BLOWING IN THE WIND

You know how it is. A scent on the air from a hedgerow bush, a particular kind of weather day, the DJ plays an old song, and, well, it isn’t déjà vu, but you’re cast back in time, searching for a place where the whole of life was before you, and the world was pure excitement and wonder. It seems to happen to me more and more as I get older. You make me feel so young…

This morning, stepping out from Newborough on a bright, breezy day, something triggers Free’s ‘All Right Now’ and I’m grasping for the tantalising Spirit of ’69. I hear it clearly in my head. Paul Rodger’s accurately gruff rock n’roll voice, Andy Fraser’s groundbreaking grumbly bass, Paul Kossoff on guitar. Can he really be the son of dear old cuddly David, who told us nice Bible stories on the wireless? But in the age of the first mini-skirts, ‘generation gaps’ are a commonplace. We’re about to learn something of fathers and sons, drug addiction, pain and death: the end of a hippie dream… 

All of this before I’m out of Newborough’s 30 limit. I give the cars extra width as I walk the long straight lane southwards – almost two miles of it. Normally that would mean vehicles zipping past at 70 or more, but the wise drivers know – fenland roads are uncertain, especially on a windy day. The tarmac bends up and down, side to side, and it makes for a bouncy suspension-twisting ride. I turn onto Bridgehill Road, and pass a collection of old Fords on a farmer’s forecourt, waiting to be broken for spares. There’s an unusual 1970 stretched Zodiac limo (perfectly matched to Free), a three litre Capri which might have been driven by Bodie and Doyle, and a Mark 2 Cortina of the kind which used to be legion on our motorways, invariably driven by nylon suited mid-range company execs and sales personnel. This isn’t helping my nostalgia vibe. On another right angle, Gunthorpe Road is definitely single-lane-with-passing-places, but it must be a well-known local rat-run because I’m constantly dodging traffic. Arriving at the Cherry Barn Garden Centre, I detour in search of a cup of coffee and cake, but what’s on offer doesn’t appeal so I overtake the tutting and mumbling exit queue, and use the ‘Dodds cyclepath’ to penetrate Peterborough near a roundabout, an entrance to the city different but indistinguishable from last week’s. Maybe I was lucky to emerge from ‘Cherry Barn’ unscathed. During this weeks petrol crisis, videos have gone viral which show drivers (male) brawling by the pumps over alleged queue-jumping.

Hazards of the Fens - check out the verticals

On the subject of flat lands, I was amused by a recent tale from acquaintance Marilyn in Morcott.  Apparently Rutland County Council had outsourced the cutting of our village verges to their Lincolnshire counterparts. When their team arrived, it was unable to proceed, because the village is on a slight slope, as are some of the verges. Lincolnshire’s ‘environmental husbandry’ works only on the plain and level. Up on the Wolds, at Louth for instance, the grass presumably remains unkempt and the bunny rabbits are happy…

I make my way to Paston and its All Saints church. After many years of living in Northampton, I know the demographics of that town’s various suburbs only too well – where the liminal spaces are – how the social housing sits – the turf wars between estates.  In Peterborough I can’t read what I see. I’m passing through a jumble of different kinds of housing – well-tended modern villas here, social housing there, new build, thirties’ construction…

 I also realise I’m still really bad at reading the age of churches from their exteriors. Even after five years’ writing this blog, I’m still remarkably unobservant. I look at All Saints, and think it might be Victorian, but it isn’t – it’s an ancient place, known as the ‘church in the fields’ until the nineteen-thirties. Later, gazing across the street at Eye’s St. Matthew’s I initially interpret it as medieval, whereas in fact it’s Gothic revival. 

I’m feeling footsore from treading tarmac as I pass through All Saints’ war memorial gate hoping the church is open or there’ll be a welcoming churchyard bench. But it’s not, and there isn’t one. I perch uncomfortably on an angled stone under the gate to drink tea and eat a Waitrose chicken and sweetcorn. The board opposite me records the death of a gentleman by the name of Vergette. It wasn’t a name I’d ever come across until recent walks, but there are Vergettes all over the place around Peterborough. The word has a heraldic meaning but can also denote a rod or clothes-brush, so maybe the Vergettes were once tailors.

A year or two ago, there was a run of apparently insensitive clergy comments chiding the laity for being one-day-a-week Christians. If you’re the priest of a congregation whose church is as firmly closed as this, it could be tempting to think your people only turn their eyes on God when they pitch up at Sunday morning worship.

