Apple of my eye

 

                                                                The Old Forge, Tinwell

The sun has rammed his hat on and he’s already been out to play for a few hours as I cross the Welland out of Tinwell and hike the river bank towards Stamford.

The news isn’t good. The Covid figures are on the rise again - in the UK but also more notably in France and Spain. The government’s strategy will be to squeeze the brakes, and try to keep the economy going while depressing the spread of the virus. Can this be done? No one knows.  I want to pray: ‘Lord keep us all safe’, but I’m old enough to know that in earthly terms one day sooner or later he won’t keep me safe. Anno domini and all that. So the most I can pray on this gorgeous morning is: ‘Lord, may we be safe today. Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings’.

There’s quite a stragglegaggle of people down by the water. An older lady ignores my cheery hello. Perhaps she’s deaf. A sprightly young woman with a dog returns my greeting, but rather too loudly because she’s listening to Adele on her headset. A guy with a pack is sitting in the long grass beside the path looking distinctly stoned, so I get nothing from him. A couple are standing facing the river, all concentration. I think maybe they’ve seen a kingfisher or an alligator, but as I get nearer I see they’re muttering into their cellphones. Maybe a multi-million pound deal’s in progress. Another dog walker turns his back on me, though we’re more than five metres distant from each other.

There’s a peculiar aroma of apricot bodywash on the air. At first I think it may have been the sprightly young woman, but she’s long in my rear view mirror now, so what can it be?  Maybe there’s a sewage facility somewhere near and they’ve done what they occasionally do at Billing and freshened the environment for a few miles around with eau de talcum powder – but this is more subtle than that. Well, Rutland’s more up market than Northampton. We probably can’t afford the apricot flavouring.

These days, when I’m out walking, I find I’m more aware of people’s personal fragrances than I used to be. Deodorant uptake seems to be a Big Untold Story this year. I put it down to my heightened wariness of other people: I’m constantly scanning everyone across all parameters lest they be a possible source of infection. Today, even as I enjoy Freemen’s Meadow on the approach to Stamford most people seem a little withdrawn and morose. Well, as I say, the news isn’t good.  Over on the school playing field, I notice the girl teenagers are back in ankle length skirts, as if escaped from post WW1 episodes of Downton Abbey. I know hemlines go up and down, but this novelty had escaped me until now, and I ponder its possible social significance over and above the need of the fashion industry to constantly renew itself. Does it mark the dawning of a new conservatism? Or is it a sub-conscious mimicking of the 1918 ‘flu pandemic? Anyway, the girls and their mums will get over it soon enough, once the skirts have suffered the scuffs and scours of a wet and muddy winter.

As ‘apples of my eye’ go, the view of Stamford from just here is high on the list: it’s mostly the reason I’ve strayed out of diocese/county (because of course Stamford is in Lincolnshire and therefore strictly speaking shouldn’t be included in my Big Walk!) The crisp stone buildings rise up gently from the Welland towards All Saints church. The conspicuous wealth of past generations oozes from every pore. Stamford was a river port, a place where the wool merchants of the North could readily access European trade from the roads the Romans had established centuries before. The very name Ermine Street tells a story. From here the fens stretch out towards the east and the sea. I follow the surprisingly thronged streets around to All Saints front door. It’s open, but as I learn from Jan and Kay who I find cleaning and tidying, this is the first week people have been let inside. It’s a lovely, generous building lit by Victorian glass, magnificent in the sun. The natural slope of the hill raises the east end in a way I find inspiring, echoing both the City of God and the hill of crucifixion. The church has a new priest, Neil Shaw. Jan and Kay think he has a job on his hands. The church has lost a bit of membership. There’s work to be done on relationships – but then isn’t that always so, when a new person arrives to begin their ministry? The interregnum was long. There are a number of beautiful medieval churches in Stamford, giving a clue to the town’s wealthy history, and Simon Jenkins has much to say about them, but All Saints should be its beating Christian heart.

The suburbs of Stamford stretch uphill halfway to Great Casterton along the former Great North Road, passing the site of the Toll Bar at the apex of the hill. The name Casterton requires little interpretation; a farm proximate to a Roman settlement that quickly arose around a military post. The church of St Peter and St. Paul is right by the road at the southern end of the modern village before the crossing of the River Gwash which would have encouraged its development. The poet John Clare whose bucolic verse is so widely celebrated in Northamptonshire and beyond, was married here in 1820.

I’m only a quarter of the way through my sandwich when the parish priest Don McGarrigle arrives in the church porch with his bicycle. Don is an engaging Ulsterman with a ready smile and lively, welcoming manner. I should think he goes down a storm with his parishioners, and considering he’s the same age as me (69) I can only admire his energy. He spends half his week being a Telecoms engineer. I’d already picked up a leaflet for last week’s Café Church before Don appeared, and had been charmed to see that each element in the worship is timed ( 10.38:  Talky Bit 1  etc.) for the benefit of those viewing at home. The final hymn (expected at 11.16!) is described as ‘Crashy Bashy You Shall Go Out With Joy’…

Need I say more. To walk a couple of miles from the relatively High Church splendour of All Saints to this energising, humorous, people-friendly atmosphere in Great Casterton illustrates again my point: we need both places and others to maintain our balance as the Body of Christ. We are truly ‘better together’ – and ‘better in colour’.

Don has recently held drive-in services with the assistance of the local pub. He’s found talented local musicians to provide locked down support, whilst not excluding his nonagenarian organist. This is all wonderful, and I enjoy my twenty minutes inside SS Peter and Paul very much, without sparing John Clare a single thought.

