– These days it’s dark when I wake up at 6:30, though the house is warm from the new Hive central heating controller which turns the boiler on automatically. It goes to 23 degrees Celsius, and if I wanted I could crank that up from my phone via the app connected to the wifi router.
– I could turn the heat up in my house from anywhere in the world, as long as I had internet access. Think about that for a minute.
– Actually I’ve unplugged it. Not much call for it, really. It seems neat, but the timer function handles our heating needs nicely.
– In the morning when we step out the air is cool and fresh in a way that reminds me of outward bound trips as a kid with my school in some remote corner of Wales, staying en masse in ancient old youth hostels on creaky bunk beds that smelled of Lynx deodorant and wet socks and sweat.
– In the morning you’d go for your shower in the freezing, barren toilets, but thanks to blazing central heating in 100-year old pipes, you’d be warm even with all the windows rusted open, and in would pour this gorgeous morning dew smell, rich with the sap of freshly ruptured clouds, vibrant grass, twigs and bracken and the calls of last night’s wild hunt still ringing in the air.
– I get a taste that from the park every morning, wafting over in waves. When it’s misty it’s gorgeous. I go to work. The Hive central heating controller is supposed to beep to warn me if I ever leave the house with the heat on – it has GPS too of course- but I’ve unplugged it so it never does. Why would I need it anyway, when it’s all on a timer?
For ages now I’ve been mulling over the idea of setting up my own writer’s group in London for independent, self-published authors. I’ve been to a number of writing groups in London already, some for sitting together and writing, some the standard kind of critique group, but none offering the sort of thing I’m after.
What I’ve found are, essentially:
Few serious writers, by which I mean, folks who are consistently putting the product out there, and actually finding readers. Instead I’ve largely come across:
Many writing hopefuls. They come to writing groups hoping some writerly magic will rub off on them and give them ideas and/or motivation to finish their Works In Progress. Hence there is very little to talk to them about.
Many writing snobs, who while they have never had anything actually published- do actually have agents. What would that even mean, to have an agent but no publications? I suspect it means you have a friend who is an agent. Is this a sign of success?
More writing snobs who look down on self-publishing, and lament how bad things have got with the demise of agents and traditional publishing as gatekeepers. I find these folks amusing, to a degree. When everyone in a given group starts nodding their head in agreement, lapping up the ‘wisdom’, I get antsy.
Fairly serious writers with only small dreams. I wonder if this is a British thing. If in your critique group, when a piece is workshopped and half the old hands recommend it be sent to THE SAME uk-only online fiction magazine that doesn’t even pay, and everyone gets enthusiastic about that, that’s displaying a serious paucity of ambition. Why not look to America, THE market? Perhaps because….
Folks who like networking. They like to name-drop the semi-famous (C-list and down) authors they’ve met at conferences or agents they’ve stood in a line next to. And if you’re in the UK, naturally your glitterati are going to be UK-only stars. And if you believe the only way up is through such dodgy connections gleaned at dirty pub rails with C-listers happy to be recognized, then yes you will end up shooting considerably lower than the moon.
Critiques. Critiques are standard in workshops- we go round in a circle and discuss someone’s opening chapter. I believe these have a place and have value, but they’re also largely useful for critiquing voice. They can’t really do a thing for overall narrative- which is what I’m interested in most now.
Little meaningful discussion.
So, I’m working my way round to making my own group. In it we’d discuss marketing, top-down craft like story structure and narrative, publishing tips, network in marketing (box sets), and discussion of issues.
I emailed the godfather of self-publishing Dean Wesley Smith about his writers’ meetups and he very generously replied- seems like his groups are broad discussions with few limitations, amongst serious writers. No critiquing! That’s what I want!
I’m signed up to attend a group that may be what I’m looking for. That’s next week. I don’t hold out great hope, and if it’s not what I’m looking for, I’ll go ahead and set up my own group. Exciting!
So we went to church again today, to the matinee show at 10:45 that caters to families. It was totally different to the 9:00 morning service:
The church was packed to the gills.
There was even more repetition of songs saying ‘God is strong, he will protect me, I’m desperate for Jesus (they really sang that), I’m nothing without God, I love him so’, following along with a pop band.
The charismatic tall Mark Strong-lookalike vicar was not there, instead we had the older lady who felt like your home tutor in primary school, reading through a lot of community announcements and struggling a bit with the interactive sermon.
I’m sounding already like an ass by critiquing this. I am obviously not the target for this kind of service- it’s aimed first of all at people who believe, among whose number I am not, and secondly it’s aimed at families, hence being called the ‘family service’. They had kids blowing bubbles during the prayer list. They do prayer every day at 7:45 am and pm, as well as a prayer day when people come in and pray together.
I find it amazing that this is real. It seems they really believe in prayer? Or is all of this tongue-in-cheek? Who can say. It probably is nice – as I said last week – to think nice thoughts about others. Yeah, not much point in arguing about it- it’s not a waste of time if they get something out of it.
The sermon was quite limited, and mostly comprised of kids coming up and hanging paper leaves on a dying apple tree. I think the message there was a bit off, ie-
The preacher said there is life in this tree yet. We can help this tree by giving it love. Here are some green shoots. Let’s help it some more by adding some more leaves. What shall we write on this leaf? Children? OK, write hope on the leaf. Next leaf? Charity.
Soon the tree is covered in paper leaves.
Now we’ve helped the tree. It looks a lot better, doesn’t it?
Huh. I’m thinking, well, we’ve decorated the tree. We haven’t helped it. It looks better on the outside but its still dying on the outside. So is this like the prayer stuff? We feel better but reality hasn’t actually changed. Maybe this is my feeling about church so far, especially this family service. Too much rejoicing and not enough inner contemplation. What are we all so happy about?
I wanna feel guilty in church. And if not guilty, then contemplative. I want the lecture on morality. I want to be taught something, or at least have someone try to teach me something. I want it quiet, thoughtful, and when we sing I want there to be some poetry and meaning in the hymns we sing, not repetitive pop. I want to be part of an ongoing tradition that has lasted for centuries.
This new style seems like pandering. Church is boring? OK, so we’ll make it fun. We’ll take out most of the content. We’ll add in pop songs with needy lyrics and video screens with dodgy powerpoints. What is left then is more like a Butlins camp.
Ha, I said I wouldn’t criticize! Now I am definitely being an ass. And it’s true they are doing tangible charity. They collected canned goods for Harvest which will go to the needy somewhere. They sponsor kids round the world. If you believe in prayer- then so much prayer is doing great work.
Like I said, it’s not for us, and not targeted at us, and no doubt it serves very well as a community hub. It was packed! Babies were baptized, people were raising their hands to heaven during the songs, kids got involved and the community did something together. That is some good energy.
I guess we won’t go to the family service again. I’ll take the heavier, quieter one. Actually we will try the Baptist church next week I expect. Never done that before. Any tips on what to expect?
Have you any idea how many vacuum-packed turds it would take to turn desiccated Martian dust into thriving, bacteria-rich, potato-nurturing soil? How about hydrazine, if you knew what that was, could you turn it into water without burning your face off?
Ridley’s Scott’s latest movie The Martian, based on the bestselling book by one-book author Andy Weir, will point you in the right direction:
Turds- A lot
Not burn off face- Wear a space helmet
These are some of the most gripping scenes in the book, a runaway bestseller that started out as posts on Andy Weir’s blog in 2011, mutated into a 99cent kindle ebook, then evolved (some indie writers might say devolved) into a blockbusting print edition with a publisher that topped the charts since 2014.
Now The Martian is a blockbuster movie with Matt Damon, who guides us by the hand through turd-picking (and turd-counting) and space-helmet wearing with hydrazine (don’t try this at home).
He is awesome in this movie, no doubt. The very idea of this movie with Ridley Scott at the helm, which charged through development and production in a scant few years, is awesome, and indeed everything about the set-up, cinematography and design is awesome (thank you Lego movie for the tune in my head now).