In fact of course, we very often don’t know who does what during the six other days, either in private devotion or public witness to family, friends and colleagues.  But a church which is so dark at mid-day on Wednesday, and with no facility even to sit outside and chew a reviving sarnie, isn’t a good advertisement, particularly when it presents to the world on a prominent corner. Dear clergy and people of All Saints, I don’t mean to give offence by singling you out. This is a national difficulty for the C of E, particularly in urban areas where churches have to be defended from vandalism/desecration. I think back to a visit I once made to a museum of folk instruments during a spare hour in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas. The place was deserted (in fact I had the impression that no one had been inside for years) but its two black-skirted, elderly guardians made me very welcome, despite an utter and complete language gap, and with great attention to detail showed me many, many accordions. And many, many balalaikas. And quite a lot of wooden flutes. See what I’m saying?

I yomp through more housing estates passing all sorts and conditions of people. I dodge double buggies. I say hello to senior citizens. I cast a stern eye over primary-age ne’er-do’wells. On a bridge over the thrumming four-lane Parkway I steer round two blokes sitting on the concrete sharing spliffs whose fragrance follows me on the breeze for another hundred metres. Like garlic-lovers, their olfactory sense now screens out their personal odour. 

An unexpected shower blows in rapidly from the west, and I get rather wet as I skirt the Little Wood Nature reserve, before turning down into the village of Eye, where funeral homes seem to be a big thing, and traditional thatch and timber mixes it with new wave retail and service facilities. St. Matthew’s too is closed, but its non-original saddleback tower is a striking presence on the main street – actually very close to the road itself. Thereafter it’s long horizons and an almost four mile walk back to Newborough for me, frequently making those ninety-degree turns. I think there will be some awkwardness with crossing the major roads, but there isn’t, because Peterborough has a very good system of bike routes called Green Wheel. I encounter no bicycles at all on my way back to the car, but I’m very glad of the safety provision made for them so that I don’t have to play chicken with HGVs or souped-up Beemers. Instead I cross high above or duck under the seamless lines of drive-time traffic.

A companion through much of my Big Walk has been Diarmaid MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity. It’s a book I can’t recommend enough, a staggering achievement in the distillation of amazing academic grasp into a cordial within quaffable reach of the average reader (providing the average reader has staying power – the Penguin paperback runs to 1016 pages before references). He’s particularly good (pp. 968 ff.) about Pope John XXIII’s Vatican 2 Council. In the early sixties Pope John swam against the tide of Catholic orthodoxy, but saw clearly where change was necessary if the Church was to survive. He had his critics, and to some extent in Popes John-Paul II  and Benedict XVI those critics pushed back against his vision.

In a very different but equally revolutionary age, the Church of England (but arguably the Catholic Church also) faces a massive challenge. We change or we perish. It’s as simple as that – but the change may be more in attitude rather than practice – because a lot of change in practice has already occurred and it isn’t improving the situation. Mostly we just have to be better at who we are and what we do. I love the titles of the two main documents which dropped into Catholic in-trays as a result of the second Vatican Council. The first was Lumen Gentium (‘the light of the peoples’) which suggested a different future ordering of the Church, although in terms of papal infallibility for instance, it didn’t necessarily correct the likely errors of the past. The second, addressing the Church’s role in the world, was called Gaudium et Spes (‘joy and hope’).

How we need to radiate joy and hope to a desperate world and mediate light to each other!

One more river to cross…

Millimetres of tread:  19.5 km. Five hours. Sun, then cloud and rain, then sun again. 14 deg. C. A blusterous wind, which made the last miles hard work. Two churches, both shut. No stiles, no gates, two bridges. A sparrowhawk hovering above me near Newborough. 

Lord

Today at Morning Prayer

St. Mark the Lion

Rolling us on towards the crucifixion.

At the end of September?

Give me a break!

I find the story hard enough in Holy Week.

But now, with autumn closing upon us

And burgeoning darkness

And a pandemic

And petrol shortages

A cruel wind

Of human frailty everywhere?

 

Yet I know

We have to carry with us always

Incarnation

And salvation.

Help us to maintain

Joy and Hope

For all we meet

Through the grace of Him

Who is the Light of the Peoples

For ever and ever

Amen.