Walking’s acknowledged as a remedy for mental health issues. Even twenty minutes can lower the blood pressure, and it can stimulate the creativity of poets and singers, sometimes at inconvenient moments. The invention of the mobile phone has been a great boon in this respect, allowing the owner to scribble the perfectly epigrammatic line or hum another killer hook into his/her little black vesta case while hanging by a fingernail off Striding Edge. Sue and I enjoy our daily permitted steps, which usually exorcise the demons of gloom and restore perspective. The longer the walk, the better, because a combination of endorphins and lactic acid gives one something else to think about, like how to conquer the world, or put one blistered foot in front of the other just one mo’ time.
Today I’m dispelling the Glums* by visiting the shades of the nuns at Delapré Abbey. As I pass our local, the owner’s emerging from the side door to exercise her dog. She lost her life partner not so long ago, and now the pub’s closed, and for all I know the beer’s going off down in the cellar. She’s worth an arrow prayer, I reckon, and gets one. That’s the thing about prayer – you don’t need anyone’s permission. On a narrow section of pathway, a bloke stands foursquare in its middle yacking down his phone, oblivious of my approach (see the previous posting!) I say ‘excuse me’ with as little attitude as I can manage, and turn my head to avoid any germs he may be directing towards me as I pass. I say a prayer for him too, less sympathetic, more pithy.
When I was a student an older friend who was going through a rough patch was walking around with a copy of Martyn Lloyd Jones’ ‘Spiritual Depression’ under his arm. I remarked that personally the sheer weight of the tome would leave me with the Black Dog. Reading one’s way out of despair wouldn’t work for me now, and hasn’t in the past.
The day is grey, but there’s that quality of light in the sky which lets you know the cloud is going to burn off: it’ll be lovely before long. I wish I could feel the same way about Covid-19 for all that the Tabloid Press intermittently promises the nation a release into the Sunny Uplands. As someone remarked this week, we keep hearing about ‘green shoots of recovery’, but there aren’t any signs of flowers yet…
I pause in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Great Houghton, and look over the wall at the pluperfect lawns and fountain of the adjoining mansion. There are thirteen on the electoral roll of this desirable village which though situated so close to the centre of Northampton still retains its rural atmosphere. I love the area opposite the church with its beautiful ironstone houses and the ancient hollow way that drops down over the field towards the Nene. Everything about the place tells me there’s a great, thriving community here. So why do so few of them beat a path to the door of St. Mary’s, and will that change once we’re in the New Normal and have left the Before Time behind? And can we find some new ways of referring to these changing circumstances please?
I always thought I knew the green spaces of Northampton inside out, and am humbled and amazed to find that the Brackmills Country Park totally eluded me pre-Virus. Having enjoyed a taster of its delights on the previous walk, this time I’m going to try and follow it around the perimeter of the Industrial Area all the way to Hardingstone before making my way on to Delapré. I track the green ravine of the old railway from Great Houghton until I can turn into the Park, and then follow the tarmac up to the left in the area known (with some exaggeration) as ‘Little Norway’. A pair of red kites wheel overhead. They’ll be roosting on the roofs of the Guildhall soon. Shielded from the bruiting of the commercial area, the choir of humbler birdsong is loud in my ears, and then when I go ahead uphill, now on a grassy path, the scent of the may is really heavy on the quiet air. Friend Richard the drummer used to design industrial areas for the Development Corporation in the 70s, and in retrospect what a brilliant job they did. In effect I’m walking through an arboretum of thirty/forty year old trees all now in their prime: it’s a total delight. At the top of the hill there are occasional fine views across a hazy Northampton, the sun glinting off the white roofs of the warehousing, in one place giving the illusion of a lake. In the middle ground I can see the Express Lifts Tower, and beyond it the rise to Duston with the tower of the old St. Crispin’s hospital on its crest. There’s always a serpent in the garden, though. I try to stay high, but this turns out to be a mistake – the Country Park is really divided into two sections split by a feeder road, which means the walker needs to lose height before climbing again. My laziness brings me out to an area designated for future housing needs and currently surrounded by chain link fences. Three quarters of a mile of scrappy paths into Hardingstone is the consequence. Make the most of this woodland while it’s pristine. My experience along the paths of comparable areas around suburban London suggests its quality will rapidly degrade once the housing estates are contiguous.
I stop for running repairs and a sarnie on the stone seat of the village War Memorial, and in this weekof the commemoration of VE Day fall into conversation with a chap from Liverpool much the same age as me. He served in the Royal Engineers and so is passionate about all things military. He and his wife have the letters written to and by one of the WW2 dead celebrated on the Memorial – James Morris. This man was killed during the siege of Monte Cassino. My co-conversationalist himself lost a close friend at Goose Green during the Falklands conflict. We agree that few families avoided bereavement in the Second War. As I follow the path down under the dual carriageway and into the green spaces of Delapré, I remember the Battle of Northampton, fought close to here in 1460. The nuns tended the wounded and dying, quite possibly including Henry VI. It must have been a frightening chapter in the ministry of this Cluniac foundation, although a hundred years previously they confronted the terrors of the Black Death, which carried away one of their Mother Superiors. For me, it’s just another reminder of the long-standing cross-European links – Cluny is, what, six hundred miles from Northampton? But I mustn’t preach.
I relish the graceful early summer parkland, the golf course naked of players, the careless remains of the nineteenth century landscaping, featuring the delicious lemony green of the parades of low spreading oak trees, and emerge into the housing sprawl of Far Cotton, with its massively spired church of St. Mary’s. I pause in the churchyard beside the apse and gaze up at its height, wondering how a church this size can ever come back into proportion with its ministry and congregation. Yet Sue tells me that when some friends of hers worshipped here in the early 70s it was a thriving Anglo-Catholic community. The demographics have changed markedly since then.
Do we have to let whole portions of our personal church history go? Will we ever sing together the way we did before? Well yes, perhaps - in five or ten years’ time, but will we be able then to re-set to where we were? And is that even desirable? Some will have died. Some will have no inclination. Conceivably there’ll be new doctrines and attitudes. The old shibboleths may seem irrelevant. There’ve been times over the last two thousand years when the laity has been happy to maintain a representative priesthood, by which I mean that the clerical caste spoke to God for us, took communion for us, prayed on our behalf, while we the people kept the world turning by the sweat of our brows. Is that what’s happening in this (temporary?) situation? Do you like that idea? Do you have the spiritual resources to stay faithful without collective worship?
Lord Jesus Christ
You taught us to love our neighbour
and to care for those in need
as if we’re caring for you.
In this time of anxiety, give us strength
to comfort the fearful, to tend the sick
and to assure the isolated
of our love and your love.
For your name’s sake. Amen.
(From the church noticeboard: St. Mary’s, Far Cotton)
*for followers of Musical Theatre, ‘The Glums’ may reference the long running hit ‘Les Miserables’. Going back a little further, some of us remember the Glum family in Muir and Norden’s famous radio sitcom ‘Take it from here.’ Ron, the hapless and perpetually disappointed son was played by the evergreen Dick Bentley, his girlfriend by the lovely June Whitfield, who passed away only last year after a distinguished career in comedy which took her onwards to ‘Ab Fab’ and beyond. All of these are Glums to enjoy, if you can access them.
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