The Afterlife by Jenny Palmer, red wine

Edwin spent a great deal of his time on his parochial duties. He did the rounds, regularly visiting people in their homes, congratulating them on their successes, offering condolences where necessary.

‘A few words of comfort or sympathy here and there don’t go amiss,’ his wife Elizabeth said. ‘That’s what people want from their vicar, a bit of fellow feeling.’

Increasingly he felt that was all they wanted. The numbers of his church-going public had dropped off dramatically of late. The choir was often bigger than the congregation and that wasn’t saying much. There were a few ardent followers, women, who kept the church tidy, arranged the flowers, organised baskets of fruit to distribute among the parishioners at the harvest festival. They were the ones who kept the whole operation ticking over. He didn’t know what he would do without them. But nobody wanted to be preached at anymore, at least not in their own homes. Preaching was reserved strictly for the Sunday service.

Births, marriages, and deaths. That was his main function. He had become quite the expert. He conducted marriages ceremonies, baptized newborns, and laid the dead to rest with aplomb. He disliked funerals though. They required more thought. What did you say to someone who had lost a close family member, friend, or neighbour? Of course you could offer your condolences. But that was not enough. People looked to their vicar for more than that. They wanted you to give some meaning to it all, to reassure them that they were going to a better place, in heaven. There was no need to mention hell these days.

‘Time is a great healer,’ was what Elizabeth always said on these occasions. She was better at condolences. He had heard it so many times that it was starting to sound hollow.

‘God has put us on this earth for a reason,’ he sometimes found himself saying. ‘It’s up to us to find out what that is.’

‘How are we supposed to do that?’ one bright spark had asked him in Sunday school. ‘Is it a guessing game.’ He had struggled to find an answer to that one, mumbling something about the need to read the Bible.

He blamed Miss Bishop, the new teacher who had recently come to the village and was helping him conduct the Sunday school. She was an English literature specialist who liked poetry and drama of which he whole-heartedly approved. It was good to have a soul mate. Elizabeth was more of a practical person and never concerned herself with literary matters. Miss Bishop and he had put on a nativity play, which had gone down very well. Her dramatic talents hadn’t stopped at that. She had assembled a troupe of actors and had been putting on dramatic performances for parents in the evening. He had observed reluctantly that more people were attending her plays than came to his church services.

If only it had stopped there. But she’d taken it into her head to introduce all sorts of new ideas into the curriculum. Now pupils were coming up with challenging questions like

‘If God is good, why does he let evil things happen?’ or ‘Why do the rich get away with murder?’ To which his stock answer was that it wasn’t God who was evil, but human beings, and we must all strive to be better.’

One day a small boy sidled up to him after Sunday school. ‘Why did God let the dinosaurs die?’ He asked. ‘They were God’s creatures too. Why didn’t he let them survive? Didn’t he love them?’

The question had stumped him for a while. Eventually he replied.

‘God loves all his creatures, whether they survive or not. No doubt you will meet your beloved dinosaurs again in the Afterlife.’

The boy went way looking mystified.

This was all getting difficult. He’d better have a word with Miss Bishop. She was putting ideas into the children’s heads that they weren’t ready for or equipped to deal with. If they started to question the existence of God at that age, who knew where it would all end? And if their parents didn’t back him up, the congregation would fall even further. He might have to share his duties with another parish and have double the workload to deal with. He’d better some up with some answers with regard to the Afterlife. He’d make it the subject of his next sermon.

But first he needed to tackle Miss Bishop. After all, it was supposed to be a church school. There should be some observance of religion. He caught her on the way out of church.

‘I was wondering if you’d like to pop round for tea one afternoon,’ he said.

Miss Bishop’s face registered surprise. ‘Tea with the vicar?’ she scoffed. ‘Isn’t Mrs. Goodwin away this weekend? I thought she’d gone to the W.I. conference?’

‘Well, yes she has, as a matter of fact,’ Edwin muttered. ‘But that shouldn’t affect matters.’

‘In that case, I’d rather wait until she returns,’ Miss Bishop said haughtily.

The cheek of it. The presumption. Miss Bishop had made it sound like he was inviting her for some sort of illicit liaison. The very idea of it. He would have to postpone the conversation until after the weekend. And in the meantime, he had a sermon to plan.

Whenever Elizabeth was away, he liked to sit in a comfy chair beside the front window rather than at his desk. Eizabeth was a great fan of birds and had erected a bird table outside, directly in front of the window. From there she followed their daily activities and was familiar with all the different species and their feeding habits.

‘The Great Tits are the greediest,’ she said. ‘They don’t give the other birds a chance. The long- tailed tits always come in flocks. The Robin is prepared to wait its turn. The Blackbird doesn’t even bother to come any more. The Wren which is the smallest slips in between the rest. My favourites are the Chaffinches and Goldfinches because they have such pretty colours.’

Instead of getting down to work, Edwin found himself gazing out of the window. He couldn’t look at the finches without associating them with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Adaptation of species to the environment all happened so randomly. How was he supposed to square it with God’s plan for the universe?

Elizabeth found him asleep in his chair when she returned that evening. The sermon was still unwritten.

Jenny Palmer writes short stories, poetry, memoir and family history. Her collections 'Keepsake and Other Stories.' 2018, and 'Butterflies and Other Stories,' 2024, were published by Bridge House, and are on Amazon. 'Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists,' 2022, is sold at the Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford.

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A Simple Operation by Jenny Palmer, bottle of flavoured water

 

- times,’ the receptionist said. ‘First, for the field test and OCT scan, then to see a consultant who will decide if you need the procedure and, if so, a third time.  And you won’t be able to drive for the last two visits as we’ll need to put drops in.’  

‘No, I hadn’t realised that,’ I said. ‘But I’ve already had a field test and a scan at my optician’s. Do I really have to have another one?’

‘I’m sorry but that’s just the way it is,’ she said. ‘So shall I book you in then?’

‘I guess so,’ I said meekly, my heart sinking at the thought of all those bus journeys I’d have to plan. It would be like planning a military operation.

The benefits of living in a beautiful area in the countryside cannot be overstated but one of the drawbacks is the lack of rural bus services. To save on the number of services and maximise the number of passengers, buses have doubled up lately and now take a slow and winding path through adjoining towns and villages, picking up people at every available stop. First, I would need to hike for a mile uphill to the bus stop at the crossroads where I would take one bus into town and then wait for a connection to my final destination.

Finding an online bus timetable proved impossible, since I didn’t have all the necessary apps. Luckily, I had amassed enough timetables from walking expeditions over the course of the year.  Technically speaking, I could have driven for that first appointment, as it didn’t entail eye drops, but going by bus would be a good way of testing out the route. The journey would take two hours in each direction, so I took along a packed lunch in case there were no cafes on the way. Might as well make a day of it, I thought.

My journey soon turned into a trip down memory lane. I found myself recalling people and places from my past.  In those days, the industrial North was in decline, and I couldn’t wait to get away and see the world. Any trip back up North only confirmed these feelings. I saw it as depressing. It would no place in my future. As far as I was concerned, people were dowdy and downtrodden. If truth be told, I wasn’t looking forward to setting foot in the town again. There was nothing there but charity shops, people said. 

 I must have looked lost when I got off the bus at the bus station, because a couple of people rushed towards me offering help.

‘I know just where you want to go,’ one elderly man said, glancing at the appointment letter I was clutching. ‘It’s for your eyes, isn’t it?’

He pointed out the building which housed the health clinic, giving me precise directions as to how to get there and where exactly to cross the road.

I was half an hour early for my appointment and was surprised to find the waiting room empty. Usually in hospitals these days you are faced with a room full of disgruntled people, but I was the only one there. I didn’t even have time to start on my sandwich before I was called in. The nurse kept telling me how well I was doing, as I was spotting the green lights in the field test. I took it as a compliment even though I knew it had nothing to do with ability. 

   All this meant I was able to catch the earlier bus back. On the way home, even though the bus followed the same winding path, I was seeing things in a new light. It had all been so quick and easy. The people were so helpful. The staff were so cheerful. The front gardens we passed were full of flowers.  One down, two to go! I thought. I know it sounds crazy but during the course of that journey home, I felt as if I was falling back in love with the North. 

About the author

Jenny Palmer writes short stories, poetry, memoir and family history. Her collections 'Keepsake and Other Stories,' 2018, and 'Butterflies and Other Stories,' 2024, were published by Bridge House, and are on Amazon. 'Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists,' 2022, is sold at the Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford.. 

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Counting Sheep by Jenny Palmer, Chamomile tea

The fog was starting to clear. The sheep were on the move. The farmer must be about. He would be bringing them theirdaily rations of sheep nuts to keep them going through the winter. Julia loved watching them. Fat with lambs, they ran in single file to assemble as a flock in the spot where he would dole out the feed. Some stragglers made up the rear. They were the ones who were going to have twins or triplets.  Once they’d eaten, most of the sheep would lie down and chew the cud. It was a sign that they were contented and well-fed. One of them just stood there, staring into space. What was it thinking? she wondered. Did sheep think?

Sometimes she wished she could stop thinking. Turn her brain off. Be more sheep. She was feeling sleep-deprived, having lain awake half the night watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts. It was her own fault. She needed to take herself in hand again. She’d had these bouts of insomnia before.

As an asthmatic child, when she couldn’t breathe, she would cry out in the night for her mother to come, to give her a pill and rub her back. The attack would be over in twenty minutes or so and her mother would leave, telling her to count sheep. She liked to imagine the sheep jumping over a fence one by one, even though it was not in their nature to jump, except when they were lambs. But it was easier to count them that way. She rarely got to a hundred.

Insomnia was a real bind especially when you had to get up in the morning. The more you tried, the less you were ableto nod off. And she’d tried everything over the years: chamomile tea, cutting out caffeine, not drinking alcohol, going to bed earlier, mindfulness, meditation. Nothing seemed to work. Sometimes she’d get up, make a cup of tea, and readuntil she dropped off, but the house was too cold for that in winter. She’d end up turning on the radio to distract herself. It hadn’t exactly been comforting listening to the BBC World Service and following all the trouble spots around the globe.But at least it had been educational.

Since she’d retired, she’d embraced the new technologies. Nowadays she turned on her tablet to watch films, podcasts, and YouTube videos in bed at night. She liked to feel in touch with the world and hear the various analyses about what was going on behind the scenes. Nighttime was her favourite time of day, a time when she could absorb new information, learn something. And what with Netflix, Primeand Sky Atlantic, she was never short of anything to watch. But of late it was becoming a problem. Teenagers weren’t the only ones addicted to technology.    

Ever since that unhinged, demented, real estate manfrom reality TV had got into power in the US again, things had gone downhill. He was dismantling the rule-based international order. The whole world was living in a state of anxiety, watching his every move. The number of political podcasts had grown exponentially, and it was getting harder and harder to keep up.   She knew missing sleep was an unhealthy habit to get into. Research showed that lack of sleep caused all sorts of health problems. It could even shorten your life. That was something else to worry about.

How could she break the habit? It occurred to her one night that she could only allow herself to fall asleep once she’d found someone or something that gave her hope. Hope that the war in Ukraine might end, hope that there would be a political solution for the conflict in Gaza, or that nations might unite to combat climate change. Something to indicate thatthe world was not falling into chaos and that things would right themselves eventually. It was a hard ask. 

All this searching was sending her brain into overdrive. Not only was she over-tired but over-stimulated, making it impossible to sleep. If the world’s biggest brains couldn’t sort it out, how could she? She had been looking for answers where there were none. No one could tell her things would get better. The truth was it could go either way. Better to concentrate on the people and places around her, focus on them. Better to accept her limitations, like the Serenity Prayer said, and stop worrying. 

She managed to allow herself to fall asleep that night and didn’t wake up till after eleven. By the time she got up, the sheep had already congregated by the gate and were contentedly chewing the cud.  

About the author

Jenny Palmer writes short stories, poetry, memoir and family history. Her collections 'Keepsake and Other Stories.' 2018, and 'Butterflies and Other Stories,' 2024, were published by Bridge House, and are on Amazon. 'Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists,' 2022, is sold at the Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford

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Winds of Change by Jenny Palmer, lime cordial,

Kate hadn’t even noticed the beech trees an hour earlier when she’d been on her way to the doctor’s. Her mind had been elsewhere. All she could think about then was getting there on time. The appointment was at 8.30 a.m. It was unfortunate timing because it clashed with the arrival of the school buses which were offloading pupils all down the road, making it difficult to overtake.

As it happened there was time to spare, time to read the paper she’d bought on the way in. It was full of news about the Cop30 climate summit taking place in Brazil. The world’s biggest polluters weren’t even there. Trump had long ago withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, and India and China were conspicuous by their absence.

‘Typical,’ she said out loud. The woman next to her seemed to be nodding in agreement.

‘Just as the Secretary General of the United Nations announces that the world is about to miss its target of reducing temperatures to 1.5 degrees Centigrade above preindustrial levels, Bill Gates sees fit to step in and claim that it’s time to stop worrying about carbon dioxide emissions and focus instead on relieving world poverty.’

There was no response from the woman this time, but it helped to vent so she carried on.

‘He’s no better than the other tech oligarchs, who want to further their own interests and increase their profits by prolonging the use of oil and fossil fuels to power their AI data centres. They seem to think that climate change can be dealt with by technological solutions, rather than by garnering political will.’

The woman’s name was called out, and she left in a hurry.

It had been a long wait for this appointment. Kate had tried not to read too much into it, but her anxiety had only increased in the meantime. It felt like her world depended on the results. But it was good news. The doctor had reassured her there was nothing serious to worry about. She was elated. All she wanted to do was get home, have a coffee, take it in.

On her way back, she was struck by the sight of beech trees just past where the old community hospital used to stand, before they knocked it down and turned it into houses. The leaves on the other trees in the vicinity had been blown off in heavy gales the weekend before. Only the beech leaves remained. They were floating down to join the carpet of leaves on the road. The colours ranged from auburn to burnt orange and were set against a grey, cloud-ridden sky, giving the impression of a Pizarro or an early Van Gogh.

Who’d had the foresight to plant beech trees in that particular spot and for what purpose? She wondered. Were they put there as a windbreak, or to obscure the ugly cement works across the way? But the hospital was originally built as a workhouse, and it was unlikely that anyone had been considering the sensitivity of its inhabitants. Hopefully, the residents in the new houses appreciated the trees. They would have to go a long way to find anything quite so resplendent.

Once home, she sat down with a coffee. The news was all doom and gloom. She didn’t want to become a doomster. That was what climate change deniers had taken to calling climate activists these days, to try to minimize the seriousness of the problem, and make people think there was nothing they could do. It was important to stay optimistic. She’d go for a walk in the afternoon, up to the crossroads to sit on her bench. That would do the trick.

She’d first started calling it her bench  during Covid. It was in the early days when the population was being fed all sorts of misinformation about the virus. The bench was just past the crossroads in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town. After a mile uphill it was always a relief to have a sit down, until that day when she’d been unceremoniously turfed off it by an over-fastidious policeman in a patrol car, who was adamant that the virus could last up to seventy-two hours on a hard surface. Ever since then it had served as a reminder of just where a lack of scientific knowledge got us.

Kate plonked herself down on the bench. Sitting at 1,000 feet above sea level, looking across a beautiful valley, gave her a different perspective on life. What was needed was a sea change in society, she thought, like the one that happened in the 60s, when Harold Wilson enacted Macmillan’s ‘winds of change’ speech, which he’d made to highlight  the end of the British Empire, or the sea change in Europe in 1989, made famous by the Scorpions’ song, when the Berlin Wall came down, heralding the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. 

But which way would the winds blow this time? These climate change deniers and minimisers couldn’t keep ignoring the scientific evidence, or the evidence of their own eyes when it was staring them in the face. You only had to look at the forest fires burning in the Amazon, or Australia or California, see the floods and storms increasing in Europe and the Philippines. In Jamaica, Hurricane Melissa was a testament to the danger of rapidly rising temperatures at sea level, that could whip up a colossal tropical storm and wreak devastation in minutes.

Thankfully, she wasn’t the only one who thought so. A host of Indigenous leaders, scientists, environmental activists, and forest defenders, along with representatives from 195 countries from around the world, had gathered together in Brazil to discuss how to preserve the planet. They weren’t giving up.

As she walked back home, the sun was just setting. The sky was streaked in pink and white clouds and there was a rosy glow spreading across the valley. And in the West, there was a golden globe, as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. The colours reminded her of the beech trees she’d seen in the morning. 

About the author

Jenny Palmer writes short stories, poetry, memoir and family history. Her collections 'Keepsake and Other Stories.' 2018, and 'Butterflies and Other Stories,' 2024, were published by Bridge House, and are on Amazon. 'Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists,' 2022, is sold at the Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford. 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)