- Is David Bellamy still with us?
- Which end of an egg comes out of a chicken first?
- Can you zoom in on Zoom?
- Do I look okay in this hat?
The answers to these are, in no particular order:
- No
- Blunt end first
- No, he died in December
- No-one cares what you wear any more
Match them up and win a prize!
However. The biggest questions I have - the ones that have been hovering and/or bobbing around under the surface - came to a head with a strange encounter I had a while ago at my front door with a woman of indeterminate age behind a face mask.
She was wearing too many layers for the summer when she rang the doorbell, and I was still wearing my sequinned gold trilby. She stood back from the doorstep, where she'd laid down two big carrier bags full of food donations for the Wythenshawe Food Bank. I thanked her from a safe distance and smiled from under my trilby. Just before she turned to go, she took off her face mask, cleared her throat and hawked out the biggest gob of phlegm and sputum I think I have ever seen. Its trajectory took it against the vicarage wall about a foot from where I was standing. Thus relieved, the name less woman replaced her mask and walked away, leaving me thinking, "WTF?!?!" (In clergy brains, WTF stands for "What the flip?" Obviously.)
I gave her a moment to vanish over the horizon and then boiled a kettle and gave that portion of the wall a thorough bleaching. Even before I poured boiling water down it, it looked like a middle-sized dog (like the Littlest Hobo) had done a middle-sized wee up a wall. How one woman could secrete such a store of sputum was a minor miracle. But not in a good way.
That wasn't the question, though. The question was: how can someone donate so much food (brilliant deed) and then gob up my front wall? Should I remember her generosity or her spitting? And what was the spitting about? It was incongruent with the regard for distancing and the wearing of a face mask. It was worse because my prejudices think that women spitting is more unseemly than men doing it. I have a friend who needs medically to discharge his mouth-ballast regularly but he manages to do it in quiet ways in discreet places.
In true Hugh Grant style, I didn't mention her spit as she went, although I felt it put camels and llamas and Spit the Dog - and her - to shame.
But. Human nature! A bit like her projectile spitting, it's right up the wall, isn't it?
The really interesting questions of lockdown are not "How are seagulls coping?" or "What's the effect on the environment?" but are about human nature.
Line up, then, for the quiz of the year! Forget eggs and Zoom and gwappling David Bellamy's gwapenuts, I have a list of questions which are all about being human and resident on planet Earth in 2020. Have a go at puzzling out some of these.
R.I.P David Bellamy
However. The biggest questions I have - the ones that have been hovering and/or bobbing around under the surface - came to a head with a strange encounter I had a while ago at my front door with a woman of indeterminate age behind a face mask.
She was wearing too many layers for the summer when she rang the doorbell, and I was still wearing my sequinned gold trilby. She stood back from the doorstep, where she'd laid down two big carrier bags full of food donations for the Wythenshawe Food Bank. I thanked her from a safe distance and smiled from under my trilby. Just before she turned to go, she took off her face mask, cleared her throat and hawked out the biggest gob of phlegm and sputum I think I have ever seen. Its trajectory took it against the vicarage wall about a foot from where I was standing. Thus relieved, the name less woman replaced her mask and walked away, leaving me thinking, "WTF?!?!" (In clergy brains, WTF stands for "What the flip?" Obviously.)
I gave her a moment to vanish over the horizon and then boiled a kettle and gave that portion of the wall a thorough bleaching. Even before I poured boiling water down it, it looked like a middle-sized dog (like the Littlest Hobo) had done a middle-sized wee up a wall. How one woman could secrete such a store of sputum was a minor miracle. But not in a good way.
The Littlest Hobo, starring London
That wasn't the question, though. The question was: how can someone donate so much food (brilliant deed) and then gob up my front wall? Should I remember her generosity or her spitting? And what was the spitting about? It was incongruent with the regard for distancing and the wearing of a face mask. It was worse because my prejudices think that women spitting is more unseemly than men doing it. I have a friend who needs medically to discharge his mouth-ballast regularly but he manages to do it in quiet ways in discreet places.
In true Hugh Grant style, I didn't mention her spit as she went, although I felt it put camels and llamas and Spit the Dog - and her - to shame.
A less reputable and socially useful dog.
But. Human nature! A bit like her projectile spitting, it's right up the wall, isn't it?
The really interesting questions of lockdown are not "How are seagulls coping?" or "What's the effect on the environment?" but are about human nature.
Line up, then, for the quiz of the year! Forget eggs and Zoom and gwappling David Bellamy's gwapenuts, I have a list of questions which are all about being human and resident on planet Earth in 2020. Have a go at puzzling out some of these.
Those people who hoarded toilet rolls and pasta and hand sanitiser: was it panic buying or was it sheer selfishness? Greed or desperation? Was it fear? What does it say about the human race?
And those people selling hand gel at hugely inflated prices: are they exceptions to the shine of human nature, or are they more representative?
And those people selling hand gel at hugely inflated prices: are they exceptions to the shine of human nature, or are they more representative?
On the other hand, we've been clapping for the NHS and thanking both key workers and baked potatoes. I rang my bike bell vigorously for two minutes out on my exercise cycle through Bowdon last week. Is clapping necessary? Is clapping enough?
A baked potato. Thank you!
And with the heroes on one hand and the hoarders on the other, has your view of human nature gone up or down in lockdown?
