Gorilla Snot
Went out for a quiet drink the other night. It was all going rather well, until one of our party asked me what I wanted to drink. As I sat there pondering, a wave of apathy swept over me, as it often does and, of course, I chose to indulge myself in it.
"I can't be arsed to choose." I said. That sounded so sluggardly that I quickly added "Get me something I've never had before." To make it sound like I actually had an 'interesting and adventurous' personality.
The consequence was that I had to sit and wait while both of my companions excitedly fled to the bar to have a board meeting with the bartenders over what to buy me. Quarter of an hour later I was presented with this:
A nosebleed in a glass. I had to guess what was in it. Obviously there was a form of Irish Cream which had been mixed with some vile bodily secretions, causing it to curdle horribly and turn a putrid fleshy magenta. I was chirpily informed that this particular beverage was called 'Gorilla Snot'. I wonder why.
With the whole experience now behind me I can reliably inform you of several facts:
1. The other mystery ingredient is in fact Port.
2. Calling it a 'drink' is a little misleading. It's more of meal in a glass. I was literally using my cocktail stirrer to spoon the mixture out of the glass like alchoholic porridge.
3. Don't be intrigued. It's not one of those looks horrible but tasts quite nice drinks.
4. If you really must try it, don't bother with the ingredients. You can experience this drink yourself by simply being puking into a pint glass and sipping your own lumpy sick.
I'm sure there's a lesson here, if I could be bothered to look for it. Anyone else had any interesting drinks?
Pizza, Chocolate and Oats
I'm feeling fat. I'm not fat, but I've been beggining to feel it. Firstly let me explain that this is most unusual for me. In that past I have been a vocal advocate of every unhealthy foodstuff known to man. I would have buttered my toast with MSG if I could've. There was also my college days where I would consume with great gusto at least three Mc Donalds' a week. So feeling fat is a new one for me.It all comes from having eaten nothing but fruit, and the very occasional bowl of ready break or soup for the entire month of February. It was a really difficult thing to do and the cravings for random stuff was immense, most notable of which were my insatiable desire for pizza, chocolate and oats. Yes, oats, something I have pretty much never eaten before. Upon the dawn of March I immediately went down to Morrisons and bought several large bags of crunchy oats and ate them in truely massive quantities for breakfast for breakfast, dinner and supper. I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here but the results were fairly explosive.Anyway my point is that since the start of March I have gorged myself on every sugar and saturated fat laden food I could lay my fevered hands on. I have put on 1 1/2 stone in 6 weeks and although i'm still well underwieght for my height, I notice that I can't run as fast, jump as high or be arsed as much. I'm eating for the sake of it and for the first time it feels horrible.Clearly the human body wasn't really designed for eating so much food; only as much as it really needs, so i guess i'm going to have to try and embark on a more permanant, but not as strict version of the February experience. It's kind of a spritual thing as well (what isn't?). I have serious concerns about the noncholance with which we can destroy ourselves with greed. I don't want to be obese but more than that, I don't want to be spiritually obese, where I can have whatever I want, whenever I want it and you can cram the consequences down my sauce covered lips while you're at it. I'm discovering that food has huge consequences to how I live my life and I'm at the mercy of it's demands. No one makes a slave of me. Death to the gateaux and Ronald can kiss my skinny arse!
Lately...
Lately I’ve been feeling very spiritually lethargic and I notice that it affects every part of my life. Discipline becomes less important, hearing Gods voice becomes harder, the desire to be creative begins to wane, I become more needy in my relationships…the list is endless as I attempt to replace God in my life with anything mundane that I can get my hands on, not out of spite but simply because I can’t be arsed. Why? I wish I knew.
Into these times I find that God invariably breaks through, even if they are short torrents of intense relationship that flare up and die down again, they are truly precious and some of the most creative times for me. An island of promise and joy in what seems like a sea of ignorance and waste.
One such time occurred only a few weeks ago. I hadn’t written anything for a long time and finally wrote out of my despondency, this.
It Would Be You…
Who’d have thought?
It would be You I’d loose my heart to.
Find life-lust on your lips.
Your words awaken my life.
Who’d have thought?
It would be You who’d draw me near,
Sat down, tear-smeared and breathless.
Overwhelmed by Your knowing.
“You are mine…”
Writing the words is like a kiss.
“…And I am Yours”
And You say; “I didn’t pay in part,
All it takes is surrender”.
Oh, my beloved, what of me now?
That it were just about my heart.
In the week that followed God took me on a journey of promise that ended with a revelation of the way that surrender brings authority. That when we submit to the beauty of the Holy Spirit working through us, we can do all things. That’s when your life finishes. I’m dead already – or at least I might as well be. My life isn’t my own and because of that God promises more than I could ever dream of achieving through ambition and subscribing to the politics of ‘success’. A week later I wrote this next poem. Somehow the two together sum up a watershed moment when I began to stop running towards what my life was going to look like and began to think about how I could burn it all and watch it blaze, bright and hot in a dark place, where the only people who would see, were the people who needed the warmth.
Temple
Man, so stripped in his worship;
Naked-aware that You are God,
And he, flesh, kept from death,
But for the constant frail flutter,
Of time ticking in his breast.
O familiar ache in the centre;
Your presence pressing deep.
What a mystery for the Great I AM,
To choose this throne of breath,
And bone, my humble God, to use.
