Pumpkin and kissing gate: Clipston
A late start after a lengthy phone-spat with E-On. Grrr! Wow! Splat! Take that, you bounders! It's past mid-day when I leave the car in Sibbertoft's Welland Rise and set out over the fields on the Jurassic Way towards Marston Trussell.
It's a commonplace that we humans often become more negative with age, unless we push back against the habit. By the time we reach retirement most of us have trodden in a lot of disappointment, but was I really so optimistic, so glass-full in my twenties? After my wasted hour with E-On this morning, I confronted the apparent impossibility of getting a doctor's appointment, and surely that wasn't the case a couple of decades ago? And after that came the encounter with the temporarily closed road (which turned out not to be closed) on the approach to Sibbertoft. Health and safety, my Aunt Ada! I am the living, breathing model of a modern Victor Meldrew.
While I was arguing with young Aaron in the E-On call centre, I shared with him a rare moment of self-awareness - and I'm sure it's totally changed his life - which was that at least in terms of opportunity costs, it was more expensive to stay there moaning at him about E-On's tariffs and arcane, disingenuous billing procedures than accept the small financial loss entailed in letting them have their way.
And why should you care? Well, only that there are a lot of older people like me in the pews of our churches, so we need to take stock. Some of us sit on holy committees, and are elected to our synods. Do you think the young are any less inclined then the old towards theological and liturgical nit-picking, at differentiating their brand of 'faith' and elevating it as the one true religion? Do you see evidence among your congregation of the 'acceptance' supposed to characterise mature old age? And how do you tell that apart from passivity and nay-saying complacence? How do the virtues and vices of senescence balance with youthful activism?
We oldies have to do better. I once had a much loved t-shirt whose slogan read: Radical thinking has to start somewhere. The late Tony Benn could be an idiot, but to his dying day he never ceased searching for new approaches to problems. How I admire that.
A brisk and chilly breeze propels me towards The Lawn and Berberis Spinney where there's an enclosure raising flocks (herds? scuttles?) of pheasant chicks. I always thought the aroma of pheasant came from its being 'hung', but there's a distinct 'game-iness' on the air in Berberis Spinney.
I leave the Jurassic and strike out north on an unmarked path to Rectory Farm with its satellite businesses, then cross the road with attractive St. Nicholas' church clearly in sight. Marston Trussell sounds like the state of a body after a heavy night out on the ale (I'm feeling ab-so-lute-ly Trusselled). Indeed the village seems to have hosted a beer festival in years past but now I can't even find the pub. From inside the locked church comes a high warbling drone which might be a burglar alarm. Noting the legend in the porch which reads: 'Polite notice. There's no lead on the roof: it's already been stolen', I phone Sharon, one of the keyholders. Apparently what I'm hearing is a bat deterrent.
As opposed to locked church doors, which are a people deterrent.
Market Harborough from the Jurassic Way
I look again at the day's route, which by my feeble standards may be quite lengthy. I'm a bit heavy-legged and a lot of it will be on tarmac. However there's a not-strictly-necessary diversion I really want to make. Near East Farndon Grange I join a bridleway which takes me north then east slowly up a hill towards an airy position overlooking Leicestershire, with Market Harborough in the relative valley below. In a field there's a single outlier stone, a 'glacial erratic'. It shouldn't be here. It's the wrong sort of rock, and it looks very lonely, but it's in a suspiciously conspicuous and convenient place. So do we believe it rolled here from hundreds of miles away in a previous era, as some geologists would suggest? Or was it brought and placed for some forgotten reason? - to signify a meeting place for some lost political or religious purpose. Size-wise we're not talking a second Stonehenge, as you can see, but on a day when all the churches I visit are closed to visitors, this little bit of possible al fresco religion packs a rare awe-inspiring punch. It's called the 'Judith Stone' after Judith of Lens, who was a niece of William the Conqueror. She married Waltheof, and after his death owned lands across a swathe of the South Midlands. What her precise connection to the stone is supposed to be, I can't tell you.
I trudge uphill over a ploughed field whose soil is thankfully still light and friable, rejoining the Jurassic to find a piece of seemingly common land in East Farndon with the tower of St. John the Baptist's in front of me. Even though I can't access any of their insides, all the churches I call on today are very prettily situated. St. John's sits above a handsome church garden with benches. I take a photo of the tower and am appraised suspiciously by a woman leading her daughter on a pony up the path through the churchyard. I want to eat a sarnie there but the midges are biting, so I move on, chicken and mayo in hand.
Now I remember the long curving lane to Great Oxendon. It's warm but not overbearingly sultry today. The last time I walked this way it was sappingly hot, and I was nearing the end of a long ramble with the prospect of a wait for the irregular bus to take me back to Northampton. There was once a Little Oxendon too, on the edge of the hill to the north, where the golf course is now. The history websites seem to indicate that it's an important place - maybe a relatively complete example of a lost village. The church of St. Helen's, Great Oxendon turns out to be halfway between the two original settlements and not really intimate to Great Oxendon at all, although there's a hardcore path stretching out half a mile from Main Street, so modern villagers can walk to worship without getting their feet wet. Before I join the church path I have to brave a small paddock containing a pretty highland cow sporting an impressive pair of horns. She looks at me, but aside from a single warning shake of the head refrains from putting them to anti-personnel use.
St. Helen's, Great Oxendon
The church is dedicated to the earlier of the two St. Helens, the one who, after the twelve disciples and the Apostle Paul, could perhaps lay claim to have been the most important person in Christian history, since she was Constantine the Great's mum. Without her, probably no conversion of Rome to the faith, and without that, who knows what might have happened.
In the impressive, solid Manor House next to the Rectory in Great Oxendon's Main Street lives Mike Bairstow who though maybe fifteen years older than me, went to the same school in Eltham, Kent. A tall, genial, convivial man, he played for the Old Boys against the school second eleven when I was its captain. I'd taken a few wickets in the previous seasons but didn't really believe I could bat. In that innings someone turned on the light, and I began to really enjoy being at the crease. Mike bowled me an off-cutter, which struck me painfully on my unprotected left hip bone and went for four byes, credited to me as runs by a myopic (or kindly?) umpire. Later, when his turn came to bat, Mike top-edged a ball higher than most hits I've seen anywhere. The ground was small but the ball was prevented from achieving earth orbit by the top of a street-light in the road outside.
I walk on to Clipston, where I have a small purpose in mind. I recall that a local Kentish Baptist minister called Ken Weller retired here with his wife in the 1970s. They'd formerly been missionaries in India, and a certain distinctive enthusiasm and capacity for organisation transferred with them back to England. There's a substantial Baptist chapel in Clipston and it occurs to me that perhaps they might have been buried there. But first I visit All Saints, which sits at the other end of a village larger than I'd appreciated. In the church porch I see that the Rev. Miranda Hayes has been appointed to both the benefice which includes Clipston and Naseby and the one which comprises Welford and Sibbertoft. This is a big ask, a wide territory to cover. I hope she's going to get some help.
Clipston Baptist is on the fringe of the village, set up above the lane so as to provide the visitor a monumental sight as she approaches it - as one commentator suggests , a place now out of scale with the nearby buildings. In a Sunday Times article, Paul Macartney refers to a drug-induced vision in which he experienced God as a hugely high, towering wall. There's a painting by Piet Mondriaan from his middle period - his religious psychology is interesting - which depicts a massive, vividly coloured church tower rising up phallically before the viewer. I can find no record of the Wellers in the churchyard, but I do see in the chapel porch a memorial stone which tells me that Thomas Jarman, composer of the much loved and sung hymn tune 'Lyngham' worshipped here in the eighteenth century. I'm intrigued and resolve to look him up when I get home.
I walk on, avoiding a field where there are too many cattle gathered across the path I want to use, and climb the busy little lane back to Sibbertoft. About a hundred metres from the car, I come across an old gentleman sitting outside his house on a canvas chair. He's wearing a coat and a hat, even on this warm early evening. He holds in his right hand, as if a sceptre, a long forked walking stick. His clothes are well-used and the garden behind him is not so tidy. But he has twinkly eyes and a lively smile, and it seems he wants to chat, so we do - about not much. At the end, I ask his name. Ken Jarman. Oh, I say, I saw that name on the wall of Clipston Chapel half an hour ago, but you're not related are you? Oh yes I am, he replies. Well, according to my grandfather, anyway. He always said that if we'd had the royalties from Thomas Jarman's music, we'd have been a rich family.
It's been a frustrating day, with the four churches closed. I think back to a song from a musical performed by Twentieth Century, the Cambridge Christian group of which I was once a member. 'You have built walls, and barred your doors securely...' In common with many of that 'Youthquake' generation we were mild iconoclasts, would be Christian flower-children protesting the perceived or actual conservatism of the older war-experienced generations. We also sang Sydney Carter's now largely forgotten 'Bird of Heaven':
Catch the Bird of Heaven/Lock Him in a cage of gold/Look again tomorrow/And He will be gone...
Bell and book and candle/Cannot hold Him anymore/For the Bird is flying/As He did before...
Fly, bird, fly. But how? And when, and where?
Balls in the over: (currently six, although at various times four or eight, and if the English Cricket Board has its daft way, perhaps five or ten, because obviously that's going to bring in a different audience, even if it alienates lifelong supporters of the game...) 22km. 6 hrs. 19 deg C. Sun, cloud and a cool breeze. 24 stiles. 18 gates. 8 bridges. Pheasants. Flocks of starlings on the stubble. Wasps, large, small, British, Foreign!
Lord
What's going to be the New Thing?
Do I get to see the Promised Land?
Or is my calling to deal with the Egyptians
Or to wander around pointlessly in the desert?
In which case, help me to do so with skill, energy and wit.
Cunning as a serpent, harmless as a dove.
But when the Moment comes
And your Spirit is released afresh on your people
Give me the grace to recognise it
And not be grouchy
Or obstructive
But to welcome new life and growth.
Amen.
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