Further up Ermine Street and just to its east, uncomfortably near the slip road to the A1 dual carriageway is Tickencote about whose St. Peter’s church Simon Jenkins is interesting but guarded, although he awards it three stars. Don McGarrigle handed over the keys for this tiny place of worship to the Churches Conservation Trust in 2019, but it’s still used for occasional services and weddings. Perhaps St. Peter’s is best thought of as a true travellers’ church, since human and animal traffic will have passed its doors in huge numbers over the centuries. Now those travellers will pause at the service station just down the road, but if they come to Tickencote at all, they’ll come to see a single architectural feature more overwhelming than in any other church I’ve visited so far on The Walk. The Norman chancel arch frames the altar like a huge stone fireplace, as if someone was presenting a huge secret to the world. In Simon Jenkins’ words:

            ‘…the great arch at Tickencote is like a peacock’s tail, comprising every motif of beakheads, crenellation, odds and ends of faces and much zigzag. The carvings are the forte of the composition, a mass of animals, heads and monsters. The origin of many of these figures is obscure, perhaps Roman, perhaps Saxon, perhaps Viking. “Once the floodgates of fancy were opened”, says the guide, “a full tide of grotesque imagery poured through…”’

For the rest, Tickencote’s church leaves me wondering. I know what I think of neo-Georgian architecture on modern housing developments – there are worse fashion tics, but it leaves me a bit cold. So what should I think about eighteenth century efforts to mimic earlier architectural forms? Perhaps it’s just a contrast to the human warmth radiated by Don McGarrigle, but I leave St. Peter’s Tickencote feeling a trifle chilly despite its one extraordinary interior feature.

Shortly afterwards I have an unpleasant encounter with canines at a farm near Great Casterton. OK, let’s not be coy. I have a run-in with a farmer lady and her three choc labs at Ingthorpe Farm. I arrive at the farm gate, having been much barked at from within, to attempt to walk the right of way which passes through the farmyard. A notice by the gate tells me that because we live in Covid times I should use an undefined alternative track somewhere to my left (why?) although there are no clear markings as to where that is. I stick to what the map says, but can’t open the gate because of the threat from the dogs. The woman calls in one particular snarling hound. I pass through the gate, and then all three dogs hurl themselves across the yard with the intention of eating me. She follows at a canter.

 Me: Thank you for coming to rescue me, but (and I continue somewhat fiercely, though not impolitely) this isn’t OK! This is a public right of way.

 Her: They wouldn’t do anything…

 Me: I don’t know that do I?

 Her: Well, you should use the other path…Covid… (mumbles)

 Me: This is the right of way… (beginning to walk away across the farmyard and looking for the exit…)

 Her: It’s not that way. Do you have a proper map?

 Me: (brandishing map) Yes!

 Her: (to my back and grudgingly)  Sorry…

So… some marks to her for the final, belated apology, but as I say, this isn’t OK either from a dog-owning or land-owning p.o.v. Clearly no proper diversion of the right of way has been granted, even if conceivably it’s been applied for, and property-protecting dogs can’t be allowed to harry walkers doing what the law says they can. And I’m fed up with having dog-owners assuring me their pooches wouldn’t hurt a fly, are great with kids, are just a complete darling etc. etc.. Every year people get badly bitten in public circumstances by out-of-control pets. Children are sometimes killed.

This week there’s been some publicity about ancient, grumpy rock singer and knight of the realm Van Morrison’s latest release of Covid denying/protest songs – government conspiracy etc. In my view a lot of this stuff is just tosh, but there are some worrying aspects to the behaviour of governments national and local at this moment (and this filters down to the way the folk in charge sometimes behave in churches). Laws are made on the back of a fag packet with no proper scrutiny. We’re now controlled to a degree unprecedented in peacetime. It's the unfortunate way of things that in the middle of this chaos and anxiety there’ll be attempts to smuggle in changes to society which aren’t necessary or desirable by any reasonable democratic standards. In this category, though some way down the scale of importance, could be changes on our rights to use footpaths as we have for hundreds of years (as part of a loosening of planning standards?) It’s not a time to let things slip, people. Exercise your rights, and complain where you have to. But if you’re walking through Ingthorpe Farm, take care. It’s a while since I’ve had to say it in these pages, but farmers are our friends, and need support and advocacy. And in return, they mustn’t regard other users of the countryside as their enemies. Or bringers of disease.

Ticks in the box (and flies in the flybottle)  16 km. 4.6 hrs. Flat and easy. Three churches – all open for one reason or another. Thank you, Don.  Five stiles. Eight gates. Four bridges. 20 degrees C. A warm dry day, but very breezy especially later coming back down to Tinwell. 

Lord

Help me to stand up for justice

And not only where it affects me

In some trivial way.

Let me hold dear

The rights of the dispossessed

The powerless

The poor and the weak

And truly to see Christ

In their faces

And so find strength

To relieve the world’s pain

By your grace

And the breath

Of the Holy Spirit

Amen.

 

As the grain once scattered in the fields

And the grapes once dispersed on the hillside

Are now reunited in bread and wine,

So Lord may your whole Church soon be gathered together

From the corners of the earth into your Kingdom.

 

‘I’m still the apple of my mama’s eye

I’m my daddy’s worst fears realised

I’m the other kind…’

(Steve Earle)

How extraordinary that this expression, like so many others, should find its way all the way from The Psalms into (relatively) contemporary rock music…