36. Comedy Night in Kentish Town part 2.

Usually I have my act sorted word-for-word. It’s totally memorized apart from dealing with hecklers. But last week in Guildford I extemporized a little, dropping some and adding other bits on the hoof. And tonight I’m a lot less prepared in a way simply because I’m planning to do five minutes of audience participation.

And, as an experiment, I don’t tell them that I’m an independent Catholic priest, a heretic, or do very much of the self-deprecating stuff that so many comedians use. Instead I’m quite authoritative – as in ‘I know my Bible, let’s play a game’ kind of way.

Because of the torrential storms and wet, it’s definitely Noah’s Ark time and given that the UKIP Oxford councillor got all over the news for saying the floods were due to the government’s approving gay marriage, I do a session on how many of the Old Testament laws we have all broken, getting the audience to stand up and sit down and working out who’s broken the most laws ... and therefore who is to blame.

Some of the laws are palpably daft in this modern age - hey what am I saying? Most of them are. That doesn't mean they weren't valid then (given some caveats - see below*) but God is quite capable of updating stuff. People seem to think that God would never allow his creation to evolve but that's simply not the case. 

They like it – well audiences do love to participate – and they do seem to think it’s funny. I end with the ‘actually it’s all the fault of the vegetarians’ story and get good applause.

But for the first time there is active hostility directed towards me from two of the other comedians during their act and another (a physicist) somewhat pointedly over-disses religion and those who believe in it. So that’s interesting. It doesn’t hurt or deplete me at all and it’s probably because I haven’t quite presented myself as exactly who I am.

However, it does show how atheistic the comedy world is – and there are lots of anti-religion jokes going around. The only trouble with them is that they are ill-informed on the Bible stories (as if anyone but me notices!).

There is definitely a place for spiritual comedy even if it’s only to show that religion is simply the terms and conditions that cover the real heart of the great Love that binds the stars together.

I think that that faith is about seeking out the 70% organic chocolate instead of being content to chomp on the cheap stuff.

If you’ve got any sense, you know that the everyday stuff isn’t really chocolate at all but it gives you a quick ‘hit.’ It’s cheap and it doesn’t need you to think about it. It takes a real effort to get used to the richness and the the lack of cloying sweetness in the quality chocolate. And you can’t eat so much of it at any one time. It’s so much easier just to get a bar from the front of the stack... But once your tastes have changed and you feel the benefits, you don’t really want to go back.

Except for Christmas of course. And that’s a a Cadbury’s Twirl in the middle of the Green and Blacks. Utterly delicious but, once you’ve found the good stuff, not something you know you can deal with every day.

Hmm. I think I could develop that as a joke.

* Re homosexuality and the Old Testament, there is some good evidence (here is one example) that Leviticus 18:22 was a law against male cult temple prostitution - which was highly prevalent. As people were generally married six months after puberty there was very little (if any) loving same-sex relationship stuff going on so the law is not referring to that at all. 

Neither are lesbians mentioned - so gay sex between women is fine. Which I can see might be annoying if you're a fundamentalist teenage feminist and want to be an abomination on the same terms as the men...

35. Comedy Night in Kentish Town part 1.

After last week’s heroic trek to Guildford it’s a huge relief to potter ten minutes down the road from Diane’s to the Oxford Pub in Kentish Town for the Monkey Business Funny Night. Martin, who runs it, is what they call ‘a character.’ He needs people who are kind to him and who fit in happily around his slightly bumbling manner. I’m very grateful to him for giving me my first break in London and, as a former radio and TV reporter who spent years working ‘live’ I can adapt where necessary.

But a lot of comedians aren’t so adaptable and they rub up against him. It’s their stuff hitting his stuff. We’ve all got stuff of course. And I think a lot comedians have a bit of a problem with authority. After all, if they didn’t where would most of their political jokes come from? Martin does not run free comedy nights; he does this for a business and he wants you to bring friends -  whom he charges. That doesn’t go down very well as so many comedy nights are free nowadays.

There was an article in the national newspapers recently who said that comedians were mostly borderline psychopaths.

The four aspects measured were:

•             Unusual experiences (belief in telepathy and paranormal events)
•             Cognitive disorganisation (distractibility and difficulty in focusing thoughts)
•             Introvertive anhedonia (reduced ability to feel social and physical pleasure, including an avoidance of intimacy)
•             Impulsive non-conformity (tendency towards impulsive, antisocial behaviour).

