One step enough for me

As Barn Lane exits Milton Malsor towards Blisworth, I pass one of many 'No Rail Freight' signs to be seen around the village (local land is about to be lost to a huge new commercial hub), and quickly find myself walking between sheepy fields under threat of extinction. The sheep get me thinking about the Latin word 'grex'. (This is the kind of nerdy thing that happens when you walk on your own and all the oxygen is going into your legs, not your brain!) I suppose sheep are quite gregarious insofar as they mostly seem to prefer the company of others to being on their own. (Though 'Shaun the Sheep' suggests they get occasionally grumpy or solipsistic like the rest of us). But would humans who think of themselves as gregarious like to be characterised as 'flocky' in a sheepy way? Perhaps not. And then there's the word 'egregious', which I've always assumed means 'out of the flock', therefore 'obvious' or 'outstanding' or 'pre-eminent'...even in a bad way as in 'egregious offender'. Thus does the countryside continue to make its linguistic presence felt, even in the biggest cities...truly 'rus in urbe'!

A side path takes me diagonally across a field which had wheat growing in it six weeks ago towards a high footbridge spanning the main Euston railway line. When I was eleven I would have loved this. The bridge affords a fantastic trainspotter's resource - if you could be fagged to walk that far, which I think only pretty fanatical trainspotters would. I stand and watch a few trains thunder past: the privileged Virgin expresses and a punier, clattering London Midland job. On the far side the path has been ploughed so there's a trudge over thankfully still quite friable soil to the Blisworth Football Club. Their pitches are quite hard too. You wouldn't want to be a goalkeeper diving around on them at the moment.

There's a funeral at St. John the Baptist's church, which from a friendly sign outside I deduce would otherwise have been open. Four undertakers are standing near the porch - the service is in progress, and I can hear the sound of the organ playing what I think is 'Abide with me'. In a generation, only diehard football fans will be requesting this: surely it's destined to be replaced with 'My heart will go on'. Organists, get practising! One of the undertakers is talking into his mobile. The others are chatting, sharing a quiet joke. What a funny job - being professionally serious most of the time, and then clocking off to talk about footy or Bake-Off or for a moan about the boss. I think of actors who knit or read or gossip before assuming their 'game face' and going on to give their Hamlet or Hedda.

I've been to a lot of funerals over the last few years, playing the organ, singing in the choir, mourning those I've known and those I haven't. I missed one this last Monday for a lady who we saw married only a few weeks earlier; David our Rector took the instructions for the wedding at the hospice. And last night I was rehearsing the Northampton Chamber Choir in Henry Purcell's 'Funeral Sentences': 'In the midst of life we are in death...'

I find walking useful in dealing with all this, the immediacy of putting one foot in front of another, of having the next small objective in front of me, of being made to appreciate each scene as I become part of it, and then leaving it behind me.

Blisworth Mill has been gentrified, but at least it's been preserved, a handsome building towering above the canal. A path crosses a long field above a tiny stream, but again the path has been ploughed and it's a tough, gently uphill half-mile to the far fence. No one has walked this way for a while and no wonder. The next obstacle is the A43 dual carriageway, a bit like crossing the Silverstone track while there's a Grand Prix is in session. 'In the midst of life...'

I scramble through the gap on the far side. Across the field is Gayton Woods Farm and beyond the farm some angling lakes, ringed by earnest fisherfolk on this lovely September day. I pick up the Northampton Round Path, conspicuously waymarked. In a little copse, I'm astonished to see what I at first think is a deep disused quarry. Then I realise the precipitous drop is into the cutting of the railway which once ran from Blisworth to Towcester. It was part of a network of lines whose prime purpose was the transfer of ironstone from Northamptonshire to South Wales during mid-Victorian times. Demand fell away drastically and there was never any prospect of substantial east-west passenger traffic so by 1952 the line was closed. The gradient up from Blisworth across 'the summit' was steep, so they cut as deep as they could to ease matters.

I'm now in the 'Gayton Wilds', according to the map, though it doesn't look exactly untamed. When I did my stint with 'Beltane Fire', looking for a record deal c.1988 as a sort of English U2, my favourite number was lead singer Clint' s 'Southern Wild', the reference being the New Forest where Clint had been brought up. The New Forest isn't exactly the outback either, though perhaps a tiny bit less domesticated than Gayton.

The church at Gayton is dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin. As I've walked, I've been surprised at the number of dedications to both Mary and St. John the Baptist, although I shouldn't have been. Where I was brought up, in Bexley in south-east London, the two Anglican churches are dedicated to...Mary and John. Just asking - but why aren't there more Anglican churches with Jesus in their monikers? Is that a stupid question? I mean, I know John was 'the forerunner' and all that, but he was just a family member doing a job, wasn't he? And in some small sense, actually pre-Christian, so an oddity among the saints...or perhaps we should say 'special'.

Gayton has a strikingly large number of big houses for such a small village. Perhaps the reason for this is the unique balcony view down towards Northampton. Here be Coppocks, numbered among the more kindly teachers of Matt during his time at Weston Favell Comp, including David, who's churchwarden at St. Mary's. I remember accompanying the Faure 'Requiem' here some years ago on a wing and a prayer (I think the regular accompanist had dropped out at short notice...)

My path follows the high ground for a while through fields of beautiful red-brown soil, then drops to the railway and the canal, and I walk the towpath until the Grand Junction meets the Northampton Arm, near the point where the railway branch to Northampton is visible while the main line is still audible. When we came to Northampton forty-three years ago, we were incomers and viewed with suspicion by Northampton society as fifth-column agents of change and decay (or at least, that's what it often felt like!). The Northampton of that era and several before was detached and wary. Many of the kids had never been to London, and were scared of escalators.  You'll think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.  That branch-line attitude has changed completely over the last twenty years, but nothing's a given. With all the talk of Hard and Soft Brexit, of freedom of movement and the open market, of wanting in other words to have our cake and eat it, of just plainly irreconcilable desires, what's the future for this town and the country?

Stats man:  15km. 4 hours. 23C. No kingfishers on the canal. Undertakers: four and jovial. Ploughed-up paths: at least three. Churches: two. Railways: two. Buzzard: one, hovering purposefully. Defunct pedometer: one.

Father God
Do I really matter to you?
When I consider
The grains of sand on the beach
The specks of soil I crush underfoot
And the boffins tell me
There are more stars in the expanding skies than that,
Then what am I?
I hear you Jesus.
I hear you say
Our Father sees the sparrow fall.
I try to mitigate my mortality;
To be present in the moment;
To make each second an eternity,
But still I'm afraid.
I doubt.

I will rest in the loving arms
And trust.
One step enough for me.
Amen.