I am an anthem of my Gods renown,
The train of his robe fills this temple,
Richest fount of exquisite emotion,
Free-flung, wild and unbound,
Yet found, bound in my Zion.
Man, so stripped in his worship;
Naked-aware that You are God,
And he, a paper cup, kept from ash,
But for the very furnace within.
A frame of dust on a blaze of authority.
I’m a pillar of fire;
So show me a desert.
I think I’ve learned that if you find yourself in the grip of an attitude or a lifestyle that you hate but can’t get out of. Try crying out. Whether out of bitterness, distress, hatred or just boring nothingness. The Psalms demonstrate a God who responds when we become passionate, if even for the briefest of moments.
My E-mail Stalker and Newton's Third Law
Over the last few months I have been receiving regular e-mails from an unknown girl inviting me to sign up to various websites with her or to be her Bebo Buddy or whatever the latest communal website fad happens to be. For the most part, considering that I don’t know her at all, I have ignored them but last night I became curious. Just who was this girl? And where did she get my e-mail address from and is she some sort of sordid e-mail stalker?
So, to put the conspiracy theories in my head to rest, I signed up to one of the websites and clicked on her profile. To my horror, this is what popped before my eyes: 
Oh, dear Lord…words fail me.
As I reviewed the eloquent synopsis above I couldn’t help but begin to pick out some deeply disturbing issues:
1. The dreaded photo. Well it’s a bad starting point really isn’t it. The cap…and those eyes! What happened? Did she loose her eye liner and thought a black marker would suffice? Was it a fight? A disease? Some things man is not meant to know.
2 Build: Muscular? There’s just no need for that.
3. The Personal Words form a poetic summary of the whole. I hope I never meet Trev.
4. Peter Andre? Peter Plastic Pecs himself is her favourite artist?
5. She loves to party on the corner of the street. I suspect that the full implications of that statement have not really sunk in for her. Plus, she’s 20, not 13.
6. She relaxes in the back seat of a Saxo, loves to holiday at Butlins and her favourite sport is ‘to bitch’.
The only thing that's missing is the cliched, Sex: yes please. Clearly, I could go on, and the effort not to be cruel is immense, although in my defence this post would not exist if she didn't persist in e-mailing me. However, far be it from me to act as the self-righteous character assassin here, especially as I don’t even know her. Long may that continue. Instead I would like to share with you my new theory. It goes like this:
In physics for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction right? I have now come to believe that for every person, there is an equal and opposite person. For example you have Christ and the Anti-Christ, Arnold Swarzenegger and Arnold Rimmer, Camilla Parker Bowles and Johnny Knoxville, etc etc. And that this girl…(I changed her name, more out of sympathy than for any legal reasons),…this girl is my Anti-Me. Yes, she is the Anti-Heaton (or possibly a character from Little Britain). Every word I can think of to describe myself finds it’s antithesis in this young lady (or “durty hoe”) from Walsall.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we ever met. Would the world come to a sudden end in a supernova fusion of matter and anti-matter. Cool. But then I think of her ‘relaxing’ on the backseat of Trevs red Saxo and pray fervently we never do meet. Or, for that matter, that she never finds this website. Hmm. Well, it’s all been in the best possible taste…I’m just not sure she’d understand.
Supposing that i was going to end on a sensible note, I guess i would say that it's strange, the extent to which someone elses life is so instantly an anathema to me. For me everything ends in reflection and introspection and this, I know, reflects something that I don't like. Genuinely, I wish her all the best in her ambitions...although maybe not the one about becoming a page 3 girl. But more than that i hope that she finds herself living in a community where people love her for who she is. That only leaves me asking myself; could that community involve me? Impossible? It shouldn't be.
August 6, 1945, 8:15 am. It was a Monday...
This is an extract from the memoirs of Mrs. Futaba Kitayama, a 33 year old housewife who survived the bombing of Hiroshima. "It was in Hiroshima, that morning of August 6. I had joined a team of women who, like me, worked as volunteers in cutting firepaths against incendiary raids by demolishing whole rows of houses. My husband, because of a raid alert the previous night, had stayed at the Chunichi (Central Japan Journal), where he worked."Our group had passed the Tsurumi bridge, Indianfile, when there was an alert; an enemy plane appeared all alone, very high over our heads. Its silver wings shone brightly in the sun. A woman exclaimed, 'Oh, look -- a parachute!' I turned toward where she was pointing, and just at that moment a shattering blast filled the whole sky."Was it the flash that came first, or the sound of the explosion, tearing up my insides? I don't remember. I was thrown to the ground, pinned to the earth, and immediately the world began to collapse around me, on my head, my shoulders. I couldn't see anything. It was completely dark. I thought my last hour had come. I thought of my three children, who had been evacuated to the country to be safe from the raids. I couldn't move; debris kept falling, beams and tiles piled up on top of me."Finally I did manage to crawl free. There was a terrible smell in the air. Thinking the bomb that hit us might have been a yellow phosphorus incendiary like those that had fallen on so many other cities, I rubbed my nose and mouth hard with a tenugui (a kind of towel) I had at my waist. To my horror, I found that the skin of my face had come off in the towel. Oh! The skin on my hands, on my arms, came off too. From elbow to fingertips, all the skin on my right arm had come loose and was hanging grotesquely. The skin of my left hand fell off too, the five fingers, like a glove."I found myself sitting on the ground, prostrate. Gradually I registered that all my companions had disappeared. What had happened to them? A frantic panic gripped me, I wanted to run, but where? Around me was just debris, wooden framing, beams and roofing