DAZED AND CONFUSED

 

The Gorilla.  Where the Grantham canal meets its nemesis - the A1!

The gradient of the lane away from the canal towards Barrowby appears slight, but is illusional. As you begin to breast the wold, what looked insignificant now makes the walker blow, or at least this walker.  To be fair the guy in singlet and shorts who was running it ahead of me seemed not to slacken his pace at all. 

Inside the village limits a man is picking litter.  As I pass I say thank you, because even if Barrowby has been a three-time winner of ‘best-kept village’, it’s a horrible, unrelenting, painting-the-Forth-bridge sort of a job.  He doesn’t reply, not even a grunt. Well, he may have been deaf, or thought me sarcastic or condescending. Or I wonder, maybe he’s doing a different kind of ‘community service’, and really doesn’t want to be there at all, except it’s preferable to a few days in chokey or a large fine.

All Saints’ church is locked, and as I sit on the bench to catch glimpses of the Vale of Belvoir, all trains and traffic, the sky begins to spit raindrops. The Met Office is often criticised, but in fact rarely gets a lot wrong. However, there wasn’t a hint in today’s forecast about precipitation before early evening.  I begin to wonder about the wisdom of today’s yomp. I am, as regular readers know, a fair-weather walker.

Back in Church Lane a big blue bus has arrived, disgorging a crocodile of children. ‘Been anywhere nice?’ I ask the teacher who’s guarding the rear. ‘Swimming’, she replies, and I’m transported myself, back sixty-five years to the weekly journey in an elderly coach through the narrows of Puddledock Lane to the pool, where before I leave the Maypole County Primary School I achieve the zenith of my swimming career, second place in the fetching-the-brick-from-the-bottom of the pool competition.  So confined and Kentish was Puddledock Lane there was always the chance the bus company would send the wrong, larger coach, which on one occasion found navigation impossible and got stuck, to our delight, and possibly the teachers’ too.

Expanding Grantham

I’d looked at both the OS and local maps, and come to the conclusion my desired route across the A1 to Great Gonerby was probably unfeasible. So it proves. It’s a problem up and down the length of this particular road. The lanes and paths that crossed it were summarily chopped off, without compensating provision.  Beyond the dual carriageway I can see there’s a track leading to Rectory Farm where I could rejoin my preferred route, but a notice warns off pedestrians from trying their luck on what clearly isn’t a right-of-way.  The consequence for me is a walk right into the centre of Grantham.

It now takes an average of one hour and eight minutes from Grantham into Kings Cross by train, so in theory it’s as easy a London commute as Northampton ever was.  Looking at the layout of the town on the map, it’s clear what will happen. There are plenty of spaces to infill and expand, and down the road from Rectory Farm the development is already well under way, promising a range of 2,3,4 and 5 bedroom houses, probably without any accompanying infrastructure, because of course there’s no reward to the house-builders in providing that.

I’ve ridden this hobby-horse too many times, but how can we reverse the process begun, yes by Grantham’s very own Margaret Thatcher, in the 1980s? It’s convenient for governments to tip the scales of electoral advantage by retaining power while devolving responsibility and (inadequate) finance.  A property-owning democracy is all very well, but we don’t have enough starter homes or council houses.  Local councils are cash-starved and going bankrupt while having increasing responsibilities.  This year the potholes in the road are a real danger to safety. Who’d want to serve as a councillor?  Probably many of the people you’d rather weren’t. The National Health Service is a hybrid. It suits the government for it to be so, but as most families know, it’s failing. Either it will have to be ‘re-nationalised’, or we’ll have to go the American route and all buy insurance while the weakest go to the wall and die because they can’t afford it.  So, Grantham may go the way of Northampton, becoming increasingly ill-governed, lawless and under-provisioned. Each week brings a scandal about some aspect of government, local or national, but the problems are general, and in need of a more radical (i.e. root and branch) solution.  But what can actually be done, short of abandoning democracy?  And democracy always has to be the priority. 

The Church of England to some degree mimics these trends in secular politics.

I walk towards Great Gonerby on what I suddenly realise is the Old Great North Road. A roadside legend at Gonerby Hill Foot tells me that until 1825 Gonerby Hill was regarded as the steepest hill between London and Edinburgh (was that true?  Highgate Hill?  Carter Bar?) Now the footpath more nearly follows the original contour while the roadway climbs in a cutting where the gradient is less severe.  At the top is St. Sebastian’s church, whose clock tower was habitually under fire from young ‘clockpelters’ in times past. Sadly, it too is locked – as so often churches near major conurbations are, of necessity if vandalism is to be avoided. Clockpelting wouldn’t be the nth of it now. 

