So A Comedian Walks Into Church

by Paul Kerensa

  7

  You look foolish. Go to 8.

  8

  The toothbrush on the sink belongs to Jo. You’ve got a similar one in your wash bag. They’re not that different, although Jo’s is clearly an upmarket version. It probably reaches teeth other brushes can’t reach.[14]

  Your own toothbrush is in the wash bag, currently perched on the laundry basket, and is a budget version: splayed bristles, cheap plastic handle, not very comfy to hold as it’s a long cuboid with rounded edges.

  Hang on a sec. A long cuboid is just the mechanism needed to fit in that gap where the door handle once was. The spindle that would stretch from handle to handle would have been a cuboid too, and something of that shape and size could turn the latch.

  Do you want to try the toothbrush as the spindle for the door latch? Go to 10.

  Do you want to not bother trying it? Go to 9.

  9

  I really think you should try using the toothbrush as a spindle. Go to 10.

  10

  Full of hope, you try the toothbrush from the wash bag in the small hole where the door handle once was. Frustratingly, it doesn’t quite fit. So close, yet so far away.You try for several minutes, yelling,‘It must! It must fit! This has to be the way out!’[15]

  Eventually, forlorn, you replace the too-large toothbrush and look elsewhere.

  If you think it’s a good idea to take the toilet ballcock apart, go to 11.

  If you want to look in the cabinet above the WC, go to 13.

  11

  You dismantle the ballcock from the toilet cistern until it’s in fifteen different pieces, and you have wet, yucky hands. What now, genius? This shtick might work for Jack Bauer, but you’re just a bloke who can’t even wire a plug. How are you going to turn this into a working door handle? What’s more, you now owe Jo a new ballcock. ‘You won’t notice I’m here,’ you said ...

  Oh, and if you’re stuck here for two days - which you deserve to be with this attitude - how are you going to flush that loo? New plan please.

  To look in the bathroom cabinet, either for a spare ballcock or a means of escape, go to 13.

  To practise sword fighting with the toilet brush, go to 12.

  12

  You take the toilet brush out of its vase, and start some mean fencing moves. It’s woefully unhygienic, not very dignified and in no way helps your mission to leave this Stalag Luft of bathrooms. So unfortunately:

  GAME OVER. You have lost the plot. Sorry. You can just keep reading though to see what other, better players would have done.

  13

  You (or I) wouldn’t normally peek into someone else’s bathroom cabinet, would you? But drastic times call for drastic measures. Inside you find an array of shampoos, a razor and razorblades, and a pack of cotton buds. If nothing else, when you finally leave the bathroom, you can be clean-shaven with silky smooth hair. You can’t ‘Wash & Go’, but you can ‘Wash’.

  To investigate the razor further, go to 14.

  To give up and sleep in the bath, go to 17.

  14

  You take the razor out of the cabinet. It probably won’t help slice your way out of that door, like a painstakingly slow version of Jack Nicholson in The Shining: ‘Heeeere’s Johnny ... eventually.’

  What the razor will do, though, is slice something smaller, like perhaps a toothbrush ...

  To whittle the toothbrush with the razor until it fits the spindle hole in the door, go to 16.

  To use the toothbrush to brush the razor, go to 15.

  15

  Now you have a clean razor. Pointless, but filled some time. Go to 16.

  16

  You take the razor and start slicing the cuboid end of the toothbrush to make it fit that gap in the door.Thin slivers of plastic fall into the sink. You frequently try it in the spindle hole; if you take too much off, the toothbrush will rattle around in the cube gap, with no chance of ever turning that latch.

  After a good five minutes of whittling, the toothbrush is taking shape.You try it in the door and ... it fits! One gentle turn of the brush, and it becomes an improvised door handle. The latch (praise be!) retracts into the door, and now you just need to pull the door open.

  If you didn’t tear the hook off the back of the door in option 2 above, then the door opens and you may now leave. Success!

  If you did visit option 2 above and tore it off, sorry, you’re stuck here. Go to 17.

  17

  You make your peace with being prisoner here, climb into the bath, and pull the shower curtain up to your chin. Night, night (except it’s day). GAME OVER.

  ***

  Simple as that. For me, that took three and a half hours.And I felt good. I was a hero! I was MacGyver! I had found myself in a fix and combined the objects at my disposal to ensure my escape. Give me my man badge now.

  When I’d danced for joy in every room I could, I wedged that bathroom door well and truly open with the wicker laundry basket. If I had to come back in here, there was no way I was being caught out again.Then again, even if I was, so long as my trusty whittled toothbrush was with me, I could come and go as I pleased. Maybe this is how cat burglars start.

  Next was to eat some real food,[16] then seize my trusty phone. How I’d missed it - all those communication possibilities I took for granted. I felt like dialling everyone in my phone book, partly because I finally could and partly because I wanted to shout from the rooftop about how I’d found my freedom with just a razor and a toothbrush.

  Instead I limited my phone calls to girlfriend Zoë, my dad, and finally the householder Jo. Zoë and dad were both happy to hear my tale, although didn’t quite share my level of enthusiasm. Zoë humoured me but had to dash as she had lunch on the boil, so I think we left the story with her thinking I was still trapped in a bathroom in Walthamstow. My dad heard it all, but brought me back down to earth with the challenge that I may be able to escape a bathroom, but did I know how to change a tyre? I bet he has a man badge.

  I left a voicemail for Jo, explaining briefly what had occurred. It was when I was preparing to go onstage at Saturday’s gig - the same venue as Friday but now with three acts - that Jo texted back: ‘Sorry to hear! Glad you made it out. You could have also looked behind the bath where I keep the spare handle.’

  Oh, now that hurt.

  I returned from the comedy night - a mixed performance from me, overjoyed at my new-found freedom, frustrated at the notion of this spare handle - and stormed immediately to the bathroom. Wicker basket still propping the door, and shaved toothbrush still in wash bag in case of a sudden draught and a slam, I checked behind the bath. It was a free-standing tub and there, nestled behind the pipes on the floor, a brass handle complete with spindle stared up at me.

  I did a little cry. Hero status was no longer intact. Crying is something Jack Bauer and MacGyver rarely do, and they’d always, always, find the spare handle.

  * * *

  A day later, and I’m lost. Yesterday I couldn’t find my way out of a bathroom; today I can’t find my way into a church. I’m told there are at least three on this road, one of which is recommended by a friend of a friend.[17] It’s apparently modern and funky and meets in a non-descript building on a non-descript road in a non-descript town. I’ve found the town at least and it’s... well I can’t describe it. Let’s stick with non- descript.

  Apparently their meetings pack the village hall to the rafters. Unfortunately only locals know it because whenever they put a sign up saying ‘church’, it gets stolen.That’s breaking at least a couple of the Ten Commandments: it’s stealing, it doesn’t exactly help others to ‘remember the Sabbath day’, and if they secretly covet the signs for themselves (unlikely), then that’s bad too.

  I’ve done more U turns than a cabinet minister.A shaved toothbrush won
’t help me here, and my satnav is shrugging. Where is this place? Clearly they’re emulating those modern and funky nightclubs that no one knows how to find, and when you do it’s just a door and a keypad.[18]

  There’s a general 10.30 a.m. deadline when finding churches. Some might start at 11 a.m., but there’s no guarantee. It’s nerve-wracking enough walking in alone to an unfamiliar church; it’s worse to do it ten minutes late when they’re giving a church news item about ‘...Outreach, so more strangers come into our building’. Cue me. Everyone looks and gasps.

  It’s 10:27. I’ve got my failsafe option of the local cinema showing a substandard rom-com at 11 a.m., but I’ll just feel bad that I’m missing church to watch Matthew McConaughey ‘hilariously’ woo Kate Hudson.

  I see a spire! That must be it. It’s not very non-descript, so it could just be a church rather than the church, but a) beneath that rickety steeple might be the most funky modern spiritual youth this side of the non-descript town, and b) it’s 10:28 and it really doesn’t matter. I just want to get my praise on and avoid McConaughey.

  I’m particularly keen on some God chat this morning, partly to give thanks for (and, all right, brag about in prayer) my escape from the bathroom, and partly to ask why, in His infinite wisdom, He couldn’t have arranged for Jo to leave the spare handle somewhere more obvious. I’ve asked Jo the same question and her answer - ‘Well, I knew it was there,’ - wasn’t satisfying.

  I navigate my way to the spire, which turns out to be atop an old, large, very traditional building. I park outside and jog up the grand steps to the door, where I follow in a suited pensioner.[19]

  As I draw near, I read the sign above the door: ‘United Reformed Church’. This could be the modern funkiness my friend’s friend told me about. Perhaps the pensioner’s about to start some body popping. It’s unlikely, because from what I recall, the ‘URC’ has been around a while...

  Putting the ‘URC’ in ‘CHURCH’ (otherwise it’s just ‘CHH’)

  General ejection. Oliver Cromwell stirred up some vicars, causing The Great Ejection. It’s nothing to do with people in dog collars being flung from planes, which is a shame because that’s an interesting image. It’s actually about mainstream Anglicans being ousted from churches to make way for maverick ministers called Congregationalists and Presbyterians, which is nowhere near as funny as priests in ejector seats.

  Presbyteriwho? Presbyterians don’t have the Church of England’s bishops (or archbishops) or deacons (or archdeacons), but that doesn’t make them enemies (or archenemies). Instead they have a ‘presbytery’: not, as it sounds, a church café, but an assembly of elected elders. Scotland is the home of the Presbyterians, who I think had a hit with ‘I Would Walk 500 Miles’.

  And Congregationaliwhatyousay? Congregational churches go even further - and I don’t mean 501 miles. I mean they’re governed by the congregation, hence the name.Wales is the biggest Congregationalist area in Europe. They have lots of independent churches who don’t talk to each other, probably in part because of all the mountains.

  Let’s be civil. King Charles II hid in an oak tree (hence The Royal Oak pubs), and upon emerging victorious as Hide-and-Seek champion of 1651, he gave the Anglicans their churches back from the Cs and Ps, who became rebels without a church. In 1662 these rebels (about a fifth of clergy) were told to adopt the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty- Nine Articles by St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August, as I’m sure you know). They refused and set up on their own.

  United as in Manchester, reformed as in ham. Congregationalists and Presbyterians united in 1972 to form the United Reformed Church. There’s not a head of the URC as such, but there is a moderator. At the time of writing it’s Val Morrison, who on a regular basis can be heard to say,‘No, it’s Val, and no I don’t know any Brown-Eyed Girl.’

  The gatekeepers[20] are both in their sixties yet still among the youngest here. Despite the large interior being fairly empty, it’s a warm and cosy atmosphere. It feels like we’re one Werther’s Original away from a grandparent convention. I consider leaving my coat on, then take it off, knowing that my fellow congregants would be the first to suggest that I wouldn’t feel the benefit. Glancing at some of the congregants, I optimistically think, ‘Yeah, these guys could be the modern funky kind.’

  I take a pew near the back - it is literally one person per pew. I begin to wonder if the service starts at 11 a.m., which might explain the lack of people ... and then the minister begins.

  ‘How lovely it is to see some new faces!’ he declares, while looking directly at me. He means ‘new face’. There’s an audible shuffle as many in the congregation turn to look, and I give an embarrassed nod to the dozen OAPs.

  I’m grateful when the organ strikes up with some worship greatest hits, and happily they’re all Songs of Praise classics I’m familiar with.You don’t want to be a newbie mumbler. I’m starting to think, though, that maybe this isn’t the funky church I was recommended, unless ‘Crown Him with Many Crowns’ is about to get a serious remix.

  Reading, sermon and prayers are all traditional and short to make way for communion, which with this number here will be pretty brief too.The sign of peace is trickily executed. We’re meant to shake hands with our nearest neighbours, but due to age and low attendance, everyone’s spread out and mostly immobile. I do more moving than most and manage seven ‘Peace be with you’s, feeling bad for the four I’ve left out. I throw a smile at each of them as if to say,‘Catch you later.’ I nearly add a wink, but thankfully stop myself.

