Sunday 22 September 2019

Ecclesiastes


Way before Jesus was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, a curmudgeonly, reassuring voice echoes down the corridors of time: ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’ Moan, moan. Whinge, whinge. There’s been a half-empty glass ever since man/woman looked at a hand and knew it to be his/her own.

 The band ‘Black Midi’ were up for a Mercury music prize this week for their album ‘Schlagenheim’. Apparently people were surprised a few weeks ago when Radio 6 DJ Steve Lamacq invited them to take his show up to the top of the hour with ten minutes of musical freestyle. No one does that anymore. Fifty years ago…Soft Machine…Grateful Dead anyone? Well at least on John Peel’s Perfumed Garden or Radio 1’s Top Gear (no connection with  Jeremy Clarkson or Andrew Flintoff). Nothing new under the sun.

 That this is so presents a dilemma for contemporary artists of all genres.  And as a matter of fact causes a problem in the context of today’s media-driven politics and religion.

 


Warmington is thrumming as I leave the car outside St. Mary’s and follow the Nene Way where it threads its way through the back streets towards the hamlet of Eaglethorpe. There’s a whole lotta building goin’ on. The road’s being patched, diggers and lorries are moving in and out of the new little housing development beside Hautboy Lane. And past the newsagents’ and the butchers’ shop (yes, Warmington still has one!) the road is allegedly closed for both traffic and pedestrians because there’s ‘scaffolding in the road’. Avoiding the workmen’s beady eyes, I ignore this OTT piece of H&S blather and hold my line – ‘at my own risk’, of course. Where the path burrows under the A605, there’s a mural extolling the local environmental delights, the mill on the Nene, the birds and cattle, the fact that there’s a Beaker burial close by. The Nene Way angles across the water meadows towards the sluice gates, and already the elegant tower of Fotheringhay’s church is drawing the eye. Simon Jenkins says: ‘(a)float on its hill above the River Nene, a galleon of Perpendicular on a sea of corn…’  



I have to slog across a ridge and furrow field to avoid a herd of cattle. By a water trough near the stile, a mummy cow shields her two calves and stares me down, head slightly lowered. I’m always holding my breath in these situations. There was another report in the press this week of an elderly lady (admittedly twenty years senior to me, and in company of a dog which may have been misbehaving) who was trampled to death by some Belted Galloways, a breed about whose temperament you can read differing opinions.  But whatever, maternal instinct under perceived threat is something of which to be wary in all animals, human or otherwise.

 I breast the slight rise on the track down towards Fotheringhay castle, and climb the mound of its robbed-out keep by a path steep enough to make my ankles complain. You know the story. Sir Anthony Babington wrote Mary Stuart a note trying to enlist her support for an assassination attempt on Elizabeth, with the aim of restoring an English Catholic monarchy. Mary stopped short of endorsing murder, but lent her weight to regime change. Babington was executed, and Mary exiled to the castle at Fotheringhay. Subsequently Elizabeth maintained that she was tricked into signing Mary’s death warrant. Whatever the truth of that, Mary was beheaded in the castle on the 8th February 1587, a poignant, tragic story, all the more awful for the mess the executioner made of his job.  Of course these events have been fertile ground for romanticised historical films and novels, and it’s been amusing to see ill-researched versions (usually originating in the US) which sketch mountains as a backdrop for the final scenes in Mary’s life. Nay, mi duck, there’s not a hill worth speaking about in a hundred and fifty miles. Even Sandy Denny, who wrote a song for Fairport Convention about Mary’s last days, and then subsequently named her own band after the village, refers to ‘lonely’ Fotheringhay in her lyric, and I don’t think that’s right either. It’s true Mary was held here because the place was easy to defend. Sight lines for the defenders were excellent, and there was marshland for would-be attackers to negotiate. But Peterborough was only eight miles distant (Mary’s body was initially interred there, before her son James had it moved to Westminster Abbey), communications along the Nene were good, and there were numerous villages of much the same size as Fotheringhay up and down the valley. Cock ups and conspiracies. Nothing new under the sun.
 

 Incidentally, the tomb James had constructed for Mary faces Elizabeth’s in Westminster, and he made sure it was bigger than the Virgin Queen’s. I also note with a smile that the dedication of the handsome church in Fotheringhay is to St. Mary and All Saints. That’s Mary the mother of Jesus of course, and a common enough name, but who worshipping here in any subsequent age wouldn’t spare a thought for Mary Stuart as they walk up the church path or take communion? The exterior of the church is a wondrously beautiful landmark. For once the interior doesn’t perhaps match it for all the pleasure to be taken in clear windows, lofty ceilings and the charmingly painted pulpit and organ. There’s a reason for that of course. What we experience now is only half the original building, and the ugliness of the wall behind the altar betrays the church’s brutal shortening when the adjoining college for priests was dissolved during the Reformation.

