Brewing

So our new neighbours moved in - they being the chaplain Roy and his writerly partner, Barbara. A good team effort saw many a trinket, not so much furniture, but a lot of techno-gadgetry hauled into their new home. And, in the short time that they have been here, they have struck rather a wonderful chord - to the extent that they’re coming greyhound racing with us on Saturday evening – Go God, Go!, says I.

Perhaps it’s just a fluke, but at the time of this forging of social relations (why can’t I just write ‘friendship’?) with the chap’ and his lady, I’m reading a novel about a member of the clergy who is seeking to ‘plant a church’ – to grow it from nothing but good will in a socially and economically barren part of the world – an estate in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in pre-Blairite mid-90s Britain. This fictional member of the clergy is thus tasked with ingratiating himself into a community that is probably much grittier than our’s – though a recently formed residents' group (back in reality, now) has promised to ‘reclaim the streets’ from ‘nuisance youths’. Such is life. Anyway, in the novel – Crusaders, by Richard T. Kelly – the cleric is currently (I’m at page 299, out of 540) becoming a pal of a local gangland man who’s been tripping over himself to offer support to the churchly enterprise, whilst clergyman has also made time to bed a young single mum from the estate (she’d attended a community forum type of meeting that he'd hosted at the local primary school). Other than that, the central character is also being courted by the local MP – a former socialist who very much feels New Labour ideology. Somehow, these four diverse characters’ story arcs are to become enfolded – I’ve worked this out from having read the book's synopsis – ‘...Gore (the clergyman) finds he needs the help of all three (the gangland man, the single mum and the MP) to bring off his mission. But gradually these same relationships draw him into a moral crisis’, it says.

So you see, what I have is a degree of latent 'being prodded at', regarding notions of community and, well, people coming together generally - to try to make good feelings and other worthwhile stuff happen. Mm, that's where I'm at. As this is a blog, I shall simply leave my babbling at that. I shall brook no big claims-making re ‘making a difference’. For now, I feel that it is enough, simply, to feel.

And from this above post, I choose ‘enfolded’ as my favourite word.

And, as ever, I must beg of your forgiveness for my great love affair with the simple comma, and, indeed, God’s honest hyphen, all so very important for the gentlest pacing of a Thursday evening's blather.

Today I am 11 stones in old money. That's 70 kilograms in Euros - just on the limit of light welter-weight.

Good 'morrow one and all.