Grapevine Digest September 2006
Here are some bits from recent Grapevines that you may have missed (and a bit more): If you would rather not receive future mailings just send a blank email to nodigest@bobemm.demon.co.uk .
Fred Gill Fred always managed to look ten years older than he really was. It quite frightened me to discover when he died that he was only seven years older than me. To my knowledge Fred only went to chapel (parents were Methodists) twice in the last twenty years, once to get his mother buried and the second time to get buried himself. Not that that’s important, but it’s good that his final resting place is within 100 yards of his home. Fred’s contribution to the village was huge. Given a few years he would have rivalled Jack Hinch or Dick Robinson for the title of “Village Character”. Fred was a long distance lorry driver during his working years, and knew the road map of the UK by heart. His manner could sometimes be gruff. Our daughter worked briefly as a barmaid at the Granby many years ago. Fred came in and asked for “the usual”. “I’m new here, would that be bitter?” “’Course it’s bitter.” “A pint?” “’Course it’s a bloody pint!” But the gruffness hid a gentle heart and many people in the village, especially his neighbours, had reason to be grateful to him for his kindness. Some of his idiosyncrasies entertained greatly. Going down to the shop, I’d find him sitting on the grass outside his house. “Morning, Fred.” “Morning, Bob. Great day again.” “Sure is, Fred.” Five minutes later, coming back. “Still here, Fred?” “Yeah, bloody awful weather!” “Sure is, Fred.” And when he passed in his car he always waved in a sort of Episcopal blessing, two fingers extended together (not the rude way), with a kind of flourish which could, with a bit of imagination, be taken for the sign of the cross. Well, I always took it like that anyway!	You might not have seen the gallery of photos at http://ncparishes.org.uk/Old%20Photos.htm If not, have a look. When I sent you the note about Geograph, I forgot to hide the other recipients – naughty mistake! However, from that list you will see how limited the Digest distribution is. To make it at all effective I need as many e-mail addresses as I can possibly get. If you can help please do. People can always unsubscribe. You know those beautiful old wind pumps that used to dot the countryside: about twenty vanes on top of a slender pylon. They used to creak at about two creaks per second. I would willingly have made them all listed buildings. There are two sheep outside my window making just the same noise and driving me mad. Good Sense is not uncommon in the press – it just depends which papers you read. Try www.timesonline.co.uk/libbypurves to start with. Especially have a look at “Pity the poor little bunnies” Harvest Thanksgivings North Thoresby – September 24th at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Marshchapel – October 1st at 6 p.m. I make no apologies whatever for being an Internet freak. But it always surprises me when I find people with a stupendously fast broadband connection who don’t realise the possibilities. E.g. wedding couple say “don’t know what hymns to have – can’t think of any.” Just try putting “Wedding hymns” into Google: 3,030,000 results in a tenth of a second! And they’re sorted into a vague sort of relevance. Geograph seems to have hit a chord. Several people have responded – all impressed by the site. If you fancy contributing any images do remember (as I didn’t) to compress them to a reasonably small file size (100Kb – 200Kb). Also, they can take up to a fortnight to get moderated, so don’t be despondent if they don’t appear immediately. I’m experimenting a bit with layout and fonts etc. Tables, in particular are defeating me. Also, the Comic Sans font I’m using for main articles seems to get emboldened on some browsers. If you are finding it hard to read any of this, let me know. We had a questionnaire from the police about anti-social behaviour in North Thoresby and I tried answer it as helpfully as I could. But this is a real brain bender of an issue. I grant you mini-motos whizzing up and down village lanes without benefit of insurance or crash helmets is an insufferable pain. So is damage to property, public or private. So is the despicable theft from cars by the churchyard (or anywhere else.) But a simple gathering of young people in bus shelters or even church porches isn’t a threat to the body politic. OK, we reluctantly locked the porch of St Helen’s, but that was because the little toads were making such a mess with fag ends, drinks cans and used condoms that we got fed up with clearing it up every single morning, not because they were a danger to public safety. Similarly, the socially challenged character who yells, “Vicaaaar!” every time I come across him is irritating, but not more than that. It’s sad, though understandable, that some of us find gatherings of youngsters intimidating. But if there are half a dozen teenagers having a social do in the bus shelter, the best thing to do is to ask them to shove up a bit so that you can sit down. They are most unlikely to eat you. My gut feeling is that many youngsters feel intimidated by their elders. We, after all, have cars, bank accounts, a career, credit cards, even a gentle retirement. We look like giants to them. If we were to behave like giants rather than victims we might regain some of that stability that we mourn. Want to know about anti-social behaviour? Go and live on Nunsthorpe for five years. One of my pleasures this summer was sitting on the patio with a cup of tea watching the swifts wheeling and screaming round the chimneys and rooftops. Then one night in the first week of August they were all gone. They’ll be here next year, of course – but I might not! Neither might you. Gotta be a lesson there somewhere. Christmas OK, far too early, but these things need planning. I’m thinking of 2007, – 2006 is sorted. Susan was in France for Christmas 2005 and went to the local ( Roman Catholic) church on Christmas Eve. The service started at 10 p.m. thus knocking on the head any stuff about midnight being particularly important! The service was a mass, no doubt about that, but it also involved large numbers of children, (yes at 10 p.m.) processing with the baby Jesus to his manger. The singing was all unaccompanied, except by two women who kept the time. Yes, the culture is different, but I’m thinking. Think with me, please. Magazine Eighteen months ago we agonised about buying the equipment to produce a magazine for the group. At about £3,000 it seemed to be beyond us. The cost has now gone down to £1,175. I don’t have the energy to go through all the hassle of multiple PCC meetings, decisions, counter – decisions and all the rest. But if anyone has any idea of how we could raise a grand without endangering our communal blood pressure, I would be pleased to hear about it.
Blowing one’s own trumpet When Louis Armstrong was invited onto “Desert Island Discs” all eight of his chosen records were of his own performances. Also, his chosen book was his own autobiography. When Roy Plomley commented on the choice Satchmo repied, “Well, ya gotta blow yo’ own trumpet sometimes, ain’t ya! I’m blowing my own trumpet over the “Songs of Praise” at St Helen’s on July 23rd. The Bishop of Grimsby told me that I need to be an impresario! (An impresario, he says, organises the dance, books the hall, hires the band, employs the bouncers, but rarely dances.) So I did that, and with the expert help of Celia Ambler, Norman Wattam, Des Green, Graham Burrell, Lynn Dudgeon, Edna Proctor, Barbara Fewse, Val Lee, Maureen Monfrioli, Maggie Townend, Ian Shelton, Joe Gibson, Ros Hicks and Peter Pettifer it all went well.
House Martins (Martens) We used to have over thirty nests under our eaves - so much so that we put up wire netting to stop them pooing on our window boxes. Last year we had ten nests and this year we have five. OK, so all populations go up and down, but this is a bit worrying. Nature doesn’t usually work that fast. Working out a sensible Christian approach to environmental issues is fraught with all sorts of dangers and temptations. Especially as we rarely have the quality of information which allows certain responses. I still want to believe in a God that loves house martins. The trouble is that that means I have to believe in a God who loves tapeworms and smallpox viruses as well. Difficult, innit?
A Response (not the only one) from one recipient of the Digest said that she hoped it would keep coming as it made her laugh! “Was it meant to?”, she asked. Well, what little good I can do etc. etc.
E-mail Power The same recipient picked up the last issue in India and hopes to receive the next in Texas What a world I spend a lot of time revamping old photographs of my family and often wonder just what my Grandmother (born 1890 – not so long ago, really) would have made of all this e-stuff. (Actually, I have a good idea, because she interpreted most new things as either a vision of heaven or as the hellish work of Nikita Khrushchev.)
Graves back to Fred Gill. We had a heck of a job working out where to bury him. The churchyard plan was ambiguous and didn’t really match the ground. In the end the gravedigger struck lucky and found an unused plot next to Fred’s father. In the past I have resisted asking people to reserve spaces by a legal process because it costs over £200. We’ve preferred to save spaces informally and trust to local memory. But I don’t think this will do any more. Several years ago we lost Ray Parker at Marshchapel, who was an encyclopaedia of who had been buried where. Neither Fred Drury nor I at North Thoresby imagine we are immortal, and the plan isn’t infallible. I’m starting a program of approaching people who have close relatives buried in the churchyards asking them to regularise their positions. Because of the cost, I anticipate a bit of flak. If you hear contumacious noises, would you let me know so that I can deal with them.