 Fotheringhay was a Yorkist seat. Richard III was born here. Today a wedding party is making preparations for their Big Day tomorrow after the contemporary style; lots of flowers, and those odd bits of wispy white nylon people like to stick on the ends of the pews to make the church look…weddingy. There’s no space for cars in the car park of the next door Falcon pub, because it’s occupied by a marquee, and a lighting truck has just turned up so the guests can mum & dad-dance their way to the midnight hour. The lass behind the bar serves me a GB. Did I want food? she asks. I tell her not today, and she breathes a sigh of relief. The ovens have gone down, but it’s not a problem, there’s only one set of covers: they’ll have to have salad. And stuff. What kind of ancillary ‘stuff’ I wonder, but keep my thoughts to myself. Tomorrow’s groom and best man bestride the bars like mighty colossi, owning the joint for a day. It’s a slightly strange vibe.

 Up the road I yomp across scrunched up earth between the farmer’s thoughtfully placed little white sticks and fetch up at Woodnewton’s sewage plant. This straggly village improves from then on, and has its rep greatly polished when at cosy St. Mary’s church I learn that Nicolai Poliakoff aka Coco the Clown spent his last years here. He had an extraordinary life. I lift two pieces of delight from the Wikipedia article about him to improve your day. Firstly he ‘had two distinctive visual features that endeared him to television audiences: his boots, described as being size 58, and his trick hair with hinges in the central parting which allowed it to lift when he was surprised…’ . Secondly in April 1957 he ‘was knocked over and injured by a vehicle driven by Kam, “the only motoring elephant in the world”’ I think I probably saw him live in a performance by Mills Circus at about the same time, along with boxing kangaroos and all kinds of other acts which wouldn’t now be allowed. Clowning however, goes on forever, and has something to say about bullying, being bullied, and the inappropriateness or not of revenge.
 


Opposite the church is a lane leading down to Conegar Farm where there’s a delightful mill setting, the clear water sliding through strands of weed as straight and beautiful as a pomp rock guitarist’s hair. From there the track to Southwick (pronounced Suth-ick) climbs gently at the edge of fields, then drops to a stream, then resumes uphill progress through lovely Howe Wood before emerging into the open just above the village. As I sit on a bench and survey the scene a young lab trots out from behind me, followed by his mistress, who lets me know that she’s about to collect the bag of dog poo she left in the field below. Too much info, but a gold star for responsible dog-owning behaviour.  There’s yet another St. Mary’s, on the left where the track meets the road on the village fringe. Inside a narrow space, the sanctuary floor is polished and shining, entirely covered by the slabs that mark the Lynn family tombs. Above the altar is emblazoned the legend ‘Till he come’.

 

If this is Southwick, then where is the northern village to which its name obliquely refers? Perhaps Apethorpe, perhaps King’s Cliffe, both yet to be visited. Iron smelting was an industry here in the 10th century, and perhaps before that too.

 By now I’ve remembered that many years ago I walked this circle from Fotheringhay on a chilly winter’s morning, and somehow missed my way before Perio Mill. The path seems clear enough today but where it dives through a hedge in making a right turn I find a roughly ploughed path-less field, and have to take an uncomfortable diversion around its knobbly perimeter, saying rude things about the farmer as I go. To be fair, I don’t know what he/she’s supposed to do when ploughing’s done. I’m just not sure it’s my job to do the equivalent of wading through eighteen inches of snow to keep the right of way open.

 The benefit of autumn on an immaculate cloudless day such as this is the golden low light simultaneously warming the buildings of Fotheringhay’s single street, and sharpening their profiles. How many of them are built with stones from the old castle?

 And in this week of renewed climate change protest from the world’s schoolchildren, what part of our past will the future most resemble? Nothing new under the sun.

 


'The evening hour is fading within the dwindling sun
And in a moment those embers will be gone
And the last of all the young birds flown

Tomorrow at this hour she will be far away
Much farther than these islands
Or the lonely Fotheringhay'

(Sandy Denny)

 Clicks on the churchwarden’s counter:  19.5 km. 6 hrs. 21 deg. C.  Four stiles. Twenty one gates.  Sixteen bridges, one way or another. Kites, squirrels, butterflies, a dormouse frightened by my tread. Three churches, again, all open! The devotion to St. Mary very strong in these parts. The ground dry, dry, dry.

Lord
When I’m desperate
To drive through my own ideas
Help me to listen
To the unreasonable voices of others.
When I am sure I am right
Remind me of the times
I have been so wrong.
When instinct tells me
What is best for me
Help me to do
What will bless everyone.
Amen.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment