It'll not hurt you.
I just don't want to go into a church, that's all.
It's just an experiment.
I'm going to prove to him that he does believe, whether he believes it or not.
I had enough experiments when they had me in hospital.
What were you in for? Two weeks.
Ooh, very nasty. Two weeks.
A man should have some religion.
I am not raised for church.
Come on! Come on!
His family's always been devout National Assistance.
Time you saw the inside of something other than a betting shop.
At least in them tha don't have to die to collect the winnings.
Here, come back! Come back!
Come back! Come on!
Looks like the spirit's moving him fairly rapidly.
I can't bear to think of him touching you.
He is me husband.
Well, that's no excuse.
He takes you for granted.
He hardly ever takes me anywhere, these days.
He's become ever so remote, ever since he started taking that stuff for his heat bumps.
All right, you can come out now. We'll not be hiding behind that book.
Now then, why did you run away?
I didn't run away. I just remembered something.
Oh, yes? That your trousers were on fire?
Notice the smoke coming out of your wellies, did you?
I told you he'd not go near. You'll notice how his religious scepticism failed him as he went up that path.
It isn't God, it's the vicar. I owe him a few bob.
Don't tell me that rubbish. You were in mortal fear. I knew you would be.
It's all very well to scoff at the afterlife from the relative security of the taproom at the Red Lion.
But then nobody's had a mystical experience at the Red Lion.
Maybe not. But it was touch and go once or twice when they had no bulb in the outside toilet.
You can't scoff when you find yourself on consecrated premises, can you?
I've had lectures all my life from fellas in trilby hats.
If they're not preaching religion, they've come to take your telly back.
You weren't so confident about being an atheist back there.
I'm not changing anything.
Oh, we can see you're not changing anything. I'm sticking to my opinion.
And no doubt you're sticking to your socks, an' all.
No wonder he's an atheist.
If cleanliness were next to godliness, there's nowhere else he can go.
Come on, we'll take a walk up the hill. And if he won't admit to feeling a sense of wonder in church,
we'll see how he feels when faced with the wonders of nature.
Wonders of nature(!)
One cow cake after another.
You know, I used to come up here and ponder the meaning of life.
I used to come up here for rabbits.
Given up girls, had you?
I've had more lasses than you've had handbags.
It's moments like this that make you stop and realise just how bloody draughty it is.
Yes, you ask yourself, what does it all mean?
You try and prepare for higher things.
I like a bit of Mozart.
Oh, we usually had corned beef.
She used to cut it up thin, did my missus.
Trim it up with a bit of lettuce, cucumber.
I reckon by the time she'd done, it was nearly as posh as Mozart.
I used to play without letters, of course. Of course.
I still have 12 classical long-players from the Reader's Digest.
You haven't? I have. Well, I don't suppose it need make any difference.
We've known each other a long time.
Of course, some of us have the natural taste to overcome a skimpy education.
I know what they say about me behind my back.
That's Blamire, out of the army with ideas above his station. There we go.
Then, of course, there was that awful scandal when I was
caught in that compromising position with the telegraph.
It was your wild language that people found objectionable.
Fancy saying "discipline" in front of a social worker.
'Ey up!
Did tha think I'd got lost?
Why should we expect Dame Fortune to grant us a boon of such magnitude?
I say this much for thee, Cyril, tha's a lovely talker.
I'll have less of the Cyril. Try Mr Blamire, while doffing your tatty cap. Is that my coffee?
Aye. Your coffee that we have brought in our flasks. I thank you.
Where have you been? Don't encourage him!
It doesn't do to inquire into the unseemly mysteries of his person.
I'll tell you this much, it weren't easy without any paper.
I told you, I told you.
Not at this altitude. I got right down behind that dry-stone wall, but it was still no good.
Too much wind.
You should have heard it whistling.
God forbid.
I don't know how Boy Scouts can do it.
Probably by numbers.
And then only under careful supervision.
15 minutes and all I could raise were a puff or two of smoke.
Could he be adapted, do you think, for signalling purposes?
He'd have to be licensed by the GPO, respond to simple commands.
No, the operator would have to handle him. That is too much to ask.
And then I run out of matches. So, no fire.
You're always out of something.
He's like your friendly neighbourhood famine. Ah, we didn't need a fire, any road.
If I had a match, I could light me fag. If I had a fag.
I only have one consolation and that is I am contributing,
in my own small way, little as it is, to a bit of lung cancer.
