The best of all possible starts

IDECIDED TO move house at the beginning of the year, so I set off for Winchester to haunt the estate agents for the afternoon. I'd hardly arrived when a blue van screeched to a halt in the parking space beside me, throbbing with "rock music".
I only had a tenner so I was forced to ask Elvis for change or risk being clamped. Although he was busy cramming a drum kit into the back of his van, he dropped everything and emptied his pockets to help me. When it was obvious he couldn't change my note he insisted on giving me the 30p I needed. "What's the world coming to if we can't help one another," he said.
I was mortified. I simply didnt know how to react, so I didn't. I just mumbled an embarrassed thank you, bought my pay-and-display ticket and stuck it on the car. Two minutes later I pulled off a brilliant side step to avoid two NSPCC collectors and jinked across the road into the estate agents. I visited every agent in the town without once getting caught.
I went to a building site for lunch. The local paper had announced a cheese and wine reception to celebrate the opening of a new show house.
While discussing the merits and the demerits of having the downstairs cloakroom off the utility room rather than the hall, I was downing glasses of vin de plonk and wolfing as many nibbles as I could lay my hands on. Then 1 dashed off to Asda to scramble for the Saturdaynight bargains just before closing time.
I'm not normally such a Scrooge. I used to have a reputation for being generous, at least to my friends, but the little windfall from granddad changed all that. It held out the possibility of escaping from the little square box with plastic windows on the housing estate where I live, escaping from the edge of the industrial estate, from the foul pollution by day and the constant drumming by night from the chemical factory. But even granddad's little nest egg was limited; it could only stretch to the house of my dreams with a lot of imagination and lots more scrimping and saving.
I suppose the truth of the matter is that although the
INNER BY D TORKI
house is on the small side it has all I need. The problem is that it doesn't really fit in with my selfimage, even though know that most of my friends whose homes do fit in with their self-images on the outside have to live like paupers on the inside.
Self-images can be very expensive. I began to realise that I couldn't afford one. I'd never be able to travel or eat out, I wouldn't even be able to vote as I would like. There's only one party that promises to keep me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed!
limy telly hadn't broken down that morning and if I hadn't left my glasses in the show house in the afternoon, I wouldn't have spent the evening reviewing that pathetic little performance in Winchester. But I did, and thanks to Elvis it made me think. It made me think I needed to review my daily performances a little more regularly. It's made me pray too for the help I needed before my ego got totally out of hand and, apart from anything else, landed me in
the debtors prison instead of the country cottage I've been dreaming about.
So I made a Lenten resolution, to introduce an examination of conscience into my daily routine, to see if I could get a few inches off my ego by Easter. If I can only keep it down to average size there's no reason why I can't stay here for the rest of my life.
Now I don't want to start preaching to others but I promise you, you'll never regret it if you just spent a few minutes a day reviewing your performances the previous day. It will do wonders for your ego. Your family won't recognise you within a week or two, and you might even find you've got some money to spare for those who've got far more important things to worry about than their selfimage.
I know that seeing the man I really am won't give me the strength to become the man I ought to be, but at least it makes me turn to the only one who can. St Paul says that's the best possible of all starts so that's something. After all, you can't get anywhere if you don't know where to start! t *Taken from David Torldngton's latest book: A New Beginning, a Aideways look at the 3piritrudiift, published br orr Available in All Christian bookshops.