The Big Book showed me that I wasn't the special snowflake I thought I was - some people might find that scary or horrible I suppose as it kinda takes some excuses away. BUT it gives something far better than special-snowflakishness. Hope! That there was a way to change so I didn't have to go round alternately shoving it in peoples face that I was horrible and was going to say / do / think horrible things regardless of them, and then feeling lonely as hell, nursing my persecution-complex because I felt so not-enough. That's just me though.
Anyway..... I thought of this thread in the week - I'd stopped for coffee in this fairly normal (bit grotty looking from the outside, but fine one I was in) cafe, and they had a sign saying that you could sit upstairs, OR go sit downstairs in their 12th century crypt. I went down and had a look and the guy running the place came down as well. He was telling me the little they know about it. He showed me some remains of very old paint under a light which he reckons was put there to show that it was a safe hiding place when Oliver Cromwell and his men were rampaging the city in the 1600s. He showed me the blocked up archway that they say would once have led to other parts of the cathedral. Apparently when the city was hit by a disease (black death around 1360s) there were so many bodies with 40 - 50% of the population being wiped out, that they only stored the minimum percentage that they HAD to. This worked out to be the skull and left arm. So that's what they put down there. Years and years later someone came along and found all those bones expecting whole skeletons but it was just arms and heads.
It was a pretty cool room - even though it was allowed and lit and all. If I ever have a party for anything (doubtful) I intend for it to be there. Afternoon tea in the crypt.
BB