Hello, team. I have launched a publication on Substack. The name of the publication My Special Interest. The idea is to get sh*t on the page, or get whatever’s already on the page out into the open. Otherwise it will sit and gather dust, and My Special Interest is not about gathering dust. It is about the joy of learning, leaning in, and turning towards.

I will keep putting stuff on ONURBICYCLE. It will continue to be a personal blog for ditties, poems, short stories, articles, and updates about the trip. Some of what goes on Substack will also go here, possibly in abridged form. The Substack publication is specifically for longer form nonfiction pieces on a range subjects including early religion, myth, UFOs, messianism/environmentalism, and meditation/consciousness – and short pieces of fiction relating to the life of Jesus and other much-mythologised figures.

It is/will be an ongoing project, and I invite any and all contributions, ideas and feedback.

I just posted an introduction to the publication, which you can find here. The publication link for My Special Interest is here. The first instalment follows!

Mary tells Joseph

Mary blinked lightly in the silence. Wood dust hung in the air – he hadn’t cleaned. Joseph, her husband-to-be, a carpenter with hands heavy and thick with scars, heaved his body up from the table and, rising, caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that hung on the wall, darkwood-framed. His eyes were wet and confused. The familiar fire grew inside him, the thirst. He longed for a tonic, a brew, something to dull the senses.

‘We made a vow,’ he said, his voice breaking, ‘both of us. You betrothed yourself to me.’

‘And you to me,’ she said. Mary wept. She understood. She couldn’t explain it any better than she already had. It sounded absurd, and yet there it was.

His mind raced through possibilities she had already considered. They would have to divorce; their betrothal was legally binding. A baby would bring scandal and ruin. Worse still, without his protection, she would be regarded as an adultress. Justice would stone her to death. Joseph continued to watch himself in the mirror, felt the temperature rise inside his chest. He saw what would become of him.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ His eyes searched for hers.

‘I’m four months along, only,’ she said. ‘He told me to go.’ He, Him. And before Joseph could say anything, ‘Elizabeth is pregnant too.’

‘Elizabeth?’ He turned to face her. Mary looked up from the table. She had been carving it nervously with her fingernails and now, meeting her partner’s gaze, she picked clumps of wood out from underneath them. In the orange glow of a modest fire he shone like a demigod, trembling with rage.

‘Joseph, I told you where I was going. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten.’ But they were getting off topic. ‘I know it’s hard to believe.’

‘Not only for me,’ he reminded her.

‘I know.’ She did know. It had taken her long enough – of course she’d denied it, but that was before it had become a physical thing, tangible, with legs. She dreaded to think of the neighbours. ‘But they will,’ she said, ‘believe, I mean,’ as much to try to convince herself as to win him over. ‘If I tell them and you tell them, soon enough they will. The one who told me said he is to be great.’

‘And you believed it?’

‘I gave my consent, didn’t I?’

‘Did you? Didn’t you? What do I know?’ Joseph was incredulous. ‘What if you hadn’t?’ he wanted to know. ‘What if you had said “no”?’

‘To God?’

But that wasn’t the point. So when each went to bed that night in separate beds, under different roofs, it was he who faced a choice. She had already made hers.

Five months later, surrounded by shepherds, farm animals and magi, Mary gave birth to a boy. She wrapped him in swaddling bands and named him Jesus.