Chest expanders
MY LOCAL bishop, +Will of Lewes, got in touch: “Help! I have managed to split my cassock around the arm (too many sausage rolls). Do you think the Crafty Ladies could fix it??”
The Crafty Ladies group at Holy Cross “does what it says on the tin”: it consists of ladies who are indeed crafty; and they can crochet/knit/create almost any form of craftwork. They have produced chasubles to be decorated by children at Holiday Club, teddy bears and dolls to be raffled, and yards of glorious bunting that has adorned many a parish festivity. They are going to turn my late lamented black labrador Sophie’s liturgically coloured bandanas (which they had made) into memorial cushion covers.
I duly put the Bishop in contact; and all was well, with a beautifully restored cassock. I tell you this for the simple reason that, if ever a sentence deserved to appear in the Church Times, it’s surely this one: “Local bishop stitched up by Crafty Ladies”. I rest my case.
Larger than life
WHERE have all the characters gone? I have been reflecting on two redoubtable village ladies from my childhood in the 1970s in the West Sussex village of Walberton: Miss Burchell and Miss Hillier. Miss Burchell had been the postmistress in the war, and still wore her postmistress’s cap as she cycled round the village some 30 years later.
Her eyesight, though, was deteriorating, and, I remember, she would often cycle the 14-mile round trip to Littlehampton early in the morning, to visit a long-suffering friend, by following the white line in the middle of the road — much to the trauma of occasional motorists.
She had a cat, Thomas, to whom she was devoted. Feeling that he needed educating, she tried to get him enrolled in the local church primary school; when he died, she had him skinned and turned into a miniature “lion skin” rug, complete with skull and spread-eagled legs. I remember seeing the Thomas rug on her bed when I was once given a cup of tea in her tidy little bedsit.
And then there was Miss Hillier — also a cyclist, and concerned with animals, but somewhat differently. She was a devotee of the eight-o’clock Prayer Book holy communion, and I would often encounter her on my way to sing, as a choirboy, at the main Sunday service. She rode a monumental tricycle; she once let me have a go on it, and was hugely amused when I crashed into the church hedge. Her animals, though, were the rabbits in the garden. She knew them all by name, including — inevitably — Flopsy and Mopsy (though that didn’t stop her trying to shoot them with an air-rifle as they attacked her lettuces).
I remember, long after she died, looking round her derelict and abandoned bungalow (the rabbits won) and finding her turban-like felt hat still hanging on the door where she’d left it, years before.
If contemporary eccentrics are developing in churches now, I haven’t noticed any — though perhaps because I’m blithely turning into one myself. . .
Before the fall
STILL reflecting on Walberton, and having just having had the 35th anniversary of my deaconing, I remember that I started going to church purely because my mother told me to. Initially, I sang only at evensong, spending Sunday mornings riding rather than going to St Mary’s; but every time I cantered, I fell off — and the last time I fell off (badly winded), I decided going to church was safer.
In retrospect, how wrong I was.
Hot pursuits
AS I write, the sun is sinking on this summer’s barbecue season. I don’t have a large garden — that went when the old rectory was sold off, before my time (I keep saying I’ll stop moaning about it, and then continue to moan) — but it’s large enough to host some 60 or so people.
I have had three private barbecues for friends and family, and some seven work-related ones, for the bell-ringers; teachers and governors of the church primary school; church musicians; community leaders; the parishes; the youth group and their families; and, lastly, the clergy of the deanery chapter — all in all, I think, just under 200 people. It’s gone well, though much time was spent over charcoal (well, gas, actually, but the thought was there).
High spots were an impromptu concert in the garden by the wonderful Uckfield brass band who were with the musicians (I’d warned the neighbours), and a spirited evensong sung a cappella (that time, the neighbours were invited). The weather was universally good (although I lost the smaller of my two gazebos when the wind got a bit gusty), but overall a good season. Now it’s all downhill to mulled wine and mince pies.
Haute couture
THE other big summer event for us was our jungle-themed children’s holiday club. This year, we capped it at 50 participants (there was then a waiting-list), with games, songs, crafts, and storytelling.
I was bouncing around dressed as Noah (it could have been worse — I had considered being an orangutan), and, by the last day, needed to lie down in a darkened room; but it was all hugely worth while. We do a lot of children’s work, and I had wondered whether it was still worth doing: the answer from children and helpers alike was a resounding “yes”. So, we must work on the theme for next year: I wonder what costume it’ll be? Sumo wrestler, perhaps?
On second thoughts, I’ve already done that, and never again. . . Maybe I’ll get the Crafty Ladies to run something up.
The Revd John Wall is Rector of the Uckfield Plurality in East Sussex.