This is going to sour and
mean. One of the carpet-chewing things about ‘lockdown’ (along with illegal
raves and spitting at law enforcement agencies/service providers) has been the
running story concerning citizens driving hundreds of irresponsible miles for
the pleasure of an ice-cream on prom or pier, claiming that this is a vital, life-saving
respite from Covid-blues. It seems we’re an island race still. Or just sugar
addicts. Whatever, we’re mixed-up, aren’t we?
If you happen to live slap
bang in the middle of England, Rutland Water’s a good substitute for Skeggy or
Brighton beach, but thank goodness, not a roller-coaster or games arcade in
sight. In the course of today’s walk I see a single ice-cream van, and one Best
Western Hotel (not yet open for business, though perhaps next week…suitable PPE
permitting)
I pull myself up the hill away
from uber-neat Empingham and turn right following the signpost to Normanton.
I’m writing a verse in my head, which could perhaps be put to use for this
week’s ‘Ten On Sunday’. It’s St. Peter’s patronal festival weekend, and I want
to give old Rocky a suitable puff, like he needs it from me. Two days
ago I had a (40 watt i.e. not so very bright) lightbulb moment. Despite what
I’ve heard preached in a gazillion sermons, does everyone necessarily
identify with Peter’s spiritual experience? So I asked Sue, and she confirmed
she felt little sense of identity with our church’s patron saint. I wonder how
many other women (51% of the population, as we all know) agree? But then... firemen,
police officers, prisoners, they all exert a certain attractive force. Why not
a horny-handed fisherman with a dodgy temperament? These are murky waters – the
confluence of the streams of identity, faith and sex appeal. Reversing genders,
we need to account for the increasingly enhanced status of the Virgin during
medieval times. Yeah Vince, go on, chuck in a bit of psychoanalytic theory for
good measure…
Normanton is a strange
phenomenon. There was a village once, but it was cleared to make way for
the stately home and park of the Heathcote -Drummond-Willoughbys (two barrels
doesn’t make you a proper toff!) and the population re-directed to Empingham, according
to the time honoured and charming custom of the ruling classes (cf. Navajo
Native Americans/South African ‘townships’). Kingdoms rise and fall, the HDWs
had other, grander houses, and so eventually redundant, expensive Normanton Hall
was delapidated in the 1920s.
The church of St Matthew
is marginally pre-Victorian and thus the HDWs (subsequently the Lords of
Ancaster) would have known and supported its construction: for them as for many
19thC wealthy folk, philanthropy was fashionable until the money ran out amidst
the post Great War depression. The church’s tower and portico were modelled on
St. John’s Smith Square, proportionately reduced, but the balance of the
stonework is Edwardian.
Today Normanton is just a
series of signs on the roadside: even St. Matthew’s was earmarked to disappear
beneath the reservoir until it was saved by local outcry. What we enjoy now is the
top half of the deconsecrated church, with what is effectively a mezzanine
floor at the new post-inundation ground level. It looks like an elaborately eccentric
and beautiful river steamer awaiting the embarkation of pleasure-seekers. On a
hot day, it’s a wonderful place for a sarnie and a cup of tea, the sparkling
water lapping at the surrounding stones, sail-boards skimming the lake surface,
children giggling on the lawns.
There are a lot of people
enjoying the waterside; walkers,
cyclists, photographers, twitchers, boaty folk, families with children. I follow
the shoreline to the eastern dam from which one looks down on Empingham,
wondering whether, if there were a breach, the village would swim with the
fishes. (The answer is surely not: they must have designed out such a risk. Please
tell me they did!) The village website for Empingham has a really good history
section, showing how most periods of England’s national history are represented
somewhere within the parish – just the right mix of juicy anecdote and serious
comment. Gilbert seems to have been the HDW’s favourite given name. I taught
with a Gilbert Heathcote, a kindly, humane, sadly disappointed man, whose
nickname to staff and students alike was ‘Bunny’: I never knew why. His life
didn’t end well. Decades later it still seems unfair that it didn’t.
As sometimes happens,
while I take a breather at the northern end of the dam, my phone spontaneously
video-calls son Matt who’s beavering away on his computer in The Hague. Having
established who’s phoned whom, I show him the water stretching away towards
Oakham: as he says, I could be anywhere, but it doesn’t look particularly
English. Shortly afterwards I find myself in true grockleland because of the thronging
car parks, but then I’m off again on the path towards Whitwell, which rises to
skirt a little bay where there’s a sailing centre. I pass two slightly noisy
ladies with their kids and hear a snippet of conversation.
Woman 1: Mind you, I’d sell my soul to the devil…
Woman 2: Would you?
Woman 1: I’ve got no qualms about going to hell…
What a strange thing to
say! At the moment there are various
claims doing the rounds about an uptake of interest in Faith, often based on
the number of hits church websites get for virtual services. During the last
couple of days this even surfaced in the broadsheet press. Now it’s quite
possible – even predictable - that this is true. People have been badly scared,
and they’ve had time on their hands. If I think about it, I’ve probably prayed
and read the Bible more consistently than at any time in my life, perhaps for
both the above reasons, as well as from a need to create routine and personal
discipline, and to differentiate one day from another (it’s good to be reminded
at Morning Prayer that today’s an Ember Day and tomorrow we’re due to
commemorate wily old Cyril of Alexandria).
I’ve already wondered out loud in these pages if ‘revival’ might be
round the corner and if so whence it might come. However, let’s not get ahead
of ourselves, shipmates. Evidence rendered from hits on websites needs to be
treated with caution. Just because someone’s looked in your windows, doesn’t
mean they’re coming to stay. And these church surfers could be residents of
Terra del Fuego rather than Tooting for all you know. I passed a couple of big
kids on bikes the other day, and one said to the other, ‘She thinks she’s
something, but she’s only got 17k followers’. 17k!
If it is true that
folk are getting religion, what does ‘following Jesus’ mean these days? The
expression has a whole new layer of meaning now that most of us ‘do’ social
media. Commitment to theological precepts? Adoption of a critical and stringent
moral code? Actual church attendance? (well, no, obviously not for the moment!)
Financial contributions to the work of the Church as well as charities?
Integration into a Christian community?
These days there’s a tendency to impose our own requirements of ‘faith’,
in a way which is more palpable than in days gone by. Pick n’ mix is the thing,
now we can’t be told what to believe. And, reading more of the Old Testament
than I have for a while, I feel myself employing a bit of selective attention:
there’s a whole bunch of difficult stuff in there, about which I don’t care to
think too much.
Whitwell is a tiny
village. In the 2001 census there were just 41 people living there. Which makes
it a really good joke that in 1980, the regulars at the Noel Arms wrote to
President Chirac requesting - nay more or less demanding - a twinning with
Paris, insofar as their outgoing letter stated that if no reply was forthcoming
within a certain period of time they’d deem their ‘offer’ accepted. Eventually,
though it took a while, a definitive and
unsurprising ‘non’ found its way back to Whitwell. Notwithstanding, and latterly with the amused
connivance of Rutland County Council (to whom I increasingly warm), the proposed
arrangement continues to be celebrated on the village road signs. I pause at
St. Michael’s for a drink, and then cross the grounds of the Noel Arms to continue
to Exton beside pleasant fields and through a carefully, diversely planted modern
copse.
Exton’s a beaut. There’s a
shady village green, surrounded by lots of period thatched charm. If it weren’t
for the modern cars, you could easily imagine yourself back 50, 70, maybe a 100
years. The church of St. Peter and Paul is removed from the village, adjacent
to the grandeur of the re-built Exton Hall, which has its own Catholic chapel
(exquisite and available for weddings, according to their publicity). Exton
Park has its own eccentricities, including ‘Fort Henry’, a
lakeside folly from which the aristos and their guests once recreated the great
naval battles. The OS shows bare areas to the north-east of the village on the
fringes of the Park, where the landowners allowed exploitation of the ironstone
during the mid-twentieth century, employing the massive ‘Sundew’ dragline - now
to be seen part-preserved in Corby. It’s of astonishing size, a remarkable,
awe-inspiring piece of industrial heritage, a testimony to man’s ambition to
subdue the Earth.
I wish I could peek inside
SS Peter & Paul, which has a wonderful tower and spire, impressive in size,
adorned with castellations. Simon
Jenkins likes it: ‘At first view the tower seems telescopic, as if each
component were waiting to be stretched from above’. Mind you, he likes
Empingham’s ‘rocket’ steeple too, but gives that church one star as opposed to
Exton’s three. It’s frustrating that I can’t get through the front door. As
Jenkins says, Exton is mostly about its interior monuments, including a
spectacular 1686 memorial to the 3rd Viscount Campden. Monuments and
marble aren’t my thing, but a measure of its quality and importance is that the
great John Piper made a lithograph of it. A senior couple are wandering the
perimeter of the church in woebegone fashion. Like me perhaps they’d wondered
if in an out-of-the-way setting like this the church might be open. The Church
Times had it right last week in pointing out that places of worship are mostly
cleaned by the so-called ‘A’ generation of 70+ ladies - exactly the people who
shouldn’t be doing the heavy lifting right now. Who will step up?
I see the senior couple again as I mooch through the village on my way back to the car. Let’s come back to Exton again…
At the crossroads above
the village, the signpost says Empingham is one mile distant. This is a lie. By
the next crossroads, which still may or may not be one mile from
Empingham (I’d guesstimate a mile and a half), some old-fashioned, brightly
green and red painted travellers’ wagons sit on the verge. Lucky horseshoes are
for sale, and there’s a sign advertising ‘Wilf’s Wonky Woodwork’. Well, of
course I would, but a mile (!) is a long way to carry a garden gnome.
Cards on Mabel’s table: 20 km. 6 hrs. 23 deg C. Sunny throughout. 2 stiles. 13 gates. 3 bridges. Three churches. None open.
Father God
The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe
144,000
Get to share your glory.
(Or so I was once told)
But I don’t think you’re as mean as that.
Of course
Like I always do
I find it hard
To love those people down by the Lake;
The Polish guys
Not talking English
And laughing at me
(Or so I think)
The runners on the path
Always expecting me to give way
The yacking grockles
With their yappy dogs
And grizzling kids.
And then I catch myself falling.
Oh
They’re all your people
Struggling like me
Yearning like me
Blessed like me.
How could I forget?
Father, forgive me
And make me anew
To honour, love and cherish
And so bring us all together
Into your Kingdom
Where there is room enough
And to spare.
Even for me.
Amen.
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