Telephobia

Brothers and sisters, and you in the cheap seats, it is time that I came out of the closet and 'fess up here and now. I believe in washing my dirty laundry in public, which is why I have a blog, innit, and today is the day for me.

Those of you who know me well will know that I have a bad case of arachnophobia, which put another way, means I petrified of araks. Such a phobia is no good for those of us gainfully 'employed' in buildings that are old dark and a little dusty in places, and to be honest, some of the araks that I have seen have not only had tattoos, but were of a dimension to warrant widened seating on an aeroplane. But it is not my irrational fear of araks that I have come here to discuss. No. 

I am deeply, irrationally, and annoyingly fearful of telephones. I am not referring to the actual article, as a Nokia handset doesn't in fact send me into paroxysms of hysteria or an effervescence of self-flagellation. No, it is the activity of the telephone that does it for me, and let me tell you why.

Once upon a time, I didn't mind the 'phone ringing. It would be my nan or a friend (the former who would batter on for two hours without taking a breath), and as such a source of joy. Then retail happened. And not only retail, but retail management. At that point I acquired my new fear for a new generation. 

In retail, and in particular in a sales environment, the telephone ringing was rarely the harbinger of joy. Indeed, if your sport of choice was a heady and masochistic desire for aural abuse, then a shop telephone was the place to be, and you would be oft pleased. In flooring (my former retail environment), we were paid to advise and then relieve the punter of sums of money which, in my case, peaked once at £17k per order. In flooring, such sums are paid for goods that have been untested, of varying shades to the colour swatch, fitted by human hands which are not always perfect, and with expectations at levels that would trouble the Vatican Army. At the least level, the telephone ringing would be a hapless soul demanding the whereabouts of their order, either in terms of the large lorry crossing the English Channel or else in the back of a battered white Tranny when the stuff is to be fitted. The answer, with every step of best preparation and expectation management, was insufficient and lacking for Mr & Mrs Customer, and so it began - the tirade. The abuse. The name calling. 

Then it would turn eight-thirty and the day would begin in earnest.

Once, some chap was chasing a cheap mattress that he had bought a week prior and that was on a fortnight lead time. When reminded that the nasty foam sprung object was still a week away, his retort was, I kid you not, that it would have been better if I had been in one of those two Towers (for this call took place on September 12th of that notable year). For retailers, such abuse is commonplace and much lamented, but it also stops us loving the fruit of the telephone.

Evidently, it is akin to some social-phobias and anxieties that can emerge - and telephobia is not an irrational fear of a voice in the ear (after all, I have several in my head), but of ridicule and abuse. It is closely related to glossophobia which I don't have (thankfully, in my trade). 

The upshot of years of retail 'phone abuse (often perpetuated by the upper ranks within the organisation too, I might add, and who would ever like being called 'crap' and 'shit' before the doors are even opened), is that I really truly struggle to take or make a telephone call to or from anyone. I would rather insert, slowly, white-hot copper wire into my pupil than take a call - which is inconvenient in this mobile-age and in my line of work. I have to know who it is before I answer it (and the cost of Caller Display was a non-negotiable, even before food). I hate 'phones. Simple. Where telephone calls are required I am the procrastinator extraordinare, risking (and probably achieving) the reputation of one who doesn't care enough to call, or else that I am disorganised and forgot. 

Well this is my confession. It is altogether worse.

...and Oxford customers were the worst by a country-mile, by the way (from a range of thirteen stores that I managed across much of the south of Britain)

What They Don't Tell You at Theological College

If you want to know about Ernst Troeltsch, immanence, the correct means of ringing a chapel bell before Evening Prayer on a Tuesday in Epiphany, how so many people are phased by a healthy Mariology, what Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησου Χριστοῦ means, or indeed the greater joys of the latest Kevin Mayhew assassination of a good tune, where do you go? 

Theological College innit. 

You will get all of those things there, served (in the case of my college, Gawd Blessit) with fine food, alarmingly cheap liquor (I recall setting the prices one year) and the company of lovely ordinands - natural leaders called to work almost completely alone for the next four decades or less (which is short hand for that fact that ordinands are a suspicious bunch not fond of being led because they are the leaders, innit). 

You go to your Vicar, tell him/her that you feel The Call (like the Force felt by Jedis but with less Yoda). S/he sends you to the Diocesan Director Of Ordinands where you shalt be grilled until thee be verily dead of the exertion  and with any luck a season ticket to a BAP (not a flour topped roll, but a secret panel where you will be stared at by people who will smile at you while they do it). If you pass the flour-topped bread roll, you will be invited to give up your salary (or much time after work) to study the finer recesses of the psychology of Dr Troeltsch (sat next to some lovey who will have all his books under her pillow already, and will thereby make you feel like a pilchard). After that, you have your pretty new stole blessed, clip on the collar and launch forth into the unsuspecting world of Christians and all their enormities. 

Then you make some discoveries. 

During your curacy (if you are lucky like I was), you will blessed with a training incumbent who will walk you through the 300 million things you didn't learn at college in a meaningful and organised way. You have three years for that - no time at all. 

Then, if that is your Yoda Force, you go on to be the Landlord Spiritual of a lump of London or somewhere else. Semantic prestidigitation on the Application Form will discreetly hide that fact that you were only a curate when you applied and know sod-all really. Day one - all alone except the "to do" list (which will have grown since six months before the interregnum started that you just ended).  

This last few months, I have wrestled with the the parish finances. I have just escorted a very nice man indeed through his redundancy. I have just drafted a Person Specification for a job role that I have just been called to create, and will venture down the fraught road of employee rights and human resource frivolities. I have had to manage border disputes, manage those who don't wish to be managed, be the chairperson of a charity which I needed to register with the Commission (automatically becoming bound by the law in such things). That is before having to find the words to comfort a mother to a baby who may be dying, the woman who sees no hope in life any more, or the man who seeks absolution after a lifetime of alcohol abuse. I have had to be the nice man, the polite man, the man who takes the hits and hides the bruises. I have to have a sense of absolute certainty in all that I do, without apparent personal weakness or the human scuffles that emerge for us all. I have overseen a significant building project blessed as I was this time around that I had a gifted and qualified parishioner to take the lead. Then we come to the stuff of eternal life and salvation - much of that is communicated by me, in my own frailty and oft doubt. I have been on the telly, the radio and am a public name in some places - that requires a certain amount of edification, but is never going to form part of the College Curriculum. 

I don't blame college, or indeed the system. If theological college launched a course that covered all of the above, I'd still be at college or worse, I would have run a mile before applying. The world of the Vicar just isn't what you might ever expect in your wildest or worst dreams. We are, in a very real sense, the jack of all trades and master of none. I thank God daily that he forced me through the world of work that preceded my ordination by fifteen years, because there was the training I use now. Right there. 

Though, to be sure, it is still be best job in the world. Deo Gratias. 

Gizza Job (The David Beckham Edition)

Picture courtesy of  The Guardian

It warms my heart to read pure-gold evidence that David Beckham, Lord of Los Angeles, might be a card carrying, fee-paying church-going Christian. Well, he must be - and let me tell you why. 

When he was tiny weeny, he was identified by an older person as being a child with a gift in the form of a God-given skill at something. He worked hard, went to the right places, was seen and did lots - and in the end got the chance to do what he was good at for a living. He undertook this work with aplomb and even earned a little to provide for the three cities he keeps at home (I know one is Brooklyn, but the other two escape me). He has himself a nice wife, quiet and un-assuming (well, you never see her in photos) and has made a nice life for himself and his family. My wife informs me that he is a good man, a nice role-model - an example to the children who look to him for inspiration and their Guiding Light, like what Vicars used to do and be until they became the characters of parody and idiocy on soap-operas. 

Well, night followed day. The First Season. Many more passed until the day when the nice man with the camera and fluffy pompom microphone to his home and mentioned TeemGeeBee to him. "It would be nice", said David (never to be called Dave, and rightly so). 

Then that nice Mr Pearce from off the telly said he had built his committee for the Limpicks. Our David was very sad because he wasn't asked on the committee of footballists. So (through the clever medium of everyone else's voice and not his own), he complained heartily, saying that he had been part of the group for like ever and that - surely there by right. "Football Reasons" they said - which would suggest that "Football Reasons" means "Get some Dignity Man, you are Far Too Old". Just ask that other city, Rio - he was "Football Reasoned" out of the committee he was part of. So many changes, so much grief. 

So, a man who can't seem to let go, possibly a tad past his very best, not taking the view that there are many others who might like a go at the job who would benefit from the experience rather more and who, now, might just be better - a man already involved but in another capacity. A man who fears the change born of the passage of change, much whimpering in private so that everyone else does the complaining in public. DB just has to go to church. Where else would he learn this stuff?