Though I must confess to periods of doubt when it seems that he's going to live forever.
Alexander the Great died at 33.
So?
So, stand up everybody with a better excuse for being alive.
Yeah, too many cars on the road.
He wasn't killed by a car!
Yeah, well, our Dudley was, nearly.
I think I've just made up my mind about euthanasia.
I'm for it. He got knocked off his bike.
Alexander the Great? I never knew that.
No, our Dudley!
It were probably the owner that recognised his bike.
That's a yard... He would have survived, though, wouldn't he?
Your Dudley. Now, if he'd have been a Christian gentleman, he would have inevitably have copped his clogs.
We've all had that uncomfortable feeling that the Almighty is not all that competent.
That's what I mean.
How can you fathom it all out?
Eh! Do you reckon there is one? An Almighty?
Do you mind not being so provocative while we're under this tree?
And use your right hand!
That's the one you invariably pick your nose with!
Cyril believes there's an Almighty.
He believes in anything!
Less of the Cyril. I want to know if Clegg believes in the Almighty.
Who needs eternity?
Suppose you're waiting for a bus?
I don't think it all ends when you die.
I've got it! Ey!
If there is an 'eaven, do you reckon you could take your ferrets?
Who's that little angel in the wellies who's just passed you that kite? Ferret?
I shouldn't worry unduly. Not a place you're likely to encounter.
If it's only for Conservatives, I don't want to bloody go!
Compo coming down from the trees!
'Ey up. Get his left foot.
Oh!
Ooh! Oh! Oh!
We must be adult about this thing, Mrs Partridge.
Not now, Mr Wainwright.
I haven't finished those special requests for Doncaster Borough.
To think I've found you in this petit bourgeois town.
You're a lovely, wild thing.
Oh, I don't know.
That body was made for pleasure!
It used to enjoy a slow foxtrot.
But now it never takes me anywhere.
Carnal pleasure.
Andy never says anything cheeky like that.
He hasn't got your gift for words, Mr Wainwright.
No, he just takes it for granted I shall be waiting for him after Match of the Day.
He's strangling all the poetry in you! It's true.
Mind you, he's very good about the house.
All the poetry's gone but he's got his Black & Decker.
You poor love.
And what have you got?
I've got me back against these encyclopaedias, Mr Wainwright!
And I've got these terrible feelings of guilt.
I'm sure everybody knows.
If there's no Almighty, why should one sometimes feel guilty?
What about, Cyril? I was speaking figuratively.
Ah! Come on, Cyril, you can tell us.
You keep your beady eye on the kite.
You hate yourself, guilty conscience...
I thought, hello,
what's he been up to?
It was merely an observation.
Why should I feel guilty?
That's what I like about the Conservatives. They've got confidence.
It's not confidence, I've got faith.
You've put it on me thing... Get it off!
You're not Mr Cocky when you're dead.
I won't know, will I? How do you know when you're dead? You yourself, how do you know?
You're expected to take the hint when they bury you.
No, it's a good question when you think about it.
There's a lot to being dead. It's not something any folk can do.
That's why there's so many still alive.
I want to be cremated.
Well why didn't you say something when we went to get some fuel?
And what are you going to do for fags, eh?
Well, what will you do for fags? I'll not go short.
Go on! You've always been short.
You're a hideous 4'9".
I'm streamline muscle!
I'll get fags. He'll become the plaything of this wealthy builders' merchant.
Go down the primrose path amidst a welter of rich brass fittings.
You should read these American novels these days, they're all doing it, searching for something.
Aye. And they'll get something at that rate.
I don't know any builders' merchants. You do!
And I shouldn't get too close to any American novelists either.
There were that time during the war with Hilda Mason and them three Yanks.
Everybody knew it were rape, but she were never prosecuted.
Did you read those passages I marked?
That powerful portrayal of human emotion?
Yes, but I don't think I could ever do any of those things, Mr Wainwright.
The spirits will it, the actions take care of themselves.
Especially with me back the way it's been.
Could you still care for me in a support?
You don't know what it means to me at my time of life to find out that Karl Marx isn't enough!
I'll sit in me furnished room at night,
thinking about you.
Is that right, me old love?
It must be the rustle of me wellies!
Will you come inside and stop antagonising the management?
To think he could've gone to Australia for ten quid, we should've had a collection.
Just after t'war when his shirt were cleaner.
