I know it’s an overused expression, but I tell you, it’s positively Kafkaesque!

I recently discovered that I was paying over the odds to a certain anti-virus software company, being billed twice, once for a bog standard package, and once for a state-of-the-art all-bells-and-whistles piece of sophistication. I entered a chat room, and had a lengthy discussion with a robot, who I have to say was not particularly helpful, I daresay because it didn’t recognise the peculiar character of my plight. So I excused myself, and got on the blower. Having worked my way, via keypad, through an exhaustive menu, I was quite surprised finally to commence a conversation with a real human being. We agreed that the sophisticated package was superfluous to my needs; it was cancelled, and I was refunded.

Unfortunately the bog standard package also seemed to get cancelled (without the refund). I was back in the chat room, but to no avail. I was getting daily emails to tell me I was “unprotected”, To be honest, I couldn’t face another trawl through the menus for another phone call, so I gave up. Inevitably, therefore, I have become “infected”. Yesterday evening my computer started making seriously alarming noises. I thought my integrated smoke alarm system had gone off. The various tocsins were clearly designed to induce a sense of panic. I was invited to renew my subscription. So this morning I bit the bullet and proceeded so to do. I opted for the cheapest option, a year’s subscription being of the order of a pony, as our Cockney cousins would have it. The transaction appeared to proceed smoothly, all the way to the last hurdle. Having entered my credit card details, “they” (a Kafkaesque word if ever there was one) proposed to send a six a digit code to my mobile phone. It never came.

“Transaction failed. Try again later.” I did so, to no avail.

Yesterday, as it so happened, the minister in Dunblane Cathedral preached a sermon on the topic of “perseverence”. His text was from Luke, and concerned the parable of the poor widow who repeatedly put herself before a judge in an attempt to right a wrong, an injustice, that had been inflicted upon her. The judge was a heartless man, and couldn’t have cared less. But the widow was so persistent that in the end he grew weary, and granted her request, just so that he could have some peace. It’s all reminiscent of another story about a man who bangs on his neighbour’s door at dead of night in request of sustenance. The man who has been rudely awakened accedes to the request simply because he has been importuned. Now, says Jesus, how much more will our loving heavenly father heed our petitions?

So I took this all to heart, and persevered. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.

“Transaction failed. Try again later.”

Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel sing a beautiful song, “Don’t give up”, and I have an inspirational fridge magnet that says, “Never give up”. And Winston said to the boys at Harrow, “Never give in, never give in, never never never…” But even Winston added a rider, something like “save for considerations of common sense.” I’m not convinced that that heartless judge would have changed his mind about the widow. I’m not even sure he would have noticed her existence. The pivotal episode of Kafka’s “The Trial” occurs in a cathedral, and concerns the story of a man who spends a lifetime “going to law”, sitting in a waiting room outside a door which will grant him access to justice. At the end of his life he asks the doorman why it is that in all the time he has been waiting, he has never encountered another supplicant. It is because, he is told, this door has been specifically and exclusively created for him, and now, says the doorman, “I am going to close it.”

There’s another piece of biblical advice that rather contradicts the perseverence trope.

I must publish now, mid-flow, for reasons that I will explain.

Back soon!