Ordained by God

 Jenny and I met and became friends in our first week at Cambridge.  One thing we had in common was an interest in matters spiritual.  Within a term, we had both committed to Christianity.  The slightly older student who led us to the Lord later moved on to devote herself to Feng Shui, but we have both stayed on the path.

We live in different parts of the country now and see each other together with our respective families at the annual Greenbelt festival, capturing a freeze-frame vision of one another’s lives.

 

Jenny has grown via a number of roles to flower at last as a priest in the church of England and her ordination was this Saturday near Manchester.

It was very important to be there but also a really long way to travel. 

With Annabel (the erstwhile bridesmaid of both Jenny and I) riding shotgun, Nigel drove us all three hours each way. (I did offer, but he prefers to drive.)

It was a great service with the sermon delivered, confusingly, by an arch deacon whose surname was Bishop. Apparently he is soon to become a bishop. Bishop Bishop.

The sermon was encouraging, the hymns excellent, and the church welcoming. But the thing that most justified our long drive was the beam on Jenny's face.

And it's a smile which will go on to bless the lucky church at Bollington where she is to be curate.

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

Each year, our old university friends meet to catch up with one another and also to commemorate our friends who died young – Malcolm, Steve and Hugh.

This year, we struggled to reach a consensus. 

Proposals included:

A starling murmuration in Brighton – too far to travel for some,

Hieroglyphics at the BM – out of bounds to those of us who disapprove of oil company BP greenwashing themselves by sponsoring exhibitions.

Cezanne at the Tate Modern – popular, but already seen by some.

Avatar II at Leicester Square – other audience members seem not to like it when we chat.

Magdalena Abakanowicz – Tate Modern -  a major artist of the 20^th century (and beyond) whom we all should have heard of, but never had.

 

In the end, we split between Cezanne, Hieroglyphics and Abakanowicz.

Although we meet in midwinter, it often feels like a Midsummer Night ‘s Dream, with people at cross purposes, popping up in odd corners of galleries and narrowly missing one another.  A bunch of us were at the Tate when somebody spotted the contingent from the BM arriving just outside.  Several people rushed out to meet them, but since it was nearly closing time, were not allowed back in.  Meanwhile another group of us waited fruitlessly in the Turbine Hall beneath a massive arrangement of hanging white fabric, lace and nets said to represent the knot language of South American indigenous peoples.

However, finally we regrouped fully for dinner.  And reassuringly, we reenacted the ritual of many years when, as usual, despite some of us having impressive credentials in mathematics, we were unable to match our payments to the bill. 

Photo shows Annabel, Stephen and an Abakan (one of the monumental textile sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz).

A Haven of Welcome

  
There is something very special about the house of friends – a haven where you know you are welcome.  Carolyn and David’s house in Gateshead has been that to us ever since we met when sharing the experience of new parenthood thirty years ago.

For twenty-four years however, we have been living in different regions, hundreds of miles apart.

Over that time, the generations have rolled over and the families have developed through different phases in their life cycle.

We have met the changes in our own family by moving from one house to another, whereas David and Carolyn have extended and adapted the same house in an inventive manner. This time when we visited, a room that I remember was a bathroom thirty years ago had become a bathroom once more, whereas the bathroom which long ago replaced it had morphed into the dining room.

I wished for a time lapse film that tracked the expansion of both family and house.

However, when we visited recently, the person who recalled most to us the first days of our friendship was somebody we had never met before - Lydia, one of their young grandchildren, busied herself with toys that once Hannah and Pascoe had played with and over her head we smiled at one another

Camp Friends

Who in the world would want to spend a weekend with a single toilet between fourteen people?  Especially as the toilet had no door and its walls were loosely woven and see-through.  One shower too, but only for people who didn't mind cold water and a strong smell of gas.

Let me put it differently. 

Who would want to stay in a tucked-away field, bordered with poplars and a gurgling stream, bounded by a drift of buttercups and lady’s smock? In the distance, the purple haze of a herbal ley.  Over our shoulder, a ploughed field with a hare bounding across it. Beyond, a paddock with a new-born foal.

But whether you see the environment as hell or paradise, really the surroundings are not the main thing.

It's the chance to catch up and debrief with a dozen of our oldest friends. People we met when we were eighteen or so at uni, and still working out who we were.

When we share the food we’ve brought and cooperate over cooking in a cauldron above a firepit, we accidentally recreate the community of our long-ago youth.  And we talk and talk and talk. 

And guess what, we are still working out who we are.

University Reunion

As we drove up the A1 for the reunion, I said to Nigel,

“I can’t believe that all that time, next to our hall of residence, there was that great big orchard and we never scrumped the apples.”

“I suppose we were too busy with our friends.  Well, the apples should be ripe now.  And there are carrier bags in the boot.”

“We’ll get some after the reunion.”

We had a companionable dinner with old friends.  The next morning we attended chapel and then over breakfast, Rosie suggested we collect the key and climb the stairs to the tower. 

I have thirty-three year old photos of a whole gang of us standing up there in front of the low parapet, arms round each other, our hair blowing in the strong wind. But nowadays only four of us were allowed up at a time and a metal bannister stopped us from accidentally toppling over the edge.

When we looked out over the view, there were more changes.  Beneath us our redbrick college still glowed and its grounds stretched out green.  But beyond, in nearly every direction, new buildings were going up, including a whole new village called Eddington.  I felt like a creature from a bygone era.

Afterwards, amid embraces and farewells, we went back to the car park where there had once been a sheep field, and drove away.

“Darn it,” I said, “I forgot to pick any apples.”

“Well.  Clearly then, some things never change.”

Postscript:

I reconnected with Andrea Skevington who also has a blog. Her amazing poem about spiders has resonated with me in the days since.  You can find it here:

https://andreaskevington.com/2017/09/21/spiders/

Then

Now - photo by Rosie

Now - Photo by Rosie

Dawn Chorus

It was 4am when the sun tilted over the brim of the hill into Hidden Valley in Worcestershire. First the larks, then wrens, dunnocks, blackbirds, goldfinches joined in a jubilant and ear-splitting dawn chorus.  The families in the six tents stirred.  Some lay listening in wonder.  Others rolled over to grab the tail end of sleep before it departed entirely.

The birds and the humans were doing the same thing  - forming community.  Speaking for the people, some of us met thirty-five years ago at university.  Others are partners or children who came along a little later.  Communication nowadays is often online, but every so often, Annabel shoos us out of the ether and into tents.

We shared adventures in a way you just can’t on FaceBook.  We learned to cook over an open fire.  We invaded the local pub.  We followed Dave tramping  across fields and challenging the owners of luxury homes who had blocked rights of way. And when the heavens opened, we all sardined into Nick and Jackie’s tent.

Then, at the end of the weekend, it was time to strike camp, and our little village melted away.  As we rise for work tomorrow, we shall remember the larks soaring in song and waking all the many other birds.  They will sing to the Hidden Valley where only flattened rectangles of grass show we were once a community there.