Sore Knees

I park very carefully by the eastern section of pretty Barrowden’s village green, because there are notices saying such a privilege is reserved for residents, and my boot-tying is accordingly sheepish. However the cross-section of residents who pass while I’m strapping up smile benignly, so maybe they think I’m an incomer they’ve yet to meet, or I look like the kind of visitor Barrowden wants.

The grass in the home field is as high as a Great Dane’s eye. I cross the bumps and lumps of ancient habitation down to the Welland bridge which marks the county boundary, and am charmed by the little gargoyle which watches the water from one of the spans. There’s not a huge amount to see just now.

The path to Tixover follows the river, now June-overgrown, now broader and high on a flat bank in a sheepy field, then through some bosk, and finally along a broad track which takes me to the sign showing the way to the church of St. Luke. The backdrop to its comfortable, squat and square tower is the deep-green of the woodland at Wakerley. I walk around to St. Luke’s porch, and look at the gravestones, as one does, noting the nonagenarians, feeling the heart lurch at the loss of a youngish mum, probably like mine a victim of cancer.

St. Luke’s, Tixover makes it into Simon Jenkins’. He implies that something about its re-made medieval design and situation tells you this was a Cluniac foundation. The little church was once dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, but perhaps the alleged reputation of the saint convinced a conservative congregation it needed a new heavenly patron, and perhaps they were encouraged in that thought by the Cromwellian vandals who in their reforming fervour broke some bits from the most important tomb to be found inside the church. There’s sixteenth century Swiss glass in some of the windows. I don’t know how rare this is, but it speaks of an interesting dialogue of faith.

Up the lane there’s an almighty commotion of sheep. A genial young farmer in a Land Rover is working the flock from one field to another with a pair of eager collies. He says how do as I lean on the fence and watch my own short edition of ‘One man and his dog(s)’, marvelling that farmers and animals have been doing this for centuries – though for most of that time without automotive assistance. A few yards further down the lane, but more than half a mile from St. Luke’s, there’s a sign on a lamp-post directing the visitor to the ‘Church Key’ -which won’t be hanging on its hook of convenience just now.

I’ve been to Loddington, Luddington and Lyddington. And I’ve been to Doddington and now I’m going to Duddington. I haven’t been to Diddington, which sounds like something from a Ken Dodd joke, but there is one – in Cambridgeshire, not far from the diocesan border. Duddington has a curving main street which would make a good film set, and then I come to St. Mary’s, which as one visitor has remarked is a frustrating place to photograph. The surrounding buildings crowd in on the church and render the angles awkward. For little ole’ pilgrim me there’s nothing to hang onto in Duddington today. There’s almost no one about apart from a parcels’ delivery man. I can’t draw inspiration from within St. Mary’s, because Virus Rules OK. Even beating the church boundary is quickly done, constrained by its narrow walls. The village mill is under re-construction, the water dank and un-moving in the pond. That’s the way of things, and I don’t hold it against a perfectly charming place to live. It’s me that’s dry, not the village. With nothing to detain me, I pick up the path walking north beside the river, crossing a field and a raised track, and emerging on a lane near Tixover Grange. This is now a care home, but formerly was a school for disabled children founded by the late Wilfred Pickles, whose Yorkshire tones I dimly remember from fifties’ radio. His wife was Mabel, hence the catchphrase ‘What’s on the table, Mabel?’ (there was a game-show element to the weekly programme). There’s now a furniture store near Bradford called ‘Mabel On the Table’, which will only make sense to a rather limited, elderly demographic or those with a Beryl Cook sense of humour. Still, it must work for them.

Shortly the superstructure of the Ketton cement works appears on the horizon for the first time, a jarring note in the rural symphony. A long straight track lies ahead, steadily rising, with the village of Collyweston on the opposite side of the shallow valley to my right. The path kinks left and right, and then I’m on one of those midgey ginnels which skirts the back gardens of Ketton’s dark star twin, Geeston. I loop round to enter Ketton proper by Aldgate. 

I’m surprised to learn that Ketton is the fourth largest settlement in Rutland after Oakham, Uppingham and Cottesmore, but as you’ve gathered, it acquires that size only by being a mash-up of three original villages. Wikipedia tells me that the current spelling is an adaptation of ‘Chetene’ which means ‘on the banks of the River Chater’, and the bridge spanning the stream (which separates Aldgate from Ketton) is handsome, though today I’m prevented from enjoying it to the full by two marauding teenage girls complete with teenage mobile phones and teenage verbal tics…’I’m like, and she’s like…so not…whatever…’ They’re probably super-intelligent, but just hiding it very well. Up at St. Mary the Virgin, I sit on a bench in the shadow of its soaring spire and eat lunch. Malcolm is walking his dog, and asks where I’ve been. He’s a walker too, but today he’s already played a round of golf, so he’s well ahead with his daily steps, I tell him. Malcolm hails from Windsor, and wanted a house he didn’t have to ‘do up’, but guess what fate had in store? He likes Ketton a lot, because of the variety of people – the wealthy and the ordinary, the agricultural and the industrial. We talk about walking solo. He used to enjoy the more remote long-distance paths, but we agree there’s a time of life at which doing those on one’s own becomes too risky. If I could go inside St. Mary’s there would be Gilbert Scott and Ninian Comper bits to admire. I’m intrigued by Simon Jenkins’ assertion that the angels on the hammer beams. ‘vividly repainted’ are ‘big enough to be ship’s figureheads’. The gravestones are a feature of the church surrounds, repositioned so as to be a tribute not only to the departed, but the skill of those who carved the lettering. It’s a thing well and fittingly done. What Jenkins says about the church as a whole is worth quoting:

            ‘English churches derive their character as much from their situation as their architecture. St. Mary’s sits high above a bend in the village street, where it slopes towards the stream. The contour of the street and churchyard wall thrusts the steeple upwards. Here is a church that truly crowns its settlement.’

Here’s a thing to make all you anti-Europeans foam at the mouth. Robert of Ketton, who was born sometime in the first half of the twelfth century, became Archdeacon of Pamplona, and was known and admired by the monastic foundation at Cluny. He was the first to render the Quran into Latin. You can’t escape geography. Our future, like our past, is tied to mainland Europe, not Australia or America or China – though it depends on those relationships as well.  The arrival of the Covid virus was at first touted as an import from China. Now we know it came to us via Italy, Spain and France – the three countries so familiar to Robert of Ketton.

And here’s something more for the Church to ponder. Cash-strapped as it is, many see Web Presence as the Church’s logical development. There’s a great deal to be written about this, but for the moment – just two things. The first is that it turns us all into potential ‘sheep-stealers’. We can go online to our local church, but if the church in Newmarket or Doncaster or Goodwood is making a better fist of virtual worship, aren’t you just as likely to tune into their Sunday morning offering? So, Mr and Mrs Vicars, you’d better get your programme-making chops together, if that’s where you see your parish focus as lying…you’re competing with professionals.

The second and connected thing (because viewing worship at a distance isn’t entirely new – cf. ‘The Hour of Power etc. etc. – I nearly wrote the ‘Tower of Power, but they’re a famous American rock horn section!) is that this may be the death knell of the local/parochial Church. Yet as Christians, don’t we above all value our group of people, the ones we live with day by day, struggling with the problems of our community, praying, laughing and crying together. And weren’t we slowly coming to the conclusion that one thing ailing contemporary society was the growing currency of on-line life at the expense of ‘normal’ human contact? And don’t you dare Hey Boomer me!

What we have now because of 24/7 virtual contact is a necessity, a tool, and not a desideratum, whether we’re talking Church or Business, and will you please say so to any over-zealous would-be Christian influencer, particularly anyone wearing a clerical collar. By going on-line the clergy/laity relationship and power balance has shifted rapidly to the benefit of clergy.

Democracy/consultation/participation by Zoom is difficult to achieve, whereas control of a group/congregation/PCC is relatively easy. This is very important, and not much discussed right now. Wycliffe would be turning in his grave. (Not the detective!)

The current activism of (particularly but not exclusively) young people in respect of e.g. ‘Black lives matter’ may be classic ‘displacement activity’ as a result of the restrictive social dynamics of an on-line life, post-Covid.

n.b. the cause in question is of course a very important one, though proscribing such phrases as ‘everyone’s life matters’ as racist/disgusting/filthy etc. etc. seems to me shocking, deplorable and probably counterproductive. And I don’t need to say this, do I?  Such proscription conflicts with core Christian values.

This seems a good moment to take a commercial break.

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Wow, we do get through some stuff.

The route back to Barrowden is a straight one, at first on a metalled surface, and then on a rough lane which may owe its continued breadth to the gas pipeline lying beside it. Near the summit, half a mile from the A47, there’s a tract of woodland and from a few hundred metres away I can hear them. Two cars are tucked into the scrub at the side of the track, low-slung, customed. Three individuals loll against them, two male and one female. They eye me up. They want some sport. I spot the red-rimmed eyes and lack of focus in the two blokes. They’re off their heads on something, and are swigging Red Bull as a recovery aid. They say something uncomplimentary which I don’t catch and then try me with ‘It’s Ray Mears in’it…’ I don’t rise to the bait, but smile and wish them a nice day. One of them reaches into a car and turns up the stereo to 11 for maximum offence. It’s beatbox stuff, shouty, sweary and over-compressed. And they’re too old for it, and really should have graduated to Classic FM by now.  For heaven’s sake, this is Rutland.

By Barrowden my knees are sore. And not from praying.  It’s just the banging of boots on tarmac.

Miles to go before I sleep… 17 km. 4.7 hrs. 15 deg C.  5 stiles. 12 gates. 3 bridges. The birds are very busy this year, apparently compensating with their music for a degree of human absence.

Father in heaven
As we think about opening our churches again,
Give to your people wisdom
And patience,
And then yet more wisdom,
And then yet more patience.

You are teaching us each day
About what we value.
May it be that we never again take lightly
The privilege of The Eucharist;
The blessing of The Peace;
The affirmation of shared Music;
The solidarity of a shared Amen.

So re-make your Church
In the shape you desire,
And as is good for your people.
We ask this in Jesus’ name,
Amen.