plague journal 4 you will believe

And kings crept forth to taste the sun again.
It is morning in Ireland.
The noble Heelers emerges from the leaf fringed chateau and strolls with his dogs onto the avenue.
And lo!
Here's something you don't often see.
The one time fourth highest army officer in the State (and some say the power behind the three other thrones) is hacking away at my trees with an array of implements while perched adroitly on some sort of a jury rigged gantryway that looks perilous enough to add a soupcon of danger to the entertainment.
Brigadier General Ron Baines (Retired), former commander of a United Nations battle group in the Golan Heights, has cut a swathe through the poetically chaotic overgrowth which I have carefully nurtured into wilderness and which has been my pride and joy for years.
He appears grimly but happily engrossed in what he's doing.
Of course I've had notions of tidying up that tree line myself for about a decade.
I make a start now and again.
The trick is to get a feel for what you're doing, accept the harmony that comes in a garden, achieve symbiosis with the trees, listen for what God is telling you.
Basically don't rush in.
The military man and the mystic tend to differ in their methodologies when cutting my hedge.
The military man just wants to get the job done.
The mystic wants to negotiate with the job, meditate on the job, draw life lessons from the job, to understand the job's place in the order of the universe, to spiritually transcend the job.
What this boils down to is that the Brig looks to have managed in two hours what I've been easing up to for ten years.
But has he learnt anything?
Did he praise God in the glory of beholding a tree being born, dying and being born again?
Did he meditate on the pulse of life emerging in the budding branches, the green fuse that drives the flower as the ghost of Dylan Thomas insists on calling it?
Did he become anything he wasn't already before he began the job, that is to say a Brigadier General who's very good at cutting hedges?
I think not.
Ho hum.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, another poet who many people often mix up with me (It's the top hats.) once caught a Brigadier General cutting down his trees.
He wrote a poem about the experience called Binsey Poplars which I commend to your attention.
Ah.
Not since a liberal priest styled Father Andrew cut down the hundred year old trees around Kilcullen church have I felt such a bittersweet insight into the discordant melodies of profound bollocksology at the heart of human existence.
I approach the present day Brigadier General and shoot him a wounded look.
"I was wondering would you mind me doing this," he says barely looking up.
My handsome preraphaelite features deepen into poignancy.
"If Kinneavey did it," I tell him, "or the Maloneys or the Muslim clan gang from the Alke Babish chipper or their associates at the Fountain takeaway, or the Hutch gang, or Father Andrew, it would be what I'd expect. They're always trying to help out doing little jobs for me around the place. But you of all people. Why? Why?"
"It looked ******* terrible," says Brigadier General Baines brusquely. "And you were never going to get it finished."
He resumed cutting with great brigadoccio.
I decided not to even try to explain to him about getting a feel for a garden, about becoming one with the trees, about slowly shaping the reality through a mystic savouring of the seasons, about the spiritual lessons built into stillness.
"You know how long it took me to do this?" he said suddenly indicating a hundred yards of hedge.
I looked at the line of trees.
They were neat, and trim and very boring.
I thought of saying: "Well I don't tend my garden on Golan Heights time. I'm not trying to get everything done before the Syrians breeze through on another sneak attack on Israel. It's not actually the end of the world for me if the Syrians or my neighbours think I'm a slob."
Best not to try any of those wisecracks.
Me and the Brig are usually on different sides in Middle East conflicts.
I thought of a Seinfeld spiel.
"It's very immasculating when someone cuts your hedge."
But I didn't think it would play to this crowd.
Brigadier Baines came up with another question while I was still ruminating for a suitably witty answer to his last one.
"Are you going to send me a solicitor's letter?" quoth he.
"Actually I was thinking of fighting you," I said.
The Brigadier's mind suddenly flitted to an entirely unrelated subject and he started laughing hard.
He had some trouble keeping his balance on the gantryway.
With difficulty he regained control of his faculties.
I'd no idea what he was thinking of.
It was most surreal.
I decided to leave him to it, gave him a wave and turned to go.
"The gables need painting when you're finished there," I called back. "After that you might take a look at the immersion heater. I think the element is gone. Oh and the gates need to be rehung. But there's no hurry. Anything you see that needs doing, just dive right in."
I wander off with my dogs.
You know gentle travellers of the internet, I remember a few years ago Pope John Paul the Great was in London incognito.
I think he was negotiating with Prime Minister Tony Blair about the Catholic Church giving public support to climate change shiteology or something like that.
He might also have been discussing Mr Blair's desire to enter the Catholic faith.
But it wasn't a public visit.
John Paul was wearing civvies which must have been hilarious.
Anyway the Pope and his chauffeur were due to slip back to the airport in an unmarked car.
The chauffeur was one Giiuseppe Lambertini an ex secret service guy, who drove like a rally driver but could get you out of trouble if someone started shooting at you.
The problem was that Giuseppe always drove as if someone was shooting at you.
This time, John Paul asked Giuseppe to let him drive. He said that he never got to drive for himself and that it was one pleasure in life that he missed.
Lambertini grinned and sat into the back of the car.
John Paul got behind the wheel.
As they headed to the airport, John Paul got confused because the Brits drive on a different side of the road to the Italians.
He nearly collided head on with a lorry and then swung through a red light.
A British cop car appeared from nowhere.
John Paul pulled in and wound down the window.
The cop approached, boggled, and didn't say a word.
He held up his walkie talkie.
"Sarge I need advice here," he said. "I've stopped a VIP. No I don't know who it is. But he must be the most important person on the planet. The Pope is his driver."
Ah yes.
You'd have thought the same thing about me gentle friends if you'd wandered by the chateau yesterday.
For all his modesty, James Healy must be a man of great power and influence, you would have said.
The fourth highest army officer in the State is his gardener.