43. Is It Just Me? (Part 2)

Remember that at the end of the second week, the doctor couldn't make the Friday treatment because he was going to see his daughter?

This week he suddenly says that he'll try to get to the 2.30 appointment on Friday in time but he's got a doctor's appointment of his own and may be late.

So? Well, at our very first conversations I told him that I really needed to get away on time on Fridays as it was the difference between a £40 ticket and a £140 one.

This time, I gave the receptionist a week's notice that I would need a 2pm appointment if I was going to have extra amounts of vitamin C (it's now 60 ml a day) as the drip takes more time. That was vital so I could catch my train home. She said 'fine.'

But now he's going to be later than 2.30pm. I say 'but the appointment's at 2pm.' Dr. W has no idea about that.'

I check with the receptionist and it turns out that the timing was never checked with him. I am cross. There is also another sign of carelessness in the surgery this week but that is not my story so I'll leave it at that. But I am wondering how I managed to attract this.

I tell the receptionist that I need that appointment at 2pm or I will not be turning up on Friday and will have to miss the final treatment. And that I am very cross.

So, Dr. W says he will try and change his own doctor's appointment. He succeeds in doing so.

Good. I have stood up for myself. At last.

42. Goddesses and Stuff.

The Bish’s place is three stops further up the Northern line, in Finchley ... another of my old stamping grounds. Jay and I lived there for six months before we set off for Montana;my friend Bernadette and I shared a house there when Jay and I broke up and Lion and I lived in a house there for a year when we first got together.

I was planning to do a little bit of ghost-laying as I did in Dartmouth Park but there isn’t a minute this week to do any of it – which is interesting in itself. Maybe none of those ghosts need any attention? It’s obviously more important to be in the Bish’s place, chatting, attending meetings and services, watching movies together (I adored the Johnny Depp Lone Ranger no matter what the critics think) or being out seeing friends or having the treatment.

BTW if you're reading Bishop's Palace rather than place, I'd probably better correct you. It's a flat on the second floor of a house. 

The first thing that happens is that the A-lister (who keeps signing his texts with a capital Q by accident – it’s a letter near to his name) has to postpone Tuesday at the Savoy. To say he had a better offer is an understatement but the good thing is he’s eager to reschedule for Friday morning which is something to look forward to.

So I have a free morning. Do I use it for ghost-laying? Yes indeed but not in Finchley. I head off for a Date With God.

A Date with God is when you let God take you out and decide for you where you are going and what you are going to do (for more details of those are, see here). God makes it pretty clear pretty fast that we are going to the British Museum to  see Sekhmet.

As Goddesses go, Sekhmet is pretty darn ferocious. She brings destruction to the enemies of Ra and frankly doesn’t know where to stop. But she has both fascinated and scared me since I was fifteen and came to the museum on a school trip.

Now I’m an ordained independent Catholic priest I, technically, shouldn’t have much truck with Egyptian goddesses but that's the joy of the independent movement. I wouldn't call it interfaith but I'd certainly call it inter-respect. This particular goddess has turned up quite a few times in my life and this time, God is pretty insistent.

So I turn up in the Egyptian statues part of the museum in front of four statues of the lion-headed goddess, sit down on the convenient bench in front of them and wait to see what needs to be known.

In Kabbalistic terms, Sekhmet is Gevurah – the equivalent of the archangel Khamael – the sword of God. She is judgment, surgery, knives and sharp things. You don’t mess with this lady if you want to keep the contents of your skin inside.

She turned up last time I visited the Dartmoor Shaman so I’m not entirely surprised that we’ve come to visit and it’s very clear that I do need more of her energy ... and a razor’s edge of wit if I am to be a successful comedian – a Fool for God as the Bish calls it.

I’m not tough. Oh, I have a pretty fierce persona at times and yes I can stand up on a stage and risk humiliation but there are still aspects of my psyche that are very doormat. Sekhment is servant of Ra (the great God). She defends him against his enemies. I serve at the pleasure of the Holy One (to paraphrase The West Wing) and, in comedy, where there is so much hostility against God and religion, I am Sekhmet. I just have to let her in.

41. My Body Knows What It Needs.

Week no. 3 of intravenous vitamin C. So, today I was supposed to have 75 ml instead of 50 because we missed a day last week.

So at 50ml I started feeling a bit light-headed (I haven’t had this drip for three days) and the line simply came out of my arm. My body said ‘enough.’ God I love my body; she’s so wise and so clever.

And she will lose these lumps as soon as she is ready to do just that.

40. The Third Week

This week I’m staying with the Bish. He’s my bishop in our newly re-named church The Flower of Carmel. It used to be The Apostolic Church of the Risen Christ or, according to predictive text, The Apologetic Church of the Risen Crisp.

We’ve now amalgamated with a big American Church which gives us all the bells and whistles we need to step up in the world and be recognised – including the chance of studying for a legitimate doctorate, which is really exciting for me, and having parishes all round the world. And it’s definitely ‘Independent Catholic’ with capital letters and a lot of mysticism thrown in.

As ordained priests, we still had to apply to join them – very fair given that their seminary training is much more intense than ours was.  However, all of us who have jumped through the appropriate hoops have been accepted and welcomed in that uniquely enthusiastic American way which is both enchanting and overwhelming and more of us will do the jumping when they’ve got the time.

The name’s a bit of a challenge to me ‘Ascension Alliance’ – there’s a lot of New Age stuff about ascension that I do find to be rather WBX. But as the Bish says, ‘we were risen, now we’re ascended, so it’s in the right direction.’

