Slithy Tove

After two days of nearly continuous rain everywhere is oozing and squelching - as it should be in late November. I park up outside the Post Office in Greens Norton (Wow! They have a Post Office!), and cross the green to the Bradden Road, before turning left up the lane towards the seventeenth century house known as 'Bengal'. A couple of bored horses are sitting by a large puddle the other side of the first stile, but can't be bothered to stir themselves as I clamber past. As I always do, I say hello, to reassure myself as much as to make new equine friends. The path leads on through a newly planted copse (good on you, landowner!) and out onto sheep fields, crossing the just discernible line of an old railway, until I'm forced to muddy myself thoroughly in a soft loamy sog which takes me to a second disused line - the one which used to chug from Towcester to Banbury via Wappenham. To my left is the River Tove, and in front of me is Abthorpe. St John the Baptist's church is on on a mound, dead centre of the lovely village green: a mystery of a building really, because it's very obviously largely Victorian, although the siting speaks of a long history. I divest myself of my caked boots and spend twenty minutes inside, eating my sandwiches at a craft table laid out behind the organ.

I notice that very early in his clerical career, during the nineteen fifties, the Reverend Pat Hamerton was an incumbent here. I knew him when he was in charge at Abington, and for the craic used to invite him into my classroom from time to time, not because he was particularly riveting in what he said about being a vicar, but because he was the living spitten image of Ronnie Corbett, visually and in voice tone. The kids were inevitably stunned by my apparent show-biz contacts, which was always very childishly gratifying. At least it got me half an hour's peace while they worked out what was going on. Later on, my friend Liz Legge was in panto with the real Ronnie who was exemplarily delightful and chivalrous. And since they had to dance together (she principal girl, he, inevitably, Buttons), he was perfectly matched to Liz's diminutive stature.

Another Abthorpe resident, still evidently going strong, is John Riches, who writes up the village news on-line. John was the headteacher of Emmanuel church school in the era when Northampton boasted Middle Schoools as part of a three-tier system. I was one of his governors for a while. Amusingly contrasted to Hamerton/Corbett, John is immensely tall - probably six feet ten in his prime. If we were both standing up, I remember conversations were always a strain on the neck muscles. Avery nice and good man.

Beyond Abthorpe, attempts at maintaining the footpaths in the direction of Towcester seem to have been abandoned. There are occasional vague waymarks but it seems no one walks the fields hereabouts, so no one bothers to help the few of us who do. Rather than give my quads a work-out treading the tilth, somewhat in the manner of a knight on a chess board I use the field margins to make my way to Handley Park Farm and then onto Mileoak. This is a land of horsey-culture, with many horse boxes and much electrified fencing('busbars' seem to be the name for the familiar fabric 'hot' boundary markers) and the occasional show-jumping course arranged around a paddock. But in the nineteen fifties Mileoak was celebrated as the site of a huge Roman villa, possibly built in three storeys like the more famous one at Chedworth. Since then, several other better preserved villas have been found in the West Country, and now there's nothing on the surface to betray the existence of Mileoak mansion, not even a reference on the OS map.

As any schoolgirl would guess from the name, Towcester is an ancient Roman town ('Lactodorum'). The pronunciation of the modern name is perhaps eccentric though well-known to many British people because of the adjoining race course, but for any readers from further afield, please show your local savoir-faire by saying it as 'Toaster'. The Electricity Board pulled down the last bits of free standing Roman wall in the nineteen eighties, which they should never have been allowed to do, but there's lots of archaeology close to the surface here, and of course Watling Street, now the A5, runs slap bang through the middle of town.

I go to Towcester from time to time in my capacity as Bishop's Visitor to the splendid C. of E. primary school. The school is a joyful place, buzzing with good endeavour and humour. It's losing its excellent headteacher, Richard Camp, next summer, but I'm hopeful the school will survive the loss and go on brightly into the future. I've never been into St. Lawrence's church before, and when I do, I'm hugely impressed by the building and its atmosphere. It's an imposing, even stately edifice in the Perpendicular Style, built on a Roman site which may itself have been a temple. As Peter Ackroyd has observed, there's often a very persistent continuity in the use to which geographical sites are put. As at Earls Barton, there's a bury very close to the church, both of them lying on the very edge of town because of the contiguity with Easton Neston Park. Inside the church I read a psalm, and say hello to two casual visitors and a lady tending the flowers, whose name I forget to ask (the lady, not the flowers!)

I have a coffee at the Waitrose which is tucked behind the first row of shops on Watling St., near the rather good museum, and have a brief, annoying spat with the woman serving me. The details are unimportant, but once more raise questions for me about the willingness or otherwise of supermarkets to employ sufficient staff, and therefore how hard those that are employed have to work, and what one should expect in terms of courtesy when a business makes special play of how wonderful their people are. I come away alarmed by how angry I am, particularly when I'm ignored. It doesn't take much to get me going.

I'm sorry if I've rabbited on about this before, but I wonder how widespread such anger is among us all now. It's in me, because I'm the age I am, and therefore dealing with the disappointments of late middle-age and incipient old age. I also feel powerless in the face of local and national forces beyond my control, and my constant awareness of what's going on through the various media. It's one thing to feel shocked when I hear from nice Jackie my hairdresser of yet another audacious but un-nerving burglary in the village by a gang of men, but then there's the knowing how often this pattern has been repeated and being able to see on the net pictures of masked individuals attempting the same thing in another local garden last year. And then of course there's the grim, relentless litany of international events. None of this excuses bad behaviour on my part, but in order to improve, I have to understand.

Does any of this ring bells with you?

As a town, Towcester, odi et amo. I love the history, but deplore some of what I see, without having much of a solution. On the northern edge, the A43 by-pass is being upgraded, but it's taking an age to complete, and woe to any pedestrian attempting entry to the town by the route I took today, There's new development on the fringes and bits in the town centre too: I hope it'll be sensitively done. The town exists because of the road, but the A5 is often congested, and hopelessly so when used as a diversion because of trouble on the M1. There's talk of a north-south by-pass too, but if that happens, as can be seen elsewhere, it'll give the planners carte-blanche to infill and develop inside the new road, which will further devalue the town's character as surely as it may superficially boost its economy.

And when I try to leave town today to return to Greens Norton, it turns out to be rather difficult to achieve. I can see a path on the map which might do the job: it turns out to be footpath S30 or some such. The entrance is elusive but eventually I find a waymark beside the fire station pointing through a piece of waste ground, In a hundred metres or so the path peters out round the back of Sponne School. I retrace my steps and see a notice attached to the fence. The path has been stopped, by order of the Council. No reason given. I attempt an exit another way, but am confronted by a locked gate. I walk back to the crossroads, fuming, and go west on the road until I see a sign to the Pocket Park. The map shows another path taking me where I want to go, but the signs give out in the middle of a new-ish housing estate. Before engaging with this problem, I catch sight of a second notice attached to a lamp-post. This repeats that S30 has been stopped (quite recently - only this autumn) but also gives me a reason. It is apparently 'unnecessary'. Out loud I cry 'Well it's pretty (expletive deleted) necessary to me right now' , but fortunately there's no one to hear. Necessity, it seems to me, is not always an appropriate quality of footpaths.

One last thing. In order to finally escape the clutches of Towcester, when I eventually locate the vestiges of S30, it deposits me on the verge of the A43, where yet again I have to risk life and limb to gain the fieldpath beyond. How very American. There is now no need (official!) nor reasonable possibility of safely walking the two miles from Towcester to Greens Norton except in the face of oncoming traffic up the main road. So, go by car.

Stats man.  16 km. 5 hours. 6-8 degrees C. Dry. Weak but chilly occasional easterly breeze. Two open churches. Nineteen stiles, ten gates, three footbridges across the Tove. One green woodpecker. One particularly cheeky young male blackbird. Three unsolicited happy greetings en route. One apparently demagnetised compass (how did that happen?)

Dear Lord
I am struggling with the idea:
This 'Kingdom of Heaven'.
I don't relate to our royal family.
I mean, I like the Queen, I think.
But even then I can't imagine
Her sitting down to tea at our house
Or sharing a joke about Alexander Armstrong.
And with one or two exceptions
Her predecessors were a rum bunch
Bad, mad or incompetent.
I like the idea of a perfect King
And if there were such a thing
Maybe I'd be happy to be a loyal subject
Although knowing how stroppy I am
Maybe not.
So what do I do
with this powerful Kingdom metaphor?
Back to the Bible I suppose.
The kingdom of heaven is like...
Fill in the gaps.
I'm sorry this is more of a letter than a prayer.
Expecting your answer.

Yours
Vince

Missed on a previous walk: St. Augustine's: Caldecote.