Tip What is it with people and dogs? We met Tip at a dogs’ eye clinic in 2001. He was a sort of failed gun dog and with his eyes he begged us to love him. So we took him on. He had lived for his two years in an outside kennel and wasn’t housetrained. So for all the time we had him he wasn’t quite sure where to wee. He got a bit better over the years, but not much. But he was the most majestic of dogs. He had a beautifully aristocratic face and body. All lithe and muscular and a smooth muzzle and long hairy ears. He fathered nine puppies of which he was immensely proud, but then we had to have him done, because, having got a taste for it, he leered frighteningly at anything female, dog, cat, human – anything at all. He was an enthusiastic water-dog, Any puddle, stream, pond or river would enthral him. He splashed like a child in wellies. One regret is that we never got him to the sea, local beaches being a bit muddy and French ones barred to dogs. Once, in France, he came across a field of cows. We tried to get him into the car to go home, but he was having none of it. In the end we had to let him kiss the cows one by one, and then he happily hopped into the car, content at having made his new friends. If we were unhappy or worried he always knew and came to rest his soggy jowls in our hands. On July 15th, early in the morning, he barked at the postman, as was his habit, and then lay down and died. We still miss him. Like I say, “What is it with people and dogs?” False Viruses Like thousands of other clergy I use a service planning program called Visual Liturgy. The publishers use Symantec (Norton Antivirus) to monitor their site and keep it bug-free. A few weeks ago Symantec announced that a particular file was a virus and an e-mail went out suggesting that the file should be deleted. (Mercifully I didn’t bother to read the e-mail!) Thousands of clergy dutifully did as they were told, only to find that they had got rid of a vital file without which the program wouldn’t start. One user panicked and promptly cancelled all his credit cards and bank accounts thinking that his PIN numbers had been compromised. But Symantec had got it wrong! There was no virus. Did far more harm than 99% of viruses could ever have done. Symantec are being iffy about accepting any responsibility, Church House Publishers are going bananas and thousands of clergy have had to go back to leafing through hymnbooks by hand. I must have a nasty mind, but I wonder why the aggrieved don’t just reinstate the relevant file from the recycle bin. For fun, click here
Ex Directory I know there are good reasons for going ex-directory if you are a doctor or an MP or if you win the lottery, or if your ex- is hassling you without mercy. But these days more and more people seem to do it for fun and I wonder whether they realise what inconvenience they cause. Recently I had to contact almost everyone on one of the church rolls because some publicity had gone awry and I didn’t want them to turn up at the wrong place. For some reason there were about ten numbers that I didn’t have on the machine, none of them in the above categories. Were they in the book? Of course not. (Although all the doctors, MPs – and I don’t know any lottery winners - were happily there for all to see.) There was no hope of contacting them any other way. So I gave up. Actually the same applies to the Electoral Register. Companies who want to send you junk mail don’t need the ER. They just buy your name from anyone you’ve done business with over the past twenty years. It’s the poor neighbourhood clergyman and his ilk, trying to do a mail drop, who can’t find you if you opt out of the edited version. And you’d be surprised at the number of people who complain bitterly that you left them out! And I’m not even going to start on people who change e-mail addresses without telling anyone……….. Church going – All the churches in the group are immensely fortunate in having lots of peripheral friends. Our problem is that the majority will only be seen dead in a church. Trouble is, we depend crucially, vitally, massively, humongously on the numbers who go to church. It’s the parameter which convinces our betters (I use the word loosely) that we are worth keeping open. Church goers are the ones who are the brains behind the show. They do the menial tasks like clearing up bat droppings before a wedding and they are the ones who dream up more and more arcane ways of raising money. In one of our churches we only need one person to walk under a bus and two to die of heart attacks and we’re finished. There is another church where a third of the population turns up for services, which is unbelievably fantastic, and another where we are dying out through the services of the grim reaper. We’ve always worked with a band of friends to whom we are immensely grateful, but the balance has gone far away from church going and that fact threatens us even more than the horrendous financial challenges we face. Church services aren’t really that awful. At Marshchapel we try hard to keep well under the hour, we sing loudly and it’s pretty cosy. Specials, like Harvest and Carols are specially designed to be around the half hour mark and are followed by refreshments and a chance to chat. At North Thoresby we are a bit more elaborate, so I pride myself on finishing as the hour strikes or before. There’s lots of participation by the congregation, and as at Marshchapel we have an organist who is worth coming and listening to even if the rest of it is drivel. There’s always tea and biscuits and a natter after the morning service. Grainsby is an experience of its own order. Usually we don’t have an organist so we sing unaccompanied, and without any pokes in the eye to our organists, that fact moves the whole experience into a different plane. It’s very traditional. 1662, whole and nearly unadulterated. The sermon is exploratory rather than declamatory. And if you can’t manage a Sunday there is the little communion at North Thoresby on a Thursday morning at 9.30. Quiet, meditative, with a sort of address-cum-prayers. Always over in half an hour, but beloved by those who come.

Bob Emm - Rector of the North Chapel Parishes