REPRISE

Once upon a time part of my recording work was to produce ‘sound-alikes’ of well-known pop/rock tunes. Before a session with one of my favourite singers (let’s call him ‘Mick’) who was especially good at early rock n’roll and ‘rat pack’ swing, I used to brief the sound engineer: ‘Make sure you’re well organised. He will be.  We may get his best take first time round, if not it’ll be Take 2, and after that he’ll just be bored...’

The first section of today’s walk is a ‘Take 2’ of last week’s wander along the Nene from Sutton.  As I park up, there’s serious gardening going on opposite the church, and judging from the bleeps and burps emerging from a car that’s stationary by the church wall, its occupant is resting between appointments by playing an absorbing game of ‘Psycho-killer’ on his I-phone.

The now familiar walk back towards Wansford of course seems shorter than the first iteration – one of those strange phenomena which I suppose are a subset of ‘time passes more quickly as you get older’. I enjoy it slightly more too - because I’m watching my feet very slightly less? – the rat is learning the maze!  But noticeably, even in a week, some things have changed.   Here an oak branch has crashed down across the path, rather inexplicably because it doesn’t seem rotten, and there haven’t been any recent unusually high winds. There I see fresh earthworks. Mr. Mole and his pals have been busy. A plank across a boggy section has been removed. I’d noticed it was a bit wonky last week. Maybe a warden thought there was a health and safety issue, and wet feet were preferable to a broken ankle.

It interests me how unobservant or forgetful I can be – particularly when it comes to reading text, including Scripture. You’d think at my time of life every inch of the Gospels would be thoroughly explored territory, and that like ‘Mick’ I too would be bored after the umpteenth re-reading…but it’s not so.  I notice things I’ve not seen before. Different nuances of inflection read themselves into the dialogue. New puzzles present themselves. Occasionally I’ll come across a whole section I’d swear wasn’t there before. It can be even worse in my episodic readings of mildly academic history books. I’ll read a few pages, confident this is text that’s new to me, and then come across some small familiar detail which makes me realise I’ve already ‘read’ this section. The words have just passed straight through my brain and out the other side. Is it just me, or do you find this too?  Please say you do…

Before I get to Wansford, I cross the A47 with care (and some difficulty) and yomp up the drive towards Sacrewell Farm. It seems to be a thriving business. You can camp, and members of a local sixth form are doing so. There are country crafts to learn, including blacksmithing. A poster illustrating this is displayed on the verge of the tarmac, an earnest middle aged lady being taught by a plentifully black-bearded chap who was perhaps an early member of ZZ Top. I imagine there’s tea and coffee on offer in

the café, but it’s a quarter to four and the farm closes to the public at the top of the hour, so I eschew temptation and press on till I reach the working farm buildings at which point the metalling gives way to a field path. 

There are a couple of scratch-head moments along the way. Why is that portaloo set up in the middle of nowhere beside a large plot of newly-harrowed earth, just next to a large cart which appears to have a large number of spring onions ready to plant? (Sue later opines that these may have been baby leeks destined to obtain full adulthood in the field).

And why is a large open sided iron canister secured with blue plastic ties hanging twelve feet up in that tree?  Bats? (I’m rather mindful of the needs of bats at the moment: at home we have dusk and dawn visits scheduled with the ecologists to see whether/how many/what sort of bats we have roosting in the crevices of our outbuildings).

I guess there was a once a monastic foundation at Southorpe. Or a ‘lost’ village.  Or a one-time Big House.  The OS map marks fishponds to the south, and the field by the road is full of unusually varied and prominent lumps and bumps. Since Ermine Street runs through Southorpe, I suppose it’s even possible that some of those contours might be very ancient in origin. We were asking ourselves the other day what the name of Ermine Street means. Wikipedia suggests that it may be a reference to a tribe called the ‘Earningas’ who had their stamping grounds around modern day Royston. On today’s walk I cross the line of the Roman road a number of times. Just south of Southorpe its ditches are very obvious in the Paddock nature reserve, which is so ‘wilded’ that entry is currently more or less impossible – but then there’s no parking provision here, and it sits beside a straight, modern lane along which I now have to walk, dodging speedy commuter traffic. To their credit, many of the motorists acknowledge my presence by giving me a wide berth and a cheery wave as I take to the (overgrown) verge. I wonder if during the pandemic there’s been an improvement in driver behaviour in this respect?  Earlier on in the blog I noted that there were often problems, but post-Covid perhaps drivers are more used to sharing road space with walkers and (especially) cyclists. Or maybe it’s all just good Rutland manners.

Eventually, after a long slog along the metal, I turn off onto another lane towards Upton, which is accurately named – it’s very definitely oop, at the beginning of a ridge which at Castor is locally known as ‘The Hanglands’. There’s something apparently not right at Upton. Entering the village/hamlet, one is greeted by a sign which requests the viewer not to let ‘The Highwaymen’ take away their road. On the sparsely used village noticeboard, the familiar Kitchener image is subscribed by a caption which suggests that Upton needs me. In Church Walk there are a couple of modern-ish houses which are unoccupied, one of which veers towards the derelict. The thatch on the cottages might be approaching the end of its life. There’s a vague smell of drains. The little church of St. John the Baptist is away across a field, a chapel of ease for Castor, with a single eucharist per month as its worship-power. Maybe the Milton Estate is finding upkeep of its resources a financial stretch – though that’s a very tentative thought. What I subsequently learn is that the Council wants to close one of the two roads into the village (the one which runs directly and conveniently from the A47) because the ‘A’ road is about to be dualled and they’d like to avoid building a roundabout which would both interrupt the traffic flow and incur high costs.

It’s wrong to read too much into a single visit on a particular day – I may be importing a pre-set emotion from my own psyche, but certainly Upton was giving off a disturbing aura on this occasion. On the other hand, if you want to know more about the place, please go to https://www.thearchive.org.uk   (Chapter 14) where there’s a very good, full description of the village’s buildings and history. On my way back towards the car, I’m particularly intrigued to pass ‘Model Farm’ which dates to 1685. What’s the story there? Where the lane drops down to Lower Lodge Farm, close to the trunk road, an embarrassed man is trying to re-start the noisiest quad-bike in the world. I’m more interested in the fact that on the lane’s tarmac, there’s still even now a discernible bump in the road, like that left by the level crossing of a defunct railway. It’s Ermine Street again, once busy with travellers moving supplies to the north country for the garrison in York or packing up to return home in the hope of shoring up the imperial regime. They were everywhere, those Romans. I’ve never believed the low population estimates for Britain in their time, all that farming, industry and administration.

                                                                  Model Farm Upton

I enter Sutton by the same route as on the previous walk, past the new (or heavily restored?) cream stone of the Georgian pile at its eastern limit, along the grassy verge, peering down over the railway bridge to the green depths of the old cutting, smiling at the rabbits playing on the lawns. Familiarity can so easily slip into the neglected commonplace, don’t you think, despite our wishes that it shouldn’t be so? Habituation is apparently programmed into our human character. Though we may thus be provided a rest our from relentless scanning of the horizon for threats and danger, we stop properly looking altogether, and so cease to understand.

 Fossils in the gravel:  13.5 km.  3.5 hrs. Dry but mostly cloudy with only occasional glimpses of sun. 16 degrees. Three stiles. Ten gates. Three bridges. One church. Sore hips from too much road walking.

 Lord

My attention span…

I get bored

So quickly

When I’m worshipping

Or supposed to be.

It’s frightening to think

You must have access

To my random thoughts

(Otherwise how does silent prayer work?)

 

How do you feel about this boredom?

Do you say:

‘Well, it’s difficult

And why should it be easy?’

Or do you tut and shake your head

As I would in a similar circumstance

(If I was teaching someone…)

 

Or is it (dare I say it)

That we have made worship

Tedious and human-centred?

A place for parading

Our cleverness

A medium for displaying

Our power

A vector for achieving influence

By our own stratagems.

 

Is my prayer and worship

Best displayed

In my inarticulate and instant

Intake of breath

At the beauty of a flower

The grace of a deer

The love that wells up

Among my family?

Is it enough?

 

Lord, as so often

I don’t know.

Please forgive me where I fail

And help me find ways

To make my relationship with you

More constant and active.

Amen.