canheforgivethough

Chapter One

A mother is in the garden, hanging out washing. It is a small garden, with a rectangular lawn and in between the house and the lawn is a small path, and the path continues around the side of the house. The garden is surrounded by a large wooden fence and all you can see as you look around the garden is the fence and the rooftops of surrounding houses. The washing line stretches from one corner of the garden to a corner of the house.

At the front of the house, at the bottom of the drive, sitting on the pavement is a small boy. He is looking into the sky. He is experiencing conscious life for the first time.

In the garden, the mother looks around to see her son coming around the side of the house. The boy notices his mother for the first time and the image of this beautiful young woman is etched into his mind.

She is drinking coffee now.

“What’s that?” the boy asks.

“Coffee,” the mother replies.

“Do I like it?”

She passes him the cup and he takes a drink.

He doesn’t like the taste of coffee. The taste of coffee is assigned its place in the boy’s early memory.

Some time later the boy is standing inside the house, on the first floor, near a window. The sun is shining into the window and the boy is standing slightly to one side of the window, looking at the sun’s rays. Dust particles float in the light. He is alone in the room.

Chapter Two

Fourteen years later the boy is sitting in a friends room, listening with his eyes closed to music. His world has just changed dramatically. He is high for the first time. As he sits listening, the room begins to move around him and it feels as though he is being pushed back into the seat, as if on a centrifugal ride at the fare. He is laughing, but he doesn’t know why. A glass of wine remains untouched on a table to his right.

Chapter Three

At eighteen, the boy is nearing the end of his time at school. His exams are approaching. He and his friends are making their way into town. They are smoking and the boy is relaxed with the sensation of being stoned.

When they finally reach the club they are excited and anxious to get in. They get in and move around the club, feeling slightly out of place, getting their bearings. They don’t know how to go about this and are now nervous but eventually they start asking around for Class A drugs and soon enough, they meet a man willing to sell them what they want.

They buy three grams of speed and enough pills for them to have two each. They hand over the money and take the drugs to the toilets, where the speed is cut into lines and snorted. The pills are shared out and they make their way to the bar to get beer. They knock back a few beers and look at each other briefly before taking the pills.

Chapter Four

“Wow, these pills are strong.”

We are sitting in the upstairs bar of the club. After a long pause, during which we stare blankly around the room, someone speaks.

“Who said that?”

“Who said what?” I ask.

“Who said, “these pills are strong?”

“Me.”

“Oh. Listen, are these two still breathing?”

“I don’t know my friend. Your pupils are huge.”

“Will your mum be awake, when we get back?”

“I don’t think we should go anywhere tonight, Toby, this place is great.”

He smiles. We realize that we are having a great time. Of our number, two have not yet spoken and all we’ve done since taking the pills is sit but we are having the time of our lives.

“Hey, you two – what’s up?”

We look at our other two companions. Brian acknowledges us, nodding his head in approval as he looks at me and Toby, smiling. Kevin looks up and says, quite simply, “This is the dog’s bollocks.”

Everyone else seems to be smoking weed, so we decide a smoke would be a good idea and I set about building a joint.

It seemed as though it had taken a matter of seconds to fix two papers end to end, fold a third piece in half, lick the gum of the third piece, slide it in between the two fixed papers and pull it out, and I was checking the finished paper when I got a nudge in the side. I looked up and my three friends were looking at me, laughing.

“Take your time!” Toby said.

“What?”

“Do you want another beer? You missed the last round.”

Chapter Five

“It took you an hour to roll!”

“It’s still a good spliff.”

Chapter Six

As we move downstairs to the main dance-floor, the atmosphere hits us and I began to shake slightly. The air is thick with smoke and moisture. The music is deep and clear. The lights flicker on and off, catching the movements of people in slow time. Sweat runs down their faces and in the shadows on the edges of the dance-floor, onlookers smoke and drink, lit up occasionally by the flash of a strobe or a laser.

“Give me the speed.”

