Failings

My father (who was, as I think I've mentioned, a violent and unpleasant man) always told me I was a born failure. It's true that my reign as Tetrarch wasn't without its hiccups. I got into a terrible fight with the King of Nabataea over a girl (typical me!) and did rather come off the worse. And I suppose I can't help but admit that my dealings with early Christians haven't exactly covered me in glory - who knew that those hairy prophets would have such global appeal?! I tell you, even on a silver platter, John the Baptist's head wasn't much to look at. All that outdoor living had been most unkind to his skin.

And I suppose that in a way, one could say that I failed at dieing. The details are still hazy in my memory. I remember hurling a last curse at my horrid ceiling, thrashing about a bit, and then nothing. Then it's like a dream, and yet I had a sense of time passing - of the years and centuries that passed as I was who knows where. Then a great blank, until all of a sudden, I wake up in a ground-floor flat in North London, speaking a language not my own, with a girl beside me with whom I'm clearly entagled, and around me the various trappings of a life that has nothing to do with Herod Antipas, but of which I am clearly the new - what shall I say - director?

My body is similarly alien, all pale and flabby and outlandishly tall (though so is everyone else these days it seems), and my mind, though still recognizably my own, is full of strange furniture, as if psychic squatters had taken posession while I was out, and left in a hurry when they heard me coming back. I'm now, it appears, afraid of spiders, which is very irritating. On the upside, I do now seem to be able to play the violin.

But this is all distraction. Failure is on my mind today, because it appears I may have a job. Today we'll see, but the practicalities of rent and eating and money - and generally no longer having an army of servants and slaves to attend on me and cook me dinner and all that - have made it clear to me that this, at least, is something at which I must not fail.