I begin today’s walk needing a sign of hope.
My, it’s been a strange week. The Supreme Court
judgement against prorogation, the shenanigans in the House of Commons
yesterday, hubris and humbug, the weather turning (as it has every right to do
at the autumn equinox), a damp squib of an end to the first class cricket
season, one or two little local difficulties…
The day begins as, morose and monosyllabic, I drop Sue
off at Launde Abbey for a clergy conference/retreat in which she’s leading a
session. I’m unsure whether Launde is in Leicester or Peterborough diocese, but
it’s used by both, and is to be found in a very beautiful parkland setting. Already
my mood is slowly lifting thanks to the Ministry of Greenliness and the brittle
blue September sky. Yes, I know, thank you, an adverb in the wrong place, slapped
in before the participle, but hey, don’t that particular solecism simply sound
better sometimes?
I provision and coffee in Uppingham, before moving on
to Lyddington. I leave the car near the bigger of the two pubs, the White Hart, then find the uphill path to
the west away from the village. With low confidence, I’d say the topology of
Rutland (county slogan multum in parvo –
a lot in a little/many in poverty?/#only joking) is distinctive. The wolds are
no higher than Northamptonshire’s, but their frequency seems greater, the dips
deeper. At any rate it’s quite a stiff pull up to the Oakham road. Once the
other side it’s a gentle walk down the lane to Stoke Dry, the Eyebrook reservoir
glinting glassily to my left.
Inside St. Andrew’s church, everything is rather
emphatically not dry. A year or so
ago, thieves stole the lead, and interim everything’s been kept watertight by
plastic sheeting, only it blew away the other day, and now one of Canon Jane
Baxter’s colleagues is up on the roof trying to restore the weatherproofing. Canon
Jane herself is in the side chapel, helping an American visitor with some
genealogical enquiries. I introduce myself as the chap who keeps sending her
cards whenever I drop into one of her churches. There’s an ‘Oh, it’s you…’ moment, which I’m not sure quite how to interpret. As
Rector in the benefice, Jane has seven parishes to look after, and another fifty-three are under her care as Rural
Dean. All that and the roof considered, she looks quite cheerful. St. Andrew’s
is a lovely, well-scrubbed place, with a substantial, wide rood screen which
the experts think must have come from somewhere else, because it doesn’t quite
fit. There are lots of wall paintings. There’s one of St. Christopher, with a
legend beside it, Kipling like, explaining how the saint got his name. And next
to it is one of St. Edmund being shot up by Danish archers. Or for the
esoterically-minded, Native American
archers…if you believe the facial characteristics suggest so. This would of
course rely on the dubious premise that someone beat Columbus to his 1492 landing
on the American mainland.
Other conspiracies hang around Stoke Dry too. Some
have said the Gunpowder Plot was hatched in the priest’s room (or parvis) which
sits over the North Porch. The Digbys were a notable local family, and Sir
Everard of that ilk was hanged for treason in 1606. Why the plotters would have
used a poky office over a church porch isn’t clear. You’d have thought a toff’s
front parlour would have done just as well.
A track leads away at an angle from the Oakham road,
perhaps part of an ancient drovers’ way, and it holds to the high ground, twisting
and turning all the way into Uppingham, whose name gives a clue as to the town’s
altitude with respect to the surrounding countryside. We’re only talking a
hundred and fifty metres above sea level, but the wind is blowing keenly from
the south west today. I bet the snow settles readily in winter. Uppingham is a
classy place, all second hand bookshops and picture shops. There’s a lovely,
signed, John Piper church print in the window of the Goldmark Gallery for
£2950, very desirable, but way out of our price range. Would it hold its value?
Would it give commensurate pleasure over a decade, set alongside for example, a
great holiday for two, or deprivation of caffeine and cake for a year?
Uppingham is another public school town, but the
academic presence is worn more discreetly here than in Oundle. I pass the
school’s theatre, then its main gate, reminiscent of an Oxbridge college. I
window-shop, buy a sarni, potter about the square, and decide to visit SS.
Peter and Paul’s generously proportioned church before I have a coffee in Scandimania (nice name!)
I’d like to be able to describe the church for you,
but I can’t. Instead I’ll tell you what I hear inside, something so absorbing
it takes my mind off everything else, including my touch of the morning glums.
Hope? Reader, I found it.
A girl is standing by a grand piano to one side of the
nave singing. I know the song. It’s Gluck’s ‘Che
faro senza Euridice?’, one of the two pieces of vocal music for which the
composer’s best remembered. I don’t like the aria but I’m reeled in by the
concentration and quality of the performance. A woman is accompanying the girl
- very sensitively. Ten metres away another woman is directing the singing.
She’s coaxing performance nuance by nuance by use of what in my trade is known
as TPR (total physical response).
Everything - face, arms, posture - is going into a bar by bar reflection of the
musical phrasing and intent as the song unfolds. It’s beautiful. Spell-binding.
For a mid-teenager (I later learn the young singer is seventeen) the accuracy
and focus of voice is simply stunning. And the teaching is of the very highest
order, eloquent, grounded, locked into the moment. I’ve slid behind a pillar out
of the performer’s view, the better to watch the direction offered by Catherine
Griffiths, Head of Singing at Uppingham. This is a rehearsal for the school’s
recital competition. Catherine takes her pupil through two more pieces
unfamiliar to me, and then they move on together to what will be the
mini-recital’s closer. It’s ‘Everyone
loves Louis’ from Sondheim’s ‘Sunday
in the Park with George’, the George in question being the pointillist
painter Seurat.
If you don’t know the musical, this really isn’t music
for dummies. Sondheim being Sondheim, it showcases all his Broadway-friendly
lyrical tricks while at times managing to reference the early twentieth century
pointillist composer Webern (who’s about as Broadway-unfriendly as you
can get this side of Stockhausen). The point is (ha-ha) if you sing this stuff,
you’re learning a lot more than mere dots on a piece of manuscript paper.
Later I write Catherine an e-mail to say how inspiring
I found my half-hour in their company. It’s made me think about my own
teaching, and has recalled for me the occasions when as a teenager I was first hooked
on music (and words) by outstanding teaching from adults who were concerned
both to think about me as a person while simultaneously communicating their own
passion for art and literature. This week there’ve been threats from the Labour
Party to make life for private education uncomfortable, and even to confiscate
property in the service of that aim (surely a very sinister suggestion?) As so
often, I’m torn. We need a more equal distribution of talent and engagement in our total school system.
But I can now see an argument for boarding schools which wasn’t apparent to me
before, which is that they provide an opportunity for immersion in the process
of education, which sometimes seems beyond the ability of parents and their
kids within the contemporary 9-3 two hundred and thirty days a year culture.
That’s not to say what I witnessed in SS Peter & Paul’s couldn’t happen within the state system
(and for all I know the young woman performer may be a day pupil), but what I
think I see around me in ordinary schools and families is often a lot of
distracted behaviour and performance anxiety. We pray fervently for our young
people, but are we asking for the right things?
I’m still digesting these extraordinary moments as I
sip coffee in Scandimania’s compact café,
and then walk out of town towards Bisbrooke. So much am I out of my normal head,
I contrive to leave my OS map somewhere on the road, probably as I’m donning my
anorak in anticipation of a shower. No worries. I’ve already clocked the
straightforward route back to Lyddington.
St. John the Baptist’s church in Bisbrooke is
chapel-like, and lovingly cared-for. I spend a few minutes in its silence, chilling,
and then walk up the steep climb to the crossroads where Seaton’s one way and
Uppingham the other, parallel to the old branch line which used to ferry
Uppingham school pupils into town. On the far side looking down the descent to
Lyddington the light over the far fields becomes brilliant, emphasised by the
lividity of the deep blue-grey clouds, the village church nestled into the
valley fold. There’s always hope, despite the bleakness of overweening ambition
and violent language in public life. Words matter so much, not just the
misplacing of the odd adverb, but where they appeal only to emotion and
sentiment while ignoring reason and reality. And the Church has a part to play
in this, and not just in the bishops’ welcome challenge to politicians to moderate
their methodology.
Ayes and noes
in the lobby: 15km. 5 hrs. 16 deg.C.
Very pleasant with the wind at one’s back. 14 stiles. 8 gates. 4 bridges. 3
churches, again all open. If this were a slot machine I’d be hitting paydirt. Last
time I walked in Uppingham it was 2011, on the day Sir Alastair Cook scored 295
against India: a happy memory.
Lord
I thank you
for the
Glorious array
of gifts
You have
given your people.
Help me to see
Not only
those that are in public view
But those
that are more discreetly employed.
And please
help me to discern
Where I am
gifted
And where I
should simply recognise
And enjoy
The callings
of others.
Amen.
The walker’s
prayer:
Lead, kindly
light,
Amidst the
encircling gloom;
Lead thou me
on!
The night is
dark
And I am far
from home,
Lead Thou me
on.
Keep Thou my
feet;
I do not ask
to see
The distant
scene.
One step
enough for me.
( J.H. Newman)
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