stunning, absolutely stunning." 

"Come on, let's go." urged his companion, "That's quite enough about your blessed Lepidoptera." 

'I shall become beautiful.' mused the caterpillar, 'I shall fly upwards towards the sun. I shall have a cousin who looks like a shard of Tiffany glass, and another cloaked in regal purple who will dance with a lady in a grey-black gown marbled with white. But how is it that I have all these pictures in my head? Moonshine memory perhaps?' He climbed slowly to the top of the nettle stalk and gazed up at the night sky which dappled with stars became some huge brilliant likeness of his own modest white speckled coat. 'I'm not sure that there is anyone up there,' he said, 'but just in case, for this hope that I have been given I would like to say - Thank You.' 

 

 

To Man he gave a countenance to look on high and to behold the heavens, and to raise his face erect to the stars.

- Ovid: Metamorphoses 1  

In the corner of the field next to the old labourer's cottage stood a tall ash tree, its curving branches still bare beside the new greening of the hedge. Three ring necked parakeets replete with pear blossoms sat in the sun, their ever moving long tails keeping their balance on the high insubstantial branch of their choice. Every so often one of them would walk sideways along the slippery bark and, almost quicker than the eye could comprehend, turn upside down, its beady eye glittering in the sunlight. A black bird sang a love song to his brown hen while two fat pigeons, stuffed with stolen corn, basked lazy in the sunshine. 

Into this place of sun dappled peace came a short legged climbing Kentish cat intent on catching pigeon for his larder. Stuck in a low branched fork, he made a foray to his left along a perilously bouncing slender branch. He clung on for dear life, backed down to the safety of the fork again, tried the slightly bigger branch to his right, but that began slowly to sag, rotten wood threatening to break. Retreating again to the fork, with his hind feet firmly anchored to the trunk, he stretched out unsheaved claws making out that he was about to spring. His hind legs slipped again and defeated he curled up into a tight ball of fur. Ignoring the scornful avians overhead and dreaming of his brown pottery bowl in the kitchen, he slept. 

From a bank at the far end of the field two youngsters watched the drama of the day unfolding. A slim light brown body, twenty centimeters nose to tail, pretty rounded ears, long nose and whiskers, white bib and stomacher, sturdy clawed feet, quite still except for whiskers aquiver: a weasel looking for a breakfast egg or a tender chick for her kittens. Falling out of the sky, black crested and cloaked in iridescent blue like a pair of feathered acrobats, the lapwings landed close to their nest some 40 yards from the rough grass where they had hidden their new chicks. They circled the empty nest, dancing and beating their wings, and screaming their haunting cry into the quiet of the morning. Disconcerted by the violence of the movement and the shrieking of two birds larger than herself, the weasel froze, then turned and scuttled away into a patch of tall thistles to search elsewhere for breakfast. 

Peace returned. The birds in the tree preened their feathers; the cat went home for Whiskas; the lapwings fed their chicks; and the weasel, at last, found a mouse for her hungry family. The young man put out a hand and pulled his girlfriend to her feet. 

She laughed and they ran through the field gate back towards the village. 'Thus Glory fades' murmured the Gatekeeper. Silently he folded his four great wings, and a flaming sword turned every which way about the path. 

 

 

The Rabbit, perched on the Dragon's ophidian neck and hanging tightly onto his bovine ears, was tired from the long cold flight, but his eyes burned with excitement. In the grey chill of a mid February Mancunian morning they had at last come to the end of their journey. "What, Jitù, in the Name of the Nine Emperors are we doing here?" demanded the Dragon. "Come to see the Dancing Dragons, Yinglóng." replied the Rabbit. "You didn't have to come, although I am very grateful for the ride." he added hastily. "Come on, let's wait over there." he said, and pointed to the corner of the square in which they had landed. "No one can see us, but we shall have a wonderful view of them. Don't you find all this very exciting?" 

"No," responded the Dragon, "I find it all rather depressing. In this real world, you and I don't actually exist - we are part of a myth, a corporate figment, a story men tell sitting round a fireside. Doesn't that worry you?" He laid his camel shaped head on his ten great claws and sighed. "We are make-believe answers to unanswerable questions, asked by rational beings who live as best they can until they die. Why are they so enthralled to these stories? Can we honestly claim we make any essential difference to their lives?" 

As was his wont when thinking, the Rabbit slowly scratched the back of his right ear, leaving his left ear stuck up in the air like some eccentric furry flag pole. "I think," he said quietly, "that without that storytelling, New Year for the folk of China Town would be a sad festival. For them you are the 

symbol of a benevolent power, of wisdom and of strength; you are their model of excellence and success. When they see your effigy they remember that there is an eternal force that keeps them safe from danger. They cannot see that strength, they do not hear it call, they can neither touch it nor taste it, but in the pantomime of the dance the spirit of the dragon brings them hope of good things." 

