What is old?

Posted on 12th July 2022 by Ian

I love ITV 3. There is a constant recycling of detective series without reference to date or sequence or age.

Vera drives a Land Rover that never seems to be replaced and drinks whisky in a manner that must eventually take its toll. Inspector Barnaby may be either of his manifestations, his sergeants may be drawn from a wide selection, and the colossal death toll in Midsomer continues to mount. Law and Order continues to be screened without cognizance of changes that may have affected the Crown Prosecution Service.

If there is a series that is mindful of the passage of time, it is Morse, with its Lewis sequel, and its Endeavour prequel.

Randomly, and without explanation for its scheduling, the very first episode of Endeavour was screened last night. It is the one where the youthful Police Constable Morse arrives for the first time at Cowley Police Station to join Oxford City Police.

The final moment of that episode is the one that is the most memorable. Even the music from Puccini’s Madam Butterfly doesn’t capture the mood of the passage of time as does one second at the end.

Driving Inspector Thursday’s black Jaguar, the young Morse in his Shaun Evans incarnation glances into the rearview mirror. Looking back at him is the Morse whom he becomes, the unmistakeable eyes of John Thaw.

It is a moment of continuity, a moment when past, present and future become one.

Sometimes there are moments when shaving in the morning when I look into the mirror and there is a glimpse of the person I once was. Perhaps life would have been lived more wisely if I had been able to look into the mirror and been able to see the person I would become.

Perhaps what matters is not the appearance, but what one thinks. Perhaps age is not something that can be gauged in a rearview mirror, but is something on the inside.

ITV’s West Country news bulletin yesterday evening carried a story of two ninety year old friends from the Bristol area who must look in the mirror and seem someone very different from the person looking back. The television cameras covered the weeken activities of the duo, one had gone wing walking and the other had taken part in a sky dive.

To contemplate those activities must demand extraordinary physical health for someone who is ninety, but more than that, it must reflect an extraordinary attitude.

To look in the mirror at ninety and still retain an appetite for the extreme would be a delightful way of dealing with the inexorable passage of time.

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A rare visit to church

Posted on 10th July 2022 by Ian

It was the retirement service for the local vicar today, spending twelve years in the parishes, she has been someone who understood the words community and service, someone who had become much loved for her gentle loving kindness, particularly her care for those isolated in lockdown.

A rare attender at church services these days, I drove to the service.

It was being held in Langport church, a building now closed for regular services and in the care of a body called the Churches Conservation Trust. Last year, I saw it advertised as holiday accommodation, it was a delight to see it restored, for a short time, to is proper use.

There is no parking at Langport church, and even if there were it has become difficult to access since the road from the Muchelney side of the town was closed after the idiotic driving of a Heavy Goods Vehicle brought the large lorry into contact with the Hanging Chapel that stands aside the road. (Are drivers and their employers ever made amenable for the costs they inflict on communities?)

Parking at Huish Episcopi church, I joined the flow of people walking the few hundred yards to Langport church. From the church tower in Langport came the sound of the peal of bells. At the church door, a queue of people had formed, each person stopping to wish the vicar well. Inside, the church was filled, only by walking to the front of a side aisle did I find a seat.

Sitting in the church, there was a moment of timelessness.

Today was the anniversary of the civil war battle which brought a clash of a 10,000 strong Parliamentary army with a force of 7,000 men on the crown side. What tragedies had been played out that day? How many people had come into this building to pray for deliverance from the violence?

How many other moments had these walls witnessed?

The congregation sang with enthusiasm and joined loudly in the responses to the prayers. Yes, there were plenty of octagenarians, but there were also dozens of primary school aged children and their families.

A girl of six or seven years of age sat nearby sang a Christmas carol to herself. Her church attendance was obviously as frequent as my own.

The Gospel reading for today was the parable of the Good Samaritan, a fitting reading for a farewell to a vicar who had sought to live by the spirit of Jesus’ teaching.

There were to be speeches and lunch to follow. Being a stranger in their midst, I picked up my jacket and nodded in apology to those around.

Walking back towards Huish, I thought I understood how my family had spent so long in this timeless place. As if in a moment of perfect synchronicity, a farm jeep pulled up alongside me and one of my uncles greeted me

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Civil war rights

Posted on 8th July 2022 by Ian

The Battle of Naseby in June 1645 and the Battle of Langport in July 1645 marked the destruction of the armies of King Charles and the First Civil War drifted to a conclusion the following year when the Scots handed Charles over to Parliament,

In the period that followed, there was discussion of what sort of socirty the members of the Parliamentary army wanted.

Read the accounts of The Putney Debates now and they recall that the men who fought for Cromwell in battles like those at Naesby and Langport were men who had set out with high ideals.  The soldiers were evangelical Christians, they were men whose daily lives were shaped by Scripture and prayer.  They believed everyone should pursue their own conscience, that no government had a right to impose religion.

In An Agreement of the People issued on 28th October 1647, they declared:

That matters of religion and the ways of God’s worship are not at all entrusted by us to any human power, because therein we cannot remit or exceed a tittle of what our consciences dictate to be the mind of God, without wilful sin.

The Levellers, the soldiers who took part in the Putney Debates, had no place for an established church, no place for secular powers being used to dictate people’s religious beliefs or their practices.

The Levellers’ vision extended much further than matters of religious belief, there was a belief in universal suffrage, an idea that their opponents claimed could only lead to anarchy and an end to private property. On 29th October 1647, after a morning prayer meeting, the soldiers had resumed their debates. Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, who became a heroic figure for the Levellers, declared during the debate:

For really I think that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee; and therefore truly, Sr, I think itt clear, that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under.

The poorest man has as much a life to live as the richest man: a declaration of the dignity and rights of every person, rights that were about more than a matter of words or principles, rights that had direct political implications.

Neither Cromwell nor the Crown would entertain the introduction of such rights. The oppression of the Commonwealth would be followed by the oppression of the Restoration.

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Some people should never be 77

Posted on 5th July 2022 by Ian

There was a barbecue at my cousin’s house in Pitney last Friday, followed by disco music for the gathering of cousins.

Dancing to Blondie’s Atomic, one of my cousins said how much she loved Debbie Harry.

‘I think she is 76,’ I said.

‘No’, my cousin replied, ‘she couldn’t be.’

Unbeknown to us, Friday was actually Debbie Harry’s birthday, her 77th birthday. This seems to run contrary to the natural order of things. In Star Wars terms, Debbie Harry being 77 is like a disturbance in the Force. Debbie Harry should always be young.

Certain people should always be certain ages.

When I was in ministry, I used to think that clergy should always be in their late 60s and worldly wise, grey and lined, carrying the marks and the bruises of four decades of work, and even if they’re not, they should think they are. Whereas pop stars should be at the other end of the age range, they should never be more than 35, or perhaps 40, if the more mature image suits.

I am troubled sometimes when I meet someone from twenty or thirty years ago, I don’t mind that I have got much older and have gone grey, but I expect them to be as they were when I last saw them. It is a reassurance that some among my cousins show no more sign of ageing than did Dorian Grey.

The expectation that people should not change is strange, perhaps a projection of my own fears of ageing and death on to others, but it raises thoughts in my head about whether our pasts are lost forever.

In my rather vague theological thinking that has endured in the years since I resigned from the church, I have clung onto the idea the redemption of creation that is described by Saint Paul in the Bible in his Letter to the Romans.  If such a redemption takes place, I hope, it will include the redemption of time, allowing us to recapture the moments that are important, allowing us, perhaps, to put right the mistakes of the past (and I have many, many mistakes I would like to rectify).

I am aware these thoughts are very unorthodox. But should I ever find myself in that state of existence known as heaven, I think I would probably be happy with being maybe 68, the age at which I might get a pension.

Ms Harry, if I should happen to meet her, would be no more than half of my age, and my cousins would remain as young as they are now.

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Teatime with cousins

Posted on 3rd July 2022 by Ian

A weekend of laughter, the visit of two cousins from Cheltenham to join with local family members for a barbecue on Friday night and a music festival yeseterday.

The Cheltenham cousins would have been among those who would have gathered in my grandmother’s kitchen on summer Sunday teatimes.

In the kitchen there was a long settle stood against the wall.  On those summer Sunday evenings when a large proportion of her twenty grandchildren might have gathered,  it seemed able to accommodate an unlimited number of small children, there for the abundant teas that marked the boundary between afternoon and evening.

The settle was always the preserve of the many little girls among the numerous cousins, this weekend’s visiting cousins among them. Perhaps more girls could fit in the limited space, perhaps their more refined table manners demanded less elbow room than the habits of uncouth boys.

Fits of giggles at silly stories combined with a desire not to incur the displeasure of the family matriarch, all four feet ten inches of her who would be sat nearest the kitchen door and never needed to raise her voice in order to exert her authority.

The sun did always shine at such teatime assemblies, for had it not been a fine afternoon, so many would not have gathered at the farm.

Perhaps children’s appetites were smaller then than now, perhaps there was a contentment to be found in having jelly and ice cream and fairy cakes, but there seemed always more than enough to sate the desires of every child at the table.

The moment owed much to family who had come from afar. The cousins who came from Gloucestershire and Berkshire created a mood different from that when it was just those from the locality. Perhaps it was similar for all big families, the returning exiles bringing something different to the table.

The chair nearest the window became a personal favourite, perhaps it was the most distant from the threat of the wooden spoon. Sitting at the end of the table meant being able to watch everyone; those from elsewhere had always the best stories and the funniest humour.

The teas were not frequent. It was summertime when the family from afar would come to the farm. It was perhaps only once a year that we sat around that table, yet it was a meal from which memories would linger long. Other accents among our Somerset burrs would tell tales of excitement and variety far removed from our gentle country lives.

More than fifty years later, it is the cousins from afar who bring us laughter.

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