tiles; there wasn't a single landmark left."And what had happened to the sky, so blue a moment ago? Now it was as black as night. Everything seemed vague and fuzzy. It was as though a cloud covered my eyes and I wondered if I had lost my senses. I finally saw the Tsurumi bridge and I ran headlong toward it, jumping over the piles of rubble. What I saw under the bridge then horrified me."People by the hundreds were flailing in the river. I couldn't tell if they were men or women; they were all in the same state: their faces were puffy and ashen, their hair tangled, they held their hands raised and, groaning with pain, threw themselves into the water. I had a violent impulse to do so myself, because of the pain burning through my whole body. But I can't swim and I held back."Past the bridge, I looked back to see that the whole Hachobori district had suddenly caught fire, to my surprise, because I thought only the district I was in had been bombed. As I ran, I shouted my children's names. Where was I going? I have no idea, but I can still see the scenes of horror I glimpsed here and there on my way."A mother, her face and shoulders covered with blood, tried frantically to run into a burning house. A man held her back and she screamed, 'Let me go! Let me go! My son is burning in there!' She was like a mad demon. Under the Kojin bridge, which had half collapsed and had lost its heavy, reinforced-concrete parapets, I saw a lot of bodies floating in the water like dead dogs, almost naked, with their clothes in shreds. At the river's edge, near the bank, a woman lay on her back with her breasts ripped off, bathed in blood. How could such a frightful thing have happened? I thought of the scenes of the Buddhist hell my grandmother had described to me when I was little."I must have wandered for at least two hours before finding myself on the Eastern military parade ground. My burns were hurting me, but the pain was different from an ordinary burn. It was a dull pain that seemed somehow to come from outside my body. A kind of yellow pus oozed from my hands, and I thought that my face must also be horrible to see."Around me on the parade ground were a number of grade-school and secondary-school children, boys and girls, writhing in spasms of agony. Like me, they were members of the anti-air raid volunteer corps. I heard them crying 'Mama! Mama!' as though they'd gone crazy. They were so burned and bloody that looking at them was insupportable. I forced myself to do so just the same, and I cried out in rage, 'Why? Why these children?' But there was no one to rage at and I could do nothing but watch them die, one after the other, vainly calling for their mothers."After lying almost unconscious for a long time on the parade ground, I started walking again. As far as l could see with my failing sight, everything was in flames, as far as the Hiroshima station and the Atago district. It seemed to me that my face was hardening little by little. I cautiously touched my hands to my cheeks. My face felt as though it had doubled in size. I could see less and less clearly. Was I going blind, then? After so much hardship, was I going to die? I kept on walking anyway and I reached a suburban area."In that district, farther removed from the center, I found my elder sister alive, with only slight injuries to the head and feet. She didn't recognize me at first, then she burst into tears. In a handcart, she wheeled me nearly three miles to the first-aid center at Yaga. It was night when we arrived. I later learned there was a pile of corpses and countless injured there. I spent two nights there, unconscious; my sister told me that in my delirium I kept repeating, 'My children! Take me to my children!'"On August 8, I was carried on a stretcher to a train and transported to the home of relatives in the village of Kasumi. The village doctor said my case was hopeless. My children, recalled from their evacuation refuge, rushed to my side. I could no longer see them; I could recognize them only by smelling their good odor. On August 11, my husband joined us. The children wept with joy as they embraced him."Our happiness soon ended. My husband, who bore no trace of injury, died suddenly three days later, vomiting blood. We had been married sixteen years and now, because I was at the brink of death myself, I couldn't even rest his head as I should have on the pillow of the dead."I said to myself, 'My poor children, because of you I don't have the right to die!' And finally, by a miracle, I survived after I had again and again been given up for lost."My sight returned fairly quickly, and after twenty days I could dimly see my children's features. The burns on my face and hands did not heal so rapidly, and the wounds remained pulpy, like rotten tomatoes. It wasn't until December that I could walk again. When my bandages were removed in January, I knew that my face and hands would always be deformed. My left ear was half its original size. A streak of cheloma, a dark brown swelling as wide as my hand, runs from the side of my head across my mouth to my throat. My right hand is striped with a cheloma two inches wide from the wrist to the little finger. The five fingers on my left hand are now fused at the base."Having read this any ruminations on the "horror of nuclear weapons" would be pointless and cheap. My only question is 'Why did I have to search around on the internet to find this on some obscure website?' If I learn about the second world war in school i'm told to read war poems all about mustard gas and the way it was used. I'm shown photographs of mountains of Jewish shoes left ownerless with in-depth detail of the Holocaust and it's machinations. And i'm told that on August 6th 1945 a nuclear bomb called Fat Man was dropped on Hiroshima in order to end the war with the Japanese.As Stalin said "Kill one and it's a tragedy, kill a million and it's a statistic." I thought we'd got past that. If being taught was more about imparting past experience than just reciting facts would we still have such massively indiscriminate weapons? Along with the fact that modern nuclear weapons are now 4,000 times more powerful than Fat Man comes the question of what siezure of stupidity has so gripped our leaders that the UK feels the need to keep and maintain 392 such weapons (US has 8,000!) when clearly we are not going to use them?
"File them next to the toilet..."
