Two pieces of silver...and gold and turquoise

In the wake of some rather unfortunate events that occurred a few years back, my knee-jerk reaction was to charge in to every self – help section of every book store on every High Street this side of the river. My bedside mountain of books resembled ‘Hogglewick’s’ new age best sellers list of the decade. Dare to say I was more confused than an egg - laying cow in a chicken coop....however, Mr Oliver James you did have some very good points and Matthieu Ricard., I salute you!

Ironically, however, the very place that I made a bolt from some 20 years ago is the very place that brought peace, insight, solitude and space for thought – as I write this I am astonished that I find myself confessing that it is the Roman Catholic Church that this very spiritually sloppy, prodigal daughter is referring to. I hasten to add that although my actual attendance over the past two decades has been way below par, I continued to pray to St Anthony when having misplaced an item and regularly said hello (and still do) to my dear Aunt Audrey who, on the day of her funeral, had the good grace to turn James Taylor’s ‘You’ve got a Friend’ on the CD player as I wept inconsolably into the bathtub.

Having now established my presence in the local Catholic community, I hesitate to a jolt each time I pass the confessional box, partly because it’s so intriguing, like some cavernous Opus Deim hideout, and partly because all my mortal wrong doings, however trivial, come seething to the fore.

So......as I am yet to gather up the fortitude to confess to Fr Michael in his ascetic tardis, I am boldly spilling the beans on my Judas-like secret here in cyberspace in the hope that GOD will tune in to MTFS’s frequency and grant forgiveness along with issuing a few token Hail Mary’s.

“Forgive me father for I have sinned, it has been 7 304.84398 days since my last confession and.....I sold not just any dog, but the family dog off for a pair of Yves Saint Laurent Earrings" – ouch!

Yes, it’s bad and Wise man Solomon would have been writhing in his grave.....but there is so much more to the story which makes it all the more forgivable – the dog hated living with our family, in fact she hated it so much that she took a kamikaze leap through the fly screen on to a very hard surface outside, leaving a cartoon cut-out of her figure. So, in a win-win scenario, I was instructed by my ever-industrious mother, to march over to the nearby neighbours (where said dog had been retreating to each day), with two pieces of paper in hand: one being an endorsement of the dog’s pedigree bloodline and the other, an offer too good for any pedigree dog-loving family to refuse. In return I was to receive a cut in the takings; the rest was my mother’s to spend on a pair of exquisite YSL earrings that would take pride of place on the ‘Mother of the Groom’s’ delicate ears at a wedding that would ironically take place in a park opposite the aforementioned dog’s new digs. The guilt of that act has wafted in and out of my consciousness in sporadic waves over the years...but now finally, I can lay it to rest.

AMEN

Photo credit: www.lecoqin.com

http://www.ysl.com/