Not a sparrow falls

There was one of those Christmas quiz shows on television.  The quizmaster was Richard Osman, the man who used to be on Pointless but who then became a bestselling crime writer (a case of verification of the Biblical maxim, to he who has shall be given, like Cillian Murphy having a music programme on BBC Radio 6).

The contestants were being asked for numbers to answer arbitrary questions.  One question was on how many beefeaters there had been in the Tower of London.  Given that the tradition has existed for five and half centuries any number given might have been credible.

There was one answer that seemed unlikely, the question was how many breeding pairs of robins are there in Britain.  The answers were given in tens and hundreds of thousands.  The actual answer was 7,350,000. It seemed a very unlikely figure. ‘Second only to the wren’, said Mr Osman. That seemed even more unlikely.

The numbers seemed so large that Google was called upon for verification.  Sure enough, the number of breeding pairs of robins was cited as 7.4 millions.  That gives a total population of 14.8 millions.  The figure for the pairs of wrens was a million more, which means there are nearly 17 million wrens in Britain.

Where are they?

Robins still seem such notable visitors that some people suggest they are the soul of a departed loved one (a tradition that I only discovered in conversation with First Year students during the past year.

Fourteen million seems such a large number that it seems almost odd that robins still occasion comment.

And the wrens?

Like the robins, the appearance of a ‘jenny wren’ was something to prompt comment.

Perhaps it is just in our corner of England that the largest bird populations are not as obvious as their figures would suggest.  Even so, the combined total is more than thirty millions and I do not believe either species has been visible in the garden during the past week.

It was a surprise that the robins and the wrens outnumbered the sparrows, which seemed ever present in our garden.

Perhaps the notion that sparrows were a plurality arose from the Gospel teaching of Jesus on God’s concern for the small and insignificant, ‘not a sparrow shall fall.’ Maybe in First Century Palestine, the plurality lay with the sparrows.

‘Not a robin shall fall,’ would seem a much more graphic image, but would have lacked a feeling of the commonplace.  As numerous as they may be, the robins retain a special place.

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Why Betjeman was wrong about Christmas presents

 . . . those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant

John Betjeman’s poem Christmas, motivated by his desire to emphasise the religious, is dismissive of the gifts given to each other by ordinary people. The son of affluent parents, public school and Oxbridge educated, Betjeman does not hold in high regard those things that do not conform to his taste.

Was he justified, though, in using words like ‘fripperies’  and ‘silly’? Was he reasonable to trivialise other people’s choices because they did not match his understanding of Christmas?

Betjeman understood well the concept of the sacramental, the poem itself concludes with the belief that Jesus is present in bread and wine; the sacramental is about an outward sign carrying an inner meaning. For Betjeman, the bread and wine are the outward of the inner reality of Christ’s presence. But can the things aboit which he was so scathing not have a sacramental significance for those who gave them and for those who received them?

A poor print in a cheap plastic frame hangs on the room of the bedroom in which I sleep when I am in Somerset.  It was a gift to my mother in childhood years in the early-1970s. A seascape, it depicts the rock formation at Durdle Door in Dorset; print and frame together weigh no more than a few ounces.

The print has hung on the wall for at least fifty years, it is hard to remember it not being in the house. Why has it retained its place for so long when numerous other things, probably more valuable and certainly more tasteful, never gained a lasting place?

The print would have fallen into Betjeman’s category of ‘inexpensive’, though it probably consumed most of a small amount of pocket money. He would probably have thought it ‘hideous’, he would not have been a man impressed by cheap plastic things, but was it ‘silly’?

My mother clearly thought that the picture had a significance that extended far beyond what could be seen or touched, it was a sign, for her, of something deeper, something that could not have been described by the child that bought the print, thinking it a work of art.

Perhaps many Christmas presents are fripperies with no meaning beyond themselves, they are silly, but perhaps many more are outward signs of deep thoughts and feelings, they are sacramental. When it comes to surveying one’s presents on Boxing Day, the inner meaning shouldn’t be forgotten.

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Missing George Martin

Christmas Eve meant visiting the forebears, placing Christmas wreaths upon their graves

Pitney first. A small neat, medieval church tucked into the side of the hill. Clem Hill and his wife Ella, Clem dead in 1972, Ella seven years later. Ella was my grandfather’s sister, a homrly, welcoming lady, who provided massive teas to visiting family members. Clem had survived service in the Great War, carrying shrapnel in his lungs until his dying day.

Aller next.  My great grandparents, Albert Luxton and Emily Lock. Both were from families whose roots in the parish were deep. The Luxtons had originated on the borders of Somerset and North Devon before their move to the lowlands of Aller.  Albert and Emily are seventy years dead, both gone five years before I was born.

Huish Episcopi is the most familiar territory, the home parish for generations of my mother’s family.  The round of the graves meant bringing seven wreaths, five of which were intended for Huish Episcopi.

The wreath-laying at Huish follows a clockwise sequence.  Through the lych gate then left to the grave of Jack Martin and Augusta Crossman, dead fifty years ago.  Close by lies the grave of Stanley Crossman, brother of my grandfather, Ella and Augusta, a man whose life was cut short by respiratory problems but whose hard work built up the family farm.

Passing the west end of the church, my grandparents’ grave is at the north side of the churchyard. Dying in 1991 and 2007, they remain fresh and lively in my memory.

The circuit of the graveyard continues to the south-east corner where Albion George Crossman and Emily Cox were buried after their deaths in the mid-1940s.

One grave was still to be found, George Martin was the son of Jack and Augusta, my mother’s cousin. My mother had worked in the shop that George kept on the edge of Somerton and my mother was anxious that his grave be visited.

The problem lay in knowing the location of George’s grave, it was said to be close to the grave of his parents. Repeated searches of the area of the churchyard around the Martin grave were fruitless. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Returning home, my mother and an uncle who was visiting were convinced George had been cremated and the ashes buried in the area where I had searched and a memorial plaque had been placed at the spot.  One of my sisters returned to Huish with me, in the last light of Christmas eve afternoon we searched – without success.

A blessing of the crib had taken place in the church and the congregation was leaving.  A priest stood at the door and I asked if I might speak to the church warden.

The church warden was someone from a storybook, a perfect man for the role, avuncular, knowledgeable and patient with this stranger who was taking up his time on Christmas Eve.  The burial registers were recent, they did not extend back to the time of George’s death. The written details were unnecessary, the church warden had been in charge of the churchyard for twenty years and suggested he might have been aware of the burial.

The mystery remained. Perhaps the ashes had been unofficially interred and perhaps no memorial plaque had been placed.

 

,

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The turning of the days

My good friend Richard who has for almost two decades looked after my online presence advised me yesterday that it was some one hundred or sixty days or so since there had last been a post here.

Had I been asked the reason for the lack of words, I might have said a lack of motivation, or the disappearance of a muse. Perhaps summer reading might also have contributed.

Struggling when not having work to do, spare time in the summeer was spent watching videos from the Middletown Centre for Autism and reading academic journals on neurodiversity.

There was a repeated sensation of being familiar with the experiences described by those with the neurodiverse conditions arising from their brains working in a way that differs from the typical.  Being someone who needs routine, who has to do things in a particular way, who dislikes changes in that which is familiar, I could identify with those who find some situations difficult.  I don’t like being in noisy groups of people, I don’t like parties, I have a propensity for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I struggle to read people’s faces, to understand how they are feeling. I don’t do emotions, either happiness or sadness.

The passing of the winter solstice seemed an opportune moment to attempt a reset, to try to get words in order.

Arriving back in Somerset after a twelve hour journey from Dublin, the broken clouds allowed a glimpse of the winter sky.  A recall of the countless moments in childhood spent staring up into the night sky. There were emotions felt at that time that defied any articulation.

In school, a group of neurodiverse students meets in my classroom one lunchtime a week – our students are decribed by the term ‘twice exceptional’, dealing with the exception of neurodiversity while being in the category of the gifted and the talented, they are students with high levels of intelligence.  Facilitating the meetings demands no more than asking that there be only one voice at a time.

With the school engaged in Christmas tests, I had not expected there to be a meeting this week.  Eight third year students arrived and asked that the meeting might go ahead. The discussion that ensued offered me profound insights into the challenges and helped me to understand why so much of my youth was spent feeling that I was an outsider.

 

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Learning

‘Do you remember the time we took you to the youth club and you stood looking gormless?’

There was no answer to be made, there was no memory of such a moment, no belief that it had ever occurred. There is a recollection of being invited to go and deciding to stay in and watch television, but it is hard to contradict three independent accounts.

There was something unsettling in the question. It had been good-humoured, but had raised doubts.

The doubts had been exacerbated by making a careless, unnecessary comment that had caused offence to someone.

Standing watching the musicians on the stage from afar, there was a sense of a need to be somewhere secure, to be sitting watching a detective programme, to not feel threatened or uncertain.

Solitariness always seems more attractive; no-one to offend and no-one to cause hurt.

The post-doctoral researcher seeking to share ideas on education of people with learning disability asked those at the seminar to take out a sheet of paper and a pen and to draw concentric circles, placing oneself in the middle circle and then placing those with whom one was familiar into circles of friends, their closeness or distance from  the centre reflecting  the strength of friendship.

There was a notepad in the backpack underneath the chair and a pen in the inside jacket packet, but it was more comfortable to appear to have neither pen nor paper, for the circles would reveal the extent of the isolation.

There had been a shadow over the proceedings of the day, an anxiety about the guesthouse car park. In the midst of a medieval city, parking spaces are not plentiful, and what if it became necessary to ask someone to move their car so as to be able to leave?

There had been an intention to go somewhere to watch television coverage of a football match, clusters of people in England colours sat outside the pubs.

The intention faded, much better to return to the guesthouse room, to close the door, to feel secure.

Two of the papers at the seminar had been given by people with an autism diagnosis, both of whom had recognised in adulthood that there were situations with which they struggled, small things that might cause them undue anxiety.

Having realised that relationships are difficult because it is always impossible to understand what the other person might be feeling, there is a sense that there might be an explanation. There is an awareness that the capacity to cope in challenging pastoral situations might arise not from compassion, but from an incapacity for empathy.

The seminars may have been an important personal lesson.

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