FLAT

There’s a long hold at the level crossing just beyond Helpston. An inter-city passes, then another, and finally a local train chugs by on its way to Stamford. (Do diesel trains ‘chug’?  This one does! Perhaps it’s poorly.) Finally I cross, and drive on to Glinton, parking by the church, marvelling again at that wonderful needle spire which so preaches a sermon in stone about the eternal sublime.

The weather forecast couldn’t make up its mind this morning – nothing dire, just a question of cloud or not, but right now it’s excitingly bright and breezy. There are often uncertainties on the map too, particularly when approaching conurbations. Will that path require the hazardous crossing of a dual carriageway? Indeed, will it still exist at all? Will the right-of- way which seems to fizzle out mid-field actually continue unimpeded into the track which apparently lies beyond it? A day’s walking is elevated by the knowledge there are obstacles to overcome. Yeah, right.

Out on North Fen Road, I turn right on the pleasant path which heads east towards Peakirk, musing on the experience of the last eighteen months. I’m shocked to read the Northampton Chronicle and Echo’s weekend court report detailing the indictments against numerous individuals in respect of Covid violations – for ‘being out of their house without reasonable excuse’. Even at this short distance in time, what we went through then seems an appalling curtailment of liberty, though of course there was a law, and if some chose to ignore it, then ‘law-abiding’ society has a right to see them brought to justice. However, I notice that the list of accused is largely male, young and with immigrant history. What conclusions if any should we draw from that about bias in the justice system or the tendencies of some population subsets towards rule-breaking? (It seems to me these are questions for the Church to consider too, in the light of patterns of church-going and our mission to the world.) 

I still hear references in Church circles to the current health crisis ‘being over’. It isn’t, not worldwide, not even in the UK (in fact, compared with the rest of Europe, particularly not in the UK, for reasons which still remain unclear). Gordon Brown has been a prophetic voice about the issue of vaccine-waste, and our need to be pro-active in providing aid to Africa if we’re to avoid a continuing world-wide Covid-disaster. Otherwise, as he says, we’re encouraging a factory for new Covid mutations.

Beside Peakirk’s village green, I and my jumbled head re-adjust to a very different world, because this low building is St. Pega’s church, the only one in the UK dedicated to St. Guthlac’s sister. I encountered him at the far end of the Diocese near Stony Stratford in Passenham, although locally it seems Market Deeping also does him honour. We’re deep in seventh-century Christian history and myth here - the kingdom of Mercia where Pega and Guthlac were nobility. After a soldier’s life, Guthlac renounced the world and fetched up not far away in Crowland, where he built himself a hermitage from an ancient burial mound. People came to see him for healing and advice, and after his death that holy place eventually became Crowland Abbey.  When Guthlac died, Pega left her own hermitage at Peakirk to tend the body and ensure his decent burial. She subsequently made a pilgrimage to Rome where she too passed away. Legend has it her remains were in turn brought back here to her East Anglian home.  People go bonkers about Arthurian stuff, but it seems to me this is a story that’s equally compelling and suggestive. All it needs is a Holy Grail.

Peakirk’s village green looks tranquil and – flat – but it wasn’t always that way. Geophysical research has confirmed the hunch and tradition that ‘Car(r) Dyke’ once passed through it. The Dyke is presumed to have been a waterway, about eighty miles long, constructed in early Roman times to transport grain south to north – but there are some puzzles. Some of the workings of the drains survive in banks and real water, but the gradients go up and down over low ridges, while generally following the edge of the obvious fens, and in places there are causeways across the Dyke’s course which are permanent undisturbed features. Perhaps they marked regional distribution points, and maybe it wasn’t only corn which was carried up and down. Later it seems that the Dyke may have become a territorial demarcation – though I wonder if this default explanation isn’t too easy – the same thing is said of the ‘Grimsdykes’ which can be found north west and south east of London. An unfeasible amount of labour must have gone into such earthworks if they were simply to indicate to A that they were crossing onto B’s land and might get their head chopped off.

In St. Pega’s churchyard, it’s chastening to see how many of the graves mark individuals who were the same age as me or even younger when they passed on. Heartbreaking too, to see the resting places of child siblings, or people in the prime of young life. Jimmy Greaves died last weekend, and although he was a decade older than me, he was the poster-boy for popular sport during my childhood. His ability to be in the right place at the right time as he scored his many goals for Chelsea, Spurs and England gave encouragement to those of us who played footie without the advantages of speed or size. He showed it was possible to compete by sheer wit, intelligence and anticipation. I’m getting to that point in life, where almost every day there’s news of the death of near contemporaries.

