Champions will be needed

When Australia was hit by a series of natural disasters – earthquake, flood, fire, and hail – someone likened it to Armageddon.  Sydney was obliterated by a dust storm.  One resident, Tanya F., told a journalist, “It was like being on Mars.”  She did add, “I haven’t been there.” 

            It’s important to tell the truth.  It’s even more important to be on the winning side. I borrowed The Valley of Fear from a library in Essex.  Someone had written on the pages.  Names were highlighted, sentences underlined, and alert questions like Is McMurdo Douglas? were pencilled in the margin.  At the part where McMurdo says, “I am Birdy Edwards,” I found the words I knew it! 

Knowledge can be a hollow thing.  Luck is more important.  When I was teaching in India, on sports day a pupil was hit by a javelin.  Of all the children in the school, competing, watching or just idling about while javelins fell like toothpicks from the sky, he was the one who got speared. 

You need to be in the right place at the right time.  In Australia, at the age of ten, I joined a new school, but was sick at home for the first couple of days.  When I finally made it in, I sat next to David W.  I had no choice.  It was the only seat left.  The other boys had been clever.  With two to each small desk, the chairs were practically touching; metal chairs, grey and cold, even in the summer.  I was on David W’s left.  As soon as we had taken our seats, he began to pick his nose with his left index finger. After a few seconds, he wiped a large lump of snot onto the edge of my chair, just below my right trouser pocket.  It was more than just wiping.  It was sculpting in wet clay, carefully making sure the stuff would stick.  And he did it openly.  There was nowhere else for me to sit. 

I don’t remember much about that boy.  He was demoted to another class the following term, but at a camp several years later, we had to share the same tent.  When we were packing up at the end, he found a piece of cardboard the size of a bookmark.  He passed it over, saying, “You can comb your arse hairs with it.”  It was the last thing he said to me.  What are the last things I say to people?

There is an apricot tree in my back garden in East London.  It no longer bears fruit.  On a warm evening, the terrace house behind it burnt down – not the house on the left or the house on the right, the one exactly behind it.  I watched as orange flames picked out the ink lines of its empty branches.

A little way down the road there is a girls’ school run by Roman Catholic nuns. For most of the summer, a canvas banner hung on the wall, promoting the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries, “where champions are raised for end-time exploits.”  A logo put black mountain peaks in silhouette against orange flames.  The Ministries offer three-hour Sunday worship, Wednesday Revival Hour, when I guess you perk up after the rigours of Sunday, and Monthly Deliverance, ‘Strictly by Registration.’ I'd push straight for Deliverance.  I don’t know why the nuns let the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries advertise on their wall, but if the end of the world was near, I suppose the local girls’ school would be the first port of call for a lot of champions.