I’m just eight miles from
Melton Mowbray, which always makes me think of the BBC’s cricket correspondent
and one-time England fast bowler, Jonathan Agnew, who’s always been an
enthusiastic advocate for all things Leicestershire: he learnt his rather accomplished radio chops there. The town is of course most famous
for its pies, which from Christmas will presumably be no longer subject to
predations from European imitators. Or will it be more vulnerable?
 |
| Thatching in Langham |
As I drive into Langham
and park in a shady spot, I give way to a tanned, swarthy young man who’s leading
a pretty grey pony up the street. While I’m booting up from the Audi’s
tailgate, I hear soothing, cooing noises softly behind me, and there’s the Lawrentian lad again, pony in hand. “She’s only young,” he says, “And still a bit wary of the
back of vehicles…” I say what a handsome animal the little horse is. He looks
pleased. As far as I can see, his companion is perfectly calm.
I have difficulty
deconstructing this. I suppose I’m thinking ‘Black Beauty’, inventing a narrative of abuse and misfortune. But I still can’t see why the rear
of an Audi estate would cause difficulty, unless it’s just straightforward
unfamiliarity or a dislike of the colour. Perhaps metallic blue just isn’t in
the natural repertoire of a horse’s experience. As I’ve remarked before:
there’s just so much one doesn’t know.
 |
| On the verge at Whissendine |
I’m walking to Whissendine
- an attractive name, conjuring images of a summer breeze susurrating through
willows beside a dibble-dabbling brook etc. etc. To get there I walk beside
arable fields onto a low airy ridge with views across to a traditional
windmill, whose sails are turning in wind that’s a few notches up from
susurrating. In fact the gusts are quite annoying, blowing the brim of my
Goretex hat down across my eyes and spoiling the view. The Met said nothing about wind
today. I guess the mill’s situated at the far end of Whissendine’s
straggly settlement: the village is larger than I’d thought - over a thousand
inhabitants. In Rutland terms ( ‘magnum in parvo’) that’s almost a city.
At the time of writing I can’t find a derivation for the village name, but I
can tell you it’s the title of a song by English ultra art-rock band Crippled
Black Phoenix, the description of whose music and alumni reads like an
out-take from Spinal Tap Revisited. The windmill is possibly the tallest stone
windmill in the country.
Hurray! The White Lion’s open again, so it’s
Curry Nights and Quiz Evenings all round. Hurray! So’s the church, a couple of
times a week. Boo! The Craft and Produce Show has had to be cancelled, but… Hurray!
The bell-ringers are back in socially distanced business. And with the
encouragement of Rev. Deborah, there’s going to be community bunting all over
town. Whissendine sounds fun.
Off Station Road, I pick
up the track which angles towards the hamlet of Teigh. Is this to be pronounced
‘Tie’ as it would be in Kent, or ‘Tea’ as in ‘Leigh on Sea (Essex)? Or even,
just possibly, Tay? A few hundred metres
from Whissendine there are many lumps and bumps in the fields,
including the remaining square earthworks of a sizeable moated manor house. At
some gates, a fastidious homeowner requests that passing walkers disinfect the
handles after closing, and then I come to a railway crossing on the diagonal
just as an EWS freight train thunders through, looming above me while I wait,
fingers in ears. It’s a striking feature of this particular railway line
(Stamford to Oakham) that there are many unmanned ground-level crossings. I’m
used to Northamptonshire ways, where such things are rare because the principal
railways are high-speed and well-trafficked. The bridleway is summer-overgrown
for a little while and then a path diverges through a hedge, cutting a clear
swathe through a field of immature wheat towards the tower of Teigh’s church.
Holy Trinity Teigh’s past incumbents
include some colourful figures. Going back to the fourteenth century, let’s
consider Richard Folville, who with others of his family formed part of the
‘Folville Gang’. Depending on your point of view, the gang were either simply a
bunch of murderous ruffians or Robin Hood-style vigilantes righting wrongs in a
time of lawlessness and in the absence of any appropriate justice system. They
were certainly participants in the endless political intrigue during Edward
III’s reign, more generally against the King than on his side, and perhaps
implicated in Isabella’s doomed attempt at invasion. Rev. Richard was cornered
in All Saints by a King’s Peace in 1340/1 after a fight in which there’d been
at least one fatality, and having been lured outside on some pretext of talks
about talks or a pardon (the gang had been let off several times previously) he
was summarily decapitated. As I eat my sarnies on a bench in front of a
tranquil scene of perfect rurality, this gives pause for thought. Violence,
like archaeology, is ubiquitous.
Then there’s the Rev.
