We are Borg*

                                         Crownwell Farm Wing
I’m expecting calls today, so the phone is chirruping away in my pocket as I turn right from Wing’s Middle Street into the village’s Bottom Street. Of the two, where would you rather live? The one might suggest a lack in firmness of purpose, the other a scatological sense of humour (though these are not the only possibilities: other interpretations are available!) The call is from the estate agent handling the sale of the old family home in Kent. The number of people interested in viewing what should be a highly desirable house has declined. Should we reset the price? Well, of course - the property market is bound to reflect the economic uncertainty existing elsewhere, so yes, we must.

I slither and slip down a soaked field to Crownwell Farm where chickens and ducks range freely and contentedly under pretty pink-blossomed trees. The Rutland Flyer bus scoots past up the lane, and I relay the estate agent’s news by phone to Sue. Then as I heave myself up a muddy ginnel beside the site of the old Manton Junction station, I field a call from My Client enquiring about the viability of next week’s recording sessions in London. They’re going ahead, but with me producing from Northampton by Skype. I always said I’d give up recording if it was reduced to us all working in our own little boxes made out of ticky-tacky (cf. Pete Seeger), but that’s what there is for the moment, and for all I know it’s a situation that may become permanent.

We’re so very connected, which provided the Internet holds up under the pressure from gazillions of bored kids and their parents playing Super Mario, is going to make the coming weeks and months survivable, mentally speaking, but which is also pumping infomatic fear into our homes hour by hour. These days I’m turning the phone off every evening to avoid Night Terrors, but here I am, on a lovely but chilly day, wired into the world even as I ‘do pilgrimage’ around the Rutland countryside.

As the path emerges by back gardens into the edge of Manton, a refuse lorry emblazoned with Rutland Cares reverses down the rutted lane towards me. A white-bearded, weather-hardened bloke leaps down in sprightly fashion from the cab, Father Christmas collecting sacks rather than distributing from them. He buttonholes me – almost literally – there’s no regard for social distance: ‘Don’t mind me asking…’ he trumpets, no introduction, expelling spittle into the surrounding air, ‘But ‘ow old are you then, mate?’  I spot the direction in which we’re headed. The government has suggested the over-seventies should confine themselves to barracks for the next twelve weeks. I say I’m sixty-eight. ‘And you walkin’? ‘Ow far you goin’ today then?’ I guess at a dozen miles. ‘Exactly. That’s what I mean…’ he offers to the world at large. ‘My buddy, ‘e’s the wrong side of seventy, but ‘e’s as fit as a fiddle. Works out, runs, the lot. He’d go flippin’ barmy stuck inside all day. Government wants their head tested…’

It isn’t an argument I can successfully contest. Seventy’s an artificial limit, and later I hear politician David Blunkett and Christian Wolmar, the railway campaigner, make similar points on Radio 5, but the general principle is surely right: we have to separate to survive. And by the time I write up this walk, the advice/instruction has been generalised with increasing force to the whole population. But here in the UK we’re still more free than friends Dorothy and Malcolm in France, who with the whole of the public there are restricted to within 500 metres of their property unless they fill out a form and take it with them. I extract myself from my Caring Rutland encounter with as much respect and dignity as I can muster, and wander across to St. Mary’s church, musing on my new possible exposure to Covid-19, and how difficult it can be to politely observe a sensible distance (This has also become easier in the days since, as the message has been gradually absorbed.)

For any human being, but with added weight and affect if one is Christian, and perhaps a little more still if one is a huggy/kissy/mwah mwah semi-theatrical, this all goes against the grain. We’re meant to be together, to show love and solidarity in physical ways. The human touch makes us more mentally healthy and grounded. When will we be able to fully trust other people again, on the Tube, in our supermarkets, in our houses, in church?

I spend a few minutes in higgledy-piggledy St. Mary’s, a church without a tower, but with the remains of the medieval chantry within, to the side of the plain, well-scrubbed sanctuary. When I emerge Rutland Cares are now making their deliberate way round the village, causing a posse of leisure riders to wait and then wait some more the far side of the crossroads. I laugh, because I remember the dustmen leitmotif from the excellent 80’s telly series A Very Peculiar Practice. An ingenue doctor (Peter Davison) finds himself attached to a medical practice at the subtlely dystopian ‘Lowlands University’. Feral nuns of rather masculine disposition roam the deserted campus, and so do sinister white refuse trucks. We’re left to make up our own minds about what either are doing. I’m sure you’ll find it somewhere on Netflix or Amazon, a gentle, funny, respite from the blood and gore of Game of Thrones etc. .

