Wellies and bad language - not a million miles apart, upon Confucian principles...
When Confucius once said, “a man who wears big wellies may yet have small feet”, he could have been talking about me. Not that I am saying I have small feet – something I would especially like to emphasise to any female readers that may have heard various unsubstantiated anatomical correlations bandied about – but I wouldn’t be opposed to sporting wellingtons of a length and girth superfluous to my needs.
“Wherein lies the relevance?” I hear you ask. Well, I have been contemplating the Confucian aphorism in relation to my over-zealous usage of swear-words in casual conversation. It occured to me last night, that I swear like a Trojan. This is not to say that I invoke the names of ancient Greek gods in vain, in moments of high temper; or that I use blunt curses along the lines of “may the forces of adversity fall like armoured manure from a wooden horse’s arse and smite thee in thy sleep”. Rather, I invoke the speculation that Trojans, as a veteran fighting force, bristling with aggression and insensitive to niceties, must have had a tendency to curse and swear. And my own incidence of swearing cannot be far off their achievements.
So where does Confucius come in to this? In short, my tendency to swear (or the size of my Confucian wellies) is likely to cause some people to form an opinion of my character (or the size of my feet). Assuming me to be ill-educated, aggressive, hostile or simply inarticulate – or, in short, to have big feet - the onlooker is deceived by my ill-fitting wellies, and does not appreciate that the wellies actually conceal small feet; the abundant swearing conceals a thoughtful and sensitive soul. Far from being one part of an aggressive veteran fighting force, with ancient Grecian sensibilities, in fact I enjoy nothing more than a nice cup of tea and an episode of Murder She Wrote.
And as a thoughtful and sensitive soul, my over-use of swear words is starting to bother me. I remember my old nan telling me that everytime we swear, an angel dies. If this is the case, then my name must be mud, up there. I won’t evade the issue and so it is, relcutantly, I hold my hands up to the fact I have been responsible for nothing less than mass-genocide in Heaven. In my short time on this Earth, I must have single handedly changed the social landscape of that cloudy Wonderland, wiping out a vast proportion of the angel population with ruthless indiscrimination. This in itself is bad; but what is possibly worse is the fact I have unconsciously implemented a sustained regime of psychological torture. Angels must now find themselves living on their nerves, wondering who is next to come under the shadow of Steffageddon, and who will suffer the fatal consequence of my next profanity.
Indeed, to take this analogy further, my unthinking use of bad language might be said to be the metaphysical equivalent of lamping. Its random nature is cruel and uncompromising. Trying to get on with their angelic existence, my prey is oblivious to my proximity until they suddenly find themselves under the glare of my barrel-mounted lamp. Caught in the lamplight, they freeze, their wings a-quiver, their golden harp hanging limply in well-manicured hands. I watch them, coldly, as I slowly increase the pressure on my linguistic trigger. As I pop out a swear word, I might notice that the angel at which my lamp is directed has, at some point in recent weeks, shaped its eyebrows to enhance the look of innocence upon its face. The effect is one more of subtle surprise than innocence. But the observation is academic and the impact of my brutally uttered swear word brings the angel down in a lifeless heap.
In a way, if my swearing has an impact quite as sudden as this, it would be merciful. For an angel to expire in a split second would at least ensure that there is no suffering. But what my old nan never actually expounded to me, was exactly how the death of an angel is effected. My concern is that on being the victim of a swear word, the angel dies a long, lingering and torturous death. Heaven could be awash, for all I know, with groaning angels, staggering around on their cloudy terrain, wishing for the end to come and praying for that blessed final relief that will accompany their ultimate annihilation. And all because of me.
If this is the case, it will be very bad for a whole raft of reasons. Needless to say, for the suffering angels themselves, it will be no picnic. Having known nothing but the ecstatic bliss of being in God’s presence since time immemorial – and having enjoyed, uninterrupted, an existence of the purest bliss – to experience the lingering pain of a slow and torturous death will come as something of a shock. One has, therefore, to feel some sympathy with these suffering urchins.
What is arguably worse, is the impact this will have on the mental health of the other angels in Heaven. If they have to stand by helplessly as their friends and compatriots moan in anguish, they will be affected significantly. It will affect them, first-off, to have to watch the stark discomfort of those with whom they feel a great affinity. They will want to soothe the pain, to remedy the hurt, but will be unable to do so. In light of this, the sense of fear across the angelic community will be intense, as each angel wonders when its turn will come – and when it will know such pain as is being demonstrated on the Heavenly plains.
The apprehension felt by all angels – the bleak fear, the sense of helplessness - will surely unsettle those of a weaker mental constitution. They may go stark-staring mad and there is no telling to where this could lead. It is worth baring in mind the words to the old music hall favourite, however: “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun,/ Mad angels [author's italics] and Spanishmen shop in Boots, spending hours at the till sorting through loyalty cards and vouchers, while contemplating a history of inquistorial atrocities”.
I do feel deeply for any angel that I have killed and for his friends and compatriots that have suffered as a result of my actions. I regret it now and hope to remedy the situation as best I can. From here on in, the darker horizons of Stefanese will have a milder tint. The “F” word will be nothing harsher than “fiddlesticks”; the “S” word will be as inoffensive as “sugerflip”; the “W” word will be the wonderfully alliterative “Willy Wonker”; and the “C” word will be beautifully transformed in to that expostulative favourite, “caucasian hermaphrodite”. I like to think, in line with the Confucian wellies, that I will be treated with understanding when my time comes to approach the Pearly Gates. Hopefully, it will be understood that my only real crime was one of linguistic laziness; and that I in no way harboured the mens rea necessary to render my indiscriminate carnage upon the Seraphim plains, a prolonged act of murder.
My worry is, of course, that such understanding will not be demonstrated when my time comes. Worse still, Heaven will be full of angels in a delicate mental state, frothing at the mouth, playing death-metal on their harps and desperate for revenge upon he that caused them to live in fear for so long. If this is the case, I am going to negotiate a trip “downstairs” until they have all calmed down a bit. Angry, mentally unbalanced angels with a taste for vengeance could probably make my afterlife a tad uncomfortable.
If such negotiations do not succeed then I will just have to hope that my swearing is effective at point-blank range, because I am going to come out shooting. There will be no other way. If the angels leave me no choice but to fight, then the wellies will come off.
I’ll go down fighting.