The noise around them swelled into an approaching crescendo of gongs and cymbals, firecrackers and drums. Round the corner into the square where the Dragon and the Rabbit stood came a crowd of excited laughing people following the dancing dragon - twenty joyous undulating metres of yellow and orange shimmering silken scales, and a vast horned mask of red and green and gold, its cavernous mouth stretching after the great scarlet pearl of wisdom carried on a long pole before it. 

The Rabbit laughed, thumped the cold pavement in time to the beating of the drums and, invisible to the dancers, he loped around and about them. "Oh, Gold Moon-Rabbit," sighed the Dragon as he scooped up his little friend from under the feet of the Pearl Carrier "do you really believe in all this? " "Yes, I think I probably do." replied the Rabbit. "I believe in that power, of which all this hope and joy is but a shadow dancing on a wall. Be happy Old Dragon, today we are a piece of that shadow, and it points us all to the stars."

 

Towards the end of winter a small colony of blind Driver Ants made its preparations for escape. The corporate intelligence of 250,000 ants had decided to move away from their dying mountain forest and march towards the coast. On the beach just above the tide line they discovered a large hollow log well suited to be both a nest and a vessel. Having established a temporary home in the coarse grasses behind the beach, phalanxes a thousand strong gathered and moved quantities of food into their new log home. Large male ants were captured by the workers who tore off their wings and accompanied their hymenal procession back to the grassy nest and their Queen. The colony was ready. Long lines of soldiers guarded the Queen and her eggs as they were escorted into the log where the rest of the colony was already installed and the entrance was sealed. That evening the tide was extraordinarily high and the log was swept south out to sea. 

In the early Spring a flock of Cape Crows flew south. In spite of fifty million years of imprinted instinct and custom, they abandoned their parched, sweltering homeland and island-hopped across the raging seas until a remnant of the original flock, wind-hurtled, bedraggled and hungry, found an island where the grass was green, the spring water was sweet and flowers still grew. There the Crows found insects, small reptiles and mammals and a flock of inoffensive Yellow Birds. The Crows had arrived in the Promised Land. 

By the time the log with its colony of ants was washed up on Yellow Bird Island the Crows were running out of food. The flock had stripped the scrubby bushes, eaten every visible insect, consumed any tiny creature who had not taken refuge underground, killed and devoured all the small Yellow Birds. No longer acting as a coherent group, they began to turn on their weaklings. First they throttled and ate the sick and the old, then the young fledglings. Now lurking solitary in undergrowth and in dark rock fissures they stalked and killed each other. Those who escaped cannibalism fell starving out of the sky and their bodies began to rot. 

The Ants unsealed the log and organised themselves. They gathered up every tiny morsel of food the crows had not found, they smelled out the underground fugitives, killed and carried some of them back, in many pieces, to the nest. They feasted on the remains of the crows. Everything they could scavenge, everything they took they shared, but for now left alone the younger animals and the microscopic insect eggs the Crows had failed to see. Yellow Bird Island was theirs and the colony perhaps had a future. 

When the sun turns blood red, when our piece of the planet burns up, when the ocean rises, the sea boils and the great flood comes, when we fly from the destruction of our homelands, whose example shall we follow - that of the Crows or of the Ants?

 

Oliver and I got into terrible trouble once for making a small joke in The Friend about a medical condition from which I suffer. The author of the pompous article which had nudged us into this solecism became quite incandescent with rage that we should dare to laugh about Serious Matters. She wrote to us, and went on at some length listing our manifold iniquities and hoping fervently that we had not done too much Lasting Harm to her Cause. We were not at first exactly amused by this communication - although it did serve as a salutary warning to engage imagination and brain before opening word processing programme - but my bruised psyche was later much soothed by a vision I had of a first Quaker martyr about to be run over by my power chair. 

This long ago episode, however, did absolutely nothing to alter my firm conviction that laughter and humour are good for you: they lower the blood pressure, assuage the effects of anger, deflate pomposity and generally restore the equilibrium of the body and of the soul. 

Regard these two men -they just happened to be persons of the male gender, nothing sinister in my choice. The first, a very senior cleric and distinguished peace campaigner, I met striding through a meeting hall with what my agnostic and slightly less distinguished peace campaigner partner described as "teeth gritted into a dazzling smile of Christian good humour and loving kindness" spreading unease wherever he looked. The second, an Anglo-Catholic priest I once knew, one memorable Sunday morning in the Sanctuary tripped on his 

overlong alb up the altar steps, then, burdened with overmuch ecclesiastical iron-mongery and blinded by 'holy smoke', fell down the steps again and finished up on the floor with the Gospel Book clasped to his bosom and his feet inextricably entangled with the base of the Paschal candlestick. He struggled there a second or two in the face of a silent and horrified congregation until he lay back again convulsed with laughter. Everyone laughed, and remembered why they so loved and respected this holy and humble man. Which of these two would you rather sit next to at a dinner party, or entrust with your most intimate problems? 

Maybe, as I am reliably informed, there isn't much explicit humour in the Bible, but if we are indeed made spiritually in the image of God, then God himself, herself, itself or themselves must have laughed first and given us an example we should follow. Listen to the chuckle of the beck as it runs down off the high moor or the gentle teasing of a soft wind in the leaves. Look at the sunlight laughing on the tops of the waves or the wide smile of a fenland sky, and be glad.

 

The Dragons were going home. They had, it was said, done a good job. Eyes gleaming and nostrils aflame, they swept through and swept away the noxious detritus of the Old City and left it like a skeleton stripped clean and white by vultures. They left it silent and empty, jagged and stark against the sun bright sky, disturbed only by lazy wisps of smoke which gathered and lingered around the fire cleansed concrete and stone. 

The Inhabitants, those who had survived the plague, were making a new settlement on the plains to the east of the old city and would not return. In their place would come the slaves newly released from the chemical mines far across the ocean to the north who would refurnish and refurbish from the raw materials the dragons had rescued from the cleansing and had stacked in great piles around the edge of the city. Nothing clean and free of bacteria was to be wasted - waste and theft were capital offences - and slaves who complied with all the emergency regulations could look forward to a distant manumission, unless of course they were female. Females were held as slaves in perpetuity, by their masters or by their husbands if their masters had had to give their slaves up to the Resettlement Committee. 

"Why do they all put up with it?" asked Blue Dragon Apprentice. 

"I don't get it." Blue Dragon Apprentice wrinkled up his already wrinkled forehead, leaned back with all his weight on his rather short scaly tale, and waved an ungainly front foot at Blue Dragon Site Manager. The effect he was trying to create of a mature, sophisticated, university educated dragon, which he was not, was sadly lost on Blue Dragon Site Manager who had closed his eyes and was now beginning very softly, by dragon standards, to snore. "I mean, well, you know, if anyone tried to make a slave of me, I would fly off into the Waste Lands, and catch mowbats for supper, burn down the forest, and boil up the rivers until all their water supplies failed, and then They'd die of thirst, and..." 

"No They wouldn't. They'd shoot you first." 

"I'd like to see anyone try." Blue Dragon Apprentice almost shouted at the boss dragon. "I can out fly any of Them. I can kill with fire at a distance of a hundred metres. My talons will tear out their throats and I will bite off their legs and arms. We're the most dangerous creatures on this planet, the most powerful in the whole of the universe." 

Overcome by his own eloquence his roar disappeared into a monstrous squeak and, too embarrassed to notice what he was actually doing, he grabbed and began to swallow a passing mouse. Even more embarrassed he coughed loudly, spat out the mouse and mumbled it an apology. The mouse shook itself, brushed its whiskers and exuding quivering outrage from the pink of its nose to the grey tip of its tail, limped away into the undergrowth. 

Out of the approaching dusk other dragons came to join the pair - Yellow and Green, and one Silver-Dragon, Surveyor 1st class. 

"This freedom thing," Yellow Dragon Explosives said, "it can get you a lot of grief." 

"How?" demanded Blue Dragon Apprentice. 

"Well, take Earth for example. The Inhabitants have got freedom, all kinds of freedom, all over the place - free democracies, free elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of action - so long of course as they stay within their laws or don't live in one of those tyrannies they also go in for. And then, there's the really dangerous one." 

"What's that then?" 

"Freedom to choose to do nothing about anything they don't fancy, or about any problem which they don't care to face. Hey! Get your ugly great tail off my foot, you horrible little reptile." 

The other dragons startled by the sudden change of subject looked up. Blue Dragon Apprentice, having lost all interest in the finer points of Freedom, had rolled over so that his tail had indeed fallen across Yellow Dragon Explosives's foot while he stared up at the darkening sky and counted, very sotto-roar, the night's newly appeared stars. 

"Oh, sorry about that," he said, and moved his tail to one side. "I think I was just exercising my freedom to consider other matters. Everyone keeps going on about Earth, and it's getting boring." 

Yellow Dragon Explosives glared at him. 

"That's the sort of self centred, blinkered, dangerous 

rubbish that's making the planet not safe for its Inhabitants." 

"Not safe? What are you on about?" 

"Because while they're all running around demanding their rights and chasing after money and things, and exercising their precious personal freedoms - or being tyrannised by tyrants - they haven't noticed that they're poisoning the place." 

"How do you know? Have you been there?" 

"Well, no." Yellow Dragon Explosives admitted, "No-one has. It's Not Allowed. But stories get around, we hear things, and the place doesn't sound to be very safe, or very healthy." 

"I've been there." the Surveyor said. "I was sent to do a survey and see if there might be anything we could do to help." 

"Why isn't it allowed?" backstitched Blue Dragon Apprentice, "And who said you could go? And how did you get there? And if you can go, why can't we all go?" 

"It's not allowed usually" said the Surveyor patiently "because it is the only planet in the Universe where dragons are not safe. The first dragon was born on earth thousands of years ago, but not from an egg. He was an idea that sprang from the imagination of one of Earth's story tellers sitting beside a fire in the middle of a clearing in a forest. If we were to meet any of Earth's inhabitants now, they might remember that dragons are only a figment. The egg that was never laid would crack and the baby who was never born would fly up to the stars and be lost for ever in the darkness of the eternal night, and there would be no more dragons. 

"It was the Governor himself who sent me to look around and make a report. I flew solo through the Universe like some miniscule silver shooting star and none of their telescopes bothered about me, probably didn't even notice me" 

"Brilliant! What did you find then?" asked Green Dragon Engineering. 

"I found a planet which seems to have been abused by its Inhabitants for more than two hundred years. The frozen Arctic tundra is beginning to melt and will sooner or later release tons of methane gasses into the atmosphere which is already dangerously polluted by CO2. The Polar ice caps and the glaciers are melting and one day there will be too little white ice to reflect the sun's excessive heat back into space; the seas will rise and drown land and people; the desert will cover a whole continent and land and people will starve. The survivors will try to escape to the cooler lands of the north and the south and will kill each other for what little food and fuel that might remain, and their civilisation will perish. 

"Their politicians say 'We must do something, very soon.' Its people say 'Oh yes we must.' But just like one of their own holy men they don't want to give up anything nice just yet. The rich don't want to lose their luxuries; the really poor now only just about survive and if they give anything up they'll just die a bit sooner. Like Yellow Explosives said, the truly free are free to do nothing. The tyrants refuse to do anything, other than buy more personal aeroplanes; the tyrannised and the slaves can't do anything even if they wanted to." 

"You're being mega-pessimistic about all this." commented Blue Dragon Apprentice. 

"In all the circumstances in which we work, pessimism is appropriate." The Surveyor's voice was tinged with impatience. "What is our first rule when we are setting up a new assignment?" 

"The Rule of Worst Case Thinking - while hoping for the 

best, always prepare for the worst." chorused the rest of the Dragons. 

"Quite." said the Surveyor. 

"What about Technology?" Green Dragon Engineering demanded. 

"Have you met Technology?" the Surveyor asked. " OK, he's a genius, marvellous ideas, amazing ingenuity, builds fantastic machines, but not always in the right place and at the right time, and not always quick enough. And he's not always even facing in the right direction. There's presidents and politicians, frightened out of their tiny minds at the thought of draconian regulations and rationing, who now are preaching that Technology will save their world. But you know the old saying: 'They who put their trust in Technology risk breaking their necks as they trip over his discarded crowbars, nuts and bolts.'" 

"Is there no hope at all?" Yellow Dragon Assistant Surveyor spoke very quietly. 

"Not much, as far as I can see," said the Surveyor, "unless there's a deal of clear sighted thinking, a collective will freely arrived at, some kind of miracle really." 

"Come on lads," Blue Dragon Site Manager had woken up again, "Forget Earth. We'll be sent for when we're needed for the Great Clean Up. Long journey for us tomorrow. Earth's Inhabitants'll have to fend for themselves for now." 

"God help them then." muttered Yellow Dragon Assistant Surveyor and, with their great claws beating a ragged tattoo against the stone road, the members of Dragon Clean Up Squad Number 58 disappeared into the night.

 

Edward Greestone did not really like people. Not that he was aggressive or obsessively withdrawn, but he had an air of apartness about him, of being a man who stood always to one side. He was a pale brown man with a palely sallow skin and pale mousey hair, wearing fawn trousers and a brown jacket. He was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, neither obviously happy, nor obviously sad - altogether a man whom no-one much noticed and whom no-one ever knew. He lived in a modest house with a biscuit-coloured front door on the edge of the city at the end of a short track, muddy or dusty according to the season. Beside the neat front gate was a locked box in which the postman left his few letters and on top of which, in the plastic folder provided, the boy with the red cart left his Free Papers. 

He worked from his house, something to do with computers, or so it was said by the gossips in the smart terrace up the road into the city. He was a regular church goer, but not to the little Saxon parish church at the end of the city road. Instead, he walked every Sunday across the wide green acres where once the Roman city had stood and was now a huge public park where swans and moorhens swam in the the lake and children played in the stream while their parents sat in the shade of the ruined walls which were two thousand years old. Then he climbed the long hill to the massive Cathedral which dominated both the cities, old Roman and "new" Saxon. He liked the Cathedral. There he could sit behind a pillar, bothering no-one, unbothered by anyone, and commune with his God in his own individual and solitary way. The clergy, both the local Rector and the Cathedral canons, had tried to visit him pastorally, but none had ever got further than his front doorstep from which after a few moments' desultory conversation they had been politely but definitively dismissed. 

One weekday morning he walked down the hill from the Cathedral - it was Ascension Day and he had been to Choral Matins - and stopped at the bridge over the little stream. He could see a red-headed girl of about eleven or twelve with two quite small boys. 'She should be at school.' he thought. One of the boys pulled a small loaf of bread out of the bag the girl was carrying. He held it up over his head and shouted excitedly. Attracted by the shrill calling, a group of Mallard ducks clambered up the low bank and, in a wetly glistening feathery herd, hurried purposefully, as one duck, towards a late breakfast. All of them that is except for the last one to get out of the river who hobbled, one foot shrunken and malformed, slowly along the path behind the rest of the group. The children tore up the bread and offered it to the ravenous group jostling and gobbling around them. 

"Crippleduck. Crippleduck!" they yelled at the straggler. As the lame duck caught up with the rest, the boys broke away and ran down the path, pieces of bread still in hand, laughing and shouting to the ducks

"Come on, come on, chase us!" The ducks broke into an untidy slow gallop, leaving their lame cousin yet again way behind and still unfed. 

Edward Greestone felt an uncomfortable and wholly unfamiliar anger rising within him. How could these children behave with such unthinking cruelty, how could they run away laughing from this pathetic deformed little creature? How was it that the God whose power and glory and love just twenty minutes ago he had remembered and affirmed could allow such wretchedness, such pain, such casual disregard? He wanted to run after the children and shout at them that he hoped one day they would be left behind, that they would be hungry, that they should know what it felt like to be isolated, an outsider, to be in the world but not a part of the fabric of it. But the children had gone, down the path, through a gap in the hedge, lost in the bright sunshine of the morning. 

In his frustration he kicked the bridge, and scuffed his well polished brown shoes. The ducks, finding there were no more crumbs to be had, took themselves back to the river, slid down the bank and into the water. They gathered themselves into formation and swam slowly up stream, whistling softly as contented ducks do, eyes bright, beaks busy snatching and filtering. He watched them as they came towards the bridge - eight mallards, a watery squadron as confident and precise as the flight of Hurricanes he could hear thousands of feet above the city. He counted them again. What had happened to the lame duck, why was she not lagging behind? His anger subsiding, he realised that in the water, in her own environment, in her own world she was not isolated, not an outsider, not a lame duck at all. Whereas himself... 

He walked on slowly, thoughtfully, beside the lake, across the soft grass under the old oaks, past the lovely eighteenth century houses in their quiet old gardens and the gentrified Edwardian terrace, up the slight rise to the Saxon Church, then along his own dusty lane. The postman had leaned his bike against the wooden fence and was pushing letters into the locked box. 

"Good morning," said Edward Greestone, "it's a nice day." The postman, who was very big and very black, was amazed by this greeting from a man who in five years had never acknowledged him with more than a barely polite nod. He swung round, knocked over his bicycle, seized his helmet from his head and held out out his hand. 

"Brother," he said, "it is indeed a beautiful day."

 

I stood on a hillside overlooking Doone Valley. I was nine years old. It was the perfect day - bright clear sunlight, bird song, a slight breeze, the sort of day when all's well with the world and God is in his heaven. I stared across the tops of the trees far into the horizon, and for a split-second moment I lost everything - sunlight, breeze, bird song, and in that 'infinite moment' it seemed to me I glimpsed eternity. What this huge panorama of an immortal landscape so golden, so delicate, so strong, seemed to be showing me was my own insubstantial finite mortal self looking as if through an invisible window into a world both infinite and immortal, stunningly beautiful but to a child frighteningly powerful. Its essential loveliness was overwhelming, and so also was my sense of loss that I could not remain for ever a part of this miraculous vision. 

Over the years the experience has been repeated, but never with quite the same power, never with quite the same sense of awe as I knew then. I have come to look on these slivers of joy as times of spiritual revelation; not so much like that first Exmoor invisible window onto the otherness of eternity, but rather as the absorbing of the individual that is myself into both the greater wholeness of the natural world and into the immanent hand of God. With this blessed sense of absorption comes the perception, the belief that I must as best I can care for this world in which I live and its inhabitants amongst whom I live, and honour the God from whom ultimately all this world has come. 

I have no formal Creed, but since the age of nine I have 

looked on the natural world and all its inhabitants much as a girl looks on her first lover - exciting, beautiful, pristine, unmatchable. I have heard God in the music of Mozart, I have recognised God in the greeting of a smiling stranger, I have seen God at work in the meticulous and generous care taken by our street cleaner. I have shied away from the ugliness of decay, been sickened by the stench of blood and the injured scream, and mourned for lives broken and wasted by cruelty and greed. Where, in these things, is the love and the presence of God? But as the shining beauty of the memory of the first love is never wholly lost, so I have never quite failed to find the a reflection of God everywhere and in all things. A God who is omniscient, eternal and ineffable and yet a God who knows and loves each sparrow who falls to the ground - in this God do I believe.

