At that moment, I drifted into a very strange dream

Nov 20 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

BENEATH a sulking sky, anxious faces peered from the shadows, windows and doorways. “More rain on the way,” they said.

I quickened my pace from the village greengrocer’s to our house, carrying a bunch of glow-in-the-gloom carrots for my wife to eat to help her see in the dark.

“The Government says that we should burn less energy if we are to save the planet,” she had told me a few days earlier.

Her turquoise orbs then gazed upon our rabbits, Milly and Molly, prancing on the lawn. “You know, in the war, people ate carrots to help them see in the black-outs,” she continued, as if struck by a sudden idea.

“They are rich in vitamin A, which is good for your sight. Maybe if I ate a carrot a day, I wouldn’t need to switch on the bedroom light at night, but would still be able to see you groaning and creaking out of your trousers, before hopping into your pyjama bottoms.

“You have an instinctive feel for strip-tease in the same way the greater-warted toad takes so naturally to tossing the pancake.”

Anyway, on this morning, as I approached the front-door, I was greeted by my wife’s voice piercing the clouds. “I must have one,” she yelled.

I ripped a carrot from the bunch and burst into the lounge, where she was sitting on our quite-new sofa, reading the lifestyle section of a paper. “I must have one,” she repeated, as I handed her the carrot.

“No, silly, not a carrot,” she chided, “I must have a Jesus phone.”

Well, many perplexed expressions have clouded my face during the 59 years that I have been grappling with the complexities of life down here, but the one which then ploughed my brow could be likened to that of a pious Mormon missionary, whose father has just willed him a Highland distillery.

After some minutes had slipped into their black-hole, she spoke again to relieve my torment.

“It’s the nickname for Apple’s new iPhone,” she said. “All the celebs have got a Jesus phone.”

At that moment, I drifted into a very strange dream. A scene in Heaven began to form in my mind’s eye.

Jesus is sitting in a comfy armchair, a mug of cocoa by his side, and he smiles as he listens to an old recording of Arthur Askey singing the Busy Bee song. “You know they are playing that song in a TV advertisement on Earth,” he says to his faithful PA, the Angel Mavis.

“I particularly like the lines, ‘Oh what a wonderful thing to be, a healthy grown- up busy, busy bee, whiling away all the passing hours, pinching all the pollen from the cauliflowers’.”

Mavis nods appreciatively. Suddenly, the phone rings. She sprints across the room and picks it up. “Hang on a mo, I’ll just see if He’s in. I think He may be potting geraniums in the shed,” she says, before placing her hand over the receiver. “It’s that Mrs Charters again,” she whispers, “calling from Next’s shop in Birkenhead.”

“Ask her what she wants,” says Jesus.

“Can I help?” enquires Mavis, removing her hand from the receiver. “She needs to know what shade of Ugg boots would be more suitable – chocolate or camel brown, though I expect you will lean towards the camel.”

“Decisions, decisions, decisions,” says Jesus.

But reality broke into my reverie when I read her paper’s headline, “Hallelujah! It’s Here At Last”.

“Do you think it is a little blasphemous calling it the Jesus phone?” asked my wife.

“No,” I said, “it’s just associating the product with miraculous powers. Jesus has all the other emotions – sorrow, anger, compassion. Why not a sense of humour, perhaps the most important of all? But the real miracle is being able to talk to God or Jesus or Mary at any time without a phone, whether its cordless or not.

“I sometimes wonder, though, with everybody being able to talk to everybody else instantly, whether anyone has anything interesting to say.”

“Indeed,” said my wife, “but with this new phone you can take photographs, play tunes, read maps, check the Stock Market and the weath- er forecast and do sums. And it’s all in one tiny box.”

“We can manage without any of that,” I said. “By the way, how are your sensible new boots? I’m glad you chose the camel brown in the end.”

“How did you know about that?” she gasped.

“Just old-fashioned communications,” I said, mysteriously. “Actually, I found them hidden in the wardrobe. I am not completely daft, you know – not yet.”

LISTEN to David Charters on his podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk