Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

As I said to Jill Harpington the other day (while we were picketing Wharfedale Council about those awful, new recycling bins), ‘Isn’t it unfortunate that Tammy’s recent “conversion” doesn’t appear to be offering any kind of formal impediment to her singing lead soprano in the church choir?!’ (Ouch! Climb back into the knife drawer, Emily!)

But that awful, piercing vibrato, Jess! It’s more than my shattered nerves can bear! Drew Cullen — on the organ — even turns off his hearing aid, and he’s deaf as a dodo!

I actually conducted an informal survey with the help of Gillian Reed last year (Gill’s the blowsy, buck-toothed piano tuner’s wife who polishes the church pews etc.) after she mentioned to me, in passing, that the bats were defecating at almost twice their usual volume on the days when the choir either rehearsed or performed.

With a little casual investigation it became increasingly clear (I can show you the graphs if you like — in fact I’ll dig one out for you, right now) that the more music we sang in a higher register, the more guano the bats produced — often (like when we were rehearsing ‘Jerusalem’, for example) defecating over three times as much!

Then — and this was the real eye-opener, Jess — when Tammy was off for a month in August (nursing her youngest daughter through a botched nose-job down in Guildford) the overall quantities produced fell by almost two-thirds! OVERNIGHT! Right across the scale! I SWEAR!

Utterly fascinating (I know), but I suppose we’re trespassing a little off the subject here, because let’s face it, Jess (as I said earlier this evening), if ‘the truth’ really is Meredith’s main priority, then why does she persist in ignoring what’s so patently true about St Martha, i.e. that it’s not a glamorous role at all!

Martha’s a work-horse, Jess! She spends virtually all of her time throughout the Gospels JUST DOING THE WASHING-UP !!

That’s why Jesus gets into a row with her when she tells Mary Magdalen to stop hanging around with the boys all night and give her a quick hand with the kitchen chores! Jesus gets into quite a bate about it. He tells her that Mary is much better off where she is (just sitting on the floor, staring at his ‘Godhead’), and that Martha’s eternal soul would be far better served by doing the same thing herself!

(Well, that’s all fine and dandy, Jess, but if Martha hadn’t done the chores, what in heaven’s name would The Twelve have eaten for dinner? How could Jesus have hosted The Last Supper? And what would Michelangelo have painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, all those years later? A dozen hungry people arguing over a raw turnip?! Hardly an appropriate subject matter for such a prominent art work I’d’ve thought!)

It’s ridiculous , Jess! Pure hokum!

I mean Tammy Thorndyke has a dishwasher , for heaven’s sake! And she has a char (if it’s socially acceptable to describe dear Susan Trott in those terms)! And she gets all her dinner parties professionally catered by the sister of that haughty besom who runs Pinenuts (the Swiss tea-house in Ilkley). D’you know her? The Dutch girl with the strange eyebrows who Duncan calls ‘The Exclamation Mark’, because she always persists in looking alarmed (no matter how conservatively he orders).

Honestly , Jess, it’s just a joke! The ‘real’ and the ‘hyper-real’ and all that ‘fast-forwarding’! What’s she trying to do, turn us all digital?!

Anyhow — to get back to our little spat — I was still recoiling from the ‘comedian’ comment, when Meredith suddenly started throwing in her own two-pence-worth, saying how she didn’t think you and I were ‘a terribly good influence on each other, and, by extension, on the group’.

You and me, Jess? Not a good influence? What on earth can she possibly mean?! The bare-faced gall of the woman! The pure, unalloyed cheek of it! I just felt like grabbing her by her bony shoulders and shaking her and shaking her! I just felt like screaming into her horsey, self-satisfied face: ‘I’m a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother of five, Meredith! How dare you stand there in your awful, gold-braided, ethnic pantaloons and scold me like I’m a seven-year-old child!’

But I just bit down hard on my tongue, Jess, and tried to rise above. Let it go, Emily, let it go, I thought. Do as the Good Lord would’ve done.

(It wasn’t having all that much effect, I’m afraid, and then that thing you’re always saying popped into my head: ‘They only hate us because we’re beautiful!’

I repeated it to myself, three times. It was extremely helpful.)

Yet even that wasn’t to be the end of it, Jess! Worse was still to come! Seb then interrupts Meredith to say how ‘disruptive’ he’d found our contributions in Group Discussion!

I must’ve looked simply stunned by this (I think I probably started wheezing again — with the shock — and then staggered back, supporting myself, faintly, with a trembling hand, against the wall) because Meredith quickly butted in to say how much they appreciated our input, overall, and that she couldn’t deny we’d invested a great deal of effort. (Remember our special DVD night, Jess? The Name of the Rose, The Omen, The Da Vinci Code, Nacho Libre and The Passion of The Christ , all in one go?)

Seb wasn’t to be put off, though. He started muttering under his breath about how ‘unhelpful’ he’d found your views on the Catholic Church turning Mary Magdalen into a whore because ‘they all feared the vagina’.

Obviously I leapt straight to your defence! I said I’d told you that because I’d read it on the internet.

‘Oh! On the internet, Emily!’ Seb snorts. ‘Well, that speaks volumes , doesn’t it?!’

Then, before I can even open my mouth to respond, he continues, ‘And how about when you said Jesus “hated his own family”, and “thought Buddhism was a big pile of mumbo-jumbo”? Were these shining little gems also mined online?’

Well, that was it , Jess!

WAR!!

I drew myself up to my full height (5′3″, in heels) and said (in my best Ice Queen voice), ‘If you want to take issue with those views, Sebastian, then I’m afraid you’ll need to take issue with the Holy Bible itself!’

Meredith gazed at me for a second, perfectly astonished. ‘It says Jesus hated his own family in the Bible?’ she demanded (plainly shaken to the core).

‘I believe there’s a fairly memorable moment in the Gospel of St Matthew,’ I loftily enlightened her, ‘when Mary and Jesus’s brothers arrive, unannounced, to pay him a visit. A disciple comes to tell him (he’s preaching a sermon at the time) and Jesus refuses — point-blank — to interrupt what he’s doing to give them an audience. He simply asks, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then, later on, he justifies this slightly high-handed treatment by saying, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother,” i.e. Jesus doesn’t play favourites…’ (I deliver Meredith an especially, stern look at this juncture.) ‘We are all his kith and kin.’

‘Poppycock!’ Seb scoffs. ‘That doesn’t mean he hates his family!’

‘You can chose to interpret it any way you like,’ I sigh, turning to look at him with an expression of infinite sadness (and of infinite pity. And of infinite patience — it was a highly complex and abstruse expression, very Sphinx-like — as I’m sure you can imagine). ‘But haven’t you hated your family sometimes, Seb?’ I continued, swinging out my arm, rather dramatically. ‘I mean haven’t we all? Just as our Sweet Lord did?’