Those were the days
FIFTY years ago, I was taking the evening service, as what we called a lay Reader, at our parish church in Finchley, north London. The congregation was an eclectic mix of young people and a few of their elders.
The youth fellowship would come en masse before rushing off to wreck some innocent parishioner’s house. I can still remember trying to get coffee stains and embedded crisps out of the sitting-room carpet. Dotted among them were senior church members who liked their Cranmer neat.
The youth fellowship in those days often included Cliff Richard, who was then being prepared for confirmation, but on this occasion he was absent. Nevertheless, we were not short of glamour; for sitting quietly at the back was a young woman with fair hair down to her midriff, wearing a fur coat.
I greeted her at the door at the end of the service, and discovered her identity. She was Cindy Kent, lead singer of the Settlers, a popular folk band that I’d heard regularly on Radio 2. She explained that she had been a committed Christian from her teens, but, since joining the band when she was 19 and moving to London (she was from Smethwick, West Midlands), she had to fit in with the band’s timetable.
Studio sessions, travel, gigs, and tours meant that churchgoing had slipped off the agenda. She had heard that Cliff was happy at St Paul’s, however; so she thought we might be able to accept the strange lifestyle of a less celebrated pop singer.
Pop to priesthood
WE COULD and we did. The next Sunday she met Cliff — they have remained friends ever since — and before long they were singing together. In fact, he invited the Settlers to be his support band on a tour of Christian concerts on the Continent, and they later collaborated on an ITV series, Life with Johnny.
The Settlers had solid success in the tricky world of popular music —some may recall their hit single “The Lightning Tree” — with Cindy’s distinctive voice a defining feature of their act. Eventually, of course, their time came to an end, and the five musicians went their separate ways.
For Cindy, that way took her into radio presentation, for BBC local radio, then Capital radio in London, Radio 2 and Radio 1, and, finally, when Britain’s first licensed Christian radio station was launched, to become an iconic voice presenting the Rush Hour sequence on Premier Radio.
In due course, she trained for ordination, served a curacy at a parish in Friern Barnet, and then at St James’s, Whetstone — both in much the same area of London. Eventually she was made house-for-duty Priest-in-Charge of St James’s (one of very few women incumbents in the Edmonton Area of the diocese of London, once declared by a previous area bishop to be a “woman priest-free zone”).
Retired but not retiring
IN CASE this all sounds like an obituary, I must add that she is fit and well, and bursting with energy, though about to retire. “Retiring” is not an adjective it is easy to associate with Cindy. She recently celebrated her 70th birthday with a glorious party on Saturday evening, with guests from every part of her distinguished if somewhat bizarre career, and a parish mass at which I preached the following morning.
I should explain that her ministerial style encompasses bells and smells along with robust evangelistic preaching. St James’s has been transformed during her time as parish priest: young families and swarms of children, lots of fun, but genuine Christian substance, too.
Mind you, there can’t be many priests in the Church of England who were once dubbed “Legs Cindy” by a BBC music producer.
Life of Brian
AT THAT that Sunday-morning mass I was greeted by a man whom I took to be about my age. “Hello, Brian!” he said. That immediately placed him in my personal timeline. No one has called me “Brian” since my mother died (for the record, it’s my second name, loathed by me since I was a toddler, and abandoned when my first schoolteacher addressed me by the first name on her register).
He identified himself as a former member of the church that I left when I got married in 1961. I couldn’t place him at first: I thought I could remember every one of my contemporaries there. All was made clear at the end of the service, when Cindy announced that hers was not the most important birthday on this occasion. “Malcolm [Sills], a great cricket fan, has reached his century today.”
As the applause rang out, and the inevitable “Happy birthday” sung, I noted that he had just told me that he did two days a week as a volunteer at St Paul’s Cathedral. Definitely 100 not out.
How cool is that?
I HAVE spent a good part of the summer going wherever I am invited with my message about the joys of being old. Yes, I know it sounds like a lost cause, but I can report that the growing proportion of the population who are over 80 — currently nine million, we’re told — are not averse to being told how enjoyable the departure lounge can be.
At Abingdon, near Oxford, I spoke to a brilliant enterprise of Christ Church called “Prime Time”, a weekday event with speakers and food, aimed entirely at those who wish to make the most of the bonus years our generation has been given. Seventy people had enrolled (and paid) to take part.
The gathering was chaired by a man I last met many years ago. By a wonderful piece of serendipity, his name was Ian Snowball. So the gathering, on a warm August lunch-time, was addressed by Winter and chaired by a Snowball.
Canon David Winter is a retired cleric in the diocese of Oxford, and a former Head of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC.