faith | M T McGuire Authorholic

Here I am again. This week I have precisely 10 minutes to finish this post. It’s not going to happen so it may bleed into next week but we shall see. I suppose I just wanted to do a final report on the knitting and say Happy Easter.

Easter has been a bit good this year. I sort of feel like I’ve actually hoisted it all in a bit more. Perhaps with the state of international affairs it’s difficult not to. But maybe it’s because things feel like they’re looking up a bit in my own life. It’s not that they ever looked down, particularly, it’s just that my life has been about other people for a long time, and … well it still is, I mean other people are important to me, but for once I feel that there is actually a bit more room and time for me in it too. I’ve been writing, I have a book coming out soon, I’ve started cataloguing some of my 7” records … Doing things, and fitting them all in, just feels … easier. Or perhaps it’s just positive energy because I feel very blessed at the moment. I dunno.

This Easter I had a bit of an Epiphany. I mean, I usually have a bit of an Epiphany at Epiphany anyway but … sorry where was I? Yeh, so on Maunday Thursday my church has a service, at which, being in the choir, I sang. It ends in silence. All the crosses, holy icons, etc are covered up, the altar is stripped bare and all but a few of the lights are extinguished. The congregation goes to the Lady Chapel in silence and takes part in a vigil. It lasts until midnight. Not everyone does the whole thing some do the start, some go off have a bite to eat and pop back, it depends.

The vigil begins with the story of The Last Supper and the aftermath. Obviously, on the Thursday the part of the story at which we find ourselves is when Jesus asks his mates to stay up with him in the Garden of Gethsemane while he prays and they keep nodding off. Bless them they are so human.

They listen to him pray and as he asks God if maybe he could not have to go through with being crucified, if this cup can pass from me … but also states that he’ll do whatever his father requires. And I sat there, calm, quiet, in the dark, thinking, ‘I’ve prayed that prayer.’

Please, please God, if it’s possible to not make me do this, if there’s any kind and gentle way I can sidestep this or … I dunno … win the chuffing pools please can you sort it? Please don’t let Mum have to go into a home, it will break her and she will never forgive me because she won’t understand, which will break me. Please don’t break me, God. A couple of people need me whole. Thank you.

Then Mum went into hospital. And the day she was due to go into the home she died. I’ve written about her death on this blog, you can find it in the dementia section if you’re interested, but it was actually beautiful, a little awe inspiring and felt like the gentlest of closure. ‘Come kindly death,’ as John Donne said.

Mum was absolutely aware what was happening to her and perfectly at peace with the idea of dying. Indeed she was so completely unafraid she had told me in the preceding weeks that if anything happened to her, ‘You mustn’t worry, darling, because I shall be quite alright. You know that, don’t you?’ In short, she was amazing.

Sitting in church, in the dark, I suddenly recalled sitting with her on the ward. It was quite dark and peaceful. The curtains round Mum’s bed were closed and she gradually faded until she was simply sleeping peacefully. The nurses turned her occasionally to ensure she didn’t endure any unnecessary pain. I remember sitting in the demi-darkness feeling as if light was all around us. It wasn’t upsetting because she wasn’t upset. Instead it was calm and peaceful as I sat there with my brother, cherishing the last few hours of companionship with my mum.

Obviously, I was singing at Easter Day, too but yesterday, bollocksed leg or not, I decided I’d do a few eats for after. Lots of people cook biscuits and bring them in after church so I decided that this week, I was probably less busy than they were and so I’d make Easter nests. I made some that were gluten free as well because get me (phnark). In total there were 54, which I thought would probably do. And it did, I came home with two empty boxes and three left! And it was a lovely service and everyone was so chipper and the atmosphere was of happiness and rejoicing. And we had prosecco to help with that afterwards too!

But I suppose what I’m saying is that I suddenly have capacity to do something like bake cakes and this is a new thing for me. It’s as if, two years on from losing the last parent, I’ve finally found myself. Sorry this really does sound like a load of old bollocks doesn’t it? But I can’t think of another way of putting it. I often feel as if my parents are beside me when I do stuff like church. I think of them often. And I’m beginning to think that I might be reaching the point where I can write that dementia book. Although I’ll need to write the last of the sausage Hamgeean Misfits first.

Knitting round up

The knitting challenge is finished. That’s grand as it means I might now get a bit more sleep rather than finish knitting at 11 and then realise I have to spend another hour doing a social media post. I do most social media on my phone which, as someone who touch types at a hundred and something words a minute, is incredibly frustrating. But the knitting wasn’t. It was fun, the people doing the challenge with me were lovely and the final total raised is £802 which is bloody amazing.

Massive thanks to everyone who donated, see the Sponsoring Heroes come etc But it was wonderful and I was so pleased. AND I was second on the fundraising leaderboard, so that’s not bad. Phnark.

If you haven’t donated, and want to, there is still time. You can do that here:

Right, that’s all for this week and there’s still 15 minutes to have a shower! Excellent! Oh. One last thing, ~~we are the sultans, the sultans of swing~~. No, sorry …

Finally, a reminder about my new book! Woo-hoo!

Yes, if you’re interested, I have a new book coming out at the end of may. If you’d like to preorder that, you can do so by going to this page here.

And here’s the blurb!

Since The Pan of Hamgee became a delivery man for Ning Dang Po’s premier gangster, Big Merv, he has learned a lot about when to run, where to hide and when to keep his head down. What with his very existence being treason, and the Grongle invaders tightening their grip on K’Barth, he counts surviving each day as a win.

Marcella the Pirate, a small-time gangster, has started a racket selling replicas of K’Barth’s most prized and expensive food: Goojan spiced sausage. When her plan becomes an overnight success, she sets her sights on toppling Big Merv as the Boss of Ning Dang Po, and The Pan’s world is upended into chaos. If Marcella succeeds in her bid for city-wide domination, it will be curtains for The Pan. But there’s more to her sudden rise than hooky sausages – she’s playing a high-stakes game, with blackmail, kidnapping, and a treasonous pact with the Grongles themselves.

Between Marcella, the security forces, and an illegal satirical comedy drag duo who need a stand-in, The Pan is pulled into a web of crime and intrigue that no amount of speed can outrun. As he navigates his way through the mayhem, he must learn lessons fast about power, loyalty and what it means to be true to yourself, even when the world wants you to be something else.

If you’re interested, click here to find out more here

Blimey, this week’s been a bit of a roller coaster. As you know, last week I was having extreme difficulties with what felt like bowel-based armageddon. I’m going to relate the happy ending of that story (spoiler: I didn’t die in the end even though I was genuinely beginning to wonder which would go first, the virus or me). I should also run this with the caveat that it is mostly supposed to be funny, and/or reassuring to those in a similar position. But I have no idea which bits of what I write/say make people laugh. I know they usually do, somewhere along the way, the trick is just to make it look deliberate. So if I’ve misjudged this and none of it is funny at all my humblest apologies. I’ll try and find something laminating-bacon-level stupid to do over the course of the week to make things more interesting. Right. Disclaimer made, on we go …

Having cancelled our holiday I then hot-footed it to the Doc’s on Tuesday again, desperately seeking help but also the referral she suggested to see what in god’s name is going on with my insides. She agreed that the referral was a good idea and suggested I have another go at solids. ‘Rice and chicken … and maybe a hard boiled egg, but not much else,’ she warned me.

‘Can I have the egg scrambled?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, but no butter or milk.’

‘Can I have coffee?’

‘With a meal.’

Woot.

‘With a tiny bit of milk?’

‘Yes.’

God love her. So I went home, made myself a small cup of coffee and had a scrambled egg. It might possibly have been the loveliest thing I’ve eaten in my entire fucking life. Trooper that he is, McOther went off and bought some chicken which he divided, making some into a delicious pasta dish for himself and McMini. I decided I would do my portion with basmati rice, chopped onions and herbs, I also added a stock cube. It was surprisingly tasty.

The next day, I felt human. I went and had the first appointment, an ultrasound scan (clear) and then we collected the cat. I had energy. It was wonderful.

That night I felt so much better I decided to branch out with some different foods. The following lunch I had the chicken and bacon in an amatricana sauce that the boys hadn’t finished the night before on lovely big shells of pasta. I did forebear to have cheese. There were no ill effects or indeed any. Having not ‘BEEN’ for 24 hours, I was cautiously optimistic I might, possibly, have turned the corner. For supper I put lentils rather than rice with my chicken and veg and cooked it in the oven with a tiny bit of cider. It was lovely. As I went to bed, I took my HRT pill and the hayfever one, although with real work to do my immune system had stopped yanking my chain and I wasn’t having any hayfever. My hands had stopped aching too.

I normally take supplements. Not many but taking Magnesium L-Threonate has definitely helped my menopausal brain fog and also made me sleep better. I’d read a few days previously that Magnesium supplements can set off this kind of reaction so I’d stopped them. Feeling a bit awake but at the same time really tired, I took one and went to bed. I knew what to do now, I reasoned. If my bottom unleashed armageddon during the night I could fix it.

It did.

Here’s another useful nugget of information people. If you are having the shits in the night, it’s more likely to be an infection, having them in the day is more likely to be IBS or some other thing caused by your immune system pissing you about. Always useful to know that. I spent Thursday drinking diorolite and thinking I was going to die but manfully started in again with the scrambled egg breakfast on Friday. Supper was chicken and rice. I had no coffee, indeed, I am no longer addicted to coffee. I can now not drink any for a whole day and there will be no headache, which is a bit of a bonus. Let’s face it, something good had to come out of all this tsunami of crap. Come the evening I did not take a magnesium pill.

I slept like a fucking log.

Today I am very tired but I am basically fine. I know I have had something grim, I feel very post viral; weak and feeble the way you do after a really bad go of flu, but my weight has stabilised at 10st 13lbs (about 67kg I think) but I had a tom tit today and it was normal for the first time in about 6 weeks … Holy shit (literally I guess)! What a joy that was! I nearly took a fucking photo of it. But I didn’t because even I am not quite that bad, so instead here’s one of the absolutely enormous shit that pigeon did on my car (and long-suffering sister in-law) a while back.

Pigeon shit down the window of a Lotus Mwhahahargh! What have I sunk to?

And I took a walk up to the market today which feels so much better. At some point I will be having an endoscopy and a colonoscopy (either together in a couple of weeks or separately, starting with the endoscopy next week and the colonoscopy in a month or so).

Any takeaways from this? I probably should have stopped and rested at the beginning but I just. did. not. have. time. And I should have known it was a virus, because it had given my overactive immune system enough to do that the allergies and arthritic pain had all stopped. Well no, actually, I did know it was a virus, I just wasn’t sure if I was going to get better! I genuinely believed it might kill me at one point, because I’m not a drama queen at all. (Yes, that’s terribly melodramatic but, in my defence, I remember my Mum saying the exact same thing after she had pleurisy; as in, ‘It was awful! If I hadn’t had to look after your father I think I’d have happily gone then’.)

Also, I tidied up something I’d got lying about and turned it into a short story which I submitted to an anthology, so that’s grand. And I applied for a stall at the Ely Cathedral Christmas Fair, so that was grand too.

Thank you, everyone who gave me advice. It was actually really useful. I listened to/read all the links and stuff you all sent and it gave me things to try.

Now, if I can make this stick I have a target of getting fit and well by 21st when I have booked to go on a metal detecting rally half an hour up the road. Really looking forward to it as I haven’t been out for ages. And I’m going to go back to the gym. Possibly Thursday or maybe a week on Monday.

Other stuff …

A propos of nothing much, on the way home from the market today, I popped into the cafe next to the church to give them a bit of pay it forward cash. They know some of their customers, are really hungry but can’t afford to pay for a meal so you can drop a few quid in so they can give meals to these people for a reduced rate (or nothing). I then nipped into church to light a candle and say thanks for the end of the tsunami of crap. I tend to pay £1 each for them, I’m not sure if there is an actual price anywhere, but I didn’t have any cash so I did the minimum £5 card thing on the doo-hicky at the back which which is a safe 3 up front, anyway, I reckon. There was another lady in there, who was obviously having a bit of quiet time and as I walked back past her I stopped to ask if she was OK, but she said hello first.

I asked her if she was OK, anyway. I always ask this, because … I dunno … because I think it gives people an option if they need or want to say something, but they can also not say anything too, and it’s an important part of the ministry of that particular church, to me, because it’s a place of welcoming and inclusive kindness. Then as I got to the door thought about my remaining candles-in-hand and went back.

‘I didn’t have any cash so I’ve paid for a few candles up front, if you’d like to light one on me you are more than welcome,’ I said.

We got talking and she is new in her faith. She’d been brought up a Christian but it just hadn’t really clicked until recently. We ended up having a chat, which was lovely until we got onto the topic of how stuff sometimes aligns uncannily and … ugh, I ended up telling her the fucking ridiculously long Mother Death story which, even in the abridged version, took far too long. I only wanted to talk enough for her to feel relaxed and comfortable and then ask her about her faith journey, because I love hearing how other people came to have their faiths, possibly because my faith journey is so boring, or because I’m nosey, or quite possibly simply because I’m unable to do anything, even being a Christian, without hyperfocussing autistically about it. But also, because I suspect the lady would have liked to have talked about it, too, and that is far more likely to be the reason our paths crossed. But oh no, no. Nothing like that from shit-for-brains here.

If the good lord sent me to listen to her story, all I did was bloody well tell her mine. Perhaps that’s what he sent her for, to listen … poor woman if he did. I was desperate to ask her when I got to the end of her story but I could see she also wanted to be on her own for a bit too and recharge during her lunch hour. So I felt I should leave her to have a chat to God rather than me.

On the upside, I did make her laugh by telling her that one of the windows looked like Jesus jumping on a trampoline, a little nugget that was pointed out to me by one of the lay readers and she did pop in to church this morning for the first ten minutes or so.

On the downside … I comprehensively stuffed judging when it was time for me to shut up and I didn’t even ask her name. I think it was OK. She gave me a hug anyway. But urgh. It’s really frustrating to have a brain that’s really pointy in some respects and then be thicker than mince in others.

The thing is … I think I do have a kind of calling. Not to be holy particularly or anything, mostly it’s to write, but also to be kind … because my parents are both gone it is left to my brother and I to Be The Light. And I have a very strong sense that I must be the light now … it’s just that my parents made it look so fucking effortless but it’s actually really difficult. I’m not the kind of legend they both were were so … I can’t … yet. I might if I work very hard at it and all the stars align.

The thing is, maybe sometimes the fact I am a cheerful soul who is, to be honest, a bit of a bell-end is something I can use in a good way. It’s just that it’s a weapon I don’t quite know how to wield yet. I think it’s at the stage where it’s still a bit heavy for me, and metaphorically, I’m waving it round inadvertently cutting off the limbs of people round me and gouging walls the way a 6 year old would if given a real working lightsaber. It’s like a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a rather overenthusiastic labrador … or my cat.

I think if I was to complete a what disciple are you? quiz, I’d be Peter; lovely guy, really sweet and well meaning, totally solid and practical too, but just … a bit of a wazzock sometimes. If he can say the wrong thing at the wrong time he will (God love you I’m sorry Peter but you know it’s true) and he’s just, so sensible and practical and well meaning and even though he blunders on from gaffe to gaffe he learns (unlike me). Maybe it’s because he’s so obviously human and flawed that I think he’s great … maybe we’re all Peter.

But at the same time, when I think about all the things I saw my parents do, the really amazing, treat-your-neighbour-as-yourself stuff, the overriding thing is that they were not embarrassed. They gave absolutely no fucks for social convention. On all levels there was simply the question, what is the right thing to do here? Oh yeh. That is. Check. Off we go.

The first time I saw a stranger in trouble on the street I stopped but I hung back, waiting for others to act. I was too shy to stop and help, myself. But then I shared a flat with someone who had epilepsy and she told me that actually, it really meant something when people stopped to help if she’d had a fit in a public place and was just lying on the ground. So now, if I see someone who looks like they might be in trouble I make a point of stopping.

If someone’s sitting down on the ground looking tired or weary, or yes, drunk, I ask them if they’re OK. Even if there’s a crowd round them I stop and ask (and the one time that has happened, when there was a crowd I mean, the woman on the ground was having a heart attack and nobody gathered round her had thought to phone for an ambulance, they were all just standing there, gawping. No-one was even holding her hand. So although six people had found her before me, I was the one who phoned). If someone’s begging I don’t always give them cash but I try to ensure I acknowledge their humanity and say hi.

Thinking about it. That’s the thing about my Mum and Dad. If there was some guy lying on the pavement with people stepping over him, my parents were not afraid to go over and check that he was merely in a drunken stupor, rather than seriously ill, and pop him in the recovery position if need be. They were never scared to ask people if they were OK, even if it might have made them look a bit stupid. In some cases they were not afraid to do something a bit dangerous, like give a homeless man a bed for the night.

While I looked on, not getting what was happening, my mum ran across the shingle of Shoreham beach and into the breaking waves to save the life of a child. She didn’t stop to think, ‘the parents might get the wrong idea if I manhandle their toddler’ or not even realise what was happening, like me. Maybe that’s the trick, at every level; getting to that point where the part of your brain that knows, ‘I should act/offer help, be kind,’ subsumes the ‘will I embarrass myself?’ awkwardness as the go-to neural pathway.

My parents were never afraid to step up. So I guess I’m getting there. I’ve got to the bit where I give no fucks about asking or offering or helping. But they were also really good at the aftermath and I’m not (unless it’s a crisis. I’m properly level-headed in a crisis but I’m a bit lumpy at the rest). I just need to get to the listening bit faster when it’s not a crisis I guess! Or I dunno … maybe I just have to hope that this afternoon was a time when the good lord had decided that what that lady actually needed, right there, was a well-meaning wanker. Although I’m not beyond thinking that it might have been that the well-meaning wanker needed a kind lady to talk to.

And yes. I think about everything I do in this much detail, which is why I write books I guess. Indeed it’s probably what makes the books alright. And no it doesn’t drive me that nuts. Although this mix of extreme self-awareness—and at the same time none—kind of dumb at times like Peter (sorry Peter) is sometimes annoying and I know I embarrass my very introvert husband constantly. But I can also let it go quite happily; chalk it up to experience, try to learn and move on. If I didn’t, I’d have probably topped myself, or been admitted to a long term mental institution, years ago. Never mind. I’ve got the no fucks bit down, so that’s a start. And tomorrow is a clean slate, after all. I can start again.