Inside Cottesmore church
The village of Exton is
just perfect. There’s the Fox and Hounds advertising its morning coffee,
and over there are be-rugged folks sitting under the trees in the middle of the
greensward drinking it. Look, there’s a lovely cottage overflowing with hydrangeas,
and here are some people saying hello, what a beautiful day, and where am I
going, as I heave my sweater over my head and pull on my boots. And in the
corner of the square there’s a dinky thirties’ style shop whose legend proclaims
with a spice of eccentricity that the one-time owner was a ‘druggist’. Tom
Lehrer is thereby summoned happily to mind, who pointed out that in the litany
of (American!) village characters traditionally celebrated in song, one is
invariably lacking - an omission he intends to correct forthwith: When the
shades of night are falling/Comes a fellow everyone knows/It’s the old dope
peddler/Spreading joy wherever he goes/Every evening you will find him/Around
our neighbourhood/It’s the old dope peddler/Doing well by doing good. But
not in Exton, by Jove, not in Exton.
Rising slowly all the while, a bridleway takes me through a farm to join the lane up to Cottesmore, passing the entrance to the Hambleton Bakery, whose delicious nutty product we regularly consume out of our local delicatessen. There’s a pedestrian and cycle path beside the road, so for once I don’t have to hop onto verges every twenty metres to preserve bodily integrity. After the village limit I do have to step aside as a young man walks towards me utterly absorbed in the contents of his mobile phone screen. He mutters an apology that isn’t an apology. I internalise a growl.
Opposite St. Nicholas’ church on the main drag, I identify another traveller. He emerges from the church path to sit opposite near the fish and chip shop with his lunch. I assume this means I’ll have to enact yet another beating of the churchyard bounds in lieu of enjoying the interior sacred space. But praise God, hallelujah, St. Nick’s is open on Tuesdays, so I get to sit in the cool within and read two psalms out loud. I choose 84 of course: ‘How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts/My soul longs, yea faints for the courts of the Lord/My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. It’s an enormous relief to be in a building actually in worshipful use, despite hand sanitiser by the font, roped off pews and requests not to touch anything. These can be coped with, it’s the absence of the long-accumulated numinous in nave and chancel I’ve found so difficult to bear.
Cottesmore’s a military place. The RAF station used to be home to the full panoply of frontline attack aircraft: Hunters, Phantoms, Jaguars, Harriers, Tornados, but as British ambitions and interests contracted and hardware costs escalated, resources were re-allocated, and now the signposts direct to the Kendrew Barracks which houses over 1100 personnel, many of them from the Royal Anglian Regiment. However, as I walk out towards Greetham, the only reminder there might be soldiers about is a sign on the local car showroom offering insurance to the military at discretionary rates.
Once more there’s the benefit of a tarmac path beside the ‘B’ road all the way to Greetham, so I stretch out and relax into a blissful, mindless body-rhythm without the need to worry about stumbling over tussock or stone. St. Mary’s shows itself beautifully to the visitor beyond a little green down the village’s back lane. Another walker is doing the same as me, taking pictures of its slightly elevated mass, and sighing over the inconvenient siting of a street lamp. Judging from the size of his lens, unlike me he’ll be a serious enough photographer to afterwards remove the offending object for posterity’s viewing. Further down the lane a domestic fuel oil tanker is struggling to turn into a narrow entrance. The driver metaphorically scratches his head in my direction. ‘I don’t know as I’ll get in,’ he opines. ‘They said just to reverse…’ He spreads his hands. I say any arm-waving from me probably won’t help, and he agrees, so I move on past the well, and then the pub, until I’m beside a brook on the edge of fields which take me to the edge of Greetham Valley Golf Club.
We’ve started to take the
Church Times at home, and as I walk I’m pondering what I’ve read in recent issues.
Of course, part of its function is to act as a trade newspaper for the clergy –
it’s where the adverts for jobs appear, and where details of new holy appointments
and deaths are displayed. So for me as a newbie lay reader (in the sense of a
member of the laity who’s reading the paper, rather than a ‘lay-reader’, if you
get me) there’s a faint whiff of the CT not being meant for me. Some of the
weekly main features seem to parade hand-wringing over-compensation for the C
of E not being super politically correct, surprise, surprise. There’s recently been much sensible (and some
over-written) concern about racial prejudice and inequity in the light of #Black
Lives Matter and last week there was a silly and annoying article by Tara
Isabella Burton about the predilection of millennials for pick n’ mix faith, as
if that were a new, good and necessary thing. Then again there was a very
thoughtful retrospective about Anglican reaction in 1945 to the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I happen to know and like some of the regular
columnists, so that’s a personal plus, and the cultural reviews seem OK. Yes, as so often, it’s the balance of
interests between clergy and laity that don’t seem quite right, but not so
absolutely wrong I could adequately rebut the charge I was being
over-sensitive.