It can't be much cop in Australia. Hurley Bailey came back.
Oh, well, then, that's Australia finished.
He couldn't stand the beer.
Typical. The priorities of the lower orders!
It's a long way to go for a disappointing pint.
What's he doing now? Drinking Guinness. For a living?
You'd think so, the way he slops it down.
I fancy Canada myself.
In the 2.30? No!
For emigrating.
I fancied Piggott's horse in the 2.30.
Why Canada? Well I saw this Janet McDonald picture.
She isn't Canadian!
But she was in Rosemary and Nelson Eddy were a Mountie.
God save us!
Don't tell us you had this unseemly vision of you as a Mountie?
I don't know, if they took Nelson Eddy...
I didn't want to be a Mountie!
I thought I might've tried me hand at fur trapping.
You? It's not lying around in coat-sized lumps out there!
It's wrapped round muscle and teeth.
I've done a bit of ferreting.
Can't be all that different.
I can just see his ferrets out there now.
Blowing on their little frozen paws and eyeing this bear with a look of amazement.
Trapper requires unusually aggressive ferrets.
Imported ferret terrorises Quebec.
No cause for alarm, says police chief, as mayor dragged down rabbit hole.
The New World might have developed all his potential!
Made him a legend among the Eskimo!
Ha! Got through winter on a skillet of flapjack and beans.
They used to rub noses.
Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy?
I never knew that.
Have you a minute to spare? I mean, I hate to interrupt this whirl of activity... Oh, shove off.
You haven't even done them pots!
No wonder you're getting fat.
I ought to be as thin as a rail.
Agreed. Then you could go and lie down in front of a train.
When are you going to unbung that drain?
Now come on, now, before your feet take root.
Anything I can do for you, don't hesitate to ask(!) Winter, you're supposed to hibernate.
Winter, not every ruddy afternoon.
Now come on, it's started smelling. I don't know what might be down there.
It'll be your mother. She's been through everything else.
Thank God, saved by the bell.
Oh, you're always in luck, aren't you?
Two meat pies and a flapjack and beans for Powerful Pierre there...
Ah, three meat pies. ..the inventor of the forty-foot ferret.
Get off! Mustard?
Why not indeed? Three teas, and how's your lady wife?
Three with sugar, and same as bloody usual.
'Ey, Compo, your missus left you, didn't she?
Aye, she ran off with a Pole.
I suppose it was wartime. Aye. Y'see?
There's nowt happening like that nowadays.
It wasn't all fun.
Cigs were rationed. Come on. Come on!
All right, all right, I'm coming!
Go on, get in there!
And where are you sitting?
I'm sitting here. Must you be scruffy AND convivial?
Have you no inclination for separate tables? All right.
Sit down, Compo, we're all together.
The camaraderie of the aging redundant cuts across all social classes.
Have you seen him eat a meat pie?
'Ey, give us a fag, and I'll give you a flash of me gums.
Well, it's 'orrible. Close your eyes and just listen to his acoustics.
In multidimensional, nerve-grating stereo.
He's got a lot of lip for somebody who comes from t'same street as me.
It's not where you're born, it's what you do with it.
As far as I can recollect, you could never do anything with it.
His mother wouldn't let him play wi' lasses.
Aye, she mistrusted them, ever since she saw your grandma,
that white-haired old lady, duffing up policemen.
Only when she were drunk.
It's destiny, fate that brings us together. Redundancy.
You can't fight forces like that.
We were all very worried when we saw you in them sailor suits.
It was a custom in those days for many children to wear sailor suits.
Well, I never had one. I find that surprising. Your mother knew enough sailors.
We was poor! We were all poor!
Ah, but we was poor and scruffy.
I remember.
He used to walk around without any gloves, and hands in pockets.
Usually mine. He used to keep his pocket money in a purse.
I didn't keep it long when you were about.
Hey, I used to wait for him outside school when he crept out of needlework.
CLATTERING AND SHOUTING FROM KITCHEN
That's what you miss, a woman round the house.
Yes, it's funny how you end up after you start off with such high hopes about cut glass and china.
We haven't ended yet. We've only just started.
For the first time in our lives, we've got time to look at things.
What things?
Everything.
What's he on about?
'Ey? He means we ought to be trying to find out what it's all about, what we're doing here.
Well, we're waiting for your cruddy vests!
On the planet. What it all means.
After we've got your vests.
Oh!
If the other one hadn't've let me down, I'd've won fourteen chuffin' quid on Piggott's horse yesterday.
Are you determined to end life as you started it, dead ignorant?
I know it's a family tradition, but you can carry things too far.
Stick with us, kid. We'll broaden your mind.
Got a light? You see?
He's asking questions already.
Watch it below!
He'll have that mill chimney down.
Look at him!
Him that's been off work 30 years with his back!
Y'know, it gets quite exhausting, all this playing about.
You go careful, Compo, there've been some terrible injuries in low-railing-jumping circles.
What have you ever contributed to the world? Eh? Go on, tell us!
A chuffin' Pole took my missus.
How much more do I owe? Timber!
You're hopeless! Oh, I don't know.
He might have been Fidel Castro if he'd been born in Cuba, and given the revolution
a whole new dimension in the way of wellies and bacon sandwiches.
Do you believe in anything?
What y'say? I said, do you believe in anything?
I believe it's your turn for fags.
Nobody believes in owt these days. Well, I do. Great(!)
Ah, does the Almighty mend his broken mice, I wonder, somewhere?
Why? Do you believe, then? I don't know.
I believe if I was God, I'd have stuck to pottering about in my greenhouse.
I wouldn't have taken us lot on. Well, there must be something. Why?
There's got to be something stronger than the unions.
How could anybody believe in miracles? It's very popular.
You want to listen to the workers fulminating a few demands.
I know what he believes.
He's convinced that God's a Tory?
'Ey up, if God comes in overalls, there'll be some sulky faces in church.
I still say that he's scared to go near a church.
Why do we need to go inside?
It's painless. You don't have to wash or anything.
It would make any difference.
What are you getting nervous for? Who's nervous? Well, come on then.
Look at him. Anybody would think he were a shareholder.
Well, it's all right if I smoke out here, ain't it? You'll be all right.
They used to burn more than that.
It's all very well being cocky out on the streets, but I want to see you when we get inside.
Why? What goes off? What goes off?
You'll come out all in one piece.
It's not as if it was a synagogue.
Nothing goes off. There's no service on.
You just go inside, sit down in the quiet and listen.
What to? Your own thoughts. That's all.
I can hear them out here.
But they'll be different inside.
That's the whole point.
At least, I hope they'll be different.
You don't have to go in now.
Maybe you'd rather come back when you're dead.
Do you... Shh!
Don't you have to sign me in?
HE WHISTLES
Is somebody buried under there?
# All things bright and... #
Is that gold?
That eagle, is it made of gold?
No.
ORGAN STARTS TO PLAY
TALKING DROWNED OUT BY THE MUSIC
I saw a mad organist once in a picture.
It's no good if you're going to fidget. Didn't you feel anything?
Aye, me nose were itching. Bonny church inside.
It's beautiful. And is that all you can say, your nose was itching?
Well, I liked that eagle.
You see, Cyril, he's felt the first little brass ferret of devotion.
Come on. Time I was home.
All it wants is a bit of putty, a dab of paint. I heard you.
Well, why don't you do something about it?
What, like praying to go deaf! Him next door gets things done.
Well, I'd do things for her.
Well, I shan't stand in your way.
I'm just glad to see you getting any sort of exercise.
I bet she's got more to offer than 1,001 jolly jobs about the home. Well, you live in it, don't you?
In it? I've been in it ever since we threw caution to the wind that night behind the baths.
Aye, and that's another thing, that bathroom wants papering. Oh, hell!
Aye, we lived on dripping for years.
Nourishing, up to a point.
I have a very clear recollection of the Depression. It was just here.
He did it with an outsized marble and a catapult.
What wounded me even more, however, was the knowledge
that he was aided and abetted by Delphine Hackett's knicker elastic.
We were just good friends.
It's a bonny world. Still, must make it easier to have faith in something.
It's all right for some.
But consider the tapeworm.
All that time in somebody's lower intestine.
How's that for environment?
Can you see them singing Bless This House in reedy, worm-like voices?
Ferrets like worms.
In dark alleys, I suppose. Keeps their hand in, waiting for grizzlies.
It's an open question, life.
Anything's possible. I mean, what do we really know about anything?
Maybe we're already dead. What?
Maybe we had to die to get here from some other place.
Give us a fag before I get a headache.
So this is heaven then, or the other place.
Well, it can't be the other place. Why not?
In Yorkshire? It would be further south, wouldn't it?
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