Two posts in as many days! I'm on fire...except that this is mostly not my work. This is an article that was printed in the Guardian newspaper and touted as a genuine letter, sent by the Inland Revenue. Whether or not that is actually true is totally irrelevant because it tickles my sense of humour either way. Apologies if you've seen it before...Dear Mr Addison,
I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise. I will address them, as ever, in order.
Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a "begging letter". It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a "tax demand". This is how we, at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy; traditionally referred to such documents.
Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the "endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat" has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from "pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers" might indicate that your decision to "file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies" is at best a little ill-advised. In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a "lackwit bumpkin" or, come to that, a "sodding charity". More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.
Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay "go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services", a moment's rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to "stump up for the whole damned party" yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor's disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on "junkets for Bunterish lickspittles" and "dancing whores" whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, "that box-ticking façade of a university system."
A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:
1.. The reason we don't simply write "Muggins" on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;
2.. You can rest assured that "sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give" has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn't render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.
I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way
wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to "give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India" you would still owe us the money.
Please forward it by Friday.
Yours Sincerely,
H J Lee
Customer RelationsComedy! A more serious post on the Hiroshima nuclear bomb later in the week...
Christian GBH
Imagine yourself, in the dry heat of the afternoon, walking down a dusty side road in a small African town, the red earth littered with strips of old chewed sugar cane, old men staring as you pass. When one of the small, brightly coloured, breeze-block shop fronts causes you to pause; “Christian Music Shop” reads the rough hand painted sign. It’s no Wesley Owen, but still seems a little out of place and until the moment you actually enter, a part of you is expecting it to hold a family of swine, a corn grinding machine…anything but Christian merchandise. To your surprise you find yourself standing in an Aladdin’s cave of Christian tapes and books, all thick with dust and displaying the cheesiest selection of titles imaginable.
This is what happened to my fellow travellers and I on one of the days we were staying in Kenya. We felt like we had stepped back in time. Imagine any Christian material produced in the 70’s, that was deemed by the West to be too disgracefully happy for human consumption, was all dumped in a tiny shack, then this was it. We rummaged through gospel tapes with titles like ‘Pure Joy’ and ‘Sing His Praises in the Morning’ accompanied by pictures of stags prancing in a morning mist or rainbows sprouting from magnificent moss-clad waterfalls.
It was then that my eyes fell upon a set of two books by Steven Ogan the first of which was emblazoned with the immortal words; “How to Beat Your Wife”. It was one of those moments when your mind is so thoroughly confused that it takes a few moments to respond. Perhaps I had read it wrong? But, no. A swift check confirmed that I was correct and that the beauty nestled next to it was indeed entitled “How to Beat Your Husband” – lest the author should ever be accused of fostering gender inequality. I glanced at the shopkeeper – a pretty young African woman. She didn’t look like the husband pummelling type.
“Have you read these?” I ask.
“Yes” Came the reply.
My mind had by now recovered from its confusion and was beginning to inform me that this situation was deeply funny. “Are they any good?” I said, cracking a grin.
“Yes, very good!”
“Ahh!” Clearly spouse beating was a popular form of recreation. After all, you wouldn’t need to spend any money to get started; all that’s required is a frying pan or hefty branch…or fists, I thought, eyeing the slight girl behind the counter with wariness. In my mind i was wondering what life might be life for a couple who had both read the appropriate literature on administering good Christian grevious bodily harm. It was at this point that I decided it was time to leave before I got myself into trouble. That and the fact that everyone else was leaving, having found no Hillsongs CDs. Or, indeed, any CDs for that matter.
So why tell this story? Well, I feel that it’s worth it, just for the unbridled joy of knowing that you too can be the proud owner of the complete set of relation-battering manuals for only £3.49 each!! Yes, I’ve found them online here at http://www.canapublishinguk.com/Uzima%20Books%20for%20life.htm
“Books for Life” indeed!
And what makes it all absolutely perfect is the revelation that they’re part of a 4 book series:
The third, brilliantly, is “How to Beat Your Inlaws”, and the fourth? It’s simply entitled “Mercy”, which of course is cheaper at only £2.99. Ironic magnificence!Ps. Seriously; check out the link...it's worth it just to read the blurb for 'how to beat your wife' and the awesome spelling error in 'Mercy'.
A Tribute
This is a small tribute to the lyrical genius that is Wierd Al Yankovic. If you need this explaining to you then you need to look harder. I'm not going to explain it. Just rest assured that his brain is big, if a little confused.I, man, am regal - a German am I
Never odd or even.
If I had a hi-fi.
Madam, I'm Adam.
Too hot to hoot.
No lemons, no melon.
Too bad I hid a boot.
Lisa Bonet ate no basil.
Warsaw was raw.
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Rise to vote, sir.
Do geese see God?
Do nine men interpret?
Nine men, I nod.
Rats live on no evil star.
Won't lovers revolt now?
Race fast, safe car.
Pa's a sap.
Ma is as selfless as I am.
May a moody baby doom a yam?
Ah, Satan sees Natasha.
No devil lived on.
Lonely Tylenol.
Not a banana baton.
No X in Nixon.
O stone, be not so.
O Geronimo, no minor ego.
Naomi, I moan.
A Toyota's a Toyota.
A dog, a panic in a pagoda.
Oh no, Don Ho!
Nurse, I spy gypsies; run!
Senile felines.
Now I see bees I won.
UFO tofu.