Hmm. Well I can relate to that. Though I need to learn more about antisocial behaviour. 

Certainly a lot of comedians  don’t relate to other people’s emotions – and I do see that on the circuit quite a lot. Not many comedians are sociable with other comics unless they are members of the same tribe. I recently got a ‘did you do Edinburgh?’ ‘No, not this year.’ ‘Oh’ – and was ignored as a rookie from then on.

Well I am a rookie. Due to the life-enhancing dis-ease I haven’t been on the circuit half as much as one ‘should’ be on it in the first couple of years of doing stand-up.

The ones who do socialise; who are supportive and kind stand out like a very-not-sore-thumb. Pray God I am always one of them.

Tonight I’ve got ten minutes to most people’s five minutes. I check with Martin because Eric, the lovely comedian I’ve been chatting to (definitely not a psychopath!), says we’ve all got five minutes. I offer to drop half the act if he needs me to but Martin says, ‘No, that’s fine, Maggy. You do ten minutes. You’re a professional.’

Now there’s lovely... I feel very chuffed.

34. Is It Just Me?

The second week is easier than the first – no tube strikes for a start - and I've found all the gardens with  snowdrops within walking distance of Diane's. But there’s a facer on the Tuesday when Dr. W casually informs me that he’s going to Edinburgh this Friday so there’ll be no intravenous vitamin C treatment that day.

But it’s meant to be three weeks of five treatments. Won’t that affect the outcome? Yes, he says, slightly.

Good God man! This is my health we are talking about! Possibly my life!

He says that he very rarely does manage the whole three weeks because there’s always something that gets in the way and no, there isn’t anyone else at the surgery who can do a drip.

Is it just me? I simply wouldn't do that. I wouldn't book someone in for three weeks and then say, casually, that I'm not doing one day. And if, for some reason, I had to go away because of a crisis, I'd arrange cover and, at the very least, be abjectly apologetic.

I think maybe I have to learn something about chutzpah.

It’s certainly shown me that I still carry a a cancer personality; probably anyone who doesn't, would dare to be furious to the doctor's face. I have a tendency not to be able to react directly to situations; they don’t seem to hit me until about an hour afterwards. That was very useful when I was a journalist as you just got on with the job, did the report and collapsed later. Today, however, I say little and then I make enquiries of the receptionist to see if someone else can be found. Really the only thing to do is to give it to God to sort it out.

It’s very noticeable however that now I’ve spotted something ‘wrong’ at the surgery, my ego is searching for more things and starting to make assumptions that are negative.

I remember, years ago,  being very vociferous to  some poor bloke at a call centre about a list of things that were wrong with something (no idea what it was now). He said ‘yes, but those are all things that you’ve noticed because there is one major thing wrong. You’re not really worried about any of them. And if we sort the one thing, you’ll feel fine again.’ I found that rather annoying at the time but it was true.

What’s more annoying is that my ticket home is on the Friday ... given that it’s a week of floods I could probably change it to the Thursday at no cost, but I have a comedy gig on Thursday night and it’s at Monkey Business. I’ve had to cancel on them twice because of the l-e-d so I really don’t want to do that again.

That night I wake up at 3am utterly, utterly furious. This is also an old pattern. There’s no one on whom I can (or would dare) to vent my fury – it’s all going to circulate and be poison to me instead.

Well that won’t do.

I get up, have some fruit and a cup of green tea and think. Nobody’s going to come up with a solution to this problem but me. Or God. It probably doesn’t matter that much but if I think it does, then it will have some effect.

What does God think? At last I remember to ask. God thinks that I was a little disappointed that the dosage was 50 ml rather than 75 ml in the first case. When it's 75ml, it is given over shorter periods of time. I did ask Dr. W but he doesn’t do 75mls.

So what if I suggest having 75ml  for a couple of days next week instead of 50ml a day?

It’s some kind of a solution; I can get my head around the idea that it might do more good and I feel totally relaxed and go back to sleep.

Next day, I ask Dr. W if he's got a plan make up the shortfall. He says he’ll have a think. ‘I have a suggestion,’ I say. He appears delighted and agrees. So next week there will be a higher dosage. Maybe that’s exactly what I need? That rather annoying God does work in mysterious ways and He/She/It is just as capable of using our foibles as our strengths.

And I will take an early train home on Friday morning instead of Friday night. First Great Western has lifted ticket restrictions so that should not be the slightest problem. So I will get to see my snowdrops again before dusk.

At this point I realise that I'm a bit crazy about snowdrops. #BonkersSnowdropWoman. 

33. Everything Goes Easily For You.

I arrive at the surgery 15 minutes early, having warned Emilia, the lovely receptionist, that I am very likely to be late. As she sets up the drip of vitamin C, I tell her how easy the journey was and that I would like the drip to be on my right hand side to give the veins in my left arm a rest.

‘Everything goes easily for you,’ she says and I think she is talking of my life; that of course the train would run; of course I would get here on time. And she is right. I am so stupid ever to doubt; I am always looked after.

Actually she was talking about my veins. ‘Dr. W says your veins are always easy,’ she says. ‘It is amazing. Sometimes we have to put people’s hands in hot water to get the veins to work.’

She leaves me, to await the doctor. Whichever way, everything goes easily for me. So often I forget that because I still have lumps and bumps. I must remember it more often.

Dr. W arrives. ‘You look so well!’ he says.

That’s because I am.

32. The War Spirit.

Waiting on platform five, where the 9.58 to London Paddington is lurking, darkened and closed-off for the moment, a small group of us start to tell our stories. One lady tells of how she got up at six to get here from Barnstaple to catch any train whatsoever to London in order to take the 2.15 Eurostar to see her dying mother in Paris.

Another is on the way to Argentina to rejoin her husband who is on a contract out there. She’s been home to visit the children but was terrified of missing her flight.

What amazing stories we all have to tell about our lives! There are others with a less important rendezvous perhaps but all of us taking that 9.58 are truly in need of that blessed train.

Once moving, the train glides slowly through the flooded plain outside Exeter ... just like last year and we gaze out at this now-familiar landscape and wonder about global warming, climate change and whether this is to become the norm.

The guard is so kind. He reassures us that all train tickets to and from London this week will be honoured no matter what trains we take. There are more storms predicted for Thursday so no one knows what will happen.

‘Just keep your eye out for the updates,’ he tells me. ‘On Friday, just get to Paddington whenever you can. We will run hourly services to Exeter one way or another. We will get you home.’

Why is it so important for me to get home? Diane would continue to put me up. We would continue to curl up together with her dog, Ajax, on the sofa-bed in her living room to talk or watch TV in the evenings when I’m not doing comedy; we would still cook supper together. I couldn’t ask for a better friend.

But I want to be home. 

However, there are adventures for me to have this coming week in London; places to go, people to see. And I want to get to the National Portrait Gallery – one of my favourite museums. I have to take a day’s Sabbath in the week and do my Artist’s Date (from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way). Now I have worked out how to organize myself in London, I must start to have some fun.

31. Devon the Island.

Howling gales, dashing rain – and floods. The railway lines from the South West are all blocked.  Devon and Cornwall are pretty much cut off from the rest of Britain – at least by rail. Much of Sunday is spent periodically checking on the updates of how I can get back to London tomorrow.

Is it critical? Yes. The treatment is three weeks of five days a week. I know Dr. Wetzler would try to help if I couldn’t get there on Monday but he is an orthodox Jew in a very orthodox area; he cannot work on a Saturday.

The problem is not just the flooding; there’s engineering work on a tunnel on the line from Paddington to Exeter so those trains are being diverted via Honiton. And now the line to Waterloo is closed by a landslide.

I often don’t realize that I’m stressed. I’ve got so used to it through years in the media and all the crises/adventures that it’s not until afterwards when the tears come that I know how relieved I am. I’m uncomfortable too. The vitamin C therapy is bound to have some effect on my body (even before it does the job it’s meant to do, which can take some time). It has made parts of me very raw and sore ... and I’ve been travelling so much, which, nowadays, makes my neck stiff. So that’s a bit of a nagging worry as well.

Today I know it’s going to be okay. The voices in my head tell me. The websites and the radio don’t. I try to phone Exeter St. David’s station on Sunday afternoon and get through to some guy in India. Well he’s not going to know any more than I do when I’ve got the local radio and Internet! Hopeless service!

I haven’t written much about my guidance or the messages yet – didn’t want to hit you with too much WBX but they are there – and they are sound. I know that because they have warned me of disappointments on this journey when I really, really didn’t want to know about them. And they have comforted me all along and encouraged me to strive.