Staying on the Bish’s sofa will be interesting. I’ve slept just one night there before. The living room is also his temple and it’s full to the brim with spiritual presences. Now that’s probably just as WBX to you as New Age ascended masters are to me but my experience from just one night was that it was quite a gloriously splendid place to sleep — in a ‘what the fuck was that?’ kind of a way. Interesting to see how I do four nights in it and who shows up to have a chat or – as may well be the case – to administer a good, healthy spiritual slapping.

Friends have come out of the woodwork in the last week or so – Londoners that is – so it’s going to be a pretty sociable week with morning coffee/herbal tea with people every day. I’m going to be knackered but I think I’ll enjoy it very much.

And on Tuesday I’m having morning tea with the A-list comedian from the Guildford gig. He asked me to suggest somewhere (he’s the one who knows London!) I ventured the Savoy and he said ‘glorious’ even though he’s  a hardened Northerner.

Why the Savoy? Because it’s beautiful, the tables aren’t sticky and you don’t get rushed out. I’ve used it as my London office in the mornings for more than a decade now. You can hire a corner of a delightful, quiet room with attentive service for two hours for the price of two cups of tea. Knocks Starbucks into a cocked hat if you ask me.

39. Is It Working?

I first heard of intravenous vitamin C when Henry was ill. It’s the brainchild of Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling and his colleage Ewan Campbell and although it’s controversial it is, finally, starting to be taken seriously. It doesn’t cure life-enhancing diseases – although it has cured some. It’s as effective as chemotherapy, but it doesn’t hurt the immune system in any way, shape or form.

When Henry was ill, it wasn’t available in the UK so he had oral vitamin C. That and a very harsh diet did stop the tumours growing. At one point, I rang Ewan Campbell in California and, bless him, he took my call and was very kind.

So is it working? I don't know. Dr. W says it won’t necessarily show until after the three weeks have ended. Well, let’s hope he’s right. Dear God, let’s hope so. I have a bit of a tendency to doubt things and it didn’t help when that new lump turned up in the first week of the treatment. But it did soften immediately and it's pretty much gone now.

I opened my TUT (Notes from the Universe) last Wednesday to read:

Maggy, it's working.

No, you probably can't see it yet, but I can. Wheels are now turning that have never turned before. Winds are now howling that have never howled before. And players from every walk of life are being drawn into place as if in some hypnotic dance. All because of you, your dreams, and your divinely stubborn persistence.

If I wasn't the Universe, I don't think I'd believe it.

Phew-w-w-w-w-w-w...

    The Universe

Oh boy, did that help.

38. More a Clump than a Blog.

You may have noticed that I tend to put loads of postings up at once instead of daily updates. That’s because I’m writing most of this on the train up to and down from London. Once I’m back home that may change.

I'm taking my laptop to London for creative writing as well as emails etc. I could take the iPad but although that’s a lovely toy it needs a separate keyboard if you’re going to use it as a writer and that kind of takes away the point for me. 

I’ve got work to do as well – I’m ghost writing a book for a Kabbalist friend who has wonderful theories and ideas but lacks the common touch when writing.

Given that the train tickets at the moment are non-restricted and I’m arriving early at the stations to get the first available train, I’m getting to sit at one of the two tables in a carriage which means that there are people on the other side of the table.

This has led to some lovely conversations. Not bad for a hermit like me. On the way home last Friday I sat with a lovely Devon farming woman who has been on archeological digs in the Holy Land so we chatted horses, chickens, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Paganism and lifestyles very happily while also marveling at the flooded landscapes we were crossing.

This morning (Monday 17^th February) my companions are a couple from 15 minutes the other side of Okehampton. They got me a black tea from the buffet (this is when I do miss cow’s milk but I’m getting used to it. I’m not really meant to have tea either but bugger it) and we got onto discussing horses somehow.

And they have a horse that needs exercising. It’s half an hour away and 15.2 hh which is perfect for me. This is the third tentative offer of riding for me – the other two were so helpful in making me feel happy last year but they came to nothing. This one may well work. And I so love to ride. I must follow it up.

37. A Year of Weather in Two Weeks

It’s the year of the British floods — and of course the complaints about the floods. We Brits do love to complain. Certainly the first two weeks that I have to be in London for the intravenous vitamin C there are downpours and gales. The train services have been brilliant given all the challenges that they have faced but I’ve got soaking wet and blown about on London’s streets which are littered with the skeletons of dead umbrellas. Ironically my hostess for those first two weeks, is better clad than I am. She walks her dog on Hampstead Heath every day and has waterproof trousers.

It’s much wetter and windier at home than it is in London but we just ‘do wet’ when we are in Devon. And on the second weekend of being home, there is one glorious day of sunshine and warmth. You know the kind of day - one when you can leave the back door open and the animals can potter in and out as they want.

I was a bit pathetic about the snowdrops when I first set off for Birmingham and London. They are so beautiful  and there are so many of them all through the garden. Most of them are doubles which are no more exquisite than the singles, just differently so. I thought I was going to miss nearly all of their beauty.

However they have lasted for these two weekends home and on this lovely sunny day I spend time just standing and looking at them and adoring them. I do pick some for the altar in the chapel and the living room mantelpiece but they are not the same once they are picked even though you can put a mirror underneath the vase to reflect their loveliness.

I have missed most of the prepared hyacinths though. But when I open up my office/chapel door I am assailed by the glorious scent of the last blue hyacinth still blooming. It almost knocks me over with sensory delight.

The next day it is over.