We panic in a pew.
Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo.
God! A red nugget; a fat egg under a dog!
Go hang a salami; I'm a lasagna hog.I'm sure you can download the song somewhere. I'll post it if i find it.
The Cockrel of Basle
I found an ancient and very obscure article yesterday that I deemed random enough to be mentioned here. It concerns the medieval practice of holding animal courts. Yes, trails for wildlife miscreants that have broken the law and hence must be tried and punished before God.
Apparently the first recorded animal trial was in AD 864 where the court decreed that a hive of bees which had stung a man to death should be suffocated, although exactly how they planned to achieve this I have no idea – but then common sense doesn’t really seem to come in to this at all. I have realised that the key to holding a successful animal trial is bucketfuls of religious zeal and little else as displayed by St Bernard who excommunicated a swarm of flies that were irritating him as he preached in the 11th Century.
More often, however, it seems that larger animals fell foul of the law and obviously had to have criminal proceedings brought against them – like the horse who threw his rider, killing him, whereupon the beast itself was itself sentenced to die. Freeroaming pigs in France also seem to be persistent offenders with one notable incident where a Sow and her six piglets were found guilty of eating a child! Sensibly the sow was hanged but the youngsters were “spared because of their youth” and “the bad example set by their mother”. One assumes they were rehabilitated or given foster homes- heaven forbid that they be left to their own devices; free to follow in the footsteps of their despicable single parent.
One of my favourites has to be the Trial of the Cockerel of Basle in 1471 in Switzerland, where apparently even birds cannot escape the long arm of the law. The vile cockerel was found guilty of “laying an egg in defiance of natural law” and was condemned to death. The unholy creature was publicly burnt at the stake having been branded as “a devil in disguise”. Nice.
Also worthy of mention are the loutish Italian caterpillars who were asked to appear in court in 1659 to face charges of “trespassing and wilful damage to property”. The court, in fairness, conceded the caterpillars right to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, on the proviso that their behaviour did not “destroy or impair the happiness of man”. Clearly justice was served, as it was in Germany where established legal procedures were scrupulously adhered to in the trial of a bear that had “ravaged” some villages in 1499. The trial was delayed for over a week on a submission that the defendant had a right to be tried by it’s peers – in this case a jury of fellow bears. Clearly some of the more morally upright kind rather than the village-ravaging variety.
“All in the past” I hear you dismissively snort. Not so! The last known animal trial was held in Libya in 1974 where a dog was sentenced to a months imprisonment on a diet of bread and water for biting a man.
I can’t help but find all this, ridiculous as it seems, faintly satirical of our own justice system. Although the days of sow hanging are gone (how exactly would you go about that anyway?), I feel that similar attitudes pervading our societies red-tape-ensconced purveyors of justice. The letter of the law overriding good judgement, the ridiculous being hailed by the few as the solution for the masses. Maybe I’m being melodramatic but with burglars sueing their victims I can only think that our lunacy has simply matured a little. But whatever you say about our modern, logic-driven ideas of what justice is here in the west, as a post-modern Christian fundamentalist in the midst of it all, I can’t help but feel growing kinship with the poor old Cockerel of Basle. Although these days, of course, the Cockerel, Satanic incarnation or not, would have a phalanx of animal rights protestors demanding it’s freedom, hoards of scientists demanding that the bird be submitted for ‘testing’ and a panel of lawyers offering their services; “laid an egg that wasn’t your fault? - No win no fee”. We’ve gone from ridiculous but simple to ridiculous and complicated and we call it progress. Away with the madness; bring back the animal trials.
Land of Widows and Orphans
Well, I’m back from Kenya now and have been free to reflect on the whole experience. 
I find that I actually felt quite at home there. It isn’t as different as I thought it would be. As for my food concerns, it wasn’t too bad; it was all just fairly tasteless. Rice and beans with a spoonful of chicken fat or this play-doh-like substance called ‘ugali’ which is basically ground maize (flour) mixed with water and boiled. It is possibly the most dense thing I’ve ever eaten. You can sculpt it into any shape you want, it’s like plasticine and about as tasty.
We prayed for many people and spoke at a lot of churches in the region, travelling from village to village by hired Mutatu – the Kenyan public transport. It’s a Toyota Hi-Ace with fourteen seats in it! Getting the seats in was a miracle of dimensional geometry; getting people in as well is truly painful, driving in it for 4 hours at breakneck speeds over potholed roads is insanity. It was a deep vein thrombosis inducing experience in a four-wheeled coffin with a psychopath for a driver. I would say ‘never again’ but I’m sure I’d be lying; it would be really good to go back but I’ll wait to see what God says.
A particularly memorable moment came when, several minutes after starting off on another uncomfortable mutatu journey, I began to notice an unpleasant smell. The conversation went something like this:
"Man it stinks back here."
(suppressed laughter)
"Guys what’s going on? Have I stepped in something?"
(outright laughter-me beginning to feel a bit insecure)
"What?"
(one of the guys manages to compose himself enough to say on word: "Sheep" before loosing it again)
"What? Am I sitting in some sheep crap or something?"
It was at this point that my friend managed to finish his sentence with the immortal words "..under…your…seat!" and indeed as if timed to coincide with my surreal epiphany, the sheep that was bound by the legs and stashed under my seat made a frantic break for freedom from between my legs. When I had recovered from the bizarre shock of having bleating livestock bursting from the impossibly small space beneath my seat I was informed that the team had already named the sheep Jenny and that it was going to be dinner on Wednesday. Can’t say I felt any sympathy.
It was quite incredible to see God working through our team. We saw many people healed of long-standing pain; one woman who had suffered a botched gynaecological operation had been in constant pain for 6 months and was freed on the spot. Africans rarely seem to get excited when it comes to prayer – it’s a very solemn thing for them, but she was so amazed to be free from pain that she was shouting in Swahili about what God had done.
There are too many things to list here that I will remember for a long time to come; the sunsets, the grinning children shouting "How are youuuuu!" in their cute accent, the children who just stare with dead eyes, the smell of stale sweat, peoples faces when they realise they are healed, the simple beauty of Africans dancing and singing, realising that prayer is powerful.
Just after coming back home I watched a film called "The Constant Gardener" which was about drug testing in Kenya. It was strange to see the places where I had been on the big screen at home. The film captures the feeling of Kenya perfectly and brings to light the fact that we as a wealthy and powerful nation have much to answer for in our exploitation of the African people, whether by proxy or not, the fact remains that we have and still are abusing the defenceless. Something for which there will surely be a just reward. It’s not just the governments fault with it’s unfair trading laws, it’s our entire way of life. Our standard of living dictates that someone be exploited to maintain it. You cannot have a concentration of wealth in one nation and expect everyone else to compete, but we actually go further – African nations, and in the circumstances of drug testing, African individuals are being forced to subsidise our wealth out of their poverty. Add to this the crippling AIDS epidemic, which in itself is dwarfed in size and effect by the pandemic cancer of corruption that sucks the African nations dry, not just of wealth but more importantly, of freedom, and you have a problem that seems impossibly huge. Too long I have used the impossibility of the task and my physical distancing from it as a withering excuse. This demands a response, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
While I’m unable to divorce myself entirely from my way of life I can make small changes by deciding what to buy, and I can help the people I met out there. Hopefully we should be able to raise enough money to buy some brick-making machines and other means to earn money for the communities that we visited. I have also noticed a significant number of my circle of contacts realising that God is calling them to give to Africa and the cause of justice for the widow and the orphan, in a way that will demand their lives. I have a growing conviction that my part in this is to support them in every way I can, and more, that God is going to give me the funding and influence to be able to do this. We’ll see, but either way, there’s a new line in the sand!
PS. For more pictures go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrheaton
What Do I Expect?
I'm sitting in a cyber-cafe in a small town called Bungoma in the far west of Kenya, updating my blog; an experiment in global communications. Although due to the lack of any refreshments or food and the occasional whiff of week old urine you would be hard pressed to call this a cafe. In fact the word cyber is also stretching the limits of the imagination to be used in this context. It is a small upstairs, windowless room packed with 10 sluggish computers on a decidedly slow connection. But it's Kenya, so what do i expect?
I am having an interesting experience but I have to admit that it's not been as crazy as i thought. My trip to India last year was certainly more of a culture chock experience. In relation to my concerns about the local cuisine (see Slugs and Yam?) things arn't as bad as they could be. I have indeed tried boiled yam, cornmeal (otherwise known as Ugali) and many other delights. It seems that Kenyan cookery requires that you attempt to remove all taste from food, and create the most interesting textures possible. It's mainly a lump of tasteless carbohydrate in some form or another, supplemented by some sort of soup that may or may not contain some nameless meat. The staple diet appears to be rice and beans. Taste is optional - just add salt.
We are going round the churches in the area praying for the sick and healing people in the name of Jesus. There have been many miracles already - people who have been in pain for many years freed on the spot and running up and down the dusty isles of mud-hut churches in tiny Kenyan villages in the middle of nowhere.
We have spent the last few days doing a crusade, which basically involves standing on a makeshift platform in a predominantly Muslim village and telling people that Jesus loves them enough to heal thier illnesses and thier family problems. We sing, dance and praise God then pray for those who ask for it and often seeing them healed. Many of them simply can't belive that the pain they have always known has stopped. They stand and weep while all around them the filthy street children in clothes torn and hanging off them, with sores on their legs and feet, dance in the dust, huge grins on thier faces. By the end of the day there's nothing else to do but join in as the sun sets like a firey stone dropping from the sky and watch them laugh at the tall white man trying to dance in their unique African way.
I have so much to write about but it can wait till i get back. Untill then...
So Much To An Image
I took this photo a few years ago in Norway. I found it this year and cropped it a bit, sent it off to be printed by an online printing service and it now sits in a simple frame on my desk. It seems to stand for how i've been feeling these past months although i'm not sure exactly what that is. Sometimes lonely, often in awe. Apprehensive yet intrigued. Somedays the girl in my picture stirs the water with her toe, on others she dances, but when I think of the future and the promises that God has given for my life, she steps out. On those days she laughs, deep and clear as the water before her. 
Isn't it strange how we can attatch so much to an image? As an interesting aside, the girl stands on the royal property of the King of Norway, the location of their small but beautiful palace which rests on the banks behind her overlooking the fjord. Does she realize that she herself is royal property, a pearl of great price?
Yoghurt
I've realised that untill you understand your brokeness, your complete reliance on God's grace for any hope of a future, you have no chance of understanding true meaning of redemption. Without this understanding how can you truely show grace to others? Without your love for others being rooted in your understanding of God's incomparable love for you, it is a hypocritical and frail thing indeed.These poems with a mixture of fun and meaning were written while i was coming to that understanding and are meant to compliment each other. Yoghurt
When you open your yoghurt,
And your spoon into mould insert.