 

Last year as we walked home from school one day in late November, 8 year old Claire announced to me that she knew about Santa. 

'What do you know?' I asked. 

'That Santa is just parents. Alex told me. It's just parents,' she said with authority. 'The tooth fairy and the Easter bunny, too.' 

Thanks, Alex. Older siblings of friends aren't always a good thing. Alex's brother who was in Year 5 must have blabbed the news. 

'Really?' I responded. 

'Yes,' she replied. 

I noted how interesting that information was, but left the conversation there. I sometimes know when to leave well enough alone. 

The days to Christmas passed as they always do. We decorated the house and the tree, enacted all the usual rituals of that time of year. Claire and I baked some of the traditional cookies that my mother used to bake, and we shopped and wrapped and sang carols and listened to jazz versions of favourite music of the season. All was going along as planned. Except for our sceptic. Each time we would mention Santa, she would look at us with that withering stare that told us that we were being a bit too looney for her to tolerate. Nonetheless Peter and I carried on with making ready for the jolly old fellow to visit us. No scepticism for us. We are still true believers. 

After the Christingle service on the 24th , we came home to a simple soup dinner, and made all the final preparations. 

Claire's certainty began to ebb. Though she continued to tell us that she was only doing it to humour us, she still selected just the right biscuits to set out for Santa, poured the glass of milk, and placed a carrot for the reindeer on a plate near our fireplace. (Nevermind that it isn't an actual fireplace - we tended that difficulty years ago with the explanation of Christmas magic.) 

'Up to bed,' Peter and I sang out to Claire, 'Santa won't come if you're awake!' 

'Yeah, right,' she said without belief, 'goodnight anyway.' 

And then the next morning, when her eyes opened, she raced into our bedroom to wake us for the day. We all descended to the living room where the tree was set. 

Claire's eyes were wide. 

'He came! He came! He came!' 

She pointed to the empty milk glass, the crumbs left on the plate and the gnawed carrot left by the fireplace. 

'Look! Presents! He came!' 

There was no scepticism. She didn't wonder if it was true or real. She was simply in the moment of delight, knowing that there are gifts that arrive unexpectedly and treasures to be found in the world. Breathless and wonder-filled along with her, Peter and I had to agree. The magic of Christmas morning had been worked again. 

That magic comes at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places if we're ready to have it come. In this, my last essay for The Unitarian, I extend my wish to all of you that you may find it often in your lives. If not at Christmas, then perhaps on another day, a day when you need it more some gift will arrive: 

the pleasure of a rose in full blossom, 

the smile of a baby for just you , 

a odd assortment of friends collected round a table for a meal, 

or a moment of true stillness and quiet when the world is too busy. 

May these blessings and gifts come to you, one and all.

 

Homorous Poems

Some amusing peoms with a spiritual or moral dimension.

 

Now many years ago my Mum thought it might be good to drag me to Church

We sat under the pulpit from where this vicar would lurch

He bellowed out the bible from his lungs and his heart

Explaining to his congregation what kept us Christians apart

It was all a bit heavy for the two of us as sort of beginners

But he told us that the rest of the world was full of sinners

And when they awful people died they were banished below without trace

Wow I thought, if he’s right, Hell must be a very crowded place 

 

I could understand the bit about evil and good

And how all the baddies go to Hell – and so they should

But only Christians going to Heaven, how mean

I remembered all the nice foreign people on telly I’d seen

All of those on the Blue Peter expeditions every year

Every one going to Hell, that wasn’t very nice to hear

A bit selfish I thought as this preacher pronounced his case

But if he’s right, Hell must be a very crowded place

 

That was a very long time ago but I remembered it the other day

When I heard some collared chap talking, and what did he say

The same thing, all the competition goes to Hell and damn-nations

Not very good I thought for our international relations

And what about some of us Britons in this multicultural society

All seemed a bit in the past and a little too much piety

Would he say that to somebody from a mosque - I mean to their face

But if he’s right, Hell must be a very crowded place

 

I can understand the robbers and thieves and the everyday thugs

And of course the burglars and murderers and them dealing in drugs

I was never sure about being quiet while eating your food

I think my parents made that up, same about being rude

But now a sweet gentle Mother in Bangladesh, she’s a sinner too

Not because she’s bad, no she’s backed the wrong horse, a Hindu

That’s not very PC these days, judging somebody by their race

But if they are right, Hell must be a very crowded place

 

That bull-rush in the flower vase under the pulpit looks just like a sausage from here

There’s an idea, bangers and mash for lunch, washed down with a tepid beer    

Didn’t I do that last Sunday, when I realised I hadn’t got enough cash to buy a roast? 

No - that was the week before, I think, was it? Well three weeks ago at the very most 

Wait!  Stop it, stop it, here I am in the middle of a service in the silence meditation 

And am I worrying about global peace & worldly warming in thoughtful contemplation?

