Yeah we danced on table tops

Good Friday. Apparently.

When I was young we had a minister come to the town; I was in primary school so
I cant quite remember when…. It was so awfully long ago

He was young, he had been in India as a missionary he had a family of boys who all looked scarily like him - the oldest of whom gained the nickname MemSaab being the feminine of Sir.

He participated fully in the youth clubs and bible classes ; he took Sunday school trips; he took school assemblies; he indulged for a period in that fanatical, arm waving, howling type of religion… issuing balloons to the congregation and telling us to ‘let them free when the word of God hit us’ (yeah all those balloons were gone in a rush) .

During Christian aid week he camped outside the church in a plastic tent and wearing a loin cloth.

On good Friday…. He would take a cross and walk the local hill (where I take my panoramic shots) at sunrise and take a service at the top.

When my dad died he did nothing for me except change his story (we don’t know why God took Joe… he just did. … to no no no I didn’t say that I said. He took him in when his heart failed). He made me have a conversation with myself across the living room and left me more bereft than I had been.

I have no religion; so on Good Friday I don’t think about the holiness I think about that man who climbed a hill on cold Scottish mornings with a full size cross endeavouring the rest of us to follow his path


I planted some gypsophila today