I give Toby the speed and watch him disappear into the crowd, on his way to the toilets. I make my way to the bar and order a beer. In the mirror behind the bar I can see the crowd heaving to the music. A girl arrives at the bar and I look at her in the mirror. Then I look at myself, in particular my eyes, and concentrate on getting the beer. When it arrives it’s warm but I’m thirsty and I drink it down almost to empty. I order another and Toby comes back from the toilets and joins me at the bar, sniffing and rubbing underneath his nose with his fingers. I order Toby a beer.

“Okay?” I ask.

He nods and passes the wrap to me.

“Where are the other two?”

I shrug. “Don’t know. They won’t be far. I’ve got all the speed.”

I tell Toby I’m going for refreshment and wander off through the crowd, towards the toilet. I find a cubicle and sit down, opening one of the wraps and examining its contents. It’s a pain in the arse trying to snort speed in a wet club toilet but I manage to arrange two lines on my wallet and snort them in a rolled up note. I make my way back to the bar and order a bottle of water.

My three friends are at the bar, and when I’ve taken a swig out of the bottle, I tell them I’ve had a good idea and take them to a corner of the club where, by use of lighters, I carefully pour the rest of the speed into the water bottle.

We all take a swig of the water. Brian then produces four more pills, and we examine them, again using a lighter.

“What are the black bits do you think?” Kevin asks.

“Don’t know. Shall we risk it?”

I’m a little worried about the pills, which are white with black specks, and a shape of some sort of bird printed into them.

“Why not.” Toby takes one and washes it down with the water. In turn, the rest of us take our pills, washing them back with our water, which is half finished.

“Swill it round a bit” I say, and Brian does so.

We finish the water between us and make our way back upstairs to smoke.

Back upstairs, the responsibility of rolling the spliff has been given to Brian.

Chapter Seven

The rest of the night is a blur. I remember dancing, crammed in with several hundred bodies, bouncing uncontrollably to the music, an insane, gurning expression on my face. Each drop of sweat coming from the top of my head felt as heavy as lead and as it dripped down my face it seemed to gain in weight, until it fell off my chin.

Eventually, too tired to dance, I fell back upstairs and looked around for my mates. They were nowhere to be seen, so I attempted to chat up a girl or two and each time, the same result – her walking away.

The beer bottles on the table before we left numbered several dozen and we staggered out into the street at about three a.m.

Too awake to sleep, and too high to eat, we spend some hours smoking weed. We smoke until the weed is gone. Someone then produced a lump of hash, and we started smoking from that. How the hash ended up on the kitchen table I do not know.

Chapter Eight

“I just can’t believe that this is what you chose to do with your life.”

I remain silent. I don’t like this at all. I’m feeling incredibly guilty. My mum is holding out her hand, staring at me right in the eyes.

“Well?”

I look from her hand, into her face. Her eyes are hard and bright, and she’s on the verge of tears. I look back at the lump of hash in her hand. I want to speak but don’t know what to say. I look at her again, helpless now.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“What else have you taken?”

I was wondering when this question would spring up. I quickly decide to limit the hurt.

“Nothing mum. It’s not what you think. It’s fairly harmless.”

“Fairly harmless, until you start taking the harder stuff.”

A pang of guilt.

“Where’s it going to end up? You’re A – levels start in a few weeks, and you’re out all night, God knows what sort of a state you were in, leaving this stuff on the table for me to find when I came down for my breakfast. Who were you out with? Toby? Brian? Kevin? I thought so. I’ve a good mind to ring their mothers and tell them what you’ve been up to. And how much did you drink? Galleons I should think……. What am I going to do with you?”

I’m looking down at my feet, still feeling guilty but less worried now. The fact that she’s started talking is good. The silence and the hard stares have been known to go on for days. The fact that she’s talking means reconciliation is near.

“You should be aware that the guys are in the attic.”

“Fine. You and your mates fuck your lives up together and I’ll worry myself sick, shall I?”

“I’m just saying, don’t be surprised if you see them wondering about in a while. That’s all.”

“Will they still be high?”

“I doubt it. I’m not.”

“Well you look terrible. Go and have a shower, you stink. I suppose you’re all expecting a cooked breakfast?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Dam right you will. And this” she holds up the lump of hash, “is going down the toilet. I won’t make you tell me you’re not going to do it again but it’s your mind and it’s your life, and one day I won’t be here to pick up the pieces when it all goes to shit.”

Chapter Nine

One week to go until my first exam. I’m revising half-heartedly. Mum’s talking to me again and the cat’s missing, which is distressing for us all.

The weather’s great and I’m taking a well earned break. I’m in the attic, which has been re-conditioned as my lounge area and it’s very much mine – mum rarely visits this particular part of the house.

The ceiling is the roof, slanting upwards as regular roofs do, with supports running down the middle of the room. At the top of the spiral staircase, which leads up to my room, is an L-shaped sofa with a small, square, wooden table in front of it. The sofa is black. The carpet throughout the room is dark brown. On the left hand side are the stereo, the TV, video, DVD and Playstation and on the right are four reclining black leather chairs. At the far end of the room are a set of double windows.

You can sit on the floor at the end of the room with your feet hanging out of the window, which is what I’m doing. The view is spectacular: fields rolling up and around an enormous hill; brown and green fields, the odd tree and some cattle. A perfect place to smoke a joint on a hot summer’s day.

A perfect day.

Mum calls from my room, “Mike’s on the phone.”

I rest the spliff carefully so that it’s resting on the window and retreat to my room. My mum passes me the phone, and as I lift it to my ears she motions towards my desk and mouths the words, “you should be working.”

“Hello.”

“It’s Mike.”

“I know. What’s up?”

“It’s terrible. You’ve got to get here right away.”

“Get where? What’s wrong?”

“Can’t talk now, they’re listening. Come to the hospital.”

“Who’s listening?… Which hospital?”

“York. The patients are listening. Get here soon.”

He hangs up and I stare at the phone receiver. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m expecting him to materialize out of the mouthpiece and explain himself.

This is inconvenient. It’s going to cause waves. I retrieve my spliff, pull off the cherry, and pocket it. I take some weed, papers and tobacco and go downstairs.

“I’m going out.”

“No you’re bloody well not.”

“Mike’s in some sort of trouble. I won’t be long.”

“When are you going to realize that these exams are important? You can’t just swan off to your mates. Get a grip.”

“I won’t be long.”

She looks at me despairingly, but eventually just shrugs her shoulders; “your life!”

Chapter Ten

Once I’m on the road, I try to get my bearings. I’m trying to remember the way to York when a black cat jumps out into the road in front of me. It’s my cat, and I narrowly miss him by slamming on the breaks, and swerving sharply to a halt.

“Where in bloody hell have you been,” I shout as I roll down the window. He just looks up at me and lifting a paw to his face, begins licking himself.

“I’ve been worried sick. Have some bloody consideration. And stop playing with the cars!”

I drive off, and make my way from narrow country lane, to minor road, to dual carriageway. Once I’m sure I’m on the right road, I light up the rest of my spliff, wind down the window and turn on the stereo. The auto-changer selects a CD at random and “Silverscreen Shower Scene” by Felix da Housecat begins playing. I wind up the volume until the back seats are pulsating, and hit the accelerator.

I’m driving a 2.0l Citron AX TDi, which I had a friend make some alterations to – alterations my insurance company are unaware have been made. It’s fast. I hit a cruising speed of about 95 mph once I’m on the motorway. A couple of hours and I’ll be there.

I seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness, one second feeling like I was lying on the bed, the next like I was…..

then back to lying on the bed, then chaos. Loud voices, light flashing into my face and a feeling like I was moving on top of something….then darkness. Cold, dark, and something pricking into my back, and a smell of petrol, and a loud and continuous scream…

“David?”

“David Brown? Can you hear me?”

“Administer…”

Then back onto my bed, then back into darkness….

“Get him in here…. morphine!”

Then back onto my bed, then I sit up bolt upright, screaming at the top of my voice. But why? Then a very distressing feeling. A pitch blackness of the soul. Cold and deeply unnerving. Then comfort again, a dreamy daze.

“The morphine must be wearing off.”

A scream. And another one, from somewhere else, from another world. Screaming from the pit of his terrified soul.

Nothing else but to scream. Pain, pure pain.

A loud explosion, and a desperate clamouring along the floor, away from the noise, away from the fire.

Isn’t your friend in the car?

“ I don’t care. Where are the cigarettes?”

….

……

“David? David Brown? Can you hear me? …. Adrenaline…. .5ml”

“I think we’re losing him.”

More screaming. Terrible screaming.

Pitch black.

Your friend is still in that car…..

I find the Christian life actually quite difficult. I’m sure you all have your own sufferings, hurts, prejudices, and various other opinions, skills and abilities that make you uniquely you, so you probably know what I’m talking about. Life, quite often, sucks. There is no getting around it for me. Everywhere I turn and everything I do, I usually find myself alone and struggling. Certainly, it would appear is if most of my problems are my fault and I can’t really complain about the natural consequences of my sin but during my Christian life I’ve found that things which I assumed would be easy are in fact much harder than they’ve ever been. Is it just me who has these problems?

Christmas is a time when personal pain is most keenly felt. I’ve spent years now faithfully attending church and singing songs to God and I find myself almost devoid of any special sentiment towards this person. Who is he, and why do people think he’s so great? Do we think he’s great, or have we missed in some way the essence of who this person is? He came to forgive sins and that really is a fabulous thing but when you haven’t been forgiven by your peers yourself, it really doesn’t make you want to shout about his forgiveness from the highest point of the city, too much. I quite often say to him, “get it out of your system this year Lord! I don’t want to go round this particular mountain again next year.”

I’ve studied the life of Jesus and I suppose it’s because I’m a man with only small amounts of faith that I just haven’t “got” the message of Christianity yet. But what actually is the message of Christianity? I’m sorry to have to say that after almost a decade of attending church I honestly couldn’t tell you one way or the other. If we take, for example, Jesus’ words to “forgive each other” and to “bless our enemies”….well, is it just me? Can you honestly say that you’ve ever witnessed this type of behaviour, let alone done it yourself? Is this perhaps the problem in our churches?

What I will say is that Jesus is markedly different to anything we have ever thought he might be. We look at the life of Jesus and think, “yey! I’m forgiven! It’s all okay now, isn’t it?” Well, no it isn’t actually. It’s certainly the starting point for your faith. You can’t love other people unless you’ve first been loved. But it isn’t supposed to stop there. We’re not called to live in a holy onesie while people who actually need to be shown love are left wondering why the hell everyone is waving their hands around saying, “I love you!” I love you,” to God.

Think about what the bible says about Jesus. Yes, it does say that he’s precious; yes, it does say he’s wonderful. The bible tells us that everyone loved him, for a while. But it also says that people hid their faces from him. When the shit hit the fan, everyone deserted him. Why do we think we’re going to be any different? Are we any different? Is there any situation is your life where you’ve deserted God, where you refused to do something for the least of his followers?

The truth is that we are embarrassed about the cross. We look at the cross and we see, for the most part, our forgiveness. But this attitude will blind us when God is revealed in our own day of judgement. Why? Because the cross doesn’t just say that: It says that you and I are forgiven and more importantly than that, that the price God paid for you is exactly the same as the price he paid for me.

You see when God died on the cross, he disseminated himself throughout all space and time. For all the wonder that is ours in the forgiveness of our sins, think about the judgement that is also true if we do not live like Jesus in this world. Think of his words. When he says that you are in danger of the fire of hell if you curse your brother, is that any less valid than, “there is now no condemnation”? When you add to that that the scripture actually says, “there is no condemnation for those who belong to him,” and also that he says, “if you love me you will do what I tell you,” are we not a little remiss to say that, “I’m forgiven so it’s okay”?

Seriously, I’m left with a feeling of deep concern about the surface of the church. I don’t think we’ve gone deep enough. We can’t hear his voice because we’ve refused to listen to the full truth for so long and it isn’t going to get any better. The cure is heeding the word of God. Heaven knows that we need to do that. We each have our own individual reasons for not believing God but we don’t feel his pain or his love for the fallen. We are embarrassed by the message and that brings its own punishment I’m afraid.

“When did we ever refuse to help you?

When you refused to do it for the least of my followers, you refused to do it for me.”

“Heaven and Earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear”.

Where have you put your hope, church?

“Demons mate. Big time.”

“Stop saying that please mate. You’re worrying me. What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Demons. Inside me.”

“Pity’s sake, mate! Shut up then. Don’t say anything.”

“I possessed mate. I sense demons inside me.”

I look at this lad and don’t feel anything at all; no pity, no empathy, no love. This type of situation is typical of the situations and people that I’ve been dealing with constantly for the past decade and this lad is going to push me over the edge. I don’t even want to help, whatever his problem is: I’ve seen enough.

“Okay, thanks mate. See you in a bit huh?”

I make for the door. My mate calls out to me: “The devil mate. He’s after me.”

I laugh. I didn’t know that he’d start crying at this point. It doesn’t move me when he does either. I just laugh some more.

“Don’t be such a tit please, mate. There are things to do, work, work, and more fucking work. Take a pill, they’ll give you something good here. Just make out you’re going to hurt yourself and they’ll put something in your arm. One thing’s for sure, I’m not spending my time here with you wittering on about the price of bullshit at the fanny-flap market.”

“It’s a possession mate. Full demon possession. I sense them inside me.” Tears are beginning to stream down his cheeks.

“God’s sake,” I almost whine.

“I sense family inside me as well mate. My twin flame…”

“WOW! Who the hell is your “twin flame”?”

“I need my power back mate. The demons took it off me.”

“Right, I’m off mate. See you later, okay?”

I make for the door. I need to get away from this fella before I take his life.

“DEMONS, MATE!” he screams after me.

I ignore him and walk out of the ward straight into some fat guy outside.

“I’m really sorry…” I begin, but as soon as he looks at me I see the same distant, vacant expression in his eyes that my mate has and I realise that I’m wasting my time. I make to leave and this fat dude screams out after me:

“THAT’S IT THEN….NOW YOU’VE FOUND OUT….I’VE RIPPED ME BOTTIE-FUCKER!!! I’VE GOT THE QUINCE MAKINGS OF A FANNY-ARSE!!!”

He stares at me for a moment and then puts his head in his upraised right hand, slightly quivering and making an extremely pathetic facial expression. He just stands there, staring into the watery deep through the fingers of his hand and I want to stay and watch, maybe take some notes for some ideas for a book but I decide to leave.

“Farewell!” I say to him. “Go into the room down the corridor, kid! There’s a lad in there who you’ll get along with just fine! It’s okay now mate, isn’t it? Not as bad as it seems?! Bless you brother.”

I leave the hospital and hope I never have to return.

I was going too fast when I hit the side of the bridge. In fact, I was going too fast in my friend’s car, when I hit the bridge. What happened next can only be described as bizarre. It felt like the whole car lifted into the air but then, all of a sudden, I found myself breaking hard and coming to a complete stop about fifty feet from the end of the bridge.

I looked over at my friend sitting in the passenger seat. He didn’t look happy. For a moment it looked like he was screaming, clinging onto the dashboard with his hands and looking straight ahead with a horrified look on his face but then all of a sudden he was just looking at me – and he looked truly pissed off.

“What the fuck have you done to my car?”

“I…I must have, well, let’s have a look shall we?” I smiled nervously and sidled out of the car door. I had hit the bridge on the passenger side, so I walked round and met my friend at his side of the car. There was a big scratch running down the side of the car but I couldn’t really concentrate on the scratch. All I could think about is why it seemed like my friend was screaming in pain. He wasn’t. He was standing there pointing to the scratch on the car, shouting at me…..

Is that an ambulance? There was no-one here a minute ago; we’re in the middle of nowhere…… Is that a helicopter ambulance?

I’m now freaked out but looking at my friend I realise that I’ve got no need to be freaked out. I simply hit the bridge and now he’s upset. No problem. We’ve come through worse than this. A blip.

“Maybe you should drive us the rest of the way.”

“You’re damn right I’ll be driving the rest of the way. You’re paying for the repairs. This is your fault. Fully your fault.”

