Priceless junk....
I’ll recap slightly for those of you who may have missed any of my previous posts….

My father is Scots and was brought up as a devout Roman Catholic – friends in the priesthood, personal last rites kit, the lot.

My mother converted from common and garden Anglicanism practised by millions in the UK in the form of weddings, births, funerals and that’s about it to Roman Catholicism – bells, smells and Lourdes.

I was brought up in what might be described as a Catholic ghetto – albeit a lower middle class suburban one which featured polite semis, a startling resemblance to Life on Mars (especially as my dad was a plain clothes policeman) and was almost entirely peopled by either Scots or Irish émigrés.

In fact so bad was this entrenched Celtic ghetto that when I finally met teachers who were English and not members of the cloth I was amazed as they were – me at the realisation that they don’t practise corporal punishment in senior schools and they at my ability to speak French with a perfect Galway accent despite having lived in Kent all my life.



But it’s not the Celtic part of me that I have thrown away…that part, the part that gets freckles and Billy Connolly jokes, the part that sees the gritty realism in Father Ted (and I’m not kidding about that one), the part of me that only needs to smell Mr Sheen and to suddenly be back in the entrance hall of the convent standing in a shaft of sunlight surrounded by dust motes.

That part of me is still safely locked inside, only to leave when I lose continence and sentience.




The part of me that I have long since thrown away is the child in me that went into the Confessional and made up sins – I swore at my mother in my head, I told a lie to my teacher erm, that one was probably true, I had impure thoughts about Peter Holt even the priest wouldn’t have impure thoughts about him, he smelled!.


The bit that has gone for ever is the girl who cried at her own wedding – which coincidentally happened fifteen years ago yesterday. That girl who believed in the sanctity of marriage, that vows are taken forever, that promises are made to be never broken, that girl who believed that marriage was one of the holy sacraments to be taken only once in a good life.

She’s long gone.

I still have very close friends who are devout Catholics, regular church goers, who give part of their time and money to the institution they believe in…and it works for them.

In many ways I envy them their faith but mine?


Mine I loved and lost and threw it out when I finally realised that that Footprints story – the one about the man walking along the beach of his life and seeing only one set of footprints when times were most hard. God tells him that at that point he was not forsaken; instead those were the times that God carried him.



Well, he must have done his back in when I needed carrying.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:23, 9 replies)

At last!
Extremely well written and suitably poignant to read. Your presence here is long overdue chickenlady.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:26, closed)

Crying at your own wedding?
Were they tears of joy at getting the man of your dreams down the isle or tears of sadness as you realised the life you should have had, (the one you have now), was gone.


Great story btw : )
( girlinthehole, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:29, closed)

@ BGB
As you may have noticed I am just a tad sentimental....so I cry at weddings, christenings, stories about dogs, cats, anything fluffy, in fact my default emotion is Overwhelmed and Tearful.

I even cried along with Patsy bloody Kensit when she found out about her ancestors from 200 years ago who had been hard up.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:35, closed)

Catlicks
Yeah, my Gran passed a few weeks back and I, a much-lapsed Catholic, attended the funeral, even read in church out of respect for the occasion. I have never felt close to God or religion or the church even as a child. My Dad told me it's ok at my holy communion to take the money and run so I was grateful to him for that. Couldnt get over the amount of young people at the funeral though, all pious and devout in Gucci shades and shoes, heads bowed taking communion from a man in a frock dialling in his performance. Fucking prick. Fucking hypocrites. We all went down the boozer afterwards.
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 11:47, closed)

I always think that
when I see that poem anywhere. This was beautiful - reminds me a lot of the way my mum feels about the cloth! *click*
( Maladicta, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 13:15, closed)

I'm clicking
for this;

'the child in me that went into the Confessional and made up sins '

On the grounds that that's exactly the same as my experience of confession as a young 'un.

Disillusionment at that young an age does not the Good Catholic make.
(Scrumpy does not negotiate with terrorists,, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 13:42, closed)

There is no dignity at all
in doing that hot eyes, lump in throat, chewing on the lip thing in an office full of people. I had to turn it into a yawn, and I'm not sure I got away with it.

So thank you very much, but lets just keep it light hearted and sweary from now on can we!

Oh, and a clicky for teh clucky.
(tinypod will never learn. Ever., Fri 15 Aug 2008, 16:42, closed)

@Scrumpy
Making up sins in the confessional is not necessarily a sign of disillusionment. Perhaps the young Chickenlady was just being cheeky. I know I would have done the same had I been raised a Catholic. I'm telling ya - an Atheist upbringing isn't all it's cracked up to be - so many missed opportunities for mischief.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Fri 15 Aug 2008, 17:46, closed)

Have a click

The first time I heard that thing about the footprints I almost gagged. It just rubs me up the wrong way something rotten, and I'm not sure exactly why. Something about the triteness of it; the 'poor you, if only you could see the bigger picture you'd understand it all, like God does'. It's patronising and it helps no-one except the damned priests trying to avoid explaining that life's unfair and God has nothing to do with it. Carrying you? More like he was hanging round your neck getting a free ride and pulling you down at the same time.

Sorry folks, that rant reminds me of Yossarian's argument with Sgt Schiesskopf's wife about the non-existance of God. Yossarian sees God as “a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation?”

Back to work...
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Tue 19 Aug 2008, 14:00, closed)