Dirty dairy, rancid raspberry,
The response is quite unnecessary:
Righteous wrath, moral checkmate,
Makes you feel good to relate,
A story of corporate irresponsibility,
To your friends, who find hilarity,
In joining with just indignation,
Your tirades of rhetorical objection.
You can indulge in a little intense,
Yet harmless humour at ltd expense.
And with pomp you plant your pot,
On the customer service desk.
And punctuate the air with tuts,
At the ironic sign above your head.
In a frigid flurry of customer care
You find you’re no longer there,
You’re blinking in the parking lot,
Hands clutching a refund and pot.
You start to eat with consternation,
Your fresh dairy reincarnation.
And realise, as you do, you’ve lost,
Out on what the petrol cost.
Crass consumerism in rhyme,
Can bring insight to the divine;
When God peeled me open, I knew,
He had nowhere to return me to. Yoghurt 2
The outside looks good to the eye,
Really looks quite elegant.
White and colour splashed and splayed,
With crisp curve and line of font;
Nought point this and that displayed,
All emblazoned with logo and pride.
Packaging genius.
But God sees past what I adorn;
Taste and see that I am rot.
Best before I was born.
My life a complaining little clot,
Of bad attitude and shame;
An intense miasma of blame.
Throw me out.
But again I am found guilty,
Having defamed Gods Glory.
For I’ve been righteous-redeemed,
And I dare to devalue the dowry,
By declaring myself unclean?
In his grace I’m recomposing.
See; He smiles at what he’s done.
The spitting image of his son.
Slugs and Yam?
I’m going to Kenya in a few weeks and I have to confess to being a little nervous. Mostly I’m just looking forward to it. It will be my first time in Africa and I’m pretty sure that it won’t be my last. It’s clearly such a diverse continent that going to just one part of one country isn’t going to give me a truly holistic picture.
So, why am I nervous? After all, apart from the political unrest, the prolific hijacking and mugging problems, deadly wild animals, scorching heat, malarial insects and corrupt government officials there’s not really anything to worry about. Oh, and I neglected to mention the fact the continent of Africa is a giant petri dish for every vile and malicious bacterium known to man. Seriously, call me a hypochondriac but how people survive out there is beyond me. But it’s none of that that bothers me really; I have to say that it’s the food.
Now I’m not a fussy eater, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not going to Kenya for a safari. I’m not going to be staying in even a moderately sanitised hotel. I’m going out with a small team to teach people about the bible, which means travelling out into small villages and staying in peoples houses/huts/shacks or whatever they live under and, obviously, eating what they eat. I’ve taken a rewarding visit to the Kenyan High Commission website and discovered that the local diet is rich and exciting, but looking at the ingredients of the dishes I suspect that they mostly consist of what only the very rich could afford. I guess it’s like caviar being a Russian delicacy but 90% of the population struggle to find themselves enough bread to eat day to day. Looking closer I saw that yams and cornmeal soup seem to be the staple diet. Let me assure you that cornmeal soup is not soup. It’s gruel. And that yams are not a tasty alternative to the potato. I’ve also heard the horror stories of our pastor being served delicately seasoned slugs on a bed of mashed yam on a previous visit. I really don’t want to embarrass myself, or my hosts, when semi-masticated slugs and yam with a generous helping of bile is projected, at high velocity, from my mouth by my horrified stomach. The stain on the carpet would be the least of my worries in that situation. Lord, have mercy.
So, as I was saying I am actually looking forward to the visit more than anything else. I’m going to be there for about 3 weeks during which I hope to absorb as many of the sights and sounds, and as few of the deadly viruses, of Africa that I can. Whatever happens I’m sure that I will come back with some interesting stories to post here.
Here’s to adventure and everything that stirs my heart to seek it.
Mess of Ulterior Motives
It is a frightening thing when you really study the motives for your actions. Actions are affected by emotions or desires, our emotional response to things depends on our character and value system as does what we desire. Obviously this is much simplified but the fact remains that the true impetus for your emotions is hard to find but when you do it is almost always an ugly sight.
Many people through history have pontificated that “there is no such thing as an unselfish act” and upon inspection of myself I can only agree. Even the people I love I do so expecting something back from them in return; a feeling triggered by a smile or a kind word. So deeply runs this unspoken expectation that even when faced with being ignored completely accidentally, we are prone to respond with feelings of anger, self-doubt or many other emotions depending on our character, which in turn could result in one of billions of actions we’d rather not have ever done (including bottling up those emotions).
The truth is that we love everyone with a hook. Human love is a spoilt, impure, self-ridden, form of manipulation. We are a mess of ulterior motives and what’s worse is that we’ve managed to convince ourselves that we’re ok. That when we’ve found a symbiotic situation with someone where we both love each other in a mutually manipulative way that somehow we’re better than the guy who beats his wife. No. It’s simply that that mans character has been shaped by different circumstances. It’s most likely he watched his father beat his mother, promising himself he’d never do that but finding himself in that place anyway. Our inbuilt placing of ourselves before others is a universal trait of humanity, however it manifests itself.
