THROUGH MANY DANGERS, TOILS AND SNARES...

The goats are posing picturesquely against the sylvan backdrop of Ryhall, bridge, church and pubs. I park up near the Methodist chapel, and walk the fieldpath on the hill to the north which is clearly marked between the newly sprouting crops. The air is warm, scented and summery.

 Onwards to Grange Farm the path is well-grassed. I realise how quickly I’ve lost my former careful habits. Rashly, the sunny weather encouraged me into shorts, and the grass is knee-length, so my calves are unprotected from possible tick-bites. Health and safety note to self and others: trousers should be worn!

I’m zigzagging across the fields to avoid traffic dangers on the ‘A’ road to Essendine, but where I have to join it for the last few hundred metres into the village, I find I didn’t need to be cautious: there’s a good, wide cycle path all the way from Ryhall. But if I’d taken that easy option, I wouldn’t have seen the muntjac I surprised in a spinney along the way.

Essendine 2021 is a somewhat prosaic place, with a lot of relatively recent housing to either side of the main drag, and no obvious village centre. The little church of St. Mary Magdalene is at the far, western end, isolated from modernity. I can’t go in, but enjoy the carved stone image of Christ in majesty flanked by angels which presides over the south door. The style makes one think Saxon, but the building is Norman at best, so perhaps the twelfth century craftsperson was simply steeped in what was even then an ancient way of portraying the Saviour. The church is situated here because the castle is next door: the substantial moat and mound are easily visible from the churchyard. It’s a charming place for quiet reflection on the relation between the Church and power, then and now.

The main line to Kings Cross passes through Essendine, and throughout today’s walk it’s always close at hand. The curve of the line away to the east just outside the village is slight but significant. On 3^rd July 1938 4468 Mallard broke the then world record for a train hauled by a steam locomotive as it ran south from Grantham down Stoke Bank. It achieved 126 mph, but had to slow down for the Essendine curve, its brakes running sufficiently hot that Mallard had to be substituted for a new pair of legs at Peterborough.

At one point on the main road, there’s a smart street sign for ‘The Council Houses’, six of them, none of which much look as if they’re now in Council ownership. Contrast that with the posh modern mansions on the lane pointing up towards Carlby. One of these has been named ‘Cavalier’. I wonder whether the owner is a Civil War re-enacter, or whether it represents a certain attitude towards the planning authorities. Or maybe he/she just had a penchant for Vauxhalls. It takes all sorts to make up a village community. As we’re learning afresh with every passing day…

A lot has changed in a short time. Speaking personally, as a family we’re now somewhere else, compared to a year ago. This is probably true mentally and metaphorically for most people living in the UK, and indeed the world. So many certainties have been undermined, so many understandings re-evaluated. But for us it’s also true physically. During the recent lockdown, against what seemed sensible or do-able, we moved away from an increasingly urban Weston Favell to the relative rural tranquillity of Morcott, Rutland. We’d been in our previous house for thirty -six years – more than half our lives. It tugged at the heart to put ourselves at greater distance from so many old friends, but increasingly we’d been feeling a vague call to a different setting for our third age. The greater isolation of post-viral Britain, the necessary health-preserving adjustments to church and social life were contributory factors to making the change. Perhaps they even made changing easier. Certainly, Northampton seems a more uncomfortable place than it did when we bought our first house in 1974. In leaving I feel a certain guilt, as if I’m letting the side down by going somewhere more apparently safe.  But the facts remain. We were burgled a few times in Weston Favell, once quite traumatically. There’ve been intruders in the garden, and implied threats of violence. A firearm was waved round in the street last year. The traffic is fast and noisy and sometimes fuelled by more than just petrol or diesel, one suspects: the supply and use of drugs is widespread.  But someone has to carry on praying and witnessing in these circumstances…and now it’s not us.

                                                                            Duh!

