Is moving house a parable for writing?

Written on Thursday 20^th March.

A pause in the endless ejection of pretty decent shirts I haven’t worn for n years, dust encrusted shoes, a loft full of forgotten museum exhibits, and a guitar last used when I tortured a congregation with I Wanna See Jesus Lifted High.

Trips to the tip are a mixture of joy and sadness. So much has to go but it’s still in good nick. Maybe I can find the right recycling bin, otherwise ‘It’s Gehenna for you’, I say, as I launch another bag, box, or bin-liner into the unknown.

All this busyness interspersed with an early morning run around Bristol’s Harbourside in glorious sunshine, it was still enough to listen to Frank Skinner’s excellent Poetry Podcast on Philip Larkin.

Words in, rubbish out.

And it made me realise I might be on to a parable of sorts. Or an analogy, or even a metaphor…I’ve never been totally satisfied the border between these terms is as watertight as President Trump would like his southern one to be.

Plus the realisation that I may be without the all-important internet connection in the new house for a fortnight and miss the April 7^th slot.

Imagine: the book is written, the play perfected, or the poem has had its last gasp. There is that ‘pen down’ moment, the lean back in the chair, the sigh…and maybe a glass of chilled something to savour and calm the racing heart.

The next day, or after some delay, you sit down with the thing that was finished, and words arrive, knocking at some inner door asking for admission. It’s the inner critic.

Eventually you are brave enough to open the door and look into his eyes. One look maybe is enough for you to pick up the manuscript, or hover over the Delete button. You know it. It has to go. But on another day, the visitor has arrived with better news. Yes, there are stodgy bits here to excise, or a chapter or stanza that could be relocated, or passages that are fine but surplus to requirements.

Like my endless, it seems, process of dividing the contents of my accumulation into three piles: Gehenna, Charity, or Car Boot Sale, the necessary self-imposed ‘downsizing’, this is no time for sentiment. As Watchman Nee once said, ‘the kingdom of God is like holding on to the plough whilst wiping one’s tears.’

And that’s before the editor arrives. In my case family members viewing the new house…but equally it could be a manuscript…whose wisdom could be mistaken for personifications of cruelty but, in fact, is lifesaving and turns something partially successful into something better than you could have accomplished on your own. I should say that I’m writing this on Thursday, and the ‘family members’ are arriving on Sunday. Am I pensive? I think exhaustion has some benefits. No further energy to argue. It’s time to let the editor do their best.

I look forward to writing May’s offering. Perhaps my head will have reached ‘the other side’ with the new house ready for a housewarming party, and the book close to publication, and…Oh! No! Marketing! Shudder.

That visitor can wait on the doorstep for a while. There are times when we all need Mary Poppins to appear and do her Supercali something whilst we collapse in a chair.

Do I hear an Amen?