But is it as awesome, indeed as out-of-this-world as it could have been? That’s the question I want to dig into. Because I’m not sure.
First though, the summary. Damon plays Mark Watney, a cocky-funny botanist on the Ares 3 mission to Mars who takes an arrow to the knee (sorry, joke, it’s actually a communications antenna to the gut) during a tremendous and impossible storm on the surface of Mars (impossible because Mars has no storms due to so little atmosphere). The crew have no choice but to flee lest their escape vehicle is irreversibly toppled by the storm, so that is what they do, believing Mark Watney is dead.
Of course he’s not dead. This is no spoiler- we know it from the trailer. So begins an epic adventure of the man vs. environment type, as Watney must figure out such questions as this review began with (turds, face-melting) in a battle to the death with the unforgiving territory of Mars.
He doesn’t have enough water. He doesn’t have enough food. He doesn’t have enough air. He doesn’t have enough tomato ketchup. YOU DO THE MATH!!
What a premise. It is Castaway on Mars. It totally inspired me. It was gold and people ate it up in book form.
Can I talk about the book?
The book The Martian
I read the book early 2015 and blew through it. I loved it. It seemed a kind of story-telling we don’t see much. First off- there is no bad guy. OK fine, romances have no bad guy. But there is no romance either. There is only man vs. environment.
That feels fresh. And the way Weir tells his story, crammed full of hard-science research about potato-yields and hydrazine and bacteria in poop, is utterly compelling. It’s hard to describe why. It’s a guy in a room doing stuff. I’m reminded of the awesome scene in Big Bang Theory where Sheldon and Raj ‘do science’ to the rousing opening notes of the Rocky music. Check it-
But where they play it for laughs, in the book it is dead serious (with laughs along the way, as Watney’s ‘voice’ is often hilarious) and thrilling. It was the most unique thing I’d read for ages. He was solving problems with science and it flew.
All we see for this whole section is Mark Watney. It comes as a surprise later on when (skip this bit to avoid book SPOILERS!- though as this is a review of the movie, and all of what I’m describing now is actually in the trailer, I don’t thin they’re very spoilery) we flip viewpoint from him to NASA and their efforts to rescue him.
The narrative expands from that point, switching back and forth between Watney and NASA on both ends of a rescue operation.
Here’s an interesting bit- in my head after finishing the book, I figured the opening section with only Watney had to be over half of the book. Maybe two thirds. But no- it is only 6 chapters. After chapter 6 (in a 20 chapter book) we flip to NASA.
Whaaat? This goes to show how damn important those early bits seemed. The Watney-only bits were my favorite.
Now, the movie:
I can’t fault the open. It is absolutely natural in a big-budget movie to open with action, and the action of the storm in which Watney gets left behind is intense. It’s strong. He wakes up and gets himself together. He curses.
Then it sort of goes ‘pffft’.
Ah, I am sad to think that. Maybe I am wrong. But the moment Damon’s Watney starts in on poop-collecting and face-melting, solo, in a room, I felt myself starting to disengage. When is it going to get going again, I was thinking. I was waiting for something. I wanted to love this bit, to be thrilled again by the ingenuity he displays, laugh at his wit, and really be in there tight on his face through the whole experience.
But I wasn’t. I was waiting for something else to happen…
This is what has confounded me. The bits that I LOVED in the book were perhaps the most boring bits in the movie!!!
Why why why? I think perhaps it was just me, but my wife said the same thing, and she liked the movie despite not having read the book or even much liking sci-fi. She described that bit as ‘a hallway we had to go down to get somewhere else’.
Yeah. It felt vestigial. It didn’t feel essential. And for me it is what may keep the movie from being awesome. It is still great for the core idea of Castaway on Mars, for Watney’s puckish voice, for the visuals, for the drama, but it lacked something deep and resonant, and here is what I think it is:
Why it may indeed not be awesome, perhaps…
The film is not tight enough on Watney or the desperation of his situation. It is not first-person hot the way the book is from its very beginning to the first NASA flip.
