And For Tonight's Entertainment

The long-suffering wife asked me a few days ago whether I was “up for” going to a homebirth meeting, so I said "sure"; it's always good to get some extra info as we are heading down that avenue, so to speak. So, tonight we are heading off to a stranger's house, with a group of other people who have had or are planning to have homebirths. The couple will show us their homebirth pool, the video of the delivery, and we will all have tea and maybe even biscuits.

If you just managed to read that sentence without stopping half way through and screaming "NO!! WHY??? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT???" then you have done better than me! Let me draw your attention again to that line...at stranger's house watching a video of them giving birth while they ask if I would like another biscuit.. I am very afraid..in fact the only thing which bothered me more was when, many years ago, a female friend put on a hard core video with her in the starring...position and asked me what I thought of it (I nearly choked on my tea!). I mean, maybe..maybe it will all be tastefully filmed from the head end (the mother's – not baby's) but – okay – I am being pathetic? Squeemish?

And when I get nervous I make jokes…I try not to … but, even now, I am thinking of lines like “OUCH, that must sting", "hey, I bet that put your man off sex for ever", "I mean, wow, that’s not pretty” “are all babies that ugly when born?” “may I say, I love what you have done with your hair..”

Yours as ever,

The Broken Man

I Don't Care

As a priest-to-be, it is generally accepted that I should care. It's not just the big things, but the little day-to-day things that as a priest (well, okay, as a person) I am meant to care about. Things like where someone went on holiday, and how impressed they were by a concert they went to. It's these little details that make up the tapestry of people's lives.

Of all the people that I should want these details from, I am sure that my wife should be top of the list. Yet, when she gets home from the supermarket and tells me that she had a bit of a funny incident with someone charging her the wrong amount and trying to explain to the person what the problem was, and the person not understanding, and being sent to customer service (come on, please; be honest, you don’t care either)...i just lose the will to live. Dear reader, believe me, I try to care. I ask what people did at the weekend...I make the small talk, but when it comes down to it...I am really not interested. I realise that this makes me a bad person; that the rest of the world is probably deeply concerned about these hundreds of details that make up our humanity, but, for me, its all acting.

I have learnt to pretend to care about these things; sometimes I manage it, sometimes I am convincing (Wow! A new puppy! That is exciting! Are you going to take it to obedience school? It really is cute isn’t it..) other times I can hardly muster up the will to smile.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone is pretending, playing along, following the rules and trying to show an interest, and as such, it makes me very uninclined to to tell people about my life. This seems to make blogging a bit ridiculious; if I don’t care about what anyone else has to say then why should they care about what I have to say? Even as I write that sentence I realise it's not that simple. You see, sometimes reading other people's blogs I laugh out loud, or I find something incredibly touching, or I learn something. All of these things interest me. What someone brought at the supermarket (unless its funny)…well…I don’t care…does anyone? Are you all acting and just doing it better than me, or have I got the bit of me that creates an ability for interest in such things missing?