Van and vanguard
The sun is shining, the tourists are back, and our camper-van has left its
place of exile (a distant car-park where it doesn’t spoil our neighbours’ view
of the cathedral) and gone to to be valeted. This all means it’s summer, and
we’ll be soon crossing the Channel. I can’t wait.
I love my camper-van, and the journeys we do in it. We never know where
we’re going to stay, and never worry, because no matter how far off the beaten
track one wanders in France, there is always a camping municipal.
Every summer I turn into a cross between Meg the Gypsy and Toad of Toad
Hall, waxing lyrical about the freedom of the open road, and sleeping under
canvas (OK, fibreglass), while my children roll their eyes and tell me about
friends who’ve rented a villa in Tuscany and are flying there.
My horrible, prosaic children do not understand the meaning of the word
romance. To them, our elderly Compass Drifter is not a thesaurus of
possibilities, but embarrassing proof that we don’t have enough money to stay
in decent hotels. At speech days, it sticks out among the BMWs and Mercedes
like a hippo among panthers, and the children cover their eyes and beg us to
park it somewhere discreet.
But, as I constantly remind them, having a camper-van is character-forming.
It is teaching them the most valuable lesson of all: not to mind what other
people think. Yes, it is a Way of Pain, but the rewards are great. When they
finally achieve that Zen-like state of non-caring (and believe me, I am doing
all I can to force them there), their disregard for bourgeois sensibility will
make them invincible.
And anyway, as I also tell them (I have to admit that this is a wild
surmise), most rich people would secretly love a camper-van. The only reason
why they don’t buy one is fear of being laughed at. I may be deluding myself
here (the poor always try to persuade themselves that they’re better off than
the rich) — but there again, I may be right. In which case, those impoverished
plutocrats should wise up and get a Compass Drifter, even if it does spoil the
view.
Word to the wise
This is my last week of teaching Latin at the Cathedral School, a job I
loved chiefly for its freedom from the prescriptions of the national curriculum.
I taught the old-fashioned way: through grammar. Oddly enough, the children
seemed not to mind — possibly even to like the orderliness of conjugations and
declensions. Some took easily to the demands of an inflected language;
for others, the variability of person, tense, number, and case was a perpetual
torment. But they all understood that Latin was uncompromising and difficult;
and, in a funny way, I think they were pleased to have it asked of them.
They responded enthusiastically to the idea of Latin as code-breaking, and
often surprised me with their skilful deciphering and enciphering of complex
sentences. We talked about Bletchley Park, and why it employed classicists, and
why having to master six tricky things at once made Latin like windsurfing.
Sometimes I would read them tales from the Iliad and the Odyssey, while they
doodled and their imaginations worked.
But perhaps the greatest pleasure was the freedom we had to wander beyond
the syllabus. What is a manse? How did it get its name? What does tacit mean?
Did Helen’s face really launch a thousand ships? How stupid was Marlowe’s Dr
Faustus to enter a pact with the Devil? Who has seen a painting of the birth of
Venus and where? We ranged over ethics, etymology, and aesthetics, into
areas that core subjects are often too busy to touch.
Eventually, when, each autumn, a new class asked me: “Why are we doing
Latin?” I learned to say not, “So that you can bore everyone about it when
you’re 40” (although they nodded at that), but, “Because you’ll enjoy it.”
It was a privilege to do the job, and I shall miss the willing, polite, and
generous children who shared it with me.
Sing to the Lord
The reason why I have to stop is that from September I will be taking our
youngest daughter to Guildford several times a week, to be a probationer in the
choir of Guildford Cathedral.
This extraordinary building, dominating the town at the top of Stag Hill,
was begun in 1936 and completed only in 1961, because the second World War
interrupted building. From the outside it looks like a powerhouse of
theological endeavour, as if Christianity were a product to be hewn and hefted
and welded by the teeming workers within. But the pale, austere interior, so
reminiscent of a medieval Norman priory, invites only stillness.
As the westering sun streams through the open door into evensong, and the
choir sings the Nunc Dimittis, it is moving to realise that this cathedral, not
yet 50 years old, is combining the musical and liturgical traditions of
centuries with the vigour of something young.