Bread

AN EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. GAWDLEY PINBALL

  I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I really don’t. He has been troublesome from the first day he arrived and it is reaching the point now where… Well, I am at the end of my tether.

  The man behaves like a gibbering idiot sometimes – most of the time in fact – but if his story is at all true… All this fire and brimstone stuff is right out of the middle ages, from whence he supposedly comes, but come on! I wrote to Slush at the Canterbury Investigations Agency, or the CIA as they like to call themselves, from the address on the card he gave me and asked them – begged them – to take him off my hands. With him here it is impossible for me to carry out my normal duties administering to the needs of my parishioners. He has to be watched at all times. He’s worse than a child!

  I didn’t notice how annoying he was at first. His mysterious appearance and the theft of the church relics distracted everybody and added a bit of intrigue and excitement for a while, but since the dust has died down his presence has become, how can I put it? Oh yes: INTOLERABLE!!

  Take the spring clean-up of the grounds for example – oh my God! I threw myself into the work with an almost Olympic zeal. I found that tiring myself out physically is the only way of lessening the impact of his constant twittering and bleating on, which otherwise keeps me awake at nights. It’s not that he talks all night mind you – in fact, since the third day I think it was, he has actually started going to his bed earlier and mercifully is waking up later and later each day. If I see him much before eleven o’clock now I consider myself unlucky.

  No, it is the way his words, his bearing – his very being here – disturbs me within my own mind that stops me from sleeping.

  It’s all brother this and brother that, sister so-and-so, or father bla-di-bla! The guy still maintains that he is from the twelfth century for crying out loud, under the reign of King Stephen! To be honest if it wasn’t for the sheer impossibility of his tale I would be quite prepared to believe it! He seems so, so, hopelessly naive - vacant almost. Every little thing has to be explained to him time and time again.

  “Yes Sadfael, the drawer pulls out easily because it is on a roller. No Sadfael, there are no hot springs around here. The water heats up due to the emersion heater. Yes it is gas powered. Yes that’s right; it is piped in from the North Sea just like I told you A HUNDRED TIMES, ONLY YESTERDAY!”

  Street lights, lino floor tiles in the kitchen, shampoo, pizza, shaving cream, the kettle, tins of beans, the garden hose, the foam inside my sofa (which he cut open fiddling around with a Swiss Army knife!), running shoes, burglar alarms, credit card statements, radiators, plastic, toothpaste, sushi – you name it, he asks about it repeatedly and with such amazement that you begin to wonder if he is from the Dark Ages after all. His total failure to grasp any explanation you care to give him backs it up still further, but surely it cannot actually be true? If it is I only wish he’d go back there!

  I have followed Church protocol to the letter: I contacted the authorities immediately who sent up their man Slush from the CIA. He explained on the day that all the evidence pointed towards his fanciful tale being one hundred per cent accurate and that I have just got to sit tight while they run a few more checks to verify every aspect of his story from a few more angles!

  The Church, in all its Holy wisdom, thinks he is genuine time travelling monk? Call me Mr Sceptic, but come on...

  You see? He’s got me contradicting myself now! Is he or isn’t he? Oh GOD!

  So my parishioners and I have all been put on ice for the time being – yeah, I guess we are not that important, just a small country parish. I have been told instead that my priority is to sit and wait with him and at all costs to keep him here. I have to make sure he does not go wandering off, blundering about somewhere.

  It’s all very well for them, of course! Easy when you are closeted away all snug and cosy down in Canterbury. “Just be patient,” they kept saying over the phone – right until that idiot cut me off the other day!

  Ever since he saw the wire coming out of the back of the hedge trimmer he has become convinced that “Thee many tentacl’d grasp of Lucifer,” has reached Bramfield and has somehow infiltrated my house. Whenever he sees a wire now he follows the thing to the wall and pulls at it with all his might, yelling inanities at the top of his voice! I have lost two phones, my electric razor, the hi-fi, computer, two bedside lamps and an alarm clock in just three days!

  The church has said they will reimburse me in full, but do they expect me to just sit here and watch him pull my house to pieces? I’ve an engineer coming to reconnect my phones on Tuesday – thank God for my mobile – but I’ve had to take steps to hide all the other wires I can think of: the fridge, microwave, TV, etc. Look at what happened with the hedge trimmer for God’s sake!

  He wouldn’t go anywhere near the thing when he saw it leaning against the hedge and nearly broke my bloody knee trying to stop me with his amateur dramatics. I had to shake him off to hobble over to it, turning it on to show the idiot that it was only a garden tool. Suddenly though he leapt on to the extension cord and set about it with a pair of secateurs! Christ knows what would have happened if there hadn’t been a circuit breaker.

  We couldn’t use any of the power tools without my extension lead so he had to do the entire hedge by hand - and that suited me just fine. I got him to mow the lawn as well, using the old hand mower. It has kept him out of harm’s way ever since and more importantly out from under my feet.

  What happens if he were to find the fuse box? Jesus! It doesn’t bear thinking about! I am sorely tempted to show him the thing and lock him under the stairs with it, if it wasn’t for the fact that he would undoubtedly manage to burn the rectory down with him as he fried!

  Oh my Lord! I shouldn’t think such unchristian thoughts I know, but… Please, God, give me strength and get this imbecile out of my parish!

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