Breakfast With An Angel

Breakfast With Algy

“Are you making it up as you go along?”

I was cooking scrambled eggs for our breakfast and there didn’t seem much to make up. Eggs, milk, whizz them up and cook them. A dash of salt and pepper and you’re done. It wasn’t roquette science.

“Making what up?” I asked.

“Your life. Is there a script or a plan or do you just make it up as you go along?”

Algy could certainly come up with some disturbing questions. I though for a moment. My general impression of life was of an endless succession of chores, not all of them unpleasant. There were my duties at the sausage factory for a start, then when I got home there were meals to be prepared, bills to be paid, household chores to be done, a me to be amused. Sometimes it seemed as if life was living me. All the same, I wasn’t aware of any script or plan. In theory I could stop at any time, but for some reason I didn’t. Why not? Because I had to do it to avoid starvation?

Cats have food rituals. First they rub against their owner’s leg, then they follow her to the food cupboard. When she opens the door, they jump up on a chair. Then they meow. Maybe there will be another leg rubbing and other rituals that must be performed. The cat has no idea which actions bring forth food and which can be safely left out, so it performs all of them, in the same order, every day without fail. If food doesn’t come, they go back to the leg rubbing to re-start the process.

Suppose I popped out to buy a loaf of bread one day and found an angry mob outside the supermarket. There was no food on the shelves. So global climate change hadn’t been just a TV program after all, although how it could affect a whole shop I’d have no idea. I’d performed all the proper rites: got my qualifications, taken a job, earned my salary, and now I couldn’t complete the ritual because nobody would exchange my money for the things I needed. I’d be as helpless and confused as a cat without its dinner.

Suppose I turned on the tap and no water came out? Or turned on the TV and found nothing to watch? Could any of this, somewhere down the line, be traced to lack of sausages?

“I don’t think there’s a plan,” I said. “I’ve just convinced myself that bad things will happen if I don’t perform certain actions, like going to the factory.”

“And will they?”

“I really don’t know, Algy.” I tried to remember what I’d done at the factory the day before. I’d spoken to several people about their jobs, but mostly I was just reassuring them, not telling them anything new. I made a few small decisions that others could perfectly well have made themselves. Maybe I was afraid that if I stopped going in, people would discover that the factory ran perfectly well without me? Then what would I do? People like to feel they are a vital part of something.

I dolloped the scrambled eggs on to some pieces of toast and Algy and I sat down to eat. One of the pleasures of being a human was that you didn’t have to think very much. Hardly at all, in fact. I knew most people would just ignore Algy and continue as if the question had never been asked, trusting they’d always get their dinners because so far they always had, but some part of me was still angel and I couldn’t let it go until I had a satisfactory answer.

“People live by routine and ritual,” I was thinking aloud. “They teach their kids the proper way to behave from an early age. For instance, they might take them to Mechanical Wonderworld which, as every parent knows, kids love. The kids get exhausted with walking and bored with queuing. The Robby Rabbit they were assured would be there to greet them turns out to be a grown-up in a grotesque costume with a monstrous plastic head. This ugly adult doesn’t share their private hopes and dreams in a charming woodland setting, but assaults them with patronising questions in an embarrassingly public place. The parents get fed up with their kids who are steadfastly refusing to have the good time they’ve paid good money for; the kids just want to go home. And what do they learn from this?”

“Never to go there again?” suggested Algy.

“Not a chance. They’ll be back in a few weeks’ time. The adults, you see, know that named and paid-for entertainments are far more valuable and exciting for kids than anything they might get for nothing. It’s just that their own kids are such ungrateful little bastards and refuse to do what’s right. They want to tell their friends they’ve been to Mechanical Wonderworld so their friends know what good parents they are. If asked, they’ll say their kids loved it, but got a bit tired towards the end. They aren’t consciously lying, it just doesn’t suit them to see the truth. They can’t stop until they’ve taught their kids how to be good consumers. And their kids will, in their turn, subject their own kids to similar horrors and disappointments.”

“Ah,” said Algy thoughtfully. “And they do this without a script? Nobody makes them do it? I still don’t understand why.”

“Humans don’t understand themselves or each other, so what chance have you and I got? They are social animals so the most important thing to them is to do as everybody else does. It’s their only point of reference. Maybe it’s what makes everything possible – they have to work together without having a clue what anybody else is doing. There is no master controller keeping the shops, taps and TV full. It’s just that everybody, somehow, does their own little part. Most of it might be futile and ridiculous, some positively harmful, but as long as the tiny amount of useful stuff gets done they'll survive. Those doing the useless stuff aren’t humiliated because nobody’s sure what’s useful and what isn’t.”

“I thought everyone here was having fun,” said Algy sadly. “It’s such a nice place, at least the bits of it I’ve seen so far. Sun and trees and pubs and traffic lights and snooker and beds... I could have a lot of fun here.”

“Humans believe that too, at least at the start. In their early years they believe that anything is possible and there are no limits to what they might do. Then, bit by bit, it all falls away. Maybe lack of education cuts out most of what they might have achieved. Then they get the wrong kind of experience, which limits them further. Finally their bodies give out until nothing is possible – they can’t even dress themselves. I’ve often thought there must be a point at which their hopes and expectations match what’s really possible. The point where the line of hope crosses the line of possibility - if I could come up with a fancy name for it I could start a new religion.”

“Ah, so religion isn’t bad?”

“It’s certainly very profitable. Scientology’s been done, so maybe I’ll call mine Mathematology. Do a leaflet drop in Hollywood and I could be rich!”

“Can I help?”

“I wasn’t serious, Algy. I have a sausage factory to run. I don’t know anything about starting religions.”

“You said you weren’t tied to a script. Prove it! I like your religion and I want to be saved.”

“Alright then,” I said. “You go off and write some holy scriptures. Think of some secret knowledge our believers will have to pay for. Look to Scientology for inspiration. They’ve got a malign dwarf who transported the souls of space criminals to secret locations outside ten or more kebab shops, or something of the sort. You have to be a level three and have a very good credit rating indeed to acquire knowledge like that. Money, money, money.”

I thought that was the last I’d hear of it. Little did I know.