Let me explain. In the book we open with Watney describing his hopeless situation. No air, no water, no food in a HABitation unit designed to last 31 days, with 4 years until rescue can come. It opens on the futility of that fact- then goes back to explain the accident, and forward to explain his actions as he solves each life-threatening problem one by one, rarely losing his cheeky sense of humor.
There is no escape valve for the reader. We are with Watney in a life or death situation. Every move he makes matters. Help is not coming. The writer’s lens does not flicker from him for a minute, and since he is so captivating, why would it?
It bonds us to every little detail of the science and solutions tightly. They matter. They are the most important thing, and without them he will surely die, and pretty soon. His aloneness comes through in the novel’s very structure.
The movie has a stab at this. After the incident, we track Watney alone for maybe 10 minutes. He does his soliloquy about no water, no food, etc…, but it just doesn’t seem to have the punch. He starts solving problems and I didn’t get the tension. I was waiting for the flip back to NASA, perhaps. I was waiting for the rescue effort to begin.
And it does. It quickly takes over. Watney’s experience gets less and less important, though we bounce back and forth between the two story-lines plenty. The stakes and sense of tension/dread of him being truly alone on this utterly hostile planet are constantly broken. I never think he’s going to die. I don’t feel the fear, and it doesn’t feel that each science solution is going to make or break him.
Sigh. Perhaps I am expecting too much? How could they make it gripping when it is just one guy on the screen alone? But Castaway did this. Life of Pi did this. That story with Ryan Reynolds in a coffin alone FOR THE WHOLE MOVIE did this, in that case with nail-biting tension (it’s called Buried).
But I didn’t feel it in The Martian. It is still beautiful, slick, funny, tense and wildly original, but that magic of being with Mark and coming to so admire his innovation and witty grit felt lost. Rather we get a stab at that, followed by a fairly straight-forward narrative of the rescue attempt.
I give it 5 out of 5 stars. It is great, still. But maybe it is not all I hoped for.
Could it be ‘fixed’??
Perhaps it could be fixed in editing. Light SPOILERS may follow.
I think opening with the storm is good. We get to see Mark is silly and light-hearted while also being a serious scientist. We get the rush of the storm. We cut away to announcements by NASA that he’s dead? NO! Get rid of this. From this point on we are with Mark Watney alone. We are in his shoes.
But- the scene of him waking up, everything through to him self-repairing back in the Hab, was great.
It was after that, in the first soliloquy, that the narrative further lost its way I think.
First- after being hit by the whole antenna and also impaled, he’d be bruised beyond belief, stressed massively, and in no shape to walk around, talk to vid-cam or anything. But he puts on a cloak and talks for 5 minutes. I think I started to not buy it here.
There needed to be consequences of the storm. Probably this means him falling straight back to sleep, after tending to his wounds a bit more. He would be black and blue all over. The body needs rest- so another fade to black. This also serves to distance us further from the past reality- of warmth, other people. He can’t escape and neither can we via cut-scene. Then we cold-open on him, alone in the Hab. A lot of very isolating shots of empty rooms, the massive sweep of Mars, the wreckage outside the station.
The environment needed to be set. The true scale of the enemy, being Mars, needed to be set. The puny frailness of Watney needed to be accentuated visually.
He wakes up. He is aching and barely able to walk. More slow shots of him rediscovering his new reality. He stands at the window looking out over his new enemy, Mars. A montage of him replacing bandages, maybe. Perhaps some tears? Some calculations. He’s recovering.
Then the spark relights. He starts to do science. When he now lists all the troubles he faces, we will feel it. No food, no water, crappy Hab. Mars has kicked his ass, we have all felt it, and the same could happen again at any time. This way his cocky-funny attitude becomes less smug and annoying and more about his own personal resistance. This is his way of bulling through- and we respect and admire him for it.
We don’t cut away to NASA for a long time. We show consequences of all his actions and his mistakes. Let his experience be the roller-coaster ride it was in the book.
And then- contact.
Going back and forth at this point is fine. It’s the middle. But, the whole ending was off. Because there had been few real costs for Watney so far, it’s hard to think he’s not going to survive. It’s pretty obvious he will. When they threw in the Iron Man line I laughed, but who wouldn’t think of that as like Gravity? And also the most unrealistic bit in the movie…
Keep it as it was. His rover goes over due to sleep deprivation. HE has to fix it. None of this remote control ‘being saved’ stuff. He does it himself. He saves himself. Also, it should have been like the beginning- tight on Watney and only Watney, like the book. Comm goes down and he is alone.We are with him and only with him.
Constantly cutting away to other scenes robbed all his scenes of climbing suspense. And finally, don’t get me started on the codas. I really didn’t care about what the other astronauts were doing. Or even Watney, for that matter. We should end on the reunion scene, and he says a funny line. That is classic Watney.
Fade to black.
What do you think? Have I overstated the case, or is it true that the soul of the book The Martian has been diluted in this movie?
I lived in Japan for 11 years, during which time I built this website up to getting over a million hits a year. I specialized in stories and photographs of my adventures in the ruins of Japan, places like abandoned military bases, forgotten theme parks and ruined love hotels.
I almost had a book deal twice for this content, but both times they fell through. I decided to publish my own in the end, available only as an ebook called ‘Into the Ruins’. In addition most of the explores and photos from that time are still on this site under the ‘haikyo’ link. People still come to see them, with about 300,000 page views a year.
Four
My Dad was an Anglican vicar until I was around 8 years old, then quit and became a witch king (Wiccan coven leader, actually) instead. This affected me in only slight ways at the time, though one of them was that me and my brother got to go to pagan camp in Bridlington, which as I recall involved us kicking a football around a lot while witches did witch stuff.
I also got a date with a girl, who on our first date to the movies after pagan camp brought her little brother along as chaperone. I think I paid 50p for him to play video games in the arcade.
My Mom is American, and we (my brother, sister and mom) used to spend all our summers in Kentucky. I worked in my uncle’s Schwinn bike shop, later on worked at summer camp in Boston where I won an award for Best Camp Counselor, and won a scholarship to study at an elite high school for 6 months in Indiana.
Three
I played Ultimate Frisbee for about 8 years, rising up to the rank of B-team captain at University. I organized a tournament for 20 teams called Not the Nationals which our team won. I was MVP (Most Valuable Player) on occasion. My nickname was ‘psycho Mike’.
Two
I was in a documentary movie. It was called ‘Silent Visitors’ and was about the hobby of going round to ruins and photographing them. I didn’t get paid, but I did get an all-expenses paid trip to, uh, Saitama. Which is just above Tokyo, where I lived. We stayed in a dog-hotel (?).
You can not see this movie anywhere, but it exists. I was the only non-Japanese to be featured. Here is the IMDB page. I made up the term ‘haikyoist’.
One
In the last two years since I started indie-publishing in 2013 I have written 5 novels and one travel book for a total of around half a million words, published 3 collections of short stories and two previously written novels to add about 400,000 more words, ordered 13 book covers from 4 different artists, hired editors and proof-readers, notched up my first movie option, and finally broken out of the red and into the black on my book expenditures.
The third book of my Zombie Ocean series should take me up close to or over the million words published mark. I plan to write 3 or 4 books a year from now on.
For the past few days I’ve been doubting the opening quarter of Zombie Ocean 3- but today I had s breakthrough. What seemed repetitive and dull became (I hope) gripping and taut. Even if we know what happens.
It’s no secret to say the opening part of Zombie Ocean 3 has some substantial overlap with books 1 and 2, just as book 2 had overlap with book 1.
Done well, I love this technique in the stories I read/watch, eg:
– LOST did it all the time, showing us the same events from new perspectives, tied in to different bits of the narrative, which serve as revelations that click the lens back.
Big ones were ‘The Other 48 Days’ which told the story of the crash from the perspective of the tail end survivors. Another was season 2 opener ‘Man of Science, Man of Faith’, which opened on life inside the hatch, after we’d spent much of season 1 wanting to get inside.
– Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card. I don’t like the man’s politics but I love those books- which tell the same core Battle School and Bugger War events from the perspectives of two lead characters, with many scenes and interactions repeated, but with fresh understanding each time.
Everyone is lead character of their own story, right?
– Also movies like Edge of Tomorrow, Groundhog Day, Pulp Fiction/Reservoir Dogs, and maybe the original of this type- Rashomon.
I hope I’m following in this tradition. I feel like with today’s breakthrough I’m heading in the right direction.
6 sales yesterday, 2 today, page reads hovering around 2000 a day. Perhaps I can finish this book by the end of October.
Today I signed a movie option for my zombie book The Last!
It is not big money at this stage, but the potential is there. I’m excited. Its a contract we’ve been negotiating for a few months now.
I’ve learned a thing or two about movie option contracts in the process. I had legal advice from the Society of Authors after becoming an associate member which was very enlightening.
Now it is done, and The Last is in the producers’ hands.
They say the vast majority of optioned novels/screenplays never make it to the screen. Fingers crossed The Last will be one of the few that do ;).
Our house settling-in has reached a new and advanced phase.
We are almost wholly out of the ‘first-fix’ stage, where we didn’t have a working shower, boiler timer, downstairs toilet, internet, phone, front lights, front door lock or side gate lock. The side-gate lock still needs to be replaced, and the internet is still spotty, but the rest are all in.
We are over half of the way through the DIY stage, with dining room, living room, bedroom, kitchen and most of the kitchen floor stripped, sugar-soaped and painted. All that remains is the kitchen floor to be blue-d, the second bedroom to be blue-d, and the hallway to be creamed.
We are almost wholly done with the furnishing stage. Yesterday our TV came. Our sofa is coming in a few weeks, bedside tables in a few weeks, and at some point we’ll choose some bookshelves. Everything else is in.
We are now some way into the decorating stage! We’ve hung a few paintings, a heavy mirror and a clock, and have a few more lined up to go. We’re talking about a rug and little side tables in the living room. We also have all the light fittings we need- some of which I can install- others I think I’ll hire an electrician to as they require some wiring.
To that end- see this lovely origami ball, in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It is lovely, providing warm light fuelled by an 11-watt energy saving bulb. Good job in selection SY!
Numerous critics have been slating Tom Hardy’s movie ‘Legend’, about the notorious gangsters Ron and Reggie Kray, on the grounds that it misrepresents history, glamorizes and Americanizes violence and the gangster life, and generally does a poor job of showing the REAL Krays and the REAL social cost of their bloody trail of terror splattered from London’s East End to Soho.
But they’re wrong to attack it for that, and I’ll tell you why.
‘Legend’ is a taut action gangster story, full of threat, charm, massive amounts of cocksure grinning, and of course sudden, bloody violence. Yeah, that’s what we watch these kinds of movies for. Tom Hardy plays both Ron (not such a psychopath) and Reggie (criminally insane) in a really magnetic way, like opposite poles.
His Ron is a charming wheeler dealer, always in control (though less convincingly so as his teeth gradually get broken and yellowed), great at glad-handing at the nightclub door and also gut-busting in the back booths. His winning grin gets him in and out of plenty of tight scrapes, many caused by his nut-bag brother Reggie.
Reggie is mad and a mumbler. I notice here that Tom Hardy just loves to play roles where you can’t quite make out what he says.
Bane- mumbly, wildly-intoned extravagance.
Mad Max- mumble to the max.
Reggie Kray- mumble like you’ve got awful flu and plums in your throat.
His Reggie reminds me very strongly of Tim Spall in Mr. Turner- where Spall seemed constantly to be on the verge of exploding. Gas just seemed to be filling him up inside, getting all pent up and giving him heartburn, indigestion, and threatening at any moment to rip out via massive flatulence or some other explosive event.
Hardy’s psychopathic Reggie seems much the same, though where for Spall it came out as art, for Ron it comes out as violence, mockery, cruelty and paranoid ravings, with a generous helping of flying spit.
And it works. The violence, the charm, the sense of potential, the push and pull between the two brothers; it’s all great fun to watch. At least it is is until the point when it stops being fun and becomes about domestic abuse, rape and murder, at which point the jolly ride we’ve been along with these two cray-cray (cray-cray-Kray?) notorious gangsters stops being a fairground ride and starts being some kind of penance.
To repeat the charge- reviewers are attacking the carnival feeling of the movie: that it is Americanized, that it is all show and no substance, that it is wildly incorrect and trivializes the suffering the Krays caused.
I’m thinking something quite different. I’m wondering if all this is entirely intentional, in a crafty case of having your cake and eating it too. The Krays loved the high life. They loved to mix it up with the aristocracy, the rich and famous; entertaining in their nightclubs a melange of London’s elites. What did those upper-crustians see in the Krays?
They saw what we see in this movie. They saw romance, brio and the twinkling hint of danger. It’s adrenaline and stilettos and James Bond. People like that stuff, they like to feel like they’re walking on some kind of edge. The Krays offered that to them, and they offer it to us through this movie.
And like everyone involved back then, we too get burned today when our main access points to the story- Ron and his young wife Francis- come apart at the seams. True colors are shown, with suicide, sadistic beatings, cold-blooded murder and paranoia coming to the fore, and suddenly we too, like the haute-couture glitterati in the front row of their clubs, beat a hasty path to the door.
My only complaint is that this final, ‘REAL costs’ part of the movie lasted too long. Yeah we need to be bashed over the head with the price of all this criminal misadventurism- but such bashing is no fun for audiences. Bash us quickly then bring down the curtain. There’s nothing more to say after that but boring moralizing, and we’re not here for a lecture- we’re here to see mad men reach out to touch the edge.
Today we went to church. That is not an earth-shattering admission for most people to make, neither is it for me, though from my point of view it is a really foreign and alien-feeling thing to do.
My Dad was a Church of England vicar when I was a kid, up until I was perhaps 8, so I’m thinking I must have gone to church a lot then. But around the time I was 8 he and my mom split up, at which point my Dad switched faiths to Wicca or witchcraft, became high priest of a coven, and I pretty much hardly remember going to church again.
I know that we did, at my new primary school which was twinned with the local church, but I don’t hold many memories of it. I don’t think those were the normal Sunday morning visits either- more the special events put on by the school, where the kids sang in a choir and who knows what else…
Suffice it to say- I haven’t been to church, minus weddings and a single random visit to St. Paul’s in central London, for perhaps 27 years.
Really? Wow, yeah, I suppose so. During that 27 I for a time became a little strongly atheist. I’d look out for fights about religion. Then I stopped bothering- I think in line with most of the UK population who seem largely secular. Talking about God is embarrassing and when politicians do it they get mocked.
So I am an atheist. But I went to church, and am planning to go back.
Here is a picture of our church:
It’s a lovely old brick building. We went to the Sunday 9am sermon, me in jeans and a suit jacket (never done that before. Do they match? SY said yes). We were welcomed warmly, went to our seat, and so it began.
I felt quite nervous, expecting at any moment that someone would stalk over to me, after obviously recognizing what I was up to, hold up my hand and cry- “Atheist! Burn the atheist! Or are you willing to profess your undying faith to Jesu Christ for now and ever amen?”
Of course it wouldn’t be like that. I did feel like a charlatan though. This was compounded by not even knowing what kind of church we were in. Was it Church of England, which I’m pretty confident I can belong in (having been baptized- I think that makes me one of the in-crowd), or Catholic, or Baptist, or Protestant, or what?
What is the protocol? Is there a special handshake? Just what secret society sign am I going to screw up that will let on I don’t know what the hell I am doing?