  Things begin to differ from what I’m used to. I don’t think it’s just a URC thing, ‘cos we’re mavericks’, but rather than queue up at the altar for our bread and wine, we stay seated and it comes to us. The demographic may mean it makes sense to do the meals-on-wheels version of the Lord’s Supper, rather than uprooting everyone. The paraphernalia, though, implies this is more greatly ingrained, since the sidesmen are passing around racks of wine-filled glasses.They resemble the test tube racks we used to have at school, only specially crafted to hold a number of miniature shot glasses.

  It sounds flippant to describe it as such: the truth is that I hold communion very dear as a great practical means of fellowship with God, and with our fellow man. It always bonds me with those I’m communing with, and I now realise that it’s not the queuing up that causes that bond, nor is it receiving it from a chalice at the altar, much as this forms one of the few arcane rituals that I actually embrace taking part in. It must be some other aspect of this Holy Eucharist that stirs my soul, because as I take my individual shot of wine from the rack, with a small morsel of bread from a plate that follows it, this still feels every bit as special.

  The rack and plate passes to the next row and for the first time I find myself with communion bread and wine in my own hands, rather than proffered by servers at the altar. I am thankful for this community’s welcome as one of their own, and take in the bread and wine in prayer. I consume and commune with God.

  I remain in prayer for some minutes, giving over to the Almighty the events of the weekend - my safe journey across the country, my confinement and freedom, and my opportunity to tell jokes to some Geordies. The near-empty church makes my moment of personal prayer as distraction-free as any time I can remember.

  My prayer time is only brought to an end by the minister’s words:

  ‘Now we take the bread in our hands and say together, “This is the body of Christ, the bread of heaven”.’

  All join in with a mumble on those last words. All apart from me: I stay slack-jawed and silent. I have no bread in my hands. I’ve eaten it.

  I think I’ve found something this church does differently.

  I look around, and see everyone taking and eating. A couple look towards me and notice I’m not. I go as crimson as the wine that everyone else is holding.

  The congregation continue: ‘This
is the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.’

  I don’t know if it’s right for me to join in saying this - I’ve already said my own version, to myself and to God, a few minutes ago. Should I say it again, in unison? But I want to join in with the others - communion is communal after all. I quickly decide to murmur something similar, changing it to past tense: ‘This was the blood of Christ ...’

  I panic that I’ve committed a heresy. It’s eternal surely? Just because I’ve consumed it, that doesn’t change anything. I need to speak to a bishop. And I’m in a URC - they don’t believe in bishops. Let me speak to the moderator. Does anyone have Val Morrison’s phone number? It must be 0800 SHA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-TE-DA ...

  I add: ‘And still is.’

  As they drink, I’m now miming, pretending I have a full glass. It sounds awful, but I want to save face. I can’t be the newcomer who barges in and guzzles bread and wine like some kind of hungry interloper. It surely comes off that I’m just here for the free food and drink. That looks terrible (although I’m sure that as good Christians they’d welcome and feed me).

  Part of me is very glad that’s over. I was having a great communion till everyone else joined in.

  The service ends with some notices, and my word there’s a lot going on. Looking around, I can’t see that many of the senior citizens are interested in toddler dance, step aerobics or the drop-in breastfeeding clinic, although one elderly lady went, ‘Ooh!’ at the sound of Zumba. There’s a more audible response to the Tuesday lunch club and Thursday’s seafront saunter.

  We’re dismissed and a dear lady in Sunday best introduces herself as Janet. Worried she’ll mention my Eucharistic faux pas, I quickly ask about her life here. She retired locally fifteen years ago, and is fiercely proud of their events. Far from being a stranger to toddler dance and the breastfeeding clinic, Janet is a regular - she provides the tea. Zumba and step aerobics don’t get tea. They probably bring their own organic watercress juice.

  Janet is proud of the other groups they host, an impressive list: antenatal classes, playgroup, Brownies, Scouts, ballet, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous ... It sounds like the Seven Ages of Man, directed by Ken Loach.