People have always felt despair about and dislike for the urban. Roman authors referred to their great city as a sewer into which everything that was worst about the world issued. But as we’re coming to understand, and this blog has recounted, not everything is roses-round-the-door out in the country. There is poverty, and there is defensiveness. There is old age and there is separation. There are also a lot of lovely people. Some of them even go to church.  But not very many.

And all of this trivial local and personal detail is set against the evolving backdrop of Britain’s relationship with Europe and the world - which has now been given a coat of obscuring varnish by the actualities of Covid and the vaccination process, and also perhaps by an ever-increasing pre-occupation with the assertion of my rights, whatever they may be – to party – to travel – to offend – to be looked after by the state – to declare my sexual identity – to live my truth, as if that notion was a philosophical slam-dunk. More than ever, we’re having to guess at the reality of the world through a screen of disinformation. More than ever, each pronouncement of authority has to be forensically scrutinised for its reliability, even if it’s printed in the Church Times. Nothing can simply be taken on trust.  No wonder Scripture doesn’t cut much ice with Jane and Joe Public. These days not even the BBC is beyond reproach.

You will all have your own stories to hand down about the Pandemic. Ours is one of family separation across national boundaries, the pain softened a little by the Wonder of Facetime.  I’d always thought there would be some eventual family difficulties for us, separated as we are by the Channel/North Sea, but had always located them in e.g. a fuel crisis. I didn’t see Covid coming. And apparently, despite the warnings, neither did our government.

Carlby is an odd one. It seems to be in Lincolnshire, and yet is still in Peterborough Diocese, joined in a benefice with Ryhall and Essendine. The River West Glen marks the county boundary here. I cross it, and march round to the back entrance of the churchyard. There’s scaffolding above the south porch, and the roof of St. Stephen’s is under repair. I hope they haven’t fallen prey to the lead thieves.

I suppose ‘Carlby’ may be the Saxon farm where a Ceorl once lived, but the fact the place was named after him suggests to me this particular ‘churl’ was a chap worthy of recognition in either the thegn’s or the community’s eyes. But you never know with place-names do you?  Sometimes, as with ‘Cavalier’, the true meaning for the inhabitants is quite inscrutable to a passer-by. There may be a joke hidden there, or a sadness, or a criticism of local politics. Who knows, after a thousand years!

My onward path takes me on a lane and then a long track between fields of youthful barley, which appears to have grown tall but have little substance to it – perhaps a peculiarity of this year’s odd spring weather – so wet and cold, until the last two or three weeks. In Morcott there was precipitation on twenty-four of May’s thirty-one days, and the daily mean highest temperature was just 14 degrees C. - way down on usual for the month.

As I begin to walk the metalled roads towards Belmesthorpe, I repeatedly doh-si-doh with two very serious athletes, armed with stop-watches, running measured splits in between equally metred rests. Of course, I say a cheery hello the first time we pass, but on all the subsequent occasions, conversational gambits are limited. Of course I feel like saying, ‘I’m nearly seventy, you know…’ as self-justification for my laggardly pace, but don’t.

Boots on the ground (well Merrill trainers actually – hurray for summer!):  14km.  4hours, give or take.  23 degrees C.  Sun and cloud, and an occasional refreshing breeze.  A muntjac. Larks a plenty, ascending, fluttering, and descending again. Bunnies (more of them this year, it seems to me). Partridges (silly birds: one preceded me for a full half-mile along the track post-Carlby, constantly surprised at my re-appearance. One wonders whether it ever found its way back to its point of origin!) A low-swooping buzzard. Orange and white butterflies.  No stiles. Six gates. Three bridges. Two churches.

Through many dangers…  Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch on John Newton and the hymnwriter’s slightly late epiphany about the evils of the slave trade, I wonder how long it is before some daft person bans Amazing Grace because its author wasn’t sufficiently PC.

Lord

We long for a kinder world

Where in the light that we’ve all fallen short

We forgive the sins of the past

And fight the evils of the present

With greater resolve:

Where

Having once missed the mark,

We pick up our bows

And strive to be more accurate

Next time round,

So that we and all humankind

Live to see your Kingdom come.

Amen.