Solipsist

There’ve been travellers’ horses in the scrappy water meadow behind Northampton’s Riverside retail development for years, piebald, hairy, rustic and not at all phased by humans, because hundreds of people pass close to them daily. They’re grouped by the gate, chomping on the sparse pasture, and I have to be non-socially distanced from them as I make my way down to the Nene, pretty much elbowing them to one side. Are they wild? Does anyone own them? If so, who? They’re apparently not for anything, whether work or riding. They just are. Which isn’t an observation one would need to make of, say, blackbirds or squirrels.

This is a path, part of the Nene Way, to the east of one of Weston Favell’s old mills, which I’ve walked a lot, though not so much in recent years. I remember bunking off morning worship down here one Sunday in a huff about something churchy, and marching my frustrations into the misty air.  Near where it passes through a second gate into the Billing Aquadrome’s land, the high symmetrical mound of Clifford’s Hill is obvious on the far bank through the trees – which aren’t fully in leaf yet. There was a ford across the river here in medieval times, and something of a river cliff, hence the name. It was a militarily strategic motte castle keeping north-facing watch over the river valley. I love the fact that the summit of the mound saw more domesticated use as a bowling green when the game came into vogue in the seventeenth century.

It’s a beautifully warm day, with a haze lingering into the late morning. There are some other folk about as I traverse the suburban housing at the outset of the walk, but in the Aquadrome only a handful of residents from the fixed bungalow caravans wander around, watching the adagio progress of the river and the birdlife. The ground surface has thoroughly dried: the ‘lockdown’ has been made bearable by the consistently fine weather of the last three weeks. What’s striking is the vast expanse of empty open ground where the site’s casual caravan traffic would normally have taken up residence by now. There’s no one there at all – whether because the government’s message about unnecessary travel has been taken on board, or the Aquadrome has shut its doors to incomers.

                                             Billing Aquadrome: April 2020

The English summer carries a host of associations giving shape and colour to time, depending on who you are. For me as for many others, the natural focus is on sporting events, all now gone from this year’s calendar, although English cricket still hopes for a miracle which would allow some matches to be played. Not even in wartime was the national game completely squashed, but I can’t see any amateur or professional version being feasible. The Olympics would have been a personal highlight. Some find a summer without Wimbledon unthinkable. Non-sporting people might mark the Lord Mayor’s Show or the Trooping of the Colour. From a faith point of view, the long stretch of Trinity is broken in late June by our patronal festival. Holidays in July or August are a necessary relief from the routine of work. At present the government is advising against booking even these. For the Aquadrome it means that the annual car festivals won’t be taking place. There’ll be no Friday evening processions of ancient Land Rovers, Vauxhalls, or American sedans onto its grass, there to be lovingly polished and primped. How will the public cope with these privations? I do not mean to mock. It’s a real question, to be considered in the light of domestic abuse and anti-social behaviour. Talking cars for the moment, I’m already seeing too much dangerous, criminally fast driving born of displaced frustration. Where is the Church’s voice in this? I don’t hear it, either at a local or most importantly, a national level. Have we become too much in thrall to a ‘multi-faith culture’, and too scared of giving a moral lead as well as a Christian message of hope to a largely secular world? Come on Justin! Get in there!

I’m on my way to Cogenhoe, and then to Whiston. I’ll have said this when I first visited the former on pilgrimage four years ago, but ‘Cogenhoe’ is one of those places which like ‘Cholmondeley’ sell the foreign visitor a complete dummy pronunciation-wise. It’s certainly ‘Cook-noe’, and more likely in old Northampton dialect, ‘Cook-ner’ (with a hint of a country burr on the terminal ‘r’). The ‘hoe’ refers to a promontory on which the straggling village sits: its ancient centre just falling off the hill’s eastern end close to St. Peter’s church. If you look back through the Big Walk’s annals, you’ll see I’ve been to Farthinghoe , and in Hertfordshire there’s the splendid Sharpenhoe with its ‘Clappers’ iron-age fort.

The heritage of Cogenhoe is celebrated in Church Street by a series of green plaques. I notice one honouring the artist Chris Fiddes whose nice son I once taught, and another for Sir John Hobson, once a Tory Attorney General. A little nearer to St. Peter’s church is a nod to Frank Cheer who ran an ‘outdoor beer house’ from a cottage. A note on the Heritage Society’s website remarks: ‘the distinctive smell of the shop is still remembered by older residents…’  I find no commemoration of sixties’ era Blue Peter presenter Peter Purves who once lived in the Old Rectory. I wonder why…?

St. Peter’s is a be-flowered quiet celebration all of its own, sitting in two acres of churchyard, teetering on the edge of the hill. There are earthworks protecting the land above the valley, but nowhere can I find a suggestion that any early military structure once sat beside it. I sit and look, thinking on the industrial history of this village, now largely a dormitory for Northampton and Wellingborough. Ironstone was once quarried here, but now you’d have to have a keen eye to spot any remaining clues in the farmed and wooded landscape. Once upon a time one of the main jobs of the school was to teach its pupils lace-making. As in so many other Northamptonshire small towns and villages, shoes were a literal cottage industry before centripetal forces drew the workers into Northampton itself and away from the domestic hearth. And now in 2020, an opposite imperative takes commerce away from the corporate centres and back into the home. In the nineteenth century the issue was how entrepreneurs could best control their workforce. How will that play out over the next twelve months? Compare and contrast Cogenhoe and villages of its ilk with all their sophisticated social connections and a church at their heart with anonymous housing estates replete with fear, loathing, and envious competition over status and wealth. Pilgrimage can generate optimism and pessimism, sometimes almost simultaneously.

I have the beginnings of a blister and leave Whiston for another day.

Stato man is on furlough, and regrets that under current contractual terms he is unable to contribute information.

Great Father of us all
We thank and praise you for the gifts you have given us:
The sun:
The rain:
The changing seasons:
The extraordinary variety and creativity of your people:
A sense of the past:
A vision of the future:
A faith that you have all things in your care:
A hope that we may see a new earth and heaven,
United in love for you,
Redeemed by the work of your Son,
Inspired by your Holy Spirit.
Amen.

And why the title to this post?  As I always say…I know you know this but…

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that we can know only ourselves. It might derive for instance from Descartes' famous ‘cogito ergo sum’ ( to be distinguished from Cogenhoe ergo sum  which would have been quite a good joke if I’d thought of it earlier!) In other words, I can be sure of one thing at least – which is that I’m thinking now. Everything else is uncertain, unknowable, and maybe unreal. Everyone else may be a zombie. All that I experience may be a dream which as surrounded me all these apparent years (or just maybe a few seconds…) This interesting, sceptical idea has hung around for more than two millenia. It can’t be refuted – in Karl Popper’s terms it’s not falsifiable – but if there really are any hardcore solipsists out there, I don’t think that’s going to worry them a great deal. Metaphorically, the term has a secondary meaning. In common language it might embrace anyone who thinks only of themselves, not necessarily from philosophical principle, but from dedicated selfishness. Can this be distinguished from the individualism which has pervaded contemporary society?  And will the current crisis provoke an examination of this? Whatever, the process of self-isolating and social distancing enhances the illusion that, sorry and all that, John Donne, but we are islands entire of ourselves.  I think about this as I walk. By myself. Alone. And every philosophical problem seems to shade into all other philosophical problems.