What about forgiveness? Will you remember the shops that tried to sell you loo roll at silly prices and boycott them? If there were a large chain of pubs that hadn't played fair by its suppliers and staff, would you remember and give them a wide berth? If a political party had denied the NHS adequate funding for a decade, would you remember at the next ballot box? Is everything forgiven and forgotten (translation: pushed under the carpet and denied and "it's time we drew a line under that").
What about forgiveness? Will you remember the shops that tried to sell you loo roll at silly prices and boycott them? If there were a large chain of pubs that hadn't played fair by its suppliers and staff, would you remember and give them a wide berth? If a political party had denied the NHS adequate funding for a decade, would you remember at the next ballot box? Is everything forgiven and forgotten (translation: pushed under the carpet and denied and "it's time we drew a line under that").
I've had less work to do in the past eight weeks. I can no longer justify my existence by what I achieve. Has your identity taken a knock as well? I'm trying to learn what I often preach, which is that God loves me just because, and not because I've clocked in for stupid amounts of hours this week. How does that change the way I live?
And if this is healthier, how can I keep up a sensible hourly workload in 2021 and beyond?
Why is it so hard to cut your own hair?
And can I win a sunflower-growing competition against a seven year old girl?
Have you seen people who think they're the exception to all the rules about lockdown and staying safe? Where does that belief come from?
And why do I keep finding it as a temptation in my heart as well?
Why do so many people have trouble with 2 metres? It's the height of Richard Osman. Lots of people I see would have trouble squeezing Janette Krankie between them.
Can YOU spot the difference?
Why is it okay for Dominic Cummings to drive 260 miles and break the rules? If the people in charge can't observe their own guidelines, what hope is there for any of us? And why will we probably let him get away with it?
What's the kindest thing you've seen in these days? And what's the kindest thing you've done?
What things that seemed really important in February have been shown up as not very valuable at all?
And what things have you discovered we should value more?
Does banana go well with pears in the vicar's Crimble Crumble?
Do you miss Sunday church? Besides all the safety stuff, would you like it to be different when it comes back?
Have online resources and BBC services been scratching where you itch?
What's helped you in the moments when your mental health has been a bit wobbly?
Are you sleeping more or less? Is that good? (Clue: I am sleeping more and it is excellent.)
Enough questions... unless you have more that you'd like to ask.
Answers... well, you think about them. Just before lockdown I was in the middle of a good trawl of Genesis 1-11, preaching on and thinking about the place of the human race in the world. It's peppered with instances of brilliant human behaviour and disgraceful human actions. God declares us very good and laster on rues the day he ever made us. Noah sort of saves the human race and then celebrates by getting off his face and kicking off whole new sins (these were the days when you could invent an original sin as well as Original Sin). One man declares that he will return hurts 77-fold on anyone who slights him. The human race decides to build a tower to dislodge God. Sin crouches at the door, passing the buck is invented. Methuselah dies of old age in the year of the flood but his son actually drowns in it while his grandson climbs in the ark. Basically, read it all and see what it says about us.
What a mixed bag. The story that emerges is that human beings are capable of so much good but also of so much evil, so much selfishness. Entitlement - a horrible thing - isn't a 21st Century invention.
Lockdown has shown me one more thing, and that's just how much hypocrisy and selfishness I have the capacity for. How easily I could and can justify things. How much of a plank is in my eye even as I level my sights on the manifold misbehaviour around me.
What can I say? Take a good honest moment to embrace your own humanity, with all the noble promise it contains. Take a moment to own up to it as well, with all the flecks of selfishness that it is shot through with. We're stuck with being human, we're blessed by being human and a little lower (but definitely lower) than the angels and a lot lower than Good and yet still the crown of all creation.
I'm not sure what the legacy of the spitty woman is - generosity or yeurgh - either in my eyes or in God's. Kindness and crassness walk hand in hand in humanity. But I can work to make my legacy a little kinder.
Enough questions... unless you have more that you'd like to ask.
Answers... well, you think about them. Just before lockdown I was in the middle of a good trawl of Genesis 1-11, preaching on and thinking about the place of the human race in the world. It's peppered with instances of brilliant human behaviour and disgraceful human actions. God declares us very good and laster on rues the day he ever made us. Noah sort of saves the human race and then celebrates by getting off his face and kicking off whole new sins (these were the days when you could invent an original sin as well as Original Sin). One man declares that he will return hurts 77-fold on anyone who slights him. The human race decides to build a tower to dislodge God. Sin crouches at the door, passing the buck is invented. Methuselah dies of old age in the year of the flood but his son actually drowns in it while his grandson climbs in the ark. Basically, read it all and see what it says about us.
The story of Noah we don't tell the kids so much
What a mixed bag. The story that emerges is that human beings are capable of so much good but also of so much evil, so much selfishness. Entitlement - a horrible thing - isn't a 21st Century invention.
Lockdown has shown me one more thing, and that's just how much hypocrisy and selfishness I have the capacity for. How easily I could and can justify things. How much of a plank is in my eye even as I level my sights on the manifold misbehaviour around me.
What can I say? Take a good honest moment to embrace your own humanity, with all the noble promise it contains. Take a moment to own up to it as well, with all the flecks of selfishness that it is shot through with. We're stuck with being human, we're blessed by being human and a little lower (but definitely lower) than the angels and a lot lower than Good and yet still the crown of all creation.
I'm not sure what the legacy of the spitty woman is - generosity or yeurgh - either in my eyes or in God's. Kindness and crassness walk hand in hand in humanity. But I can work to make my legacy a little kinder.
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