David Charters: Hope you were watching up there...

Apr 15 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IT IS my belief that the Big Man can see anyone he chooses down here on Earth, as clear as a bride’s smile on her wedding day photograph.

There He is journeying through the sky on a plumped cushion, pausing here and there at the suggestion of a middle-ranking, but ambitious angel, who hopes that his devotion to duty will be noted in high places.

“Look, it’s Charters in his conservatory,” says the angel, sucking a cough-drop and passing the Man his telescope.

Indeed, it is. I am dozing on the armchair, warmed by the sun.

The Sunday paper is spread on my lap and a mug of sweet coffee steams on the table by a pair of Hobnob biscuits.

Slowly, I am drawn from my dream by the low hum of a bumblebee.

A slight tremor is felt as the rotund chap bumps his head on a window pane. Posing, teasingly, on the other side were flowers to be sucked, but humans had invented glass, that curse of winged creatures and the cause of a billion bloody noses.

“Let’s see what Charters does now,” says the cunning angel, as the bee’s attempts to escape become more frantic.

But I am conscious of being watched in the conservatory, our blushing symbol of suburban pleasure.

So I rise to my slippered feet and hold the paper under the bee, who hovers in bemused frustration in front of the polished glass.

When he has settled on the paper, I release him through the door and he flies in jaunty style over the lawn, which still squelches after an unseasonal fall of snow.

I smile at the sky. Hope you were watching up there.

It is true that too many doubters are on parade these days, preaching their atheism, but most of us don’t want to spend eternity toasting our buttocks on the hobs of Hell, while Adolf Hitler rants in the next cubicle.

God made the bee, so we will have to look after him – or, perhaps, her, if we are being politically correct.

But God also made the worm, a creature whose reputation remains low, despire his/her vital role in aerating the soil. In fact, the very name is one of our most stringing rebukes, reserved for those who crawl for favours.

Anyway, on the main stretch between our house and the railway station, an extraordinary mass migration has been taking place, though it has failed so far to attract David Attenborough with his passion-coated voice and TV cameras. In the early morning light, hundreds of worms nose from cracks in the pavement, peeping left and right, before beginning a crazy squirm across the inhospitable concrete to the grass bank on the far side.

However, in the hustle-bustle of modern life, dozens fail to reach their destinations and their bodies mark the way.

Occasionally, I stoop to pick up a struggling wriggler and carry it to the bank – again smiling hopefully at the sky.

Thus, I am able to sit on the train wearing the knowing expression of a smug man. Then, through the loudspeaker, gasp the recorded announcements.

One is a particular thrill for ears primed to glow when our language is strangled between political correctness and bureaucratic jargon.

People with “mobility problems” are advised not to get off at James Street station, Liverpool, because the lifts aren’t working. The only exit is up a long, steep tunnel.

A variation sometimes used by the announcer is “reduced mobility”.

These are terms which, in different circumstances, could be used about the bumblebee or the worm.

For the bee nursing an egg on his head after crashing into a plate glass widow might well feel that he is suffering from a mobility problem – while we would all sympathise with the worm who prays for keener acceleration, as he slithers breathlessly over the pavement under the soles of peak-hour commuters.

As a non-driver, mobility has never been a strength of mine either. And now that I am 60, I can’t sprint between bus-stops like Steve Ovett.

Once, though, with the hopes of tomorrow throbbing before me and last night’s ale fizzing in my tummy, I would swing on the back bar of the bus, imagining admiration sparkling in the eyes of pretty girls.

But an even bolder friend bought a moped called the NSU Quickly, on which he could touch 27mph in favourable conditions. It was started by rotating two pedals. A later model, called the NSU Quick 50, replaced the pedals with a kick-start.

It was a daring change, but I preferred the Quickly.

Sometimes I wonder if fast people can escape the eyes in the sky.

But pausing to help a worm might be a wise precaution.