大象传媒

From the Reverend Richard Coles:听
These long weeks of lockdown have brought any number of surprises, not only in our national life, for good and ill, but at home too. My personal grooming, never world class, has seen me veer between looking like a roadie for Iron Maiden, and a radical choreographer from the German Democratic Republic in the twilight of Communism. That鈥檚 what a combination of nervousness and budget clippers can do. It looks like my stylist has been long furloughed too. Actually one of the things I like about being a vicar is that I never really have to choose what to wear - black black black black and bling on Sunday.听
But when our churches were closed, that wardrobe no longer applied, and in this weird period, of seventy consecutive Bank Holiday Mondays, I鈥檝e just lived in shorts and a t shirt, zooming, like everyone else. So I have found new ways to structure my daily life. I鈥檝e discovered gardening, pulling up weeds, deadheading roses, watering my raised beds in the cool of the evening. Good. Also good, it鈥檚 made me change the way I eat, finally getting to grips with the gluttony that arrived with middle age. I don鈥檛 want to go on any fancy diet, I鈥檓 not going to be jumping on the scales - why set yourself up to fail? - I just followed a friend鈥檚 example and cut out rice, pasta, bread and spuds.听
Low carb, I suppose, but I鈥檓 neither scientific or slavish about it. No need to, for it is working. I know it is, because the other day, outside the Co-op, my trousers fell down. I had just arrived, and was about to chain up my bike, when - with a swish - my shorts descended to my ankles. Style it out? I鈥檝e never styled anything out in my life. Make it look like you meant it? Not if you鈥檙e a vicar without his trousers in anything other than a 70s sitcom. Sometimes we just have to accept humiliation. We mess up, publicly, and are left looking like idiots. And sometimes it is good for us, reminding us that we are not the hero of our story, but just another Joe in a bigger story; and no matter how carefully we cultivate the image we present to the world, no matter how able or mighty - we are only ever one belt-hole away from our trousers falling down.