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Word from Wormingford

by
28 June 2013

Ronald Blythe enjoys the smell and sounds of the seaside

TO ALDEBURGH, where Peter Grimes would confess his crimes in an opera house on the shingle. And not only this, but the Suffolk coast had taken a leaf out of the Côte d'Azur, and was balmy. My friend Ian, never a man to miss an opportunity, jumped into the sea and swam several yards. I breathed in the unaccustomed warmth, and listened to the furious gulls.

It was Sunday evening, and my having taken matins at Little Horkesley that morning seemed aeons away. For this is what the sea does: takes over. Replaces what went before with its vast significance. I heard it hollering, as it were, below the balcony of my room all night.

The costly whiff of skate and haddock rose from the fishermen's huts, and the birds cried even louder. Christianity was born to this smell and noise. Galilee was 74 square miles of serenity and turbulence, where squalls blew up, or where surfaces were calm, concealing great depth. It bred a distinctive race, as seas do. As Aldeburgh does to this day. I mean, Southwold and Great Yarmouth are only a few miles north, but are they like Aldeburgh? Not remotely.

It is Songs of Praise at Mount Bures from its modest height. And all around the epitome of flower festivals. Pure Kilvert. Or so I always think. Francis Kilvert died in 1879, and his niece Miss Kilvert was my Suffolk neighbour. The contingencies of human existence can be unbelievable. This is the time of year when I might include some of Kilvert's diary in a sermon. Might he not console others as he consoles me? St Paul blessed the Romans via the God of patience and consolation.

On a June morning such as this, Kilvert let himself out of the Golden Lion Hotel at Dolgellau to visit real lions; for the menagerie had come to town. It was 5.30 a.m., and the lions, ostriches, gnus, and antelopes, wide awake but caged up, were "eliciting divers roars, groans, howls, hoots and grunts". All that I heard when at this hour I braved the sopping wet grass were Jean's horses cropping and breathing, and the final notes of the dawn chorus.

Kilbert climbed Cader Idris; I became waist-high in my wildflower meadow and sticky with pollen. But the early-ness of being outside was just the same for both of us. Only he ran into Welsh rain, and I into the clarity of an East Anglian morning. Kilvert descended Cader Idris by the "Fox's Path", as I had done, 100 years later.

I came into a stingy breakfast, being too idle to cook. And now, wet-footed, I am writing this, consoled by the selfish thought that never in my life have I ever had to catch the commuter's train. Only to stumble from bed to meadow at an unearthly hour. For 5.30 a.m. can be paradisal, whatever the weather.

Kilvert, a mighty walker, met early risers of all ages; whereas I meet fewer and fewer fellow tramps. Sunday afternoons might bring one or two of them out. Old paths are grown over, old views no longer seen - such as that from which, at a certain point, one can just make out Wormingford Church, or an oak which is contemporary with Shakespeare.

So back to Songs of Praise, and what to say between these hymns. And to hear them sung eloquently inside the thick old walls. George Herbert, of course. J. M. Neale, of course. Charles Wesley always consolingly brilliant.

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