ALWAYS TAKE THE WEATHER WITH YOU

 

I’m on my way to Lincoln, but the walks to the Rutland border – and therefore the border between the Peterborough and Lincoln dioceses – are the hors ‘d’oeuvres before the main course.

Long time readers/followers will know that apart from self-indulgence and the sheer joy/relief of still being able to put one foot in front of another, my walks are also symbolic. I’m arguing that all of us within the Church of England should pull together, putting aside theological and cultural differences in the cause of maintaining our branch of the Christian faith into the unknown future. We are 1). better together 2). better in colour and 3). better than we think we are.  There’s more to celebrate together than divides us; we are admirably and wonderfully diverse, and Christians, including Anglican Christians are a fantastic glue in our fragmenting society.

So much for the manifesto. I hope you’re still with me…

A glassy sea...our own little Galilee

I’m late setting out from my Morcott home, mostly because I want to see Zharnel Hughes qualify from his morning heat of the 200 metres at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest.  He does.  Even so, I might have started earlier had the weather forecast not been ambiguous about the prospects for morning rain. This is, as always, walking for softies!

The path down to the Foss stream has become bothersome because of two unpleasantly aggressive dogs defending their territory from behind an inadequate wire fence. My worry is that one day they’ll jump it and become more than an annoyance.  They’re no ‘XL Bullies’, and doubtless they’re wonderful, friendly pets, but already they're scary for kids and seniors like me. On the far side of the stream, the farmer has re-contoured the field, for who knows what reason. Was the soil slippage towards the stream causing difficulty for the livestock. Or is there a less benign motive? Some think so.  And what responsibilities does a farmer have towards archaeology in these circumstances? I’ve always thought there might be the remains of ancient house platforms buttressing the slope – although to be fair, there’s no evidence of that in the newly upturned soil.

Past the county rubbish tip I turn left on a green lane which runs close to the future site of a solar farm. The project is the subject of intense local debate, and much opinion is hostile to the idea. I’m a fence-sitter. I see this will provide income for a local farmer (and I wish their products brought them better returns), and yet fear the ‘farm’ will be unsightly. Personally I think there’s potential for such enterprises to be re-designated as brownfield sites in the future. But of course, we have to address the question of how we generate renewable energy in secure ways – which may not now include off-shore wind-farms, which may be too susceptible to attack from hostile foreign actors.

The tiny church of St. Nicholas in Pilton is shut. As it turns out, the forecasters are wrong, and it’s quite warm already. I could sit on one of the flatter gravestones, but earlier in the week there was an item in the national news about people having sex on churchyard monuments.  Just another damn thing for churchwardens to worry about.  But then these reports emanated from the great maw of London.  Such a thing could never happen in Rutland, could it? Nevertheless, I choose the church porch as a resting place and tearoom. 

As I walk down the lane away from Pilton towards the railway and the Chater stream, I realise how lovely the view is across the valley. Driving along it in the car, as we often do, one slides past without looking. Up on the opposite hillside is lovely Lyndon Hall, built in the French style during the late seventeenth century, and later the seat of the Barker family.  Thomas Barker the younger was a remarkable man.  He was related by marriage to Sir Gilbert White of Selborne, and shared his insatiable Enlightenment interest in the natural world, whilst remaining a God-fearer. This was the time of William Paley’s ‘Great Watchmaker’ argument for God’s existence, much derided since, notably in recent years by Richard Dawkins. Thomas Barker’s continuing legacy to us is his highly detailed recording of weather phenomena both as he experienced them personally, and as he heard reports from abroad. Thanks to the diaries and records he and others kept, more contemporary meteorologists have been able to compile synoptic charts for each day’s weather back to the 1780s – what a remarkable thing! One of the odd-nesses in his reports is the apparently greater prevalence of the ‘Northern Lights’ during his time, perhaps connected with the cycle of sunspot activity, though perhaps they were also more visible because of the lack of light pollution.

 Lyndon

Thomas Barker, weatherman,

watched the skies turn strange;

pondered what it meant,

chronicled the change.

Scrupulous, he measured

the detail of Design;

God and Science diaried,

he attempted to define

parameters for nature,

the reach of the divine.

 

Like him, we watch and worry that

tomorrow will be worse

and climate change will prove

the ancient Garden Curse.

When I walked here in Covid-time, I couldn’t get into St. Martin’s Lyndon, but now I can, and am surprised by the startling, marble-mimicking, orange and white alabaster pulpit, and the splendid reredos in contrasting green and white, pre-Raphaelite in tone, which shows highlights of Moses’ life flanking symbols of the four Gospel writers.  I lunch in the (relatively) new village café in the Pick Barn, and then walk down the lane which descends between the estate trees, and which always makes me think of Jane Austen.  St. John the Baptist’s church in North Luffenham delights by its proportions, slender and long. I linger and try a few notes on its grand piano, but the tuning is painful; it's always so difficult to keep real pianos in good nick in buildings which have such temperature variations – as Thomas Barker would no doubt have understood.  These are instances where digital pianos are unfortunately a no-brainer, unless professional recitals are the thing – and in a couple of decades time I expect sound development and touch will have improved so that only the most sniffy of pro pianists will be able to object.

The short cut through the field to the South Luffenham lane is occupied by a nice little herd of calves, but it’s warm and they’re feeding contentedly, so they can’t be bothered to harass me.  On the way into South Luffenham, a plethora of big farm machinery is picking its way past the roadworks (which have been with the village for most of the year, as the water mains are improved and nasty asbestos dealt with).  The harvest has been conducted under near-perfect conditions this summer. Only the last tidy-ups remain to be conducted in the second-last week of August.

August field near South Luffenham

St. Mary’s, South Luffenham is one of our benefice’s churches. I play the organ there regularly, and it’s a beautiful, heart-warming place to come to on a Sunday morning, by the small triangular village green, opposite a field where there’s often a picturesque pony or two.  I previously wrote about South Luffenham with its tomb for the ‘Gypsy Princess’ in the ‘Peterborough’ blog, before we came to live close by. 

Edward Boswell, ‘King of the Gypsies’ arrived in the village at Christmas 1793 (it was probably part of their regular annual route), but his teenage daughter Rose became ill with TB there, and passed away shortly afterwards . The inscription reads:

           ‘In memory of Rose Boswell, daughter of Edward and Sarah Boswell, who died February 19^th 1794, aged 17 years.  What grief can vent this loss, or praises tell, how much, how good, how beautiful she fell.’

It seems impertinent to add my lines to those.

South Luffenham

I sit beside a princess

entombed in stone

so cold.  So young,

she died before her time.

 

I play.  She did not know

the hymns the parish sings

so slow, so quiet,

so very out of time.

 

The squeezebox and the fiddle

processed her to her grave.

So apt, so far

from the culture of our time.

 

‘One Church, one faith, one Lord!’

Each year we make the claim

so bold.  But is it true

in this or any time?

Morcott – Pilton – Lyndon – North Luffenham – South Luffenham – Morcott.

15 km.  4.8 hrs ( .8 for lunch).  Sunny and very warm throughout. ( 24 degrees)

‘Always take the weather with you’ : Twangy of guitar and harmony, a lovely nineties’ tune from Antipodean band ‘Crowded House’