[This article should have been appearing in the November parish mag, but there isn't enough space. At least, that's the editor's excuse]
I don’t like driving. My imagination is far too vivid to allow me to be a happy, contented driver. I was all right until I was nearly killed by a sheep. The sheep wasn’t driving, don’t get me wrong. It was lurking behind a small boulder on the high moorland road between Owdham and Huddersfield, just waiting for a motorist to pass with his mind on other things, and I was doing 69.9 mph when it took it into its head to leap (or bound) forth in order to savour the grass on the other side of the A62. And I’m sure, in that moment of panic braking, that I caught a malevolent gleam in its eye – “Go on, hit me, sunshine, and it’s a £400 fine and three points. Oh, and a new car. If you’re spared. Meeeeee-ehr.”
I have been extremely wary of sheep ever since, and have been trying to reduce their numbers by a process known as eating.
So when my beloved intimated that a nice self-catering holiday in St Oswald’s land would make a change from the usual G-Line jaunt I smelt a rat, and my right leg (the one with the foot on the end that I use to press the accelerator pedal) starting playing up, as it does when it senses danger.
Now I’m all in favour of visiting those bits of Northumberland within an easy bus journey from the temporary pied-à-terre, but it was evident from the determined expression on beloved’s face that I was in for a lot, and I mean a lot, of driving.
We had bought a satnav thing at my insistence (well, I wanted one, because it’s a gadget, and male choirpersons love gadgets because they’re something to play with during the sermon, and beloved grudgingly agreed.) Emily is wonderful! She’s got a tremendous sense of direction, and she isn’t fazed by anything: “You have driven over a cliff. Make a U-turn as soon as possible”, she says, and I just love her to bits.
Emily, I had hoped, would make even the A1 bearable. The A1, if you don’t know it, is a road that you can’t avoid if you are aiming for St Oswald’s land, and it is populated by self-propelled suicide vehicles whose sole aim, dodgems-like, is to take you out, and themselves with you. And what did Emily of the soothing voice say? “A1. Continue 40 miles...” The A1 gives me nightmares. It is far, far worse than the A588, a road also populated by murderous missiles weighing a ton and travelling at 69.9 mph.
En route we stopped off at Hexham (I am getting to the point, honest) and bought some books, including one about Interesting Churches. It is the sort of book that chaps who collect stamps and go train-spotting and hang net curtains with scalloped hems in the windows of their garden sheds write. Any book about Interesting Churches that mentions Grace Darling as “Grace Darling, the heroine” without supporting information demands, like the Orange Brick, intense scrutiny by a choirperson with a thick notebook and a sharp pencil to hand. And yes, this questionable tome, for which I forked out the price of a bottle of Gordons, was obviously written by a train-spotter and/or stamp collector, for it is all about buildings and bits of buildings. Now church buildings are very useful things for keeping congregations dry when it’s chucking it down or for hanging bells at the top of the towers of, but that’s where their function ceases (unless you’re a trainspotter, architect, antique dealer, or beneficiary of the Pevsner estate). An Interesting Church, surely, is a church with a congregation of 500, a Sunday School with 150 children, a choir of 1,000 and a thumping great five-manual organ to go with it, and a parish share of 49p. Oh, and a few clergy here and there to remind us of what it’s all about.
The most Interesting Church I ever saw was the one Holy Noely, the young priest who assisted at our wedding, had when he moved to Australia. It was the Church in the Carport, for it was in a carport that services were held while the interesting church building was going up. If you saw the Alan Whicker programme with the green tree frog climbing up the parson’s vestments, that was Holy Noely (The Rev’d Noel Allen, who sadly Entered Immortality a couple of years ago, and what a cracking expression that is, Gromit. From Evita, I believe.)
But to move on. Evensong seems to be catching on once more. It must worry the telly people no end, the church poaching their viewers, because they’ve responded by running the Forsyte Saga again. Broughton has an Evensong, Morecambe has one, and now Cockerham is trying it out, with some early signs of success (tip: announce at the family service that the raffle prizes will be awarded after evensong, and any not claimed will be distributed among the congregation present. It worked a treat at Cockerham – there must have been 50 people in the congregation and 20 in the choir.)
There was an extra evensong at Morecambe a few Saturdays ago with the children and young people who’d had another day of singing and fun with the infectious Rachael thingy and Marilyn what's-it from our branch of the Royal School of Church Music. We dropped in on our way back from Northumberland and stayed for the service. It was good to see four of our young people from Snozzies there. There was an impossible amount of music for youngsters, some of them only eight, to learn in a day, but they rose to the occasion like seasoned professionals, to the delight of a tiny congregation and the amazement of the new Rector. Our youngsters are so important. They, not interesting buildings, are the future of our living church.
And they even made the 40 miles of the dreaded A1 a distant memory.
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