Monday 12 June 2017

Muddling through

In the planning, everything on a map seems so straightforward - that path, then that track, past the stand of trees with that stream always to the right. But in Harold Macmillan's somewhat overworked phrase: 'Events, dear boy...'

The previous day was doleful, both because of the confused, messy post-election political situation, so much inflamed by the gleeful, prurient machinations of the press, and because later on we heard that an old friend had passed away earlier in the week, taken too early by cancer, one of the young dancers who forty years ago had been part of our company as we toured Israel. So it's a relief to be out in the open, shaking off the effects of sadness, intrigue, disinformation and alcohol.

There's a weather spike, one of those brief day-long meteorological variations which seem to me to be more frequent. As I leave Irthlingborough eastwards it's very warm and there's a heavy, gusty wind rushing up from the south-west. I'm heavy-legged as I acclimatise, following the Nene Way out of town.

Nature is abundantly doing its thing. Black-headed gulls dip playfully towards the glistening river against the breeze, snapping up insects as they go, before returning at breakneck swooping speed on the extra pairs of wings the gale gives them. Either side of the carefully cut grassy path, where the nettles stand neck high, a thousand kingfisher-blue damsel flies dart and dive. Here and there small tortoiseshell butterflies join the dance. Little pink and white convolvuli poke up between the blades of grass. I hear the distant call of a rare cuckoo, as comforting a childhood memory as chocolate cake. A field of barley ripples silver in the wind.


As I walk I think. (A Cartesian variation!) I could have voted for any of the three main parties with equally good logic, and have never felt as disenchanted with all of them as I do now. Maybe I have a species of what Sartre called 'La Nausee'?  How about you?

What weight should I as a Christian apply to the fact that Teresa May is a Christian? Does it make any difference to me at all? It should mean that our values, hers and mine, might be somewhere in synch. But how could one tell through the froth and spin of party and press releases, the need to pitch a line, any line, that would reel in the voters? My gut instincts are for the left, but they seem like a bunch of incompetent chancers. 48 hours after the event I'm still metaphorically (and sometimes literally) shaking my head. (Since time of writing, news has broken about Tim Farron's resignation, which raises other questions about how people of faith stand in relation to political process)

A footbridge isn't any longer where it once was, so I miss the footpath up to Little Addington: a trifling presentiment of what's to come later in the afternoon. Next to a smart allotment (for benefit of clergy?) is St. Mary the Virgin's Church. I eat a sandwich by the back porch in which I see a dusty and not very recently used Alesis electronic drum kit. Relic from a defunct worship band? Churchwarden's guilty pleasure? Unwanted gift?

After GB in the Bell pub, where drinks aren't apparently much of a priority (the gentlemen barmen look most disappointed that I'm not staying for lunch, desperate even, there being no other takers), I press on to Great Addington past the playing field shared by the two villages. It has a lovely view down over the valley to enjoy as one exercises. I pass the house owned by John and Ruth Wayman, whose son Robbie was a childhood friend of our Matt. Robbie is now an airline pilot, which I find slightly scary for reasons with which many parents will identify. Our lives in their hands. That's the way of things, folks, and the more so with each decade we survive.

Even in a regional town, kids go on to do extraordinary things in our vivid and brave new world. Back in the nineteen seventies at the School for Girls in Northampton, Suzanne Skey was perhaps never going to set things alight academically, but she had a great and sensitive skill as a dancer, sufficient to carry her on to a coveted place at the London School of Contemporary Dance. Who'd be a dancer? They practise their art through a constant background noise of injury and discomfort for little in the way of financial reward, and as with all athletes, time at the top can be short. We know little of Sue's subsequent career, but it was certainly varied and enabled her to see the world, dancing in what would now be described as burlesque in Paris (she loved the costumes) and spending some time being sawn in half by her boyfriend in a Mexican circus.

All Saints at Great Addington is open, and inside I enjoy the coffee maker placed beside the pulpit - to stimulate the preacher or keep the congregation awake? - and the remnant of the staircase up to the long ago-removed rood screen. On the wall there are photographs of Uganda where missionaries Jane and Derek Waller have been after leaving South Sudan. These two brave people have now taken up an invitation to serve in Madagascar, where hopefully life will be less threatening and more stable. Africa seems to get into the hearts of some, like our old friends the Glovers, and won't let them go. As with so much else in 2017, conceptually the notion of 'mission work' now seems very complicated. There's aid and relief work in all its many forms, and there's the legacy of colonialism, and there are questions abut who should be preaching to whom, as Africans sometimes point out. And there are many interfaces between the Muslim and Christian worlds, in Birmingham as well as in Kampala.


Away from Great Addington, everything is at first peachy, though walking westwards into the increasingly robust wind is becoming strenuous activity. The pull up to lonely Poplar's Farm (is this correct use of the apostrophe, OS? Did it once belong to a Mr. or Mrs. Poplar? At any rate, it's currently refitted and vacant!) is a hard one, considering it's only a rise of 150 feet at most. There are lots of windmills hereabouts, which tells you something, as does the lack of trees. There's nothing to break the force of a gale. But as I start to zig-zag across the countryside, avoiding the need to risk life and limb along the main road, things go awry. All the fields here are arable: rapeseed, barley and wheat, and there are very few gates and stiles as a result, which means there are very few waymarks. And unusually the topology as I'm viewing it doesn't match the map at all in terms of trees and field boundaries. I turn left too early, and convince myself that the 'paths' I'm following along the field margins match the cartological plan. But by the time I twig that I'm very much mistaken (and then only by intermittent sight of the water tower at Finedon which is presenting itself in the 'wrong' position), the configuration of fields and ditches sets me a problem solved only by a series of dodgy moves through dense hedges and relentlessly unyielding crops which leaves me frustrated and sweary. Eventually I complete my yomp into Finedon along the heavily trafficked A6. Thankfully there's a cycle track/footpath, or else I'd really be in trouble.

Finedon was once called Tingdene, which I rather like. I don't know what to make of it. I've been through the place often enough on the main roads, but never stopped to look. More than most places of its size there's almost a sense of 'town and gown'. There are areas along and just off the 'A' roads which are clearly of the working people, and sometimes what's on offer through the shop fronts reflects that. But behind the popular façade there are lovely old houses in various vernacular building styles, and close by you'll find antique shops, posh beauty parlours and an upmarket funeral directors' - just past the Conservative Club, should you feel the need. And the Vicar of graciously proportioned St. Mary's is Richard Coles, radio presenter, author, former keyboard player with chart-topping Communards and priest. He is, though he might not thank me for saying so, rapidly turning into a national treasure. An energetic chap too. He's just become Chancellor of the University of Northampton. Sue and I swapped smiles with him in Waitrose the other day, so although he doesn't know me from Adam, we're almost mates, me and Richard. The only problem is, we need more clergy like him. I suspect we might not agree about a lot of things, but no matter. He can't carry the burden of being the acceptable face of public Anglicanism all on his own. Well, him and Justin, I suppose. And John. Try Richard's recent book: 'Bringing in the sheaves'. It would make a fantastic study for housegroups, at least in my Fantasy Parish Church...


                              For the ashes of Dr Who fans: funeral directors': Finedon


I think I'm on the home stretch now, walking back over the hill to Irthlingborough past what I presume is a shaft to the tunnel between the two towns referred to a couple of posts ago. But even now, when the line of the path should be obvious, veering away on a slight angle from an overhead power line, I get on the wrong side of a hedge and pay for it with an exhausting trudge along two sides of a field sown with rape right up to its deeply ditched boundaries. Eventually I emerge near the cricket club where I stop and watch a few overs to calm myself down. The batting is efficient, the bowling workmanlike and the fielding elderly even though this is Division Two of the County League. The car park is full of Audis and Mercs. I take away the memory of a beautiful pull for four through midwicket, a shot I would have loved to have been able to play but never could.

Stats man:  23 km. 7 hours. 22 degrees C. Wind gusting 40 mph. 3 stiles. 5 gates (and two of those church ones!) No one to talk to: everyone's head is down, either to cut through the wind or because they too are suffering from political nausea.

Lord
From where we are
We see no plan
No solutions
Little mercy
Scant integrity.
We trust
That reality
Is not as we perceive it
Or that our reality
Is a mere illusion.
But please Lord,
Give us a glimpse of the truth
At least in part
For without a vision
Your people may perish.
Amen.

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