Religious Overload

Cor blimey, what a day. The Jehova's witnesses were most touched by our warm welcome - who else would invite them in, and offer homemade fruitloaf?

They had come with a mission to carry out their mini training course which starts off asking who causes suffering in the world and ends up, after careful questioning, with the reply 'Satan', thereby dispensing with the possibility that a loving God would take a loved one's life for a sunbeam. But we knew that already. So we moved swiftly along and covered many things. Their Bibles were out and their index fingers were working overtime. I rushed upstairs for Hildegard of Bingen's vision of the fall of Lucifer and my collection of toy devil pictures, and J-C got out his 'Bible Explained' which had been peed on by the cat (I thought we had thrown it away). The JWs were looking a little nervous by this time. Not because I told them the cat had peed on the Bible, of course. And they weren't so keen on the possibility of reincarnation when the subject came up as a result of their questioning on why it was that the whole of mankind was still suffering as a result of Adam's mistake. As most people in France are Catholics nor Not Interested, I don't think we really fitted their expectations or training course. After two hours of exciting spiritual debate, I said

'Well, I haven't come round to your house to talk to you about your church, so why have you come? What are your goals? Are you happy with this session?'

They were! They liked sharpening their faith, iron against iron (it's in Proverbs apparently). Well, I think it was much the same for us.

Just after they had left we remembered Senhor H and his World Improvement paper which we had promised to return, in fact, he was keeping his Tile Shop Cathedral open for us. J-C dashed off. I mused about at home, when I suddenly wondered if he was alright, and phoned him.

'Have you been abducted by aliens?' I said

'Yes' said J-C, sounding a bit bothered, 'I'm on my way'.

Poor old J-C he has many talents, but he is socially challenged. Having been locked into the Tile Shop Cathedral after hours and been told a long succession of Senhor H's Special Reserve stories, from his problems with the local police, to his cousin's families ghost experiences which were solved only after intervention from one African witch doctor and 2 separate Catholic exorcists, to his wife's near death experience, from which she was brought back by the force of will and loud voice of Senhor H himself, J-C fell into a sort of confused swoon (he had been up until 2am writing his replies and done 2 hours of Jehova's Witnesses remember). At this point he sent out a desperate thought message to me asking me to phone him. I suppose it is because he is socially challenged that he did not manage to extricate himself by more conventional means. At the precise moment he sent out his rescue plea, I phoned him.

Anway, after all that we had a bath and an early night. J-C dreamed he was racing along in motorbike with me riding pillion behind, trying to overtake a motorbike in front, and with another joining us by a side road, when suddenly the terrain became icy and pot-holed, and we had to dismount. Make of this what you will. The next day J-C dug out the compost heap to get earthed and then we made serious progress on our wardrobe conversion with integral computer desk, not to mention helping B with his presentation on the brown bear, and R with his conjugations.