Driving down to Cottesbrooke through Creaton I realise that when I visited St. Michael's ('We the people...' July 20th), I managed to miss the splendid village green. The main street curves round the foot of a verdant amphitheatre below a semicircle of perfect cottages. It would be a glorious place to live, but I doubt we'd ever be able to afford it. Should have stayed in teaching. Or retrained as an accountant. Anything but be a musician and writer. As Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam once nearly sang: 'Look at me, I'm poor but I'm happy...' (Actually, he sang 'old' rather than 'poor' - which is equally true!)
Whatever you do for a living in Cottesbrooke it seems you ride. An elderly lady and a younger companion nod graciously down at me from fourteen hands as I park the car by All Saints. Hard-hatted primary-age children walk purposefully carrying saddles. A svelte late teenager trots by and says a polite hello (which she probably wouldn't if we were both on foot, such are the current anxieties and consequent custom). You can get good, professional riding tuition at Bothy Cottage, and either there or somewhere else close by there's ample encouragement for the disabled to enjoy the view from horseback. As I wander up the road, I'm startled to see the rear of what looks like someone doing a spot of nudist farming. A second glance with readjusted specs disconfirms the impression. In fact he's wearing a pair of ill-advisedly-close-fitting pink shorts.
Over a couple of miles the road to Naseby rises in a series of undulations. Although Cold Ashby is Northamptonshire's highest village, Naseby isn't far behind at 193 metres. Away to the right are 'Purser's Hills'. The internet won't tell me who 'Purser' was, but it looks a pretty spot, and someone up there has a little observatory. The OS suggests there's a museum on the south side of Naseby, but it's no longer there, so I press on to the church (another 'All Saints') assuming I'll find some Civil War stuff inside. The door's locked but a key's available from the well-appointed Village Stores opposite, so I borrow it, and am surprised. The church is scruffy. Petals litter the floor around last Sunday's - or was it the Sunday before that's - flower display. There's a single dog-eared description of All Saints' history on the table by the door. A cursory display of information about the Battle of Naseby is to the north side at the rear beside a couple of ecclesiastical curios, about whose provenance one can learn from the scrawled felt-tip pen and card inscription. Everywhere looks in need of a lick of paint and a buff of polish. And in the porch, I can see that All Saints managed to pay just £5k or 30% of its requested 'Parish Share' in 2017, which for a village of nearly 700 souls seems inadequate and strange. I maybe missing something here, and I don't want to be unkind, but what's the story?
A little subsequent research tells me of a grandiose scheme dating back a few years whereby All Saints would become a 'battlefield visitor centre'. It was hoped that a rather large sum of money would become available to this end. Perhaps it was thought that the Diocese might chip in? At any rate it didn't happen.
Here's what I think, although it's very easy to be critical from the boundary rope.
There's a whole bunch of new housing going up at the gateway to the village in Purlieu Court, Hammonds Mews and Catton Close. These incomers won't give a stuff about recent village politics, but they will need ministry from the Church. I saw a number of telegraph poles with admittedly faded flyers from Thornby's Buddhist Centre attached, but none with a 'wayside pulpit' from the C. of E.. Well we wouldn't, would we, because fly-posting's illegal, but you get my drift... At the moment, even if any new people borrow a key and drop into All Saints, they're not likely to come back, unless the aesthetics of the church belie the warmth of the welcome.
Secondly, evangelism can come from all kinds of different directions. I've spent a great deal of time pushing the idea of 'good' music within the Church, because sometimes people who come to listen or participate stay for the other stuff. So it's a 'yes' from me to food banks, and 'tiny tots' groups and bailing out cost-cutting councils by hosting 'memory cafes', even if we make a loss, providing we all know what we're doing. And so quite possibly it might be a 'yes' to 'battlefield visitor centres' too. But the Church of England is subject to the same financial pressures as everyone else, and priorities have to be set. The population at large sometimes seems to think we mint our own fivers.
Thirdly, if parish shares egregiously fail to be met when they could be, the weight falls on other shoulders. Other churches will be subsidising Naseby, which isn't OK in my book. For instance, Haselbech, just up the road, with a population one seventh of Naseby's managed its full whack at just over £8k. On the other hand, I'm not sure that the Diocese is sufficiently transparent about where our money goes. I expect if this was ever to be read by Bishops or Archdeacons they'd be shouting at the computer in frustration that they're doing their best, but if I don't get it, I won't be alone. My verdict: 'Could do better'.
As an aside, there's been a bit of press comment this week about 'Dark Tourism', by which is meant at its most awful, Chinese tourists taking selfies with a backdrop of Grenfell Tower. Or in watered down version, folks who trot off to Chernobyl or the site of New York's Twin Towers for their holidays. Should Naseby or Culloden come into the same category? I'll come back to this another time, not least because at the time of writing, I can't see the wood for the trees.
