Inside out
MY ONCOLOGIST was somewhat alarmed by my latest blood test, and arranged for me to have a CT scan. While the great majority of NHS patients languish on waiting-lists, if you are far enough gone in cancer, you go straight to the head of the queue — so quickly that things often happen the next day, which doesn’t give much time to think, or fret.
CT scans that involve prostates need a “contrast”; so they do two scans, one au naturel, and the second after they’ve injected you with an iodine marker. In order to deliver the contrast injection, the technicians need to attach a device through a cannula in the hand. I’m hard to cannulate — so hard that, for my last scan, it took the CT technician, two nurses, a consultant radiologist using ultra-sound, and a passing A & E consultant to get the needle in properly. So I found myself not looking forward to the process; and I prayed, hard, eyes screwed tight, that the cannulation process would work first time. It did.
I was so pleased that I remembered to enjoy the injection itself when it came. It’s a remarkable sensation, as you warm up from inside, like the kids in the old Ready Brek adverts. It’s central heating for late-period boomers.
Close acquaintance
THE technician pulled out the needle, taped a cotton-wool ball to the back of my hand, restored me to my trousers, and sent me on my way. I felt so loved that people might have suspected that I was a loony as I headed for the exit, given that I was grinning like one.
I went into the empty hospital chapel (opposite the lavatories, just before the way out), stood in front of a table with a wooden cross, and said, quite loudly: “Father, thank you . . .” and a voice replied, “Hello, yes, can I help you?” — which, as you might imagine, came as a surprise.
I hadn’t noticed that the chaplain’s office was occupied; a smiling chaplain emerged to see what was going on.
“Oh,” I said, “I just popped in to say thank you for my treatment today.”
“It sounded like you were talking to a friend.”
“Well, I was.”
Off the beaten track
MOST people who live in Presteigne will, at one time or another, take the road from the Salwey Arms on the A49 south of Ludlow, through Tenbury Wells, and up to the M5, a little past Droitwich. It’s the quickest way to Birmingham, and to the M40 for London, and the M42 for all points north-east. For ten years I worked at Birmingham City University, and this road (formed by the A456 and A443, for road nerds) was a regular commute, so I drove it two or three times a week, in all seasons.
Now, my wife and I take it once a fortnight to visit our 18-month-old grandson (and, to some extent, his parents) in Coventry. It’s a corking road, it really is, through hopyards along the left bank of the River Teme; but we’re always passing through. A few weekends ago, we thought to cross the River Teme at Eastham; and take some time to explore the unfamiliar right-hand side of the valley.
Just one never-before-taken turning from a familiar and beloved road, and we had entered church-crawling heaven. We stopped at St Peter and St Paul, at Eastham, a jewel of a 12th-century church; and then at the “Church on the Hill”, St Mary’s, in Stanford, with wonderful views across the Teme Valley to the road much travelled.
I remembered meeting a fellow Tolkien nut at an event in Tenbury, who assured me that the Teme Valley was the original model for the Shire. Standing outside St Mary’s, it was easy to believe.
We finished our detour at St Andrew’s, an estate church packed with features designed to delight the church-crawler’s heart, and which is right by the famous Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb course.
God’s Kingdom is here, it seems to me; and sometimes all we have to do to notice is to take an unfamiliar turn.
Hidden treasure
WE REJOINED our usual route just before crossing the Severn at Holt Fleet, and drove into suburban Droitwich. For years, Hilary had been promising to take me to see the Church of the Sacred Heart and St Catherine of Alexandria in Droitwich, but somehow it had never happened.
It is modelled in brick, on the pattern of Roman basilicas; but what I first noticed was the number of vehicles in the car park, as the church hall was holding a well-attended event: a cross between a Christmas fair and a bun-fight for the under-eights.
The church itself was empty, and, oh, what a wonder it is! The whole of the interior is alive with colour from a series of mosaics, which the church guide describes as being “of singular brilliance and richness”. It was begun in 1921 and finished ten years later, and at every turn there is something of great beauty. My favourite, if forced to choose, was a series of mosaics depicting the life of St Richard “of Chichester” but born and celebrated in Droitwich.
The next time you find yourself hurrying past Droitwich on the M5, take a turn, and try spending an hour in one of the great 20th-century celebrations of our faith.
Ian Marchant is an author and broadcaster, and the founder of Radio Free Radnorshire.