My mum regularly attends a local pentecostal church, and has done since before I was born, the village where my parents currently live having been the locality in question from around my third birthday onwards. Every Sunday that I am staying at home with them my mum asks me if I am going to attend church with her, and from a sense of guilt at the disappointed noises which follow when I say no, I sometimes acquiesce.
The church is a modest affair, the building itself being of noticeably religious orientation only because of the somewhat mutilated cross on the outside of one wall neighbouring the main road. I say mutilated because the cross was "redesigned" some years ago by a chap with an evidently avantgarde approach to traditional religious symbols, who must have thought that the traditional cross in the shape of... well, a cross was a bit old hat and returned said item to the church with one of the arms lopped off, which he had replaced by a bird of some description, which I presume to be a dove.
But I digress slightly. Where was I? Oh yes, I was about to tell you about the interior of the church. Inside the church of course, are the church-goers, which at present seem to be in almost equal measures long-term residents of the village, recent arrivals from East London whose skin is a darker hue than is traditional in these parts, and residents of the local care home for people with various interesting disorders, such as autism and downs syndrome. My brother being one of the current residents, I visited the venerable institution on my return from Bolivia. My brother has a flat which is slightly detached from the main building, but which one has to access through the larger building on entering and leaving. On the way out with mum on this particular occasion a colossus bounded down the stairs, and warmly greeted myself and said parent, asking after my brother and shaking me a bit too firmly by the hand. Upon reaching the street I asked my mum if this goliath (he was comfortably seven feet tall, probably seven and a half) was an inmate or a warden, and was somewhat taken aback when she told me that he was in fact one of the inmates. I asked her what he was in for, and was told that "he has a growth problem". I thought for a moment before asking "is that it?", and my mum replied that he has been interred because of fears that he might get taken advantage of because of his height.
But anyway, back to the church. So this morning my mum and I enter the church and sit down behind the giant. I attempt to focus my sore eyes. Before leaving the house I had been staring into them with the aid of a mirror, after becoming rather fascinated with the pigmentation of and shapes within my iris, and then attempting to discover whether through prolonged gazing of this sort I'd be able to detect a dilation of my pupils. I think I may have strained my eyes in doing so, but I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that they now feel right as rain. The service took the usual form, a bit of singing, some relation from various members of the congregation about how they wish to praise and thank God for something or other that has happened to them or their relatives that week, and then pastor giving a rambling sermon. This was of course interspersed with the intake of bread and ribena and the saying of prayer. When it came to the segment of the service in which audience members share their anecdotes I was prepared - for the first time! - to share something. After listening to an old woman relate how God had enabled her - or it may have been a relative - to recover from some life-threatening illness or other, and then a teenager filling us in on a similar tale, I got up to tell the assembled masses of how pleased and thankful I was that God had, in the form of the financial advisor at the university's student services department, sent some money my way. Obviously, being English and thus having to suffer the unfortunate affliction of irony dripping from every word that I utter, this was a difficult thing to. While the previous two speakers had been holding the congregation's attention, I had been inwardly preparing myself be repeating the mantra "don't try to be funny" to myself. I've sometimes thought it surprising that Christianity ever took off at all in this country, since being religious seems to require levels of sincerity so clearly incompatible with the English psyche. Which is ironic really, since God himself is, of course, an Englishman. After I had sat down, one of the other congregation members took the floor to inform us that he didn't really have anything to say, but wanted to sing, and then began a little ditty which I had never heard before and wondered whether he was improvising. There was just time before continuing the show for my mum to step up, say she was glad that I had spoken because if I hadn't she would have told to story of my windfall herself, and then to thank God for providing the half a duck my dad had spotted in the reductions counter at the supermarket the other day.
When the sharing of personal stories was over with, and we got on with some good old singing, Goliath turned around to me and enquired as to my footballing affiliation. Upon informing him that I was a West Ham fan, he put his hand up for a high five and I winced at the force of impact as his palm hit mine. I don't know if he is a regular attendee. He would certainly be useful to have in the company should productions of the life of King David be performed.
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