Hey ho, a change from ranting about the BNP, George Galloway and Boris Johnson (incidentally, Mr Mayor, if you’re paying £600 per tree for your tree-planting programme, you, and by extension the London taxpayers, are being robbed blind).
Easter was massively early this year - Candlemass, marking the end of the Christmas season, was on 2nd February, and Ash Wednesday, marking the start of Lent, was on the 6th. This means that the long swing down through the year to Christ the King, the feast which marks the last Sunday of the Church’s year, is going to be a rather long stretch of green.
Green is the colour the Church uses for Ordinary Time, to signify the Holy Spirit, and growth and new life. I didn’t use to like ordinary Time, seeing it as boring, compared to the feasts and festivals - I came to the Catholic Church via a church which did feasts and festivals rather well, and I’ve always been a drama queen at heart, and a well done Corpus Christi procession is a thing to gladden the eyes and lift the heart and mind to God.
Growth is an interesting thing. Whether it is plants or people, it happens on an incremental basis, with occasional spurts, slowly and gradually and step by step, and then one day you turn round and the orchids are taking over the bathroom.
Feasts and festivals are good and necessary things, the leaven that raises the daily rhythm of life, but it’s not in the feasts and festivals where the majority of a Christian’s growth happens. Most of your walk with Christ takes place in the green spaces, the ordinary days that mark the rhythm of most people’s lives, and the slow unfolding of the Church’s year is a necessary support for the great high feasts.
Take an orchid as an example.
The drama of the flowers couldn’t happen without the support of the roots, stems and leaves. The slow growth of the green parts is required for the flowers, and you can’t have one without the other. The gradual unfolding of the stems leads surely to the glory of the flowers, and the gradual unfolding of the church’s year, the growth of the Christian as they walk with Christ, leads just as surely to the glory of Heaven.
Plants need food to grow, and so do Christians. The Eucharist, Scripture , the writings of the Saints, works of mercy, all nourish the soul in different ways, as a plant is fed by water and soil. You may think that nothing is happening, but keep on keeping on, and then suddenly you will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away! And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!
Oh, and the people asking about Respect (George Galloway)? Yes, it really did say that. Respect (George Galloway) is the bit of the Respect: Unity Collision Coalition that stayed with Gorgeous George and his lycra catsuit. Left List is the bit that broke away under Lyndsey German.
The National Front got over 2,500 votes, and the BNP got one of the top-up seats. I despair. Still, I guess they and their ilk are the price we pay for democracy.
And 45% may be record turnout, but it's still a disgrace. If you could have voted and didn't, don't come crying to me when LOLBoris provokes Portsmouth to a war footing.
I voted. I'm allowed to moan. And doubtless I will, frequently, at some length and volume.
I'm going to be on a train when the London election results are announced (I don't know, whatever happened to counting through the night, flippin' fancy electronic wizardry that apparently can't start work until 8:30am, mumble mumble mumble), so can someone text me the result, please?
In today's case, I learned that the members of the National Front are not all in jail, but one of them is standing for election for the London Assembly.
When I made my "X" on the slip, I had this muddle of loony left and barking right to choose from:
Respect (George Galloway)
British National Party
The Labour Party
Conservative Party
Christian Peoples Alliance and Christian Party
Independent
Green Party
Left List
English Democrats
Liberal Democrats
National Front
UK Independence Party
Still, voting at the crack of dawn meant that I could sail past the last minute "please vote for me, pleasepleaseplease," campaigners with a cheery "already voted, sorry," much to their startlement and dismay.
Settle down, children. Are we sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.
[Insert wiggly lines and woo-woo noises here, to signify the passage of time].
It was my first General Election in this ‘ere London, and the Labour party could put up a donkey in a red rosette in this constituency and it would get elected.
But that didn’t stop the other parties trying, even though the Conservatives would routinely lose their deposit. The BNP tend to do better than they have any right to do in a decent civilised society, but I guess that’s one of the perils of democracy.
One evening, a few days before the election, there was a ring on the doorbell. I’d just gone rummaging in the depths of the freezer to pull out the basics of the next evening’s meal so it could defrost, and I was about to start cooking this evening’s dinner, so I had a frozen trout in one hand, a sharp knife in the other, Billy Bragg on the stereo, glass of wine poured and waiting, and all’s well with the world.
Off I trot to open the door, neglecting to put down either the frozen trout or the knife (no, I don’t know why, put it down to the promptings of the Holy Spirit).
He’s very smartly dressed, this man on my doorstep, wearing a suit and a spiffy red, white and blue rosette. Unfortunately the rosette has the BNP logo in the middle of it.
I look him up and down in my best “git orf may laynd, before I set the dogs on you,” manner and bark “yes? Can I help you?” as his eyes take in the frozen trout, the pointy knife and the apron, and gradually widen in alarm.
Just at that exact moment, Billy Bragg (bless him), suddenly belts out with “All you fascists are bound to lose,” and the BNP man sensibly takes this as his cue to get the hell away from this loon who opens the door brandishing fish at people.
“I’m wasting my time, aren’t I?” he stammers.
“Yes. Yes you are. Get off my doorstep, you horrible little man. Go away.”
Rosamundi\\'s ramblings 
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