I suppose some people would say ‘What about people who die for others? What possible selfish gain is there for them?’. To that end I would quote Jesus in John 15v13 – “Greater love has no man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus understood the principal and eventually put it into practice. So there is hope. Human beings are capable of loving properly. All the stories of heroes who make it into legend involve self-sacrifice. Something about it captures the aspirations and the respect of the human soul. The question is…can I learn to sacrifice my desires for people who I haven’t even met before. Jesus did. I haven’t even managed to do it for my friends. Thankfully God loves me in such a way that he is willing to forgive me for no gain of his own. He asks nothing back off me, but is aching for me to follow him. To allow him to teach me His ways. Is there such thing as a selfless act? I’m betting my life on it.
Agree/disagree? Think I’m nuts? Let me know.
Teach Me Your Ways
I’ve recently come back from Oxford. A bit of a change from sunny Walsall, and although I enjoyed it there, surprisingly, I’m quite glad to be back. Walsall’s gritty reality, where people couldn’t care less about their nicotine stained teeth, makes a refreshing change from Oxfords thin veneer of contentedness and unending cycle of keeping up with the Jones’.
I was attending Kings Bible College and Training Centre, which was truly awesome. I guess I’m only mentioning this because it forms such a huge part of my life experience. A lot of the things that I’ve learned about my God and the bible have become the lens through which I view life, more than ever before, so I’ll probably be mentioning it a lot. In some respects it is only a one year theology course but then it’s so much more. Because of the small amount of people on the course you become extraordinarily close friends with them. I feel like many of those people are closer than family to me now. Every day, God turns up and speaks to people and heals people both physically and emotionally. You, and the people you live with over that year, change, literally from week to week, as God forms their lives and uses the people around them to do it; what a privilege! For me, God has used the year to reveal much about my character, my flaws and my attributes, which has been a bittersweet process that I wouldn’t change for the world. All through the year the phrase that kept repeating itself within my heart was “Teach me your ways, so that I may walk in your truth”. It’s a phrase that is repeated often in the Psalms (Psalm 25, 27 and 84 to mention but a few) and it just kept jumping out of the page at me time and again resounding in my mind. 
It’s clear that God was speaking it into my life and it’s become the liturgy for my life. I know I’ll still be praying it on the day that I die.
KBC uncovered an emotional and artistic side to me that I hadn’t properly recognised before. I hope some of the product of that will end up here as I work through some of the thoughts and revelations that have formed me over the last amazing year.
The photo was taken and edited by me near the beggining of the year. The quote is from Psalm 84v11 but the composition allows the verse to be read as your mind sees fit. It hung on my wall and became a photograph that explained just how i felt, praying that verse and really meaning it. Knowing that God was answering every day. Straightforward but absolutely uncertain. Beautiful but dangerous.
Ps. All the photo's that appear on this blog are available as high quality prints in a variety of sizes. Just drop me an e-mail and i'll send you the details.
Porta-loo Explosion
I guess I had better let people know a little bit about me (see my personal profile), so I’m going to start by sharing a little about my home. I have lived all my life in a large and filthy town called Walsall, which is found just outside Birmingham, right in the heart of the black country, also affectionately* known as the arm-pit of Britain. It is famous for being boring, smelly and being run by morons.
* not actually true. I mean affectionately in the same way that people ‘affectionately’ refer to their extended family as ‘eccentric’. What they really saying is that they’re appalled at being even distantly related to them.
For instance, the council, upon being informed by disgruntled elderly residents that their town centre smelled like an open sewer, decided to do something about it. (I say elderly because the younger population having had any vestiges of pride in their home-town leached away long ago, really couldn’t care less). Anyway, someone in the offices managed to have an idea; they bought thousands of lavender plants and put them in the town centre. Obviously this was treating the symptom rather than the problem, a bit like buying a double cheeseburger to solve a bulimics weight problem. It’s difficult to understand the response. You could compare it to having a particularly offensive turd on the rug in your living room and leaving it there for a few weeks to be trodden into the pile before declaring that it’s about time to buy an air-freshener. What you inevitably end up with is an unholy mixture; a doubly sickening floral-faeces stench that could choke a maggot, like a porta-loo explosion at a flower festival. Obviously this is just one of many misdemeanours of the Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council, many of which can be read about at the delightfully sarcastic Walsall Wonderland website. Read all about the local tramps and Walsall’s appalling history when it comes to commissioning works of public art.
On a more serious note Walsall has the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe and is one of the worst performing boroughs in the area of education. So, why do I want to live here again? Well the place isn’t important, you can tell that from what I’ve written. It’s because of the people. They are important.
If I believe that Jesus lived and died for people and I claim to follow him, then there are only two types of people living in Walsall; my friends, whom I love and everyone else, who I will spend the rest of my life learning to love. The only question remaining is a big one: What exactly does that look like?
Let me give you a clue…it doesn’t involve me dressing up in orange robes, dancing through the town centre whilst brandishing a tambourine, picking the aforementioned lavender and searching for ‘inner peace’. I’m learning that it’s all about finding a need - and filling it.
More on this later.
Welcome!
Hello there, and welcome to my blog. My name is Matt Heaton, i've never done this before and i'm not entirely sure why i'm doing it now. Only time will tell what this corner of the net will end up looking like. I hope it will end up looking like me, and maybe just a little bit like Jesus. My hero and my best friend. Find out how, why, what, where and when...or at least join me in discussing all the above. Come in and feel at home, you're not intruding.
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