Once, fifteen years ago, I was whisked through the dark Derbyshire lanes to hospital, the blue light flashing in the night. It was the possible heart attack that wasn’t. About thirty years ago my knee was sewn up after falling on the dry ski slope at Cossall. Over thirty years earlier my head had to be stitched and my father fainted in the hospital. He said it was because it was so hot, but I knew better. My brother wasn’t invited to speak at my 70th birthday because at every previous decade celebration, plus wedding, he has gained a cheap laugh by mentioning the 1952 episode of my having to have a button removed from my nose. It can be seen, therefore, that I am not a frequent attendee at A&E nor a serial inserter of small items into orifices. Thus, in the Lilliputian world in which we live, it’s newsworthy that yesterday I went to the Ripley Hospital walk-in to have a detached part of a hearing aid removed from my ear. No blue lights nor sirens, no helicopters landing on the patio, no regular bulletins, no anxious crowds gathering. Though there was a worried text from a daughter after Deirdre had texted grandson Ioan about Grandfer’s little incident. She had to be assured that if any serious accident befell she would hardly be informed via Ioan, who had just acquired his first phone and wanted someone to text him.
That’s all there is to it, really. Press bell, doors open, temperature taken, details given to receptionist through screen, called in, earpiece pulled out. No one seemed amused, presumably this is a common mishap, not like the stories A&E doctors love telling you about chair legs stuck up anuses and the like.
While national and international news is historic, dramatic and world changing, domestic news is unremarkable and indistinct. Yet in our miniature parochial universe my ear-piece could become a conversation talking point, pulsating through the ether on all the websites. But there is more interesting news in the village: a new stain glass panel in the telephone box, the fish and chip shop re-opening, the churchyard being mown.
“Parochialism and provincialism are direct opposites. A provincial is always trying to live by other people's loves, but a parochial is self-sufficient.”
The Irish writer Patrick Kavanagh felt that all great events and emotions had their more homely versions in local life. We see the big world through the news but not having travelled far lately we have inevitably become more parochial and self-sufficient in our experience. If being ‘parochial’ helps us care more for the detail of our neighbours’ hearing-aid mishaps and maximise communication and care in the village that is good. I suppose Kavanagh would see our involvement in the Black Lives Matter cause or Brexit as ‘provincial,’ but we now experience the passions of the wider world more intimately and immediately than in his day. It may sound ‘provincial’ but our narrowed horizons of the last three months don’t necessarily stop us from engaging in “other people’s loves”.
Last year in Peru we showed our taxi driver a picture of our grandchildren on strike from school as part of the save the environment campaign. He showed us a picture of his 5 year old son, in his school high in the Andes doing exactly the same on the same day. It was a very moving example of the world as our parish. Yet when disaster hits our own country we pull in our notion of parish and Covid-19 has hustled events like Cyclone Amphan out of our news. Our St.Mary’s news sheet tries to balance our notion of parish with on the one hand prayers for specific people and streets with on the other hand prayers for the EU, climate change and victims of Cyclone Amphan. Part of the problem in this house is that we’ve tried to inoculate ourselves from the frustration, misery and downright falseness of the news by limiting our intake. We’ve become deliberately a little parochial. It’s as if we have been in self-isolation mentally from the wider world and are now beginning to lift that lockdown as well.
Deirdre and I were due to be in Ireland next week where we would be getting all the local news. We were then due to drive over to Donegal. I love the following poem because in it Kavanagh writing after the Munich crisis, reminds us of something we have all learned during lockdown, that what’s going on in our little communities is also newsworthy, though I can’t pretend that my earpiece removal is the stuff of Holby City.
“I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided, who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!" And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel - "Here is the march along these iron stones." That was the year of the Munich bother. Which Was more important? I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.” ― Patrick Kavanagh, The Complete Poems