‘They’ are my guide or mentor, the Holy Spirit, God, my higher self. Call them what you may, they are my spiritual rock. They have never let me down – when I remember to listen to them. This journey is helping me to listen a lot more. But it is much easier to listen in Devon than it is in London – or Birmingham.

We go to bed, fairly confident, that London is achievable. Worst case scenario is bus(es) to Bristol and a train on from there. It’s quite likely that there are trains to Waterloo as the Crewkerne landslip has been sorted. It will be tiring and possibly long but it will be okay. And Dr. Wetzler will fit me in late if needs be.

On Monday morning, we are up early in time to have a good, long cuddle in bed before we get up. I hate leaving Lion and the beagles; I know it must be done but being away really has shown me (again) how much I want to be with him. It is true that absence makes the heart grow stronger. All this weekend he has looked after me and we have stopped nearly every time we passed in the house, to touch or cuddle. This week, without my being there, he may have really faced up to the possibility that life without me might actually happen.

If it did, he would cope; he’s like that. But we don’t want it to happen. We have so much to do together and so much to offer to God from this Earth.

First Great Western on Twitter says that the engineering works are finished and the line to Paddington will open at lunchtime. But trains are running (slowly) to Waterloo although there is no timetable. That’s fine.

We get to Exeter and Lion parks the car as I go in (he is quite prepared to drive me to Bristol if necessary). I ask one of the women on the information desk about the next train to Waterloo. She looks at my ticket and says ‘your train to Paddington is running and it will be faster.’ The engineering work has been finished and all is well.

Not only that but there are hardly any people at the station. Most have taken the option of cancelling their tickets and getting a refund. Only those who have to go are travelling.

I tell Lion the good news and cry. Again, I didn’t know how stressed I was. This is half relief and half sadness at leaving him for another five days. I think I need those kick-ass boots.

30. Home.

The weekend at home is just lovely. Slashing rain and howling winds but lovely. The snowdrops are so perfect – we have hundreds of the double snowdrops sheltering underneath bushes. They are all bravely out and beautiful.

Each day there has been about an hour of sunshine – time to race out with bright-eyed, bouncing beagles so glad for a proper walk. Their Dad doesn’t take them as far or as fast as I do. They get road walks all around the fields but not in the fields.

We don’t make it to the moor itself this weekend because the landrover’s in for repair and there are floods down the East Week road. And, frankly, I a too tired to face the winds up there. Fair enough, you can lean on them ... but walking’s a bit of a challenge.

But we do make it to the river path at Sticklepath. Biggle is usually bored by that and she’s a bit nervous of other dogs – it’s a popular walk - but there are no other walkers and she was so happy to be out that she races around, up and down the hill, tongue hanging out and full of the joys of life.

Thunderfeet MegaBeagle (Mrs), AKA Razzle, who’s somewhat older, more staid and conscious of her position in life, having been a show champion, potters along grumbling a bit at having to cross streams and plod through mud after her Mum. But she is still glad to be out; glad for the change.

It feels so good to be home; so wonderful to be seeing this forest of birch trees covered in bright green lichen and with ferns growing along their branches. Underneath, the path is lined with years (maybe centuries) of rock laid down by walkers to alleviate the winter mud. This is the walk from Sticklepath up to the moorland village of Belstone so it has been a foot and horse track for a very long time. Now of course, we take our 4x4s up the tarmaced road and unload our dogs at the very top for a hike around the nine stones stone circle, the tors themselves and across miles of windy moorland.

I stand and watch the roaring, thundering, foaming river at each corner. The months of rain have made it a fearsome but magnificent torrent but there are still slow-water  pools and corners of quietness overhung by trees where you can pause and just gaze at this ancient, primeval landscape.

I wish it were a weekend of total relaxation but there is work to do — including an online webinar on Kabbalah and the Teachings of Jesus — so this Sunday is not a Sabbath. I will take a full day off in the week to compensate. I should be doing the webinar tomorrow (Monday) but I can’t really do it from Diane’s flat so a day early it is. Luckily I was able to work out most of it on the train home on Friday. I do tend to fly by the seat of my pants with webinars and workshops. God doesn’t do early so the inspiration comes in perfect time.

I can trust that now. I trust that very deeply. I still need to learn to trust in my healing at the same deep and knowing level of being. Part of me does – and all of me knows that all is truly well – but even so, the little child within still needs a further reassuring cuddle of faith.