life isn't normally like this

Steps walked: 9460.

Furthest point travelled to: 1 mile – North Mid Chapel.

Face to face non-household interactions: 5.

Track of the day: ‘Be My Enemy’ – The Waterboys.

It started with ants.

Now and again my wife Susie gets gripped by some strange impulse to do something ‘creative’ with the boys; yesterday this impulse took the shape of a project to make an ‘ant house’ kit the boys had been given many moons ago. The boys are possessed by a dream of having a pet one day, a dream so deeply felt that even the prospect of giving some reluctant ants an indoor home was enough to see them whirling around the house Dervish-like at breakfast this morning.

I was at my desk writing a sermon when shrieks of panic brought me downstairs. Ants had successfully been corralled, but unfortunately the ‘ant house’ had broken, leaving the ants skittering around the dining room table, and my two boys utterly bereft and desolate.

The youngest, Barnaby, was deputised to tell his Mummy what had happened. Clearly, Susie had invested a lot more in this project than we’d realised, and next thing she was giving him an uncharacteristically severe telling off for not looking after things properly. At this point, Susie is angry, Barnaby is in tears and James is speechless with ant-grief. Not wanting to be left out of the mounting aggravation, I became really angry with Susie for being so angry with the boys.

Things went from bad to, you know. I told the boys that we needed to go over to the church to record a service for our YouTube channel. This was not well received, and the boys became massively grumpy with me.

It might help to offer a bit of an anger summary here.

1) Boys angry at life over the loss of ants.

2) Mummy angry with boys over the demise of ‘ant house’.

3) Daddy angry with Mummy for being angry with boys.

4) Boys angry with Daddy for dragging them to church, again.

There’s a strange kind of grim perfection about it all really. Life isn’t normally like this.

              It might just be us, but then again it might not.

              Usually in any kind of crisis situation you start with lots of uncertainty and as time passes, so things become ever clearer. This time that we’re living through feels like it’s following the opposite trajectory. When this all started, I knew that we didn’t have to wear face masks, now I have no idea. When this all started, I knew we’d be through the worst of it by the summer, now I have no idea.

              A clergy friend likes to say that we’ll be amongst the last public places to open, ‘with the pubs, clubs and restaurants.’ We hear that the government is watching what’s happening on the Continent. In Germany places of worship are amongst the first places to re-open, well before the pubs, clubs and restaurants. So?

              Upheaval is less enervating than uncertainty.

              I ended my 2010 Sabbatical with two weeks on Islay. A beautiful island with an abundance of fine distilleries.

              For my last big walk of that three month break, I walked from Bowmore to Ardbeg, over hills, an adventure. Wide freedom: the only modest pressure was making sure I got to Ardbeg in time to get the bus back. Travel options are limited on Islay. It was such a good walk, but right at the last there was a point where my every path through to Ardbeg itself seemed blocked. I could even see the bus-stop. It was like one of those dreams. I just couldn’t get to the end, and if I didn’t get to the end I was stranded. The more I sought a way out, the more stuck I felt. Maybe I began to panic a bit.

              In the end I got the bus.

              Sooner or later, broken ‘ant houses’ will be less of a trauma.