No! I can’t stop thinking about dinner - it’s after that last reading, the one about 

How we are going to have a world famine because the new climate is going to cause a drought 

I bet the rest of the congregation here are right now thinking goodly things

Happy thankful peaceful thoughts all about the wonders that their God brings

It’s too noisy for me right now, not outside, I mean inside, the silence I need now is in my head 

In a few moments, I am meant to dump all my woes in my world, to think nice thoughts instead 

If nothing else, I am normally worrying the dog will start to snore 

Or he’ll start that embarrassing licking he does while thumping a back leg on the floor

And all I can do is give him a bit of a light kick and while I don’t think that’s mean 

I know what an outcry there will be after the service, over coffee, if I was seen 

At least there is no sneezing or deaf-aid whistles this week, they always put me off 

Or that annoying quick fumble for the hanky just before an apologetic cough 

I’m not in a good mood today am I? Not much tolerance going on inside me!

So am I feeling guilty about that? Yes do you know what, I am, and rightly - I should be

OK, so what are you going to do about it mate? Think of something! NOW - just keep you sane 

Concentrate for a moment, so then may be, this part of the service will not have been in vain.

Fragments of Truth

Leslie Davidson

 

Abraham walked in the wastes of Har-an, 

When a Fragment of Truth blowing by in the sand 

Said "lead your tribe to that Land far away 

Where only the Canaanite heathens now stay." 

And Satan was happy. "That's fine by me. 

That's the start of the Palestine problem", said he. 

 

Moses climbed Sinai's mountain in search of the Word, 

And heard Fragments of Truth from the mouth of the Lord. 

Then Moses came down from the mountain alone, 

Bearing God's ten commandments on tablets of stone. 

And Satan was happy "that's fine by me. 

They'll soon find that ten is too many", said he. 

 

Jesus Christ walked by Galillea beach, 

When a Fragment of Truth drifting by within reach 

Told him God was his Father and that he should choose 

Twelve disciples, and preach about love to the Jews. 

And Satan was happy. "That's fine by me. 

They'll soon have him nailed to a cross", said he. 

 

Mohammed was leading his camels one day, 

When a Fragment of Truth which he found on the way, 

Told him "You have been chosen as Allah's right hand, 

To teach men the Truth from my Holy Koran". 

And Satan was happy. That's fine by me.

Blood will soon flow in the desert", said he. 

 

There are so many Truths for God's Prophets to seek 

But their Priests all believe that their Truth is unique. 

When a Prophet discovers a Fragment that's new 

Then his followers think other faiths are untrue! 

And Satan said "Now I'm redundant you see, 

For when Faiths fight each other, they don't need me." 

 

(Adapted from an ancient Indian Fable.)

On Xmas day Gabriel called to the Lord 

"Its the Arch-angel here can I please have a word?" 

And the voice of a seraphim came from the sky. 

"This is the Heaven's call-centre on high. 

Press One for Miracles and Manifestations, 

Press Two for Psalms and Exaltations, 

Press Three for advice on Sex and Schisms, 

And Four for Plagues and Exorcisms. 

If it's none of these then hold the line 

And you will be put through in time. 

But we must apologise to you Your call is in a lengthy queue. 

Due to the recent huge increase 

From choir boys and repentant priests 

Meantime there's music for distraction From our newest angel, Michael Jackson." 

Gabriel waited for hours on hold, 

And at last got connected to the Lord. 

Then Gabriel spake "Great Allah, the Giver, 

Its thine Arch-angel here with prayers to deliver" 

 

But the Lord waxing wroth said "Gabriel pray, 

Hast thou forgotten its Xmas today? 

At Xmas remember I'm God the Father . 

Its at Ramadan you call me Allah . 

And Passover's the day for Jews, 

And Jehovah is the name they use. 

And when the Pagan Romans first held Xmas 

They seemed to think my name was Mithras 

These humans all give different names 

To Life's Mystery which they can't explain. 

 

When that apple fell from Newton's tree, 

I was called The Force of Gravity. 

Then after Darwin's contribution, 

The Atheists called me Evolution. 

Now Stephen Hawkins is writing articles 

Which call me Fundamental Particles. 

Now I've explained all this to you, 

What are the prayers you're phoning through? 

I swear it'll drive me off my head. 

If they're on again about "Daily Bread" 

  

No Lord. "They say they pray for peace!" 

Said God "Will wonders never cease? 

The Earth had peace a million eons, 

Ere I created human beings. 

Now they bomb each other in my name, 

They wage their wars, they kill and maim. 

Despoil my land, pollute my sea, 

Then pray for Peace-on-Earth from me! 

I love them Gabriel but I wonder 

If creating Adam was a blunder. But still, as ever magnanimous I'll grant them peace at least for Xmas!"