“I see. Shall we smoke?”

“No more smoking until we’re off the road. I can’t believe this.”

“I know someone who can fix the scratch,” I said. “It’s all good.”

I didn’t ever arrange for someone to fix the car but me and my friend hung out for the rest of the summer, growing ever more familiar, and always doing nothing but getting drunk, or high, or both. All was forgiven. There was no problem. In fact, there was nothing. Our lifestyles kept us together. We wanted the same thing and we drove to and from the nearest cities from my parent’s home in the country to get it. Drugs and alcohol drove us closer together and, ultimately, further apart.

My girlfriend lived over a hundred miles away and I actually loved her more than I loved the lifestyle that was slowly consuming my existence. Unfortunately I couldn’t communicate this and as a result, she didn’t ever really believe that I needed help. She just laughed and passed it off as a phase. Her concern could have turned me around that summer, but in the end the relationship ended and we went our separate ways.

The end had begun.

My bedsit was genuinely minging. The room was small with a hard wearing dark carpet, a bed, a chest of drawers, a sink which had been urinated in dozens of times, a table, a broken chair and a bin. There was a cupboard in the corner and a wardrobe in another corner. The bed ran along the opposite wall and there was a window at its end. There were about twenty empty beer cans strewn on the floor. The ash tray was full to overflowing and cigarette butts littered the floor. The computer on the floor played music randomly from the media player library; “Highwayman,” by Johnny Cash was playing. A lame pigeon sat on the floor near a pile of red wine coloured vomit. A bottle of wine bottle had fallen into a horizontal position on the floor, near the computer.

I was on the bed, fully clothed and unconscious. I didn’t ever ask anyone how I smelt at that time in my life. Looking back I can only imagine that I smelt absolutely terrible.

I had forgotten that my mother was visiting to take me shopping. The phone on the floor started ringing. At my mother’s third attempt, I was woken up. I staggered to the phone and answered it.

“Morning. Ready to go?”

“Go where?”

“Shopping. As we agreed.”

“Right. I’ll be down in a minute.”

My blog posts have so far been quite liberal in my stance on showing mercy to the sinner and maybe a little contradictory, so I’d like to write to explain exactly what I mean.

As far as the forgiveness of sins goes, I do believe that most sins can be forgiven and if pushed (which I might be), I would say that murder can be forgiven. However I do believe that to be forgiven, you have to confess your sin. There are surely many people who would love to be forgiven but will not, under any circumstances, confess their sin. Their sin is, therefore, unforgivable.

There are, admittedly, many contrite people who are serving, or who have served, full sentences for murder; and it is also said that one time murderers are the safest people that can be released into society. I’m personally not sure about that but I do believe that salvation is available for anyone who repents and believes.

Further, there are sins that are so premeditated and hateful, that I do not believe that forgiveness is made available for those who commit them, or for those who convince the sinner to commit them. Our Lord is quite clear about the judgment that awaits such people.

So that’s it. A small post, but I hope it makes clear what I mean.

“You are my battle axe, my weapon for battle – with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms, with you I shatter horse and rider, with you I shatter chariot and driver, with you I shatter man and woman, with you I shatter old man and youth, with you I shatter young man and maiden, with you I shatter shepherd and flock, with you I shatter farmer and oxen, with you I shatter governors and officals.”

I thought that hanging around in toilets was perfectly reasonable, clearly. God only knows why. I had a good girlfriend. It wasn’t a reflection on her, though. My problems were deep and serious. Hopefully she’ll be able to appreciate that, some day.

I also thought that drugs were a good idea.

I’m glad I moved on from that stage of my life. What a shame you haven’t.

Forgive me if I don’t say any more about it. I wouldn’t want to pervert your report! You did so, so, well, in judging me for my mistakes.

I’ll just add a couple of short words:

Get fucked.

My job at what was then “The Union” lasted about nine months. It was hard work all the way through. I started as a temp and worked through September, October, November and December, during which time I had to work through a nasty cold. I was pretty much skint the whole time because I was paying into my CAP account to pay off my debts. On one occasion I ate my lunch (cold pasta with plain tomato sauce) alone in the shelter of the York boat club on the river bank. I then returned to the office and decided to show some attitude to a claims client. I actually told the poor woman to shut up. This was a particularly ignorant mistake, and one which I am deeply ashamed of.