The dustmen finally part company with me for good as I walk the path beside the road which follows the ridge, Rutland Water to my left. Eventually I can drop down on a track to be on the shore of Rutland’s own little Galilee. Walking, cycling or driving the perimeter of a lake – it’s all the same – getting where you think you’re going takes a great deal longer than you’ve bargained for. And in this case the rise and fall may only be ten metres at a time, but then again, there are an awful lot of ups and downs. Another phone call announces itself. This time I’m able to put to rest something which has been causing a great deal of anxiety, and so I pitch up beside the boat club at Edith Weston with lightened step.


The village is neat and the church likewise, but there’s trouble with the roof, as there also seemed to be in Manton: it may be that the Lead Thieves have been at it again. As everyone will tell you, the village takes its name from Edith, Queen of Wessex and England, officially crowned, sister of Harold Godwinson, and wife of Edward the Confessor. Thus she lost both husband and brother in the same famous year, 1066, and survived another nine years before she was buried beside her husband in Westminster Abbey at the direction of William the Conqueror, the new Norman king. She deserves greater recognition as one of the most significant women of British history.

I cross the top road beside what was formerly the site of RAF North Luffenham, but which has more latterly become St. George’s Barracks. In its RAF days, the station was tasked with an extraordinary range of activities. Thor nuclear missiles were based here during the early 1960s, but it also hosted electronic repair units, medical services and a language school, training people to monitor Eastern European transmissions during the Cold War. In its new guise as an Army establishment it maintains its medical tradition, but also hosts the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. There are apparently a lot of Working Dogs in the Army. And now I’m thinking Peter Sellers:  It’s been a hard day’s night/And I’ve been working like a dog/It’s been a hard day’s night/I should be sleeping like a log. Yes, yes, I know:  it was written by Lennon and McCartney. But for a full-fat sixties’ diet you really need to hear the Sellers’ version in tandem with the original.

North Luffenham church is outstanding, from the point of view of its context, its exterior and its interior. This is a country minster church which tells you much about the status of the village in medieval times, or the wealth of its patrons. It’s lovely. For once Simon Jenkins is rather mealy-mouthed – though he begrudgingly gives it one star. He writes:  

‘Away from the bleakness of Rutland Water and the tat of the local RAF (sic) station lies a gentle group of farm, manor, rectory and church on the slopes of a hill dropping down to the River Chater…the tower is of the ‘dunce’s cap’ type, made ponderous by a jutting stair turret and nave aisles that embrace its base…’

It must have been something he’d eaten.

I arrive as the children are ending school for the day. A young woman is standing hunched into the wall, a few metres from the school entrance, weeping into her mobile ‘phone. It’s hard not to read everything in the light of Covid-19. Has she had some bad news about a relative? Is she wondering how she’ll cope once the children are sent home from school? Is she just terrified about the general uncertainty?  It might of course be nothing of the sort: I may simply be projecting my own worries on to her.

I walk the lane which rises gently from the western edge of the village, and keeps climbing steadily to the hamlet of Lyndon, where St. Martin’s church sits on its picnic-friendly green by a gothic ruin and next to the evenly proportioned, chateau-like Hall.

Once upon an eighteenth-century time, the meteorologist Thomas Barker lived here. In 1749, he saw what was probably a tornado:

'A remarkable Meteor was seen in Rutland, which I suspect to have been of the same kind as Spouts at Sea…

It was a calm, warm and cloudy Day, with some Gleams and Showers; the Barometer low and falling, and the Wind South, and small. The Spout came between 5 and 6 in the evening; at 8 came a Thunder-Shower, and Storms of Wind, which did some Mischief in some places; and then it cleared up with a brisk N.W. Wind.

The earliest Account I have was from Seaton. A great Smoke rose over or near Gretton, in Northamptonshire, with the Likeness of Fire, either one single Flash, as the Miller said, or several bright Arrows darting to the Ground, and repeated for some Time, as others say. Yet some who saw it, did not think there was really any Fire in it, but that the bright Breaks in a black Cloud looked like it. However, the Whirling, Breaks, Roar, and Smoke frightened both Man and Beast. Coming down the Hill, it took up Water from the River Welland, and passing over Seaton Field, carried away several Shocks of Stubble; and crossing Glaiston, and Morcot Lordships, at Pilton Town's End tore off two Branches … I saw it pass from Pilton over Lyndon Lordship, like a black smoky Cloud, with bright Breaks; an odd whirling Motion, and a roaring Noise, like a distant Wind, or a great Flock of Sheep galloping along on hard Ground … As it went by a Quarter of a Mile East from me, I saw some Straws fall from it, and a Part, like an inverted Cone of Rain, reached down to the Ground. Some who were milking, said it came all round them like a thick Mist, whirling and parting, and, when that was past, a strong Wind for a very little while, though it was calm both before and after. It then passed off between Edithweston and Hambleton, but how much further I do not know.'

Isn’t that just absolutely fab!

Orders of the day:  21 km. 6 hours.  Bright and cheerful weather, with a chilly breeze. 11 deg. C.  Four churches: all open.  No stiles. Seven gates. No bridges (that I noticed).

Father
Here we are:
Your children -
A scattered family
Shouting from the balconies
To each other
And to you.
Hear our prayer
For deliverance from
Sickness, sorrow, loneliness and death.
We repent of our carelessness
With the gifts you have given us.
Reform us, even at this late time,
Into the creatures you intended us to be.
Grant us grace
To be wellsprings of love
Refreshing an exhausted and anxious humanity:
Pouring out a glittering witness
To your great glory.
We pray it through Jesus Christ
Your Son
Our Lord and Saviour,
Amen.

·        The Borg were a new and terrifying alien invention of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94) which featured the mellifluous tones of Sir Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard – for some of us the most interesting and complex character in all the various ST series. The Borg were a robot collective whose m.o. was the assimilation of civilisations they encountered, and whose catchphase was the immortal ‘Resistance is futile’ (American English ‘Fewtle’)  They stand as a metaphor for ultimate connectivity, beyond individual personality and emotion.

Peninsula

As you know, and any Roman would have guessed, the English word for the above means – almost/an island. My walk today is a simple out-and-back along the Hambleton peninsula which sticks out like a thumb print into Rutland Water from the Oakham end.

By St. Edmund’s in Egleton a senior pair of walkers are eating sandwiches on the bench by the church gate. Once I’ve booted up from the back of the car, we nod and say hello maintaining our two metres distance, as advised. The lane towards the peninsula runs north-north-west, but I’m pleased to find there’s an alternative to the tarmac a third of the way along – a parallel sandy bike track across the Vale of Catmose running up to the old Ketton road. This broad, straight highway now simply services the village of Hambleton with its swanky hotel and arts-and-crafty buildings and then drops down in muted fashion to the edge of the peninsula, petering out and peering towards the reservoir’s eastern end.  As I tread the cycleway, Hambleton Hall’s guests roar past in Ferraris and souped up Beamers. I’m reminded of the line in Betjeman’s Christmas’: ‘Even to shining ones who dwell/Safe in the Dorchester Hotel…’ There are glimpses of water, and a camper-van hiding in the trees, before the road bends and climbs towards the village, which sits sufficiently high above the rest of the land such that it was never going to be inundated when Rutland Water was proposed (in the late sixties) and constructed (in the seventies). After this soggy winter the reservoir’s full of water which otherwise would have been making its way to the sea along the Welland and the Nene, and although way oop north Kielder Water is deeper and holds more liquid, Rutland has the larger surface area. If you want to cycle all the way round, including the peninsula, it’s thirty-seven kilometres of pedalling, which for the lycra’d enthusiasts is a mere bagatelle, but for most of us would be a Major Work. 

                                        Arts and Crafts: Old Post Office at Hambleton

The historical guide to St. Andrew’s church modestly suggests that the site of Hambleton village has been inhabited from ‘at least 600 A.D’, but the current settlement’s commanding position must surely have excited interest way before that. In medieval times it seems to have ranked higher than Stamford or Oakham as an ecclesiastical centre. Now the church is rather Victorian-dim inside, with a wealth of details that owe a lot to the aesthetic of Walter Gore Marshall, who made his money brewing, and re-invested it in the local surroundings for the benefit of all: philanthropy was in fashion back then. William Morris was all the rage, and those influences are obvious even in the elaborate carved details around the organ console. Either side of the altar two striking menorahs catch the eye, and why not? Without Morning Prayer and its O.T. readings, I tend to lose my sense of Judaeo-Christian continuity.

Marshall also built Hambleton Hall, not to be confused with the Jacobean-period Old Hall which sits by the edge of the water in Middle Hambleton. There was a Nether Hambleton too, but now it lies full fathom five, deemed superfluous to requirements, and the inhabitants paid off, an inland mini-Dunwich.  I have fond memories of Marshall’s Hall, now part of the expensive Relais and Chateaux chain. We dined there once a few decades ago, treating my stepmum and dad to a celebration lunch. It’s one of those places that brings a brigade of waiters to the table to dramatically and simultaneously whip off the metal covers from the diners’ plates. This gastronomical coup de theatre is somewhat spoiled if the wrong dishes are revealed after the denouement, as happened on that occasion. Lol. I remember the food as good but not as good as it should have been for the prices. I’m sure it’s quite different now.

I imagine Walter Marshall was rather an earnest chap. He left the Hall to his sister Eva Astley Cooper who was a bit more of a go-er. Noel Coward was part of her set in the Twenties and wrote Hay Fever in Hambleton. Sir Malcolm Sargent (‘Flash’!) who in his youth was organist at Melton Mowbray, became enamoured of her niece, and slipped in between the curly wooden columns to play St. Andrew’s organ from time to time. When we were students we used to sing Sir Malcolm’s banjo-inspired ‘Cowboy Carol’ a lot: ‘When I climb up to my saddle/gonna take Him to my heart/There’ll be a new world beginning from tonight’. I like to think of Flash bashing this out on the manuals at Hambleton, a sort of companion piece to the arrangement of Abba’s Super Trouper which B.J.Campbell, a sometime colleague of Sue’s, once essayed on the prestigious high-art organ at St. Matthew’s Northampton to our enormous iconoclastic pleasure.

Coronavirus doesn’t seem to be affecting the trade at the Finch’s Arms yet: the car park’s chocker, though perhaps mostly with walkers gathering a swift, self-justifying half before setting out round the headland. I’m feeling maudlin, overwhelmed by the likely consequences of this viral disaster in terms of illness and death and future economic catastrophy. Everyone’s trying to keep calm and carry on, but if we’re smart we know this is a series of events which will leave its mark for a generation, perhaps longer. Maybe some of the adjustments made will be beneficial socially and politically, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Maybe me and mine will come through unscathed, and maybe we won’t. Personally I know I’m viewing my own mortality in a different and more immediate way, even wondering if I’ll see to its end this project on which I’m embarked and which I’ve shared with you for so long now.

On the way back to the car, I pass a number of walkers and joggers. No one makes eye contact: everyone gives everyone else a wide berth. By the Audi I sit on the bench and eat a sandwich. Two other booted and anoraked seniors pass by. We nod and say hello, making sure there’s two metres distance between us, as advised.

When they’ve gone, a gent emerges from Egleton’s churchyard where he’s been busy tidying. There’s the sudden sound of a woody woodpecker, very close but nonetheless invisible among the bare branches of the trees, and for a moment the gent and I share exquisite enjoyment of one of God’s creatures doing what he was designed to do. I resolve, despite weak and shaking knees, that I must try to do the same.

Viral load: 3 hrs. 10k. Cloud and sun. 10 degrees C. No gates. No stiles. No bridges. One church. One Faith. One Lord. One woodpecker. Probably spotted, more or less.

Lord Jesus think on me
Nor let me go away
Through darkness and perplexity
Point thou the heavenly way.

Lord Jesus think on me
That, when the flood is past
I may eternal brightness see
And share thy joy at last.
Amen.