I return All Saints' key to Rachel whose bright eyes and smile light up the counter in the Village Stores. We chat about the development of Northamptonshire and our shared fear that the fields and woods we love are destined for a concrete future. She talks with enthusiasm about the views from the Haselbech area cross the vale beyond, and she's spot on. Either side of Haselbech, where St. Michael's church sits calmly between the Hall and the beautiful Old Rectory, the ridgewalk is airily energising. At one point I can see way beyond Northampton itself to the slightly higher ground the far side of Milton Keynes at Great Brickhill, maybe thirty-five miles away.
There's work going on in Haselbech's bell tower, but they don't see me, and I can only hear them. I stay only briefly but this building gives the visitor everything which Naseby denies. The two congregations are yoked in a single benefice with Clipston. I hope they get on.
Rounding the farm at Haselbech Hill, and pushing on to Maidwell Lodge, there are the very first slight intimations of the coming autumn, my third on the Long Walk, the fresh perfume of leaves, woodsmoke in the air, though mixed with an overtone of barbecue charcoal. At one point the countryside reminds me of Somerset, and I'm pitched back nearly fifty years to a Christian houseparty at Crewkerne where I was recruited as a student to do good to a church group from Chatham. One August afternoon I was twinned with a pretty auburn-haired arty girl called Juliet for a treasure hunt through the fields. She was much younger than me, and in subsequent days preferred the company of someone I thought a goofy hobbledehoy. I found this rather wounding, but as Ned Kelly remarked before being shot: 'Such is life...'
At Maidwell, rather dried out by the stiffening warm westerly breeze, I head for The Stag and listen in on the local gossip. On the lane from Haselbech I've been avoiding getting run down by huge combines and their associated machinery, and now the talk is interesting, charming and all of farming matters. It's marvellous drying weather, but the expectation is that yields will be well down because of the drought conditions earlier in the summer. (I'm thinking about the forecast for tomorrow which is for heavy morning rain, and wondering how much it takes to spoil a crop: this must be an annual period of extreme anxiety for arable farmers). These days no one owns their own farms, someone says, they farm on behalf of the landowners. One old boy's just died: the farm has been split between children and grandchildren, and the principal shareholder has sold up and moved on to a smaller acreage over in Cambridgeshire where the land's better. And old Nigel's died too - it's been a funny few weeks - he was the life and soul of the local party, and loved his am dram. A road accident did for him. (I wonder to myself if this could be the same Nigel whose funeral I saw being prepared at Guilsborough (July 20th) and later confirm that this is so - Nigel Townsend, one-time teacher at Spratton Hall school.) Back to the farmer who passed on. Didn't he have eleven tractors? Yes, of various ages, heritage and contemporary. At which point the barman reveals that he's got a tractor too, a Massey 35, and goes backstage to find pictures of the 'before' and 'after' restoration of same to show the assembled company.
I make my visit to St. Mary's Maidwell with the overheard conversation fresh in my mind, The church is locked, and as always in these cases but particularly now, there's a sense of disappointment. Remembering these people before God is so much harder to do sitting on the bench in the churchyard rather than on a pew inside, however placid the early afternoon village. We humans are just funny that way about 'sacred space', and probably always have been.
Making the ways straight...
I pick up the Macmillan Way which drives almost exactly south-west back towards Cottesbrooke past Blueberry Lodge and Blueberry Grange. I see no blueberries, but I do meet a man walking the opposite way more rapidly than me despite hefting a pack three times the size of mine. I ask him where is he going and yes (thank you, Joni M.) this he told me. He's going to Boston, Lincs (which is where the Macmillan Way starts or ends) rather than Yasgur's Farm and if I understand him correctly he's walked from Chepstow already. I say that I've thought of doing the Macmillan Way myself, but that I looked at the section over the fens and came to the conclusion it was too hardcore for me. Oh, he was born near there, he says, so he won't mind it so much. And when will he arrive? Some time on Sunday, he thinks. So that's more than twenty miles a day, every day, come rain or shine. And tomorrow it will be very wet!
Stained glass at Haselbech
Bones on the stones: 21 km. 6 hrs. 23 deg. C. Meteorologically a bit of everything: a few early spots of drizzle, but mainly warm sunny periods, until the cloud bunched up. A warm wind gusting 25/30 mph. Swooping swallows much in evidence. Two pairs of kites inspecting me for food potential. Two quasi-stiles (my fault for missing the path near Maidwell) so fences in reality! Five gates. 90% roads and tracks. One squirrel on the wall at St. Mary's.
'Yasgur's Farm' : the site of the 'Woodstock' festival, referenced in Joni Mitchell's song of the same name.
In the week following the dispiriting Ben Stokes trial, and with Sue beginning a church course on peace and justice...
Lord
Physically inept
And cowardly though I am
I confess
I've too often been tempted
Towards violence as a solution
When frustrated by
The appearance of evil
The intransigence of incompetence
The sheer bloody-mindedness of events.
In humility I offer the mitigation
Of my upbringing in the aftermath
Of Hitler's war
And the shadow of the death camps.
I pray that you will work
With me
With us
On my soul
On our souls
To shun evil and violence
And promote peace with justice
In our home
In our community
And throughout the world.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment