17 December 2003

Another year gone, Christmas almost upon us. As I grow older the years seem to blend together, but this year there were two particular highlights. The first was our trip to Prague in May the second my trip to South Africa in June. Long way to go for a week, but I stayed with my sister, saw my mother, and visited some of the haunts of my youth. Actually I never liked Durban much when I lived there from the age of 14, but this time I appreciated it more. Apartheid is gone, and despite the horrendous crime rate and a lot of government corruption it is a country with some hope.

Even though it was the middle of winter there were numerous species of tree in flower, and the birds were extremely interesting. The best were a pair of palm nut vultures, nesting in the grounds of the sugar company where my sister works, and at the very southern tip of their range.

So a good year all in all, despite Tony Blair's dragging us into the disgraceful Iraq war with lies and exaggerations about "weapons of mass destruction" which he still has produced no proof of. And it looks as if it is just as we said it would be. Bush is using it to boost American industry and commerce, gaily handing out contracts for reconstruction to his cronies.

On a more personal note, I am going to have to pay for a mistake made twenty years ago. I bought a eucalyptus sapling (e. gunnii) a few years after we came to this house and planted it down the garden. It is now 20m tall and I now discover that it is used in its native Tasmania to drain marshes. We have trouble here with the gault clay drying in the summer and destabilising the garage I keep the books in. The eucalyptus has made that process even worse. A one inch crack opened in the back wall this summer, and the door at the other end wouldn't shut properly. So the tree must go. Which is a pity, as it has been a feature for some years. Our next door neighbour could see it from his kitchen, and it made him so homesick that he went home to Australia. But by this time next month it will be gone, I hope, and I will have even more space to plant bamboos (which don't drink all the water).

10 December 2003 - Voices of Morebath

I mentioned having been to Morebath when we were on holiday in August. Well now I have finished reading