Henry Stanley Tibbs. In 1940 he was interned in Liverpool Prison because it was imaginatively alleged by a fellow-priest that he was a fascist who’d once hidden two members
of the Gestapo in the rectory, and was preaching treachery to his congregation,
lauding the virtues of the banished Edward VIII and the German war leadership,
and decrying Churchill as a drug addict and dictator. Tibbs was part Irish,
which in those fevered times might alone have
encouraged suspicion among a rural community, and he was a little
inclined to shoot his mouth off, but the truth seems to have been that this quirk
had made enemies of some colleagues and local residents. In short, he was stitched up and
although quite quickly exonerated, died in Teigh three years later, a broken
man. In fairness, he did admit that he’d once been a member of Mosley’s British
Union of Fascists though only because he’d favoured their agricultural
policies. Under the influence of a rather toff-ish chap called Jorian Jenks
(sounds like an ultra art-rock band member to me!) these included some farming ideas
whose time has now come, and some which might yet be fulfilled. There was a
decent dose of ecological common sense, and also the notion that Britain should
be agriculturally self-sufficient. Of course, Jenks being a Balliol man, this
also included a misty-eyed nostalgia for the Roman poet Virgil’s jottings about the countryside.
The interior of Holy
Trinity now is apparently much as it was in Tibbs’ day, or indeed as it was in
1782, when the current edition was built. I wish I could get in to have a look,
particularly because it contains a screen rescued from St. John’s College, Cambridge, where I spent my student days. It’s getting harder to ‘feel’ this pilgrimage
without access to any of the churches I visit. As with the notion of sharing a
eucharist, never were Joni Mitchell’s words more sadly true: ‘You don’t know
what you’ve got till it’s gone…’
I’m learning a little more
about prayer; that shutting my eyes and folding my hands as I was taught to do
in Sunday School isn’t really the point ( ‘And it’s taken you 69 years to
work that out?’ ); that there can be a ‘thin-ness’ about all personal
reflection if one works at it, and that the greater puzzle is why so often the
veil comes down and God is shut out from one’s various everyday processes of
thought. This is perhaps one way of looking at the idea of ‘original sin’.
I pick up the pace down
the twisty and busy road towards Ashwell, frequently having to step onto the
verge to accommodate the passing traffic. Some cars wave a thank you, some don’t.
Some peer curiously at me, as they might an ornithological rarity. Cyclists are
now legion, fashionably got up, and even if they’re behaving stupidly must
be honoured and humoured (the other day I saw a lone bicycle struggling with a
steep incline out of Uppingham towards the village of Preston and holding back
a long queue of tankers, HGVs and cars. Beside him/her was an empty footpath
which could have been used). Walkers of my sort are a peculiarity. We have no
snazzy clothing. There’s no macho kudos for doing what we do. We’re an
anachronism: too slow and unadventurous. Strictly Old Folks.
Road-walking, though
requiring vigilance, is nevertheless a time to concentrate the mind on other
stuff. I think about the next TEN ON SUNDAY (please find at www.vincecross.co.uk
). It’s going to be an excursion into the fatherhood of God, mediated through various
iterations of the Lord’s Prayer. I’m midway through recording a
five-part version by the Tudor composer John Sheppard, and finding it very
difficult – a step up from some of the more familiar Tudor music, both in
required singing technique, and concept. I’d never have attempted to work my
way through it, were it not for the Virus, lockdown and all the rest.
Boris promises us
‘significant normality’ by November. I have no idea what this means. There
isn’t much doubt in my mind that the Virus will re-surge in the later autumn,
and in any case the number of cases (though not the mortality rate, which
continues to fall) has flattened out in the UK as it has everywhere else. Even
that has to be qualified: the infection rate in Spain is beginning to rise
again quite rapidly, in a way which would alarm me if I were there. Even if
Boris means that there can be no second ‘lockdown’ because the economic
consequences are unthinkable, and therefore the pubs can stay lit all winter so
that people can drink themselves silly, this will not be ‘significantly
normal’. The cost will be a rise in cases similar to that being experienced in
the US, the NHS will be under unprecedented strain, other sick people won’t get
treated, millions of shut-in seniors will either be told to, or will themselves
decide not to, venture out more than absolutely necessary, and our churches
will either stay shut or offer something which only faintly resembles the
worship we knew a year ago. And what will be the value of that?
Loaves and fishes: 15km.
4.5 hrs. Sun and cloud. 22 deg. C. Two
stiles. Eleven gates. Five bridges.
Three churches. Five other
walkers passed. A perfectly pleasant walk, but a trifle on the dull side to be
honest – too much treading tarmac.
Father in heaven
I know about endurance
on the roads;
How, with miles in the
feet,
And ache in the legs
The mind becomes dull
The journey about
putting down a single step
And then another
And then another
And counting off the
objectives
One by one
While losing sight
Of beauty
Or lovely incident.
We are all tired now
Of enduring this trial
Grant us the gift
Of minds alert
To praise you
To rejoice
To celebrate your
Lordship
Over all creation.
Virus n’all.
Amen.
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