O Christ our God, bless the foods and drinks of thy servants, for thou art holy, each now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
I HAVE reached the purpose in my “cancer journey” where the Brother and Sisterhood of PTO Priests (Presteigne branch) hand around in my kitchen, and convey me cake and, to a lesser extent, prayer. Recently, a Prince of the Church brought round some bara brith, and we were chatting away about my recent acquisition of a primary edition of Percy Dearmer’s Parson’s Handbook, when there was a knock on the door. Who needs to be there however the Lovely Eggs, one in all the UK’s hottest indie rock/pop bands, who were holidaying in the realm and desired to say cheerio. And that is why I’ve mostly written non-fiction in my profession, because, if this was in a novel, you wouldn’t imagine it.
But, with no time left to write down a correct book, I’m writing a novel — about an elderly bass player, dying of cancer, who gets the band back together for one last gig. Novels are much easier than non-fiction, because you only make stuff up; but, as I say, the made-up stuff must be plausible.
A yr ago, I used to be in Steyning to present a speak about my most up-to-date book, One Fine Day (Books, 12 May 2023). Almost the last person to reach was a shambling figure in shades, with the silvered stays of dreads tucked right into a red, green, and gold crocheted hat, wearing a vintage Bob Marley Admiral tracksuit, stretched to its limits by his impressive corporation, and, on his feet, a pair of pink sliders. After my talk, the host called for questions from the ground. The late arrival raised his hand. “Ian, what are you working on next?”
I leaned forward. “Honestly? Are you truthfully asking me what I’m working on?”
“Yeah, man,” he said.
“Honestly — I’m working on a book about you, Gary.”
This was Gary Cove, the sax player within the band that I sang with within the mid-Eighties. In the novel that I can have mentioned I’m writing, the band are called the Breaking Wave, I’m a bass player with cancer called Frank, and Gary Cove has turn out to be genius sax player and man of God Larry O’Lovely.
Gary is a devout Christian. If you reside in or near Brighton, you could have seen him busking within the Pavilion Gardens. He sometimes gets mistaken for a Rasta, which he isn’t; he’s a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. I hadn’t seen him for nearly 40 years, but we had kept in contact with occasional postcards. So I knew that he had travelled to Aksum, to the church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, where resides the Ark of the Covenant.
I gave him a lift home to Brighton, driving as slowly as I could to select his brains as much as possible. He taught me the Maranatha prayer, showed me find out how to tell my beads, and told me that, in Orthodox theology, God is approachable only through the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. All this within the 40-minute drive between Steyning and St Peter’s, in Brighton, where I dropped him off.
I grew up in a family who practised Christianity only intermittently. I went to church once I was staying with my auntie, but, otherwise, not much. Daily prayer wasn’t a thing. Certainly, nobody I knew said grace, though we could all mumble, “For what we’re about to receive. . .”
When I married right into a Christian family, my faith strengthened. My stepdaughter and her husband come from different traditions. Both traditions say grace before a meal, and, although they normally bless the meal themselves, sometimes they invite my wife to achieve this — and even, on a rare occasion, me. And I never know what to say. I don’t know why. Everything that happens to me all the time seems a bit dumb. As an old hippie, my first instinct is to go, “Yeah, wow, thanks Lord, yeah.” Everyone all the time seems embarrassed, including me.
So I asked Gary for a grace, and he sent one, written on the back of a postcard. I’ve stuck it on the fridge, next to where I sit at table. It seems to me a correct prayer, profound and serious. And now, finally, I’m learning to say my grace: to show mealtimes into an act of worship. Stick a pound coin in a busker’s hat, by means of thanking my old friend.
Ian Marchant is a author and broadcaster. You can follow his progress: @imarchant.substack.com.