The golf club stresses to players that walkers have to take preference when they’re on the right of way through the course, which is nice – it’s true on many courses, but the clubs often don’t bother to flag it up for their members. The path winds on, taking me into old quarry workings, now wooded, beside a stream which broadens into a marshy valley and then a silted lake. On the far side is Fort Henry, the preposterous, magnificent folly I mentioned a couple of posts ago, from which guests of the Exton Estate once watched scaled down re-enactments of naval battles. It looks somehow Scottish to me, a hunting lodge on the edge of a lonely loch. Near Inverary perhaps?
Under lowering skies,
beyond a crosstrack I stroll down to the lumps and bumps of the deserted
village of Horn, until recently given an honourable mention as part of Exton’s
parish i.e. Exton with Horn, despite there being almost no houses within its
area. There was a church dedicated to All Saints here once, back in early
medieval times, so it’s right to include it on my travels, but of course I have
no idea where the church might have sat. Close to the moated remnants of the
manor house? Or back up the hill where it could be easily seen? After the building
had fallen into disrepair, new rectors were apparently inducted under a thorn
tree until a last appointment as late as 1809. Why? A reference to the ‘crown
of thorns’ perhaps. But surely not the same thorn tree. Maybe successor
bushes were planted to keep the tradition going. Dafter customs persist…
The track leads up beside a pig farm: a very substantial pig farm with hundreds and hundreds of residents, looking like a porcine caricature of a Breughel painting. The pigs are in large, separated, earthed pens kept from socialising more closely with walkers by an electric fence. As I pass, and they see/hear/smell me, they rush away up the hill to about a cricket pitch’s distance, then turn and look. Then, unable to restrain their curiosity, they slowly trot back towards me. I talk to them of course, as naturally one would. This is the very first pig farm I’ve encountered on the entire walk since April 2016.
Famously, pigs are
intelligent animals despite their ground-rooting and frightfully low standards
of hygiene. Not only do we eat them, but their hearts can be recycled for human
use. How do we feel about this modus vivendi et morendi? Because all human life is here. Around me are
peaceful pigs, pigs making a frightful racket for no apparent reason, pigs
fighting and bullying, pigs having sex with other pigs, pigs making pigs of themselves
– it’s all going on every minute of every day.
And one’s non-piggy heart goes out to them, and one’s eye sheds a tear
for poor humanity, who shouldst know better, but has the same habits and traits,
without in most cases knowing its need of redemption.
The skies grow very dark towards the east: the rain is clearly on its way. I scuttle back to the car for a sandwich and a drink to avoid getting soaked, as some of the dog-walkers marching purposefully in the opposite direction will have done.
Isobars on the chart: 14.5 km. 4 hours. 22 deg. C. Bright and breezy until the clouds gathered. Three stiles, two gates, two bridges. It’s the time of Dancing Butterflies by the edge of the fields. Mayflies. The corn uncut here, though the combines were out a fortnight ago near us . Best get the harvest in quick, or the crop may be damaged in the coming storm Ellen.
Father
I seem to have a capacity
For psychical disturbance
In the weirdest of
places
And at the most inconvenient
of moments.
I see a herd of pigs
And suddenly
A whole slurry heap of activities
And ideas
Starts to wobble threateningly.
Are we really meant to ‘subdue
the earth’?
Adam on Countryfile
Really seems to have it
sorted
About animal husbandry.
He loves his cattle and
sheep
For real
But can let them go to
slaughter
Without a tear
(Well only most of the
time, I expect).
Whereas
I enjoy my burgers and
chicken korma
On a very regular basis
But suspend my
disbelief
Rather too actively and
knowingly
When I say
Hello ladies
To the sheep I pass on
my travels.
Do I have to plead guilty
To being a lifelong, gluttonous
consumer
Of the world you gave
us?
Animals? Trees? Non-renewables?
And what would be the
alternative?
As so much else
I give my helplessness
to you
And pray that you will
forgive me my sin.
Amen.
