Friday. The rats have left, the ship is bare. What remains is shelving, for which bids are invited. On it, a solitary copy of (appropriately enough) Mass Effect (£22.97). No, prices weren’t cheap; all sweets had gone, and near the front of the store 
huddled items from the far back of the stockroom, like a Millennium Celebration Banner (Complete with “2000” in figures, thus useless even to those preparing for the next one). Yours for £1·99. Only in Woolworths. Only Today.They tuck you up, your mum and dad
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.They were tucked up when they were small,
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
By those whose kiss healed any fall,
Whose laughter doubled any joke.Man hands on happiness to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself.
Kudos to John for the poem. Two impressions from yesterday — Anna waving goodbye before my annual Xmas trek, & one of the sights of Newport Pagnell, more Philip Larkin than Adrian Mitchell...
What makes everything happen? Us? Chance? God? Advent is a time to speculate and play with the linkages between thngs. In the great scheme of things, all the dominos fall towards eventual glory, says the faith, but in roundabout and counter-intuitive ways.
Corporate reading of Scripture, in season and out of season, unlocks awareness of hidden process. By not ditching it, even when it doesn’t seem relevant, we hold open the possibility of meaning breaking through from it.
I had been thinking how irrelevant the strange psychedelic poetry of Revelation was, and glad we only really encounter it seriously at this time of year, when I was handed a Bible to read from at a lunchtime Eucharist this week, the day after Woolworth’s bankruptcy, only to find it was Revelation 18:Alas, alas, thou great Babylon, that mighty city, for in one hour is thy judgment come! The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over their city; for in an instant no man buyeth their corrupt merchandise any more. Thy merchandise was gold and silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen, purple silk, and scarlet and fine wood, all manner of vessels of ivory, and of the most precious wood, and thy buildings of brass, and iron and marble, and thy slaves which were the souls of men. Yet now the fruits which thy soul hast lusted after and for which thou hast laboured so long are wholly departed from thee, and all things that were dainty and goodly are departed, and thou shalt know them no more... In one hour is so great riches come to nought...
I wonder what the evaporation of all the mighty city’s wealth in an hour meant in the first century — certainly a phenomenon you would have to be a wacky psychedelic apocalyptic poet to imagine. The sober fact is that today, like global destruction, we have the technology. When apocalyptic suddenly leaps off the page in this way, it’s a powerful reminder that the framework in which we take such pride, and from which we derive such security, is, in fact paper thin. Everything is connected, fragile, vulnerable and dependent on God — to use a slightly eggheaded word, contingent:
Back in the 1930’s one iconic sign of the great depression in Jarrow was that the town’s Woolworths couldn’t stay open. Now that’s in danger of happening to us all, as Woolworths calls in the receivers — bad news for 30,000 staff, suppliers, and even competitors who may well find their businesses hit by the dumping of a large amount of liquidation stock on the market in the run-up to Christmas. Of course times have moved on, and Woolworth’s, like the rest of the high street, was in big trouble from out of town competition before ever the credit crunch came along. Ironically, Woolworth’s original winning formula was based on providing a comprehensive range of everyday practical goods conveniently under one roof — exactly the battleground on which it has been beaten by today’s out-of-town supermarkets. 
