O Christ our God, bless the food and drink of thy servants, for thou art holy, both now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
I HAVE reached the point in my “cancer journey” where the Brother and Sisterhood of PTO Priests (Presteigne branch) hang out in my kitchen, and bring 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 first edition of Percy Dearmer’s Parson’s Handbook, when there was a knock at the door. Who should be there but the Lovely Eggs, one of the UK’s hottest indie rock/pop bands, who were holidaying in the area and wanted to say cheerio. And this is why I’ve mostly written non-fiction in my career, because, if this was in a novel, you wouldn’t believe it.
But, with no time left to write a proper book, I am 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 just make stuff up; but, as I say, the made-up stuff needs to be plausible.
A year ago, I was in Steyning to give a talk about my most recent book, One Fine Day (Books, 12 May 2023). Almost the last person to arrive was a shambling figure in shades, with the silvered remains of dreads tucked 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 floor. The late arrival raised his hand. “Ian, what are you working on next?”
I leaned forward. “Honestly? Are you honestly 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 in the band that I sang with in the mid-1980s. In the novel that I may 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 become genius sax player and man of God Larry O’Lovely.
Gary is a devout Christian. If you live in or near Brighton, you may have seen him busking in 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 almost 40 years, but we had kept in touch 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 pick his brains as much as possible. He taught me the Maranatha prayer, showed me 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 in 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 when I was staying with my auntie, but, otherwise, not much. Daily prayer wasn’t a thing. Certainly, no one I knew said grace, though we could all mumble, “For what we’re about to receive. . .”
When I married 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 do so — and even, on a rare occasion, me. And I never know what to say. I don’t know why. Everything that occurs to me always seems a bit dumb. As an old hippie, my first instinct is to go, “Yeah, wow, thanks Lord, yeah.” Everyone always 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 proper prayer, profound and serious. And now, at last, I’m learning to say my grace: to turn mealtimes into an act of worship. Stick a pound coin in a busker’s hat, by way of thanking my old friend.
Ian Marchant is a writer and broadcaster. You can follow his progress: @imarchant.substack.com.
