Following your gratifying proposal, Doctor Smith, that I should stop aiming to dispatch to you a daily diary from now on, I am typing a short summary of my last four days’ conduct. It’s Friday night and I am in high spirits as I am finding that my job transformation, from that claustrophobic and doomsday Italian subjugation to an invigorating practical outdoor occupation, is nothing short of miraculous.
Working with Dimitri in our park is most gratifying. Though about fifty, my companion is young in spirit, has a commanding horticultural know-how and is a joy to accompany, with our having so much in common, particularly with both of us constantly juggling a minimalist vocabulary and joking in so doing. Our approach is to avoid too much trivial chat and to focus on any task in hand, although both of us do talk frankly about our own singular individual history and what in our past had brought us to finish up working in this particular parkland.
Among a long list of tasks occupying us in our past four days (all of which anybody could look up on our giant PC at HQ): marking out, digging up, building, mulching and planting six additional floral plots, following our own draft proposals, in focal positions in various parts of our grounds, pruning, and mowing lawns. Our total layout is all looking most promising—and as soon as buds burst out, it will without doubt win plaudits.
I am continuing to go to work and back by bus. Traffic along that labyrinth of roads is frightful and I would always find driving my car to and fro through constant jams arduous—particularly coming back, physically worn out. Whilst on this topic, I think it worth informing you of a spiritual hiatus that I had by missing my usual transport back to my flat today. Taking far too long to monitor my job allocation for this coming Monday, I got out of our grounds only to watch my bus rapidly moving away from our stop. Implying a half hour wait—which I did not look forward to with much gusto, as it was now starting to rain.
But a solution was at hand. Straight across that road I saw a small traditional parish church with its door ajar and I could just catch a soft haunting sound of an organ playing within. I cannot pass by such a building of worship without slipping into it for a short visit. It is a habit going back to my halcyon days as a choirboy in St Albans. Nowadays I cannot find much conviction about Christianity in my mind or soul on a daily basis, I am sorry to admit. But by just crossing that portal into a mansion of our Lord, and coming into contact again with its profoundly spiritual surroundings, I find my faith coming back in a warm consolatory flood—until, as I turn my back on it all by moving out again into our impious world, I automatically switch off and pick up my Doubting Thomas hat and put it on again.
Making my way in through that florid Victorian doorway, I saw that this church was void of humanity, apart from an organist sitting up high, abutting a rococo altar, out of this world in his vigorous playing of a potpourri of Bach. A strong round full sound was vibrating throughout its mock Gothic canopy and a mass of rich bass chords was rattling its windows. This musician was obviously practising and passing quickly from composition to composition. From my school days I maintain a fascination with classical music—principally for an organ, which I did play on occasions and I could pick out his various options. It was an amalgam of toccatas—from that all too familiar D Minor, to that constant up and down motif in Bach’s F Major. Surprisingly this local virtuoso was focussing on toccatas and not continuing with any part two of such works, avoiding no doubt in his alacrity, any difficulty in coping with its contrapuntal intricacy.
I took a slow walk around this small mansion of God, admiring a host of abundant floral displays, four of which sat most dazzlingly on its high altar. But I did not catch sight of any good lady from that parish whom you usually find busily arranging such colourful attractions. Nor could I spot any sign of a vicar. I did stop to look at a charming baptismal font and to study a host of moving inscriptions on tombs of locals lost in both World Wars. In all, I was savouring a history of a typical suburban community with its highs and lows, its joys and sorrows.
Following a short gap, organ music (still by good old JSB—his Fantasia in G Minor) was filling that church again. This particular composition was to drown my spirit in poignant nostalgia. As a boy, I was always putting on an LP of this particular work to savour. I had visions flooding back from my childhood of all that magic of Midnight Mass and Christmas jubilation—of holly and ivy on our high altar, of gifts among our family, of singing carols (In dulci jubilo was my top option). Again I was longing for such long lost days. I sat down in a front row as that glorious playing was continuing to pour out and I found, most unusually, I had a compulsion to pray.
But how would my partial ability in manipulating vocabulary start coping nowadays with that primary act of worship—what I can only call “Our Lord’s rogation” or “supplication”? I just had to try as hard as I could.
Our—I obviously cannot say “Dad” or “Papa”. Lord—that will work, although it has lost an important admission of a family link.
Who art up in our sky. That will do, but it is not totally fitting.
“Thy ID is holy”—ID is a bit too worldly—how about simply using: Thou art most holy? It’s succinct in comparison with Holy is what all of us know you as—and it’s ungrammatical to switch from thou to you, anyway.
May thy kingdom hold sway.
May thy will know no bounds, down in this world as it will up in your sky. This is not so difficult!
Grant us today our daily—“loaf”, that’s too familiar—“food?” “provisions?”. I think I ought to say: victuals.
And pardon us our sins
As all of us pardon such as who sin against us
But stop us from doing wrong
For this is thy kingdom
Thy might and thy glory
Day and night
Ad infinitum
And how do I finish that incantation? That closing word of four signs is plaguing my brain. It contains our outlaw and I cannot think up a short homologous backup option.
May it all turn out satisfactorily—a sorry mouthful, is all I can track down!
During my bus trip back to my flat, I was continuing to turn my translation around in my mind, amid a dark mood of frustration about how poor a wordsmith I was proving. I would not stand out as particularly adroit to anybody from among our Oulipublic, whom I might bump into at Holy Communion!
So around midnight, with my mind still sprightly and with nothing worth watching on TV, I thought I might look again at that invocation—in particular at its first all important noun, signifying “a man with an affinity to his natural child”. I would try to find out in how many idioms around our world this word was taboo for any “Fifth columnist” Christian and how difficult it would turn out for him to find synonyms for it in pronouncing this invocation to God.
On consulting this and that bi-lingual dictionary in my unassuming library, I saw that such a common word was a block throughout. I could not avoid that irritating symbol if I was formally translating “papa” into Latin, or into that classical vocabulary of Plato or Pythagoras, or into that idiom of Parisians or of Bavarians, or into Spanish, Italian, Russian or that lingo dominant in Portugal and Brazil. That stubborn villain of a sign was still found in all such local nouns. That said, as a final consolation I did root out that in Cardiff’s original patois, its formal word for “dad” is simply Tad, in parts of Scotland you might find a transcription of it as Ar n’Athair and if you grasp basic Aramaic you could opt for Abwoon d’bashmaya.
I am now yawning—so I will call a halt and tomorrow possibly just hand this conundrum across to our savants in Oulipo to carry on looking for solutions. I quit. Good Night, all!