We sat and listened to a sermon about meekness. It rhymes with weakness but they’re not the same- OK, I can roll with that. Later on we sang- ‘Stand up for Christ’ which was kind of a Holy War song, quite rousing stuff. In fact this is why I came- join a community of nice, friendly people.
Then came communion. Panic set in. I looked at SY, she looked at me. WTF is this? Is this Catholic? What’s going on? What does it mean, and am I eligible? Do we have to do it? What’s the script?
The guy started coming down the aisle to collect us.
“Is it optional?” I’m whispering to SY frantically. She doesn’t know. I consider asking the guy- “Uh, what are the eligibility requirements?” like it’s a theme park ride and I have to be the right height. Can they divine from the way I eat a bit of bread if I am a heathen or not?
Well, I wanted to watch and see if anyone demurred, but we were quite close to the front and nobody did, so we had no choice but to join the queue. Up to the front we go, hearts in mouth, kneel, take a bit of bread, amen, drink some wine, amen, then back down.
Phew. A little cannibalism never hurt anyone.
Is this a Church of England thing? I suppose so- since I later found out this is an Anglican church (they tried pretty hard to obfuscate any sign that this is C of E). It seems so Catholic. But I guess I was never an adult in church, so I’d never really seen this or done this before. I checked though- the entry requirement seems to be baptism.
OK, so I’ve been baptized, I’m good. Apparently some places require Confirmation to take communion, and I think that involves a decision made as an adult, which of course I’ve never done. Perhaps there is there a paper to go with it- like a passport or a driving license. All I know is they didn’t ask for any ID…
After this gauntlet we all ‘shared the peace’. This was quite lovely, and involved all of us wandering around shaking hands and saying- “Peace be upon you.” I could get into this. Why are we not doing this on crowded trains? In elevators? It doesn’t hurt a bit, it charges you up and makes you feel one with the good intentions of your fellow man.
After sharing the peace I felt good. Then came the holy war song, and I was starting to relax and feel sold. My discomfort was fading, I guess at not being found out. Then it was done, and we went to the back, about to scurry quickly out. But we got caught for some free coffee, then got chatting. A lovely old chap talked about the plans to modernize the church. A lovely older couple told us about the area. A less lovely old lady chastised me for stepping back and nearly kicking her cane out from under her.
Well, I apologized. She must have been standing right behind me like a ninja, cos I hardly took a step back. Sigh, you don’t win them all. Even after I apologized she went on about it. I turned the other cheek, as one should.
At the same time, the church was warming up for the ‘Family Service’, wherein the vicar takes off his robes, a band kicks in, the big TV screens come on and everybody, I can only assume, rocks out. Maybe we’ll go to that next time?
We also chatted to the vicar. A tall chap who looked and sounded like Mark Strong. That is authority!
Finally, the lovely couple offered to drive us home! We demurred but they insisted. It’s only a 5-minute walk but they took us. En route they invited us prospectively to dinner!
Wow. We walked in our door just feeling blown away. In line with yesterday’s post, just waiting for all these good things to get stripped away, I couldn’t believe how nice the whole thing had been. Surely this can’t be real? When do they hit us with the self-flagellation and massive fees to pay for forgivenesses? It was a little too nice, if you know what I mean.
I think next week we’ll go along to the Family Service and rock out ourselves. I’ll stay suspicious though so I don’t get brainwashed. It is true there is an awful lot of 1984-esque repetition of stuff about how great God is.
But, yeah. We mean well. I think that is the key. Plus SY is really a believer, I think. I don’t believe in God, but so what, pretty much the rest of it seems good, so why not believe in that? Praying for sick people seems a nice thing to do- it amounts to thinking nice thoughts for unfortunate strangers- and that’s good for my own soul even if it has no benefit to them. It’s hard to argue with Jesus. Why not get on board?
Ridley’s Scott’s latest movie The Martian, based on the bestselling book by one-book author Andy Weir, will point you in the right direction:
