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Finally! Why have they wasted so much time on other stuff? Better late than never.
It's the illness that likes to trick you into thinking its gone, but then comes straight back again. The cough and the snot persist and even though the fatigue is gone and I am, generally speaking, better, it all did present itself more on stage tonight than I think it has for a while. But I managed to put some energy into it and was mentally present. Anyway lovely to be back at Salisbury Arts Centre after a dozen years away (I think) and it was a great crowd and pretty much full.
I wished I had done it as well as this on Wednesday. But never mind.
As I was being driven to the gig I started wondering if people in Heaven behave like people on Earth - they probably do, right, because they are still people, if supposedly the good ones.
Certainly religious people on Earth behave in ways that don't seem very loving of other people - if the fleeing baby Jesus and his family turned up on the borders of America there would be a whole lot of Christians furiously trying to prevent them getting in. The country is full - we were here first. America first.
What if the people in Heaven are the same? We've been here for centuries, we were here first, Heaven is full. You can't come in. You're not real Heavenites. Even if you pointed out that this was previously Mount Olympus and they killed all the heathen Greek gods and souls, they won't budge from believing that Heaven is theirs.
I am glad I don't have to decide who gets into Heaven though. It's a tough job of working out who believed in the right God combined with who genuinely apologised for misdemeanours and hypocrisy. It's probably easy to work out the really bad ones (unless they sincerely apologised at the last minute in which case I think they get to come in) and maybe the really good ones don't cause you too much trouble (depending on how strictly you interpret Holy Book law - there's some really weird ones in there).
The bit where it must get tricky is the huge clump of humanity in the middle, those of us who never murdered anyone and were usually quite nice to others and only moderately selfish and kept the wanking down to once a day and then felt guilty about it. It must be really galling when you have to tell someone they just missed the cut.
Sorry mate, if you'd done one less sin or one more apology then you'd be in, but we have to draw the line somewhere. Off to burn in Hell with Jeffrey Dahmer and Hitler. But we'll keep you at the edge so the burning isn't quite as bad. You will just spend eternity in unbearable pain, not excruciating. We have to keep this fair.
I don't know if there are areas of Heaven for people who were better than others or whether it's all-inclusive for everyone. Surely the proper saints get a VIP area and a few extra privileges that aren't available to the bloke who was one sin away from going to Hell.
I just can't imagine the kind of people who have been religious all their life and think that makes them special are suddenly going to change once they're dead. If you'd lived your life on top of a pole, praising God and had never sinned, you'd be annoyed if you got the exact same rewards as Richard Herring, who lived a mainly selfish and debauched life, but raised some money for Scope by not eating Soleros for a month so gets in for being basically OK.
And let me tell you, if I spotted people being annoyed about that in Heaven I would be straight over to God to tell him that people were being ungracious and envious and that he should probably send them to Hell after all. He might send me to Hell for being a snitch. Or He might reward me for keeping an eye out for people who'd snuck in and let me have some Ambrosia cream rice. There's no real way of knowing which way God will go on any of this. It's one of the flaws in the system.
RHLSTP Book Club with nostalgia nerd Tim Worthington talking about his fab book about the golden age of kids TV
