A tin of milk part 4: A second second coming and a flying pig!9 min read

“A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Hard not to believe in the holy spill-it after that”, said John thoughtfully.

“Anyway”, said Bonnie, “I digress; you wanted to know how D died not the cat.”

“Well, one miracle’s much like another.  Was he just asleep in the spare room with the cat or in the shower?”

“Shut up or I won’t tell you.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. Well, you remember we left you lateish on Saturday afternoon because we had to get back for D’s cricket on Sunday morning?”

“Hm-hm. So a five hour drive and home around midnight.”

“More like seven hours in the end but there you go; anyone who travels on a Saturday just to play cricket has got it coming. Then the next morning I had a lie-in and off he went to his game. I thought I’d have a nice lazy morning, then get busy with final arrangements for his surprise birthday party that evening.  I’d already spent what seemed like days on the phone, whenever he wasn’t around, phoning friends and family and organising the caterers so it was just last-minute stuff like picking up the cake and the glasses. Anyway, it wasn’t to be. The phone rings and it’s the team manager saying D’s been taken ill on the field and can I come to the ground. The first thing I thought, I’m ashamed to say, was ‘what about the bloody party?’…but you do don’t you?…Well I do anyway! I suppose I went into shock or something. Anyway, he’d apparently gone in to bat somewhere in the middle order, miffed already because he doesn’t open any more, faced a couple of balls and then just keeled over. Initially everyone just froze. Some people thought he was messing about but he’d actually had a massive heart attack. Luckily, an off-duty paramedic was watching and gave him CPR for fifteen minutes before the ambulance arrived. Everyone thought he was dead. His heart stopped three times on the way to the hospital. I was in a terrible state by the time I got to the ground: God knows how I didn’t hit something on the way.  So, I ended up at the hospital and sat by his bedside for what seemed like days, having been warned to expect the worst! They’d sedated him of course so he was out of it until well after surgery. His arteries were so furred up there wasn’t really much room for stuff like blood to circulate. Skinny on the outside and lots of fat on the inside. They did a triple by-pass and, when he did come to, he couldn’t remember a thing but was nicely high on whatever they’d pumped into him! Typical. Just like him too, to have a heart attack when I’d spent weeks organising his surprise birthday party: I would have killed him if he wasn’t dying.  Instead I spent hours by his bed cancelling the party while he dozed happily, and  reorganised my life so Lisa could make school and I could get work covered. All the food was wasted of course.

“Well I don’t suppose he arranged the coronary just to ruin the party”, said John mildly.

“I wouldn’t put it past him; he’s always been awkward. Probably wouldn’t choose to die batting though, unless he was having a stinker. Anyway, whether he meant to die or not, it was very inconvenient. Apparently, it took ages for them to restart the cricket match afterwards too.”

“Well I suppose people were pretty shaken up after a thing like that; I’m surprised they didn’t call it off.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that. They just couldn’t decide whether he was out or not: the umpires didn’t know and there were opposing views. Apparently, if you’re injured you can have a substitute but if you’re dead you probably won’t be batting again. Not in this life anyway.”

“Very important things rules. Where would we be without them?

“Where are we with them?”

“Good Point.” It was too difficult a question for John to answer. He still hadn’t worked out the rules of the game let alone whether they were fair or not.

Finally he offered, “Resurrections run in our family too y’know.”

Bonnie smiled and said, “Do tell but it better be good.”

“Well my uncle Walter had an allotment when I was a kid. Walter was a gruff old sod on the surface, and underneath really when I think about it, but I was fond of him. It was soon enough after the war for all that ‘dig for victory’ stuff to still be in vogue, though it was more dig for survival ….victory wasn’t on the cards on our council estate. Rationing was still going on and everyone on the estate was stony broke so it wasn’t so much a lifestyle choice as an absolute necessity. Uncle Walter had a prize pig called Jezabelle which gave him a litter of piglets every year so pork was our meat of choice: it was that or eat the neighbours. You could keep pigs for next to nothing if you collected pig-swill from the estate for the promise of a bit of bacon; some people even bought shares in the progeny. That pig fed half the street over the years. Anyway, one spring Jezabelle got sick and Walter got worried. He doted on the pig as well as relying on it. He gave it patent tonics, fresh veg. and any little treat he could think of and spent a lot of time talking to it, pep talks…you know the sort of thing.”

“I’m not totally sure I do know what a pig pep-talk consists of”, Bonnie offered tentatively.

“It’s the same sort of tone as a cat funeral sermon”, John responded smoothly, “only the afterlife is more a threat than a promise. Anyway, nothing Walter tried did any good at all. In the end he was so desperate he decided the only course open to him was to consult……….. ‘the pig man’.”

“The pig man? ”……….

“I know, but that gives you a measure of how serious things were. ‘The pig man’ was famous on our estate; he was a kind of pig whisperer or grunter. He knew more about pigs than anyone and could cure pigs when they were at death’s sty door. ‘The pig man’ came along to Walter’s allotment and had a look. He walked round the pig, looked in its eyes, looked in its ears, looked in its mouth and then shook his head. ‘It’s no good lad’, he said.  ‘That’s pig’s not long for this world.  Best to kill it quick to put it out of its misery.’  Well Walter gave ‘the pig man’ his half a crown – good advice doesn’t come cheap – and said goodbye to Jezabelle. She looked a sorry sight so he got straight on with it. He took his heaviest spade and gave her a great whack on the head and she dropped down stone dead. The clang of the spade rang round the allotment like a…well like a very loud clang really I suppose. The whole estate heard it and knew it was all up with Jezzabelle and thin times were coming.”

“Oh the poor thing.”

“Walter or Jezabelle? Anyway, times were hard and nobody could afford a vet. Walter dug a big hole at the side of the path, heaved and shoved Jezzabelle into it and backfilled till there was no sign that Jezzabelle had ever lived.  I’m not sure if he said a few words to the holy spill-it or not but he came home looking as sad as Jezzabelle had done and barely spoke all night. He was too depressed to bite my head off when I asked about pig heaven. All he said was, ‘Mebbe…I doubt there’s one for scrawpers like you though’. The next day he dragged himself down to the allotment as usual. There was a pile of earth round the hole and no sign of Jezzabelle. At first he thought someone off the estate had thought, ‘Pork is pork’ and exhumed her but then he heard a familiar and much-loved oink and he knew. Another miracle. She must have dug herself out in the night, gone back in her sty and decided she was cured…lived for years and never had another off-day. Something, some power beyond our understanding, saved her bacon.”

“You made that up didn’t you?”

“Not at all; I swear every word is true. It’s not a bad tactic when you think about it – a powerful incentive not to be ill if you think you’re going to get whacked with a shovel.  I’m surprised government haven’t thought about it.”

“Give it time.  Anyway, talking of born again, what about you? Have you got used to not working or is time hanging heavy?”

“There’s plenty to do….but not working, if by work you mean paid employment, is a bit odd.”

“I’d settle for odd – odd would do me fine compared with an ever-increasing workload and fewer staff: I’d really like to know when an efficiency saving becomes an act of vandalism.  We’ve combined back-office functions, delayered, restructured, leaned and meaned, employed consultants with snazzy braces to tell us where we’re going wrong, outsourced to lob-lolly men, in short anything but employ enough workers.”

“Petronious had had enough too; ahead of his time he was. You know the quote? ‘We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. ….. and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.’”

“Mission accomplished then, as someone said.”

“Come on, I’ll pay and then we’ll climb the hill; there were people up there long before Petronious and you can see the whole peninsula from there.”

“What happened to the sharks and dolphins?”

“They’ll be back; they always come back.”

“Like pestilence and famine?”

“Would you settle for boom and bust? It’s a bit less portentous.”