Our Lady of the Foresaken, Valencia, Spain March 2009
There's nothing wrong, in my view, with spirituality. On the other hand, ever since my intellectual awakening when I was fifteen, when I immediately dispensed with the services of a God, I have never been a religious person. My parents sent me to Sunday School once and I fell down on the way back and cut my eye open, I never went again. Nor did my parents, who considered their Christian duty done having married in a church and christened me. My sister never was (married in a church or christened). It was left to my school to try and inculcate the fear of God into me and they did so with a man who, for eleven and twelve yearolds was the incarnation of fear and God. Nicknamed "Jake", this wizened, bent-over apparition, his collapsed half-moon face permanently stretched in a rictus of anger strode up and down the desks in the classroom, banging with astonishing energy with his walking stick whenever we, his pitiful flock, failed to pay attention. He was a man whose default mood was anger. I can't remember learning anything from him and as I saw no reason to make allowances for him, my School Religion was a complete washout. I was taking my spirituality to the rational point of the compass; Jean-Paul Sartre and the Existentialists, that was my favourite band, Camus and the Outsiders the backing group.