I eventually cut a deal with the head of department after another serious mistake with a client and left The Union with a month’s pay and an almost clean slate. The first mistake was not noticed while I was working there, despite the protestations of the client. God covered it up for some reason (presumably pity). He didn’t extend the same courtesy to my manager at The Union (in my mind anyway); he was made redundant a few months after I left.

I couldn’t have gone on as a claims handler anyway. My stress levels were running dangerously high without mitigation. I was in a permanent state of high anxiety, morning to night, seven days a week. The main stressors were obviously such as the constant fear of having my very serious mistakes discovered, which would get me fired, and the constant fear of whatever it was I was afraid of; and of course the job itself was very stressful.

I was nicknamed “Terminator” while I was there. I had a tendency to leap out of my seat and charge, head down, almost running, to the other side of the office when I needed to ask someone a question. My telephone manner was terrible. Every time someone didn’t hear what I said on the phone, I immediately started shouting until I’d made myself clear.

I was too stressed to retain information – actually doing a good job was out of the question. I merely did my best to turn up to work every day and grind it out. I might have ended up dying there. I could imagine myself turning up for work one day, charging to my desk, turning on my computer, and suddenly my head would thud into the desk after a moment of wavering precariously over my shoulders, where it would remain, motionless. My colleagues wouldn’t immediately imagine that anything was wrong, just another emotional battle lost by D Brunaire; but after a few minutes of perfect stillness, someone might look around at me. Several more minutes would pass before someone else might take more of an interest and at some point after that I’d have been pronounced dead.

I read through some of the customer comments one day during my time at THE Union. Someone had written, “It would seem to be the minimum requirement for your claims handlers to have a decent grasp of the English language. You obviously don’t agree.”

It is very unlikely that this person was talking about anyone other than me.

At the time of writing, I have absolutely no idea how to describe the universe that we live in. I only know that the best attempts to describe the universe, those that I’ve read about at least, cannot possibly be correct. I admit that I currently know nothing about super string theory and that in fact all I know about it is that it is an attempt to unify Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and Quantum mechanics. This indicates strongly that both the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum mechanics are wrong. Further, since I also know absolutely nothing (or precious little) about the standard model of particle physics, I have absolutely no hope, at the time of writing, of explaining how, exactly, the universe works. So I shall not attempt to do so now, save a few general observations.

I discovered, on an aeroplane on the way to New York (to see my brother), a couple of verses in the bible that hint at the construction of the fabric of existence. It is not necessarily esoteric knowledge and I am happy to share these things with you. At the time of writing, although I would like to solve the problem of the nature of the workings of the universe, I have absolutely no idea if I will ever do it and, if you happen to read this before I do, I wish you all the best of luck in this endeavour. Call it goodwill if you like. Do by all means observe the following:

Psalm 78: 69 – He made his sanctuary as enduring as the heavens above; as secure as the earth, which he established permanently (New English Translation)
Psalm 78: 69 – He built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth that he established for ever (New International Version)

I’ve put two versions so that you can perhaps agree with me that, although the exact interpretation eludes us, the interpretation might be that he (God) built his sanctuary (the tabernacle) like the heights (the heavens, the universe), which is itself like the earth, which is established for ever – a permanent example of the universe in action so to speak. Now I might be way out of line here and I might be accused of being so but to me, it seems reasonable. The next point is about the design of the tabernacle:

“Make the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, with cherubim worked into them by a skilled craftsman. All the curtains are to be the same size – twenty-eight cubits long and four cubits wide. Join five of the curtains together, and do the same with the other five. Make loops of blue material along the edge of the end curtain in one set, and do the same with the end curtain in the other set. Make fifty loops on one curtain and fifty loops on the end curtain of the other set, with the loops opposite each other. Then make fifty gold clasps and use them to fasten the curtains together so that the tabernacle is a unit.” Exodus 26: 1 – 6.

Need I say more?