After no more than a couple of hundred metres I'm passing the JGallery and am drawn in by the chalk-board blandishments to drink their coffee and eat what turns out to be very splendid cake. I've not been in before. It's a great space with pictures upstairs and downstairs. From the current exhibition I'm quite taken with Lee Burrows' work. There are some lovely low-lit evening pastoral images of Northamptonshire, particularly one of Nobottle and another of Harlestone. They make me think of some of the early dusky work of Piet Mondriaan before he started to break down his landscapes into the building blocks which eventually became his primary colour trademark. Then suddenly I realise I have company: it's Graham and Donna. Graham's a guitarist/singer with 'The Prince of Wales Rattlers', Moulton's very own folk group, and has recently had a triple heart by-pass. He looks very well, and good conversation is added to my coffee. The last time I saw Graham was when amongst others we played a very noisy gig just before his op. He really shouldn't have been doing it. Anyway, we all survived, though I was deaf for a couple of days afterwards.
Out of Moulton, having passed the Carey Baptist Church, the road winds past the site of 'The Hollies', where children with behavioural difficulties were once sent more or less under lock and key, and where once I foolishly applied for a job (didn't get it, and good thing too: they'd have eaten me alive!) There are houses there now, and up the lane much else has changed as Moulton Agricultural College has expanded and expanded. The verges of the lane are broad, although not as extensive as they are beside one of the other ways out of Moulton. I love these reminders of what the roads were once like before they were properly surfaced, with a wide track so that carts and carriages could find purchase among the cloying winter mud.
After the road has forked at Boughton Fair Lane, there's a straight stretch and then I turn right along a field path in the direction of Pitsford. Opposite me is 'Spectacle Lane' which the books suggest is called that because one of a number of follies in this area is built across it further down, an arch between two towers, which is said to resemble a 'spectacle'. There are seven follies in all, including the castellated 'Fox Covert Hall', now a private house. As a family we visit Stowe regularly, and Boughton is chicken feed compared with the assorted eccentricities to be found there, but these have their own Gothic charm. However, and I'm probably quite wrong, since Spectacle Lane leads down towards the site of the ancient fair, I wonder if its name doesn't have an alternative meaning. It would have afforded a good view of the goings-on.
Across the fields I reach Pitsford and am reminded what a gracious village it is. The church is in the care of the Rev. Stephen Trott, whose other place of worship I encountered in Boughton. There's a nice view down towards the reservoir and sailing club. In his younger days, Stephen was instrumental in providing the possibility of unionisation for clergy and church workers through the MSF, now absorbed into Amicus. Churchgoers will think differently about this idea, I fancy. All I'll say is that perhaps it's good if clergy are aware of union and labour issues, and maybe a good way in is through consideration of their own rights and privileges. Now with all due respect to my excellent friend and colleague Ralph Salmins, my own union, the M.U. (musicians, not mothers!) has done very little for me personally apart from being a source of cheap musical instrument insurance, but I suppose unions only come into their own when the chips are down, and the case for musicians is always difficult to make. Society could probably do with a better balance between Labour and Capital, if that doesn't sound too Galsworthy. Oh yes, to quote Billy Bragg, 'there is power in the union', which of course on occasion will be abused by the likes of the RMT. But we need that power, nonetheless.
On the way down the hill to the water, I'm passed at speed by two hottish-hatches filled with twenty-somethings, and don't understand why. But there they are again in the reservoir car park, spliffing up, which they surreptitiously hide from me, like Year 10s with their ciggies behind the bike sheds. In a way it's rather charming. Do they come here regularly to indulge their mildly illegal pastime? Or like man, the water, the dancing sunlight, those trees, it's all so...spacey, y'know...and so...beautiful! Maybe they're just enhancing their appreciation of the countryside.
The paths around Pitsford Water, which I haven't walked for fifteen years, have been suitably tarted up. You can ramble dryfoot or cycle, as if in an urban park, and there are frequent benches from which to enjoy the long views of the lake. In a while I'm seduced by a sign on a footpath to the right which promises me Holcot in a mile. I hesitate, and then follow it. But then there's a deviation, and I eventually find myself beside a beautifully appointed cricket ground, and then the path's direction becomes uncertain and I have to trudge the long way around a big field to emerge, as others have done, not far from the Holcot village limits sign. The cricket ground is 'Northfields', laid out by building entrepreneur and philanthropist Lynn Wilson, who met an untimely death in a 2008 car accident. Apparently it's used a lot for 'age-group cricket', and what a nice airy place it is to learn the game, with what looks like a flat wicket and a cultured outfield.
I don't know whether there still is, but there used to be something called the 'Holcot Hobble' which was an annual walk roughly around Pitsford Water, covering something approaching marathon distance, so hiking's in the village blood. But actually, I'm a bit underwhelmed by Holcot today. The pub is shut, and I could do with a drink, though the website tells me it should be open. Like many country pubs it's perhaps finding the lack of lunchtime trade problematic. The millennium memorial stone has a legend which hasn't been cleaned in yonks and I can't read it. The church is shut and there's scant information on the notice board. And in the churchyard of St. Mary's with All Saints, there are many plastic flowers around the more recent graves.
I see the virtue of artificial flowers. But when they become tired as eventually even they will do in the wind and rain, who will dare remove them? And if plastic flowers, why not other ornaments, teddy bears, pictures and so on? These modern day grave goods can quickly become tawdry. And even at their best they compete and shout at each other, and in the end subtract I think from what most people want of a graveyard, which is quiet serenity and peacefulness.
But Dora and David live in Holcot: lovely people who when we worshipped there enlivened the URC in Northampton's Abington Avenue with a powerful social conscience and an enterprising attitude to life and faith. I'm glad to see David's still involved in Holcot's Tennis Club. From the lane in which they live I strike out around a barn and follow the field edge south east before turning south-west at Rectory Farm towards Moulton again. I'm annoyed with the farmers today, and that probably includes the owners of Rectory Farm. There've been too many ploughed out fields, and lack of signs when there's clearly a right-of-way somewhere to be found. Farmers, we want to support you, so give us some incentive! Near Moulton there's a huge field with an ominously scrappy strip of fallow at its eastern side next to where a new development of houses is just being completed. It feels uncomfortably as if another slice of greenfield is about to be sold off for phase 2 of the project.
Sorry, I may have gone off on this one before: back on a hobby horse! According to the BBC, there are 25 million homes in the UK. Let's say that there are 65 million people. So that's an average of 2.6 people per home. So considering all the other factors involved, yes, all the single people, but also all those homes with multiple children, and seniors' homes and so on and so forth, what possible justification is there for the rhetoric which talks of government failure and a need to build 300,000 homes per year for the next 20 years, or whatever the next inflated claim is? Isn't there a case to answer that this is about reviving the economy by boosting the building trade rather than actually giving people what they need. Particularly when there are lots of empty homes not being used.
What may be meant is that we have lots of the wrong sort of properties. Everyone wants their four bedroom with ensuite, even if they're essentially single, divorced, and seeing the kids at the weekend. I know. Just saying it makes me sound crusty, anti-liberal, anti-aspirational, fascist even. And Sue and I own...a four bedroom, more or less detached house with ensuite. Hypocrite!
And on the other hand, doesn't Brexit, hard, soft or runny in the middle, show us that we need to think about our own national food production? If we're so concerned with getting fracking going in the UK so that we don't import gas, why aren't we equally concerned not to import farm produce by growing our own? But as Holcot David would remind me, the world is wider than just Europe...
And the role of the church in this should be? Hmm, I really don't know. What should we be saying and to whom?
FTSE Report: some gains approaching record levels as the pound falls. Footie Report: Wales manage a good draw away against a strong Austrian team. Footsie Report: back in Berghaus boots again for the winter, but blisterless so far, from using elastic tape wound tight round the ankle. Nice one!
Stats man: 17 km. 17C. Wind: 25 kph (gusting higher). 2 churches, both shut. Game birds a-plenty. A flock of Canada geese. Three cyclists by reservoir, one walker other than me, earnest and head down. Don't talk to people in a Country Park!
Lord God
About speaking out...
When I was younger:
You remember that?
Well, in a time of student protest
I said I was a moderate.
What I might have meant
is what I now see
which is that
making a lot of noise about something
sometimes has the undesirable effect
of making the thing you don't want
paradoxically more likely.
And this is true
at work
at home
and in The Church.
These days everyone
does P.R. and spin.
I now confess
that sometimes I'm simply scared
to raise my voice.
And sometimes I don't know
how to speak effectively.
I expect Amos felt the same
(not that I'm putting myself in his class of beard, you understand!)
and the courage of Jesus
humbles me.
That strength;
That humour;
That love.
Revive in us the gift of prophecy, Lord,
Together with charity.
Amen.
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