I retrace my steps into Grantham. At the bottom of Gonerby’s hill are the remains of a stone mounting block. The seventeenth century businessman Edmund Boulter inherited Wimpole Hall, now a National Trust property near Cambridge. He found himself too frequently and at a senior age riding between there and Harewood in Yorkshire, which had also come into his possession. The mounting block at Gonerby Hill Foot is one of a number he had erected for his convenience.

St. Wulfram’s church in the centre of Grantham is a marvel, with the sixth highest spire in the country. As the visitor turns off Swinegate, the tower appears as a sudden confrontation from what is now a rather mundane street. Inside, the church is almost as splendid: the Victorians did a good job. There are many aids to worship and lovely things to see. For me the highlight is John Hayward’s 1970 stained glass depiction of Jesus reaching out to a sinking St. Peter on the north aisle. If I worshipped here, it would sustain me week by week, despite the modern chairs I’d be sitting on - which seem ugly and unworthy of the building.  Everything about St. Wulfram’s says that it’s alive, but the notice on the door, which lays out a few terms and conditions of entry, is a little off-putting.  St. Wulfram?  He was a one-time Archbishop of Sens during the seventh century – the time of the Frankish kings. He tried and failed to convert the King of Frisia, Radbod, whose name makes me smile. I’ve always wished I had a rad bod…but alas… Wulfram’s arm was brought as a relic to Grantham, but got lost somewhere. If you find it, please return to the Rector.  The dedication to Wulfram at Grantham is one of just two, the other being at Ovingdean, near Brighton.

Grantham (work in progress) 

It broke our backs.

I knew men

who’d hewn a living

from wrangling obstinate stone

but in their final age

crept bent in pain

as if they too

hailed from Cyrene.

 

We saw the tower grow

block on grouted block,

the masters intoning

that Solomon’s temple

in all its glory

was not arrayed like this;

and that proverbial Rome

was built in years not days.

Henceforth

each grubby child

eating dust and worms

would know how great is God;

the soaring spire seen

from every lowly place

if they could only

raise their eyes.

 

Three masons plummeted

from the scaffolding,

wooden crosses sheering apart

as the ropes failed.

Sons have followed fathers

in the holy task,

assured of heaven

by dint of sweat and sunburn.

But now I feel the panic.

Was this all in vain?

For am I Judas

and this a folly not a glory?

The people suffer

Plague, poverty and peril.

Perhaps this reversing alchemy,

turning gold to stone

would be better spent

in relief of the poor.

Did the Lord Christ ever say

he wanted churches built?

Yet even incomplete

I know St. Wulfram’s

will foster awe

in centuries yet to come.

Is that enough?

A prison might do the same.

So is this work of grace achieved

In God or Mammon’s name?

The above reflects my uncertainty as to where we go from here.  Jesus’ commission to make all people his disciples is best done exactly how in 2024?  Through the internet, where quiet voices are so hard to hear?  In words, when even convinced Christians find it hard to concentrate for more than five seconds?  Or is there a case for our artefacts, including ancient buildings, to be a primary routing of eternal truth? In which case, how on earth can we afford it?

I have the map in my hand as I leave St. Wulfram’s – in fact more than one map, but I can’t make sense of Grantham town centre and don’t know why. The streets don’t seem to correspond, the angles aren’t right, and the clouds are lowering.  The breeze is fresh, and so I keep on with it in my face, knowing I’ll find my way to the west, which I eventually do, under the railway and along the Melton road. After a tedious tramp I get to the A1, and on its far side, the beginning of the canal towpath. Two tentative and surreptitious Polish fishermen say hello, pretend to pack up and make their way. Then when I’ve passed by, they begin searching again for neglected fish near the wall of the dual carriageway.  What am I misunderstanding?

Harlaxton – Barrowby – Grantham – Great Gonerby – Grantham – Harlaxton

19 km.  4.8 hours. Cloudy but mild. 15 deg C. Some light showers.

‘Dazed and confused’ was a staple of English heavy rockers Led Zeppelin throughout their (not so very long) career. The track itself had a confused history, owing much to a song of the same name by Jake Holmes, which Jimmy Page, Zeppelin’s guitarist heard while he was still a Yardbird, and brought into his new band’s repertoire at their formation in 1967. The matter was only resolved in the courts in 2012, by which time reputation rather than money was at stake, at least on one side. Led Zeppelin were a moment in pop/rock history where the blues collided with ‘psychedelia’: they were also one of the first groups to be described as ‘heavy’, though the word had just been re-born as an adjective to be used more widely in the life of young people cf:  ‘heavy trip’, or ‘heavy scene’.  It was a style of music I found new and exciting at first hearing, but its darkness soon struck me as oppressive. Concerts might be daringly alternative, but became aural assaults, which cost many their hearing too early in life.  It’s a trope which has continued into ‘metal’ for fifty plus years, leaving many dazed and confused. As the band Fairport Convention wrote at much the same time: ‘Too many friends have been/blown off this mountain by the wind.’