I cross the Folly Bank bridge, and to avoid walking along the very straight and potentially fast ‘B’ road to Newborough, zigzag along the lanes to enter the village by the back door. I pass Rattlerow Farm where there’s a very sinister sounding ‘Gene Distribution Centre’ (actually promoting better pig-breeding) and then the one-time hamlet of Milking Nook, which deserves a mention for its name alone. The door of a bungalow is open. I say hello to a lady who’s manoeuvring a wheelchair around her hall. My instant reaction as I walk on is to say a prayer for her, and then ask myself the question whether prayers as well as promises can be cheap. I think I’m right to be sceptical of my preference for the easy and holy option rather than giving costly, practical help where I ought properly to do so. However, calling down blessings on someone is good New Testament practice, and it does the person who prays good too.

This isn’t exciting walking, but there’s always something to see and enjoy. The practice of the last few decades has been to leave the stubble rather than burn it, and on a day like today, the brown and gold striations which result are beautiful in their own right. A hawk flutters over the road in front of me. Pigeons scatter. A late butterfly dances across a hedgerow. Newborough is harder to love. The land is now only about two or three metres above sea-level. Habitations tend to sprawl around the grid pattern of the village roads. There’s some new housing. I wince as I pass the recently built ‘Waterfall Gardens’, thinking that if the flood defences fail, this could be an ironic naming. St. Bartholomew’s church is at a crossroads near the centre of Newborough, a Gothic revival in yellow brick. As at Peakirk the church is closed, which is a shame because I should like to see the builders’ vision for its interior. At first, I have St. Bart’s down as a twentieth century building, and am surprised to see it actually dates to 1830, when it must have seen strikingly original, not from its design concept, but by its colour.

From Newborough onwards there’s more straight-line walking along lanes which give access to paddocks both tidy and untidy, caravan parks, and fields which don’t look their best at the back end of summer, until I cross the Werrington Bridge (or its modern road equivalent) and find myself back in Peterborough. For the moment the A15 is the city’s north-western boundary. Will housing and industry spill over towards Newborough in time? The scruffiness of the landscape between the two doesn’t bode well.

I walk around the pretty ‘Cuckoo’s Hollow’ lake and parkland, and home in on well-to-do Werrington, where the old village, like Longthorpe, has been incorporated into the urban mass. The very first thing I see is a banner which encourages the passer-by to ‘try praying’. This has the joyful ambiguity of being a proper Christian injunction, and a wry comment on the world and Werrington’s current plight. St. John’s church is locked, but what might apply in the wilds of Rutland doesn’t here: churches can only be left unsupervised at the parish’s peril. Next door is the ‘At Last’ tea room, which makes me giggle, thinking of Douglas Adams’ ‘The restaurant at the end of the universe’. Were this eschatological café open, which it isn’t on a Monday, I could just do with a cup of tea and slice of lemon drizzle. It doubles as a night spot, when cocktails replace Victoria Sandwich, and who knows what merriment ensues.

From Werrington’s village heart, Hall Lane becomes Fox Covert Road, which lines up the return route to Glinton. It passes beside an upper school where the kids are emerging at the end of their day, chaperoned by a formidable squadron of staff. The organisation required of teachers today is awesome. Forty-five years ago we had freedom to teach creatively within a much looser administration. A now widened National Curriculum, the transfer of responsibility from wider society onto teaching staff for the acquisition of knowledge, social skills and morality, plus Covid have narrowed the parameters of that freedom.

Crossing the green diagonally and doubling back on myself, I find Emmanuel church, which is the daughter of St. John’s. Its front door is about twenty-five metres from the entrance to the William Law Primary School, whose children are also bubbling out in time for their tea. They seem energised and lovely, so I’m guessing their staff are too (or maybe needing a nice long lie down!) What a great thing, that a church and school should be joined at the hip in this fashion. Earlier on in Werrington I passed ‘The Way’, which describes itself as a ‘family church’. I worry about this ‘negative space’ description. Does it imply that there are churches around which aren’t family churches, perhaps because they offer what some think of as outdated liturgy or practice? We should all be family churches, but every member of a family needs its own privacy and age-appropriate activity, as well as eating together every day and making whoopee once in a while. Don’t you think?

These days it’s hard not to think of ourselves as working for an ecclesiastical supermarket, constantly looking for our USP, branding ourselves for all it’s worth once we think we’ve identified it.

Swallows in a summer:  18 km. Five hours. Nineteen degrees C. Sun, then cloud, then sun again with a cooling intermittent breeze. No stiles. Five gates. Were there bridges? There must have been bridges. Four churches, all shut. Some cyclists, a couple of walkers.  No one to talk to today, and pigeons only offer dumb insolence. Finding one’s way around Peterborough is challenging.

 Lord

I hated Scripture Exams

When I was a kid

Actually, was terrified

That I’d let my parents down

By not scoring ninety per cent or more

In my knowledge of the Gospels.

But children these days…

Where would they get their bible knowledge?

Because without that stuff

So often rehearsed as a child

I’d be nowhere.

Do we all love learning

Less than we did?

And how much does that matter?

 

As so often, Lord

So many questions

And so few answers.

Amen