 

“And the last ball out is... is… number fourteen

That is the tenth time this year it has been seen”

I should have had that number, I can see that now

There must be a system here, but where and how

How can I win, beat this national lottery

With all them millions there must be some for me

That’s what I said and this was his reply! “You can try 

And even double the number of tickets that you buy

But I personally beat the system another way

It’s very clever, radical and an alternative style of play

It’s not a method, I expect you will consider

But I can assure you, it’s one guaranteed to deliver

You get a card each week and as normal you fill it in

Then in front of the machine, rip it up and throw it in the bin

Keep your money, and gorge yourself on fags

Booze or chocolate, cream cakes, dirty mags

I don’t care, just spend it and have some fun

It’s better than dreaming that one-day you won

Won millions, yes millions, but millions of what?

Letters through your door asking for the lot

Friends wanting a holiday, a car or drink at the bar

And as far as they are concerned you are now a local star

You’ll be hounded by the press until you buy that country estate

The one with the big high fence to keep you in and burglars at the gate

There you’ll have time to drown in an Olympic sized pool

Of vodka, bored, lonely, sad, with everything but nothing at all

The only remaining friend you’ll have that doesn’t ask for a share

Will be the guard dogs you now need to take with you everywhere! 

So put 10p in corner shop’s forgotten, dusty, rusty charity tin

It will clear your consciences and OK I know you can’t win

But invert your thinking – you can’t lose

And 90p still goes some way (in my sort of pubs) for an ‘alf pint of booze!”

 

Last weekend I sat down with my bills and my calculator

And some growling hours and a battery pack later

I’d done it – my accounts for the month were all done

And I had £20 over – now with that I could have some fun

No! It had been a good month so I’d give it to charity

There must be somebody who needed it, some society

But the big question now was which one then?

There are dozens for animals and the odd one or two for children

But which? Every day I get pleading letters on to my hall floor

And every weekends was given an envelope by somebody at my door

There were the charity shops in town, I could give them some

No - I get my clothes there they already get enough of my income

Thinking now, there wasn’t a shop I knew without at least one tin

Snugly positioned just in case you want to drop some change in

And pubs were no better with the traditional whiskey jar

Sitting there half full for years heavily chained to the bar

Ads in papers - someone smiling who we were told was going to die

And stark bill board pictures attracting our attention as we go by

My Mum’s solution to everything seemed to be making a list

So I wrote down all the possibilities that seem to exist

Soon I had piles for research, restoring, rescuing and rehabilitation

Rest homes, wrecked lives and some odd rare breed re-integration

A few years back I didn’t remember all of this

Did the government pay or did we live in ignorant bliss?

We had the Sally Army on a Friday night at the local pub

And a hat passed round at Christmas at the society club 

Now it is a multi-million pound business, a whole industry 

Aimed at heart strings, making us just feel as guilty as you can be 

All this concern was making my brain hurt for heaven sake

Is there a charity doing research into a headache?

I could give it to cancer research or them working on stopping a heart attack

Yes - at least than if I’ll ill it will have been investment and I’ll get my money back

 

Hello Minster in your 4 by 4 waiting at the lights

Bet you haven’t seen me standing here, up there at such heights

I wonder what you think about, as you drive around in that tank

Can you really afford it, or is it really owned by the bank?

Is that why you got it? So we think it is something you can afford

The Lord of manor touch, a few rungs up from my rusty old ford

The engine does sound impressive, I don’t know, but I expect it’s a V8

Now I hate to say this chap, but you don’t look very happy as you wait

Your expression don’t say “Look at me I’ve made it!” 

You are so fallawn and don’t look like you are enjoying it a bit

I expect you are a very nice man and visit your Mum every Sunday

Or may be you give all your spare time and money away

I know, as I walk over this crossing and I’ll give you a smile

Will it rile you I wonder if someone like me dare look at you a while

I’ll try and radiate a bit of happiness and let’s see how you react

But I warn you mate, I’ll judge you, its my only guide as to how you act

Let’s see how you respond from a happy gesture from a pedestrian

Will I pass your approval and if so what I wonder will sir test me on 

So here we go and I’ll watch your face and lets see what appears on it

WOW, well that to me says more than what you got under that bonnet

 

You stand on my doorstep and ask if I read the bible

Look, I’m a single Mother OK so my lives is just about survival

I’ve got 2 kids here and a dog that all need shovels of food

They are the only priority and I’m sorry if it sounds rude

But you’re a bloke right so you’re great on causes and ideals

But totally useless for washing up, cleaning and meals

Tell me, while you are our trying to show the world the light

Are your kids bored at home at the moment? Am I right 

Yes, right, go back now, get them out, find them a tree to climb

Play football, anything, just give them some of your time

You talking all about God the father is pretty sad

If you are ignoring your own kids and not being a Dad

But, if you are continuing up the road with your God talk

Take our dog with you, she needs a good walk

Go on — off you go save my nieghbour from turning a sinner

I got to go inside to save me from burning the dinner

It may be mundane looking after kids and to you not very amazing

But I think it’s more productive than selling God like double glazing

Now clear off!