A few months ago, a crack appeared in the ceiling at the bottom of our stairs. It was not a big crack and so, obviously, I did the Obvious Thing.
I ignored it. Because that always works.
Then, a few weeks ago, the crack started to widen. A Lot.
And as it widened, the ceiling started to sag until the whole thing came to resemble some sort of inverted dish or bowl with a kind of gravity-defying Grand Canyon slashed across it.
I started to wonder how long it might be until the whole thing collapsed.
Now, I am not a prophet. Nor do I know the tolerances of old plaster and wood chip, so this was not a future I was equipped to predict.
The Bible offers sound advice on prophecy for those of us who are not actually prophets.
“No one knows what is to happen,” it reminds us, “and who can tell anyone what the future holds?”
But the Bible also says, ““The wise among the people shall give understanding to many.” So I called a plasterer. In fact, I called two.
And they both laughed when they saw my ceiling.
‘I wouldn’t want to be stood there when that comes down’ was the gist of what they said.
The thing about predicting the future is that, even with expert knowledge, it is immensely hard to do.
This year has been an object lesson in that unhappy truth. Predicted economic outcomes, predicted infection rates, predicted grades have all proven wildly, often catastrophically inaccurate.
But wherever possible, it has still proven sensible to listen to people who actually know what they’re talking about. So I listen to my doctor if I am sick. I listen to my partner, Susie, if I’m puzzled by art history. When it’s a theological question, I listen to my daughter, Miriam.
And I listened to the plasterers, who were wise enough not to try to predict how long the ceiling would last – but experienced enough to tell me to get it fixed sooner rather than later.
At about three o’clock this morning it actually fell down; so I’m getting it fixed very soon indeed.
I know I’m not the only one who has been trying to see through the murk lately to know when the ceiling will collapse. Ceilings seem to be collapsing all around us. But I hope that next time a gaping hole appears anywhere in my life I’ll have the sense to call a plasterer before it’s too late.
I adjusted this one at the last minute to incorporate the overnight news of the ceiling’s demise. That first collapse, though, only involved about a quarter of the whole area. A couple of days later, mercifully just after I’d put up dust sheeting all round the stairs and hallway, the rest came down with an apocalyptic crash. It’s all better now.
The image is a detail of Gustave Doré’s Death of Samson, from his 241 wood-engraved illustrations for the Grand Bible de Tours, of 1866. The Grand Bible de Tours was a luxury edition of the 1843 French translation of the Vulgate.
This is the last of 140 Pause for Thought scripts I’ve written so far. I’ll keep posting more as they come up, but I’m also going to start posting other short pieces written for other contexts or simply for here.