DICKIE TURNIP’S MIND

Where might a good religious soul find his Salvation if he loses his faith?

“I’ve lost everything,” moaned the Reverend Dickie Turnip. “I had everything only yesterday, or if not everything a great deal of everything, and I’ve lost it just like that!”

"Everything?" asked his wife.

"Every blasted thing!" he replied, scowling. "My faith, my belief, everything!"

“In that case you even lost me,” growled Minnie Turnip. “Here we are, two old timers with a lot of history between us, and if you've lost everything it means you’ve gone and lost everything we had. I’m darned if I can understand what’s going on in your head!”

“Nobody understands me,” growled Dickie. “There I was, peace to all the world last night when I went to bed, and during the night some devil came and messed with my mind, and now I’ve lost everything.”

“I saw it happen,” assured his wife with that half-smile on her face, the one he really hated. “I woke up at c**k-crow and you were lying just there there...” she pointed towards the huge double bed they shared, “when the devil came right down here, into this room, and stole everything from you by meddling with the contents of your mind and exciting you like I've not seen you excited for years! It reminded me of our courting days when you could be almost unnaturally rampant. Mind you, I was expecting it. That mind of yours needed a bit of meddling with, everyone days so, and now according to you it’s been meddled with good and proper.”

“So I’m off down the pub,” decided the Reverend. “Off down the pub where my real mates are. You see if I’m not.”

“Am I coming with you?” asked Minnie, curious to see how he’d respond.

“You’re bloody not!” he growled. “Women and pubs don’t mix. Never have and never will. Women and pubs all mixed together are anathema to a decent society.”

He who had lost everything stormed out, slamming the door behind him. He slammed it with such ferocity that the windows of an upstairs room fell out and clattered onto the front garden all around him in shards of splintered glass.

“See if I care,” he growled, because he suddenly didn't.

The pub was a good mile away, and on his way to it Dickie decided that the best thing he could do was to get run over because a Holy Man with nothing was like a bird without feathers or a walrus without whiskers. A Holy man with nothing, he told himself, is like a god without faith.

So he jumped in front of a bus. Indeed, he jumped in front of a Number One bus because that seemed the most appropriate bus for a vicar who’s lost everything to jump in front of.

"Now come on, ex-Lord of mine," he growled. I'm on my way to see you, and I expect a nice cup of ethereal tea when I get there!"

The world and everything in it, his mind and his thoughts and even a mental image of Marilyn Monroe that he'd always treasured went suddenly blacker than anything a reasonable man might call black, and he knew no more.

"Now you've lost everything!" growled a voice. "Now you've lost everything properly."

"Where am I?" he demanded.

The voice cackled. "Where you've always wanted to be," it replied, darkly. "Welcome to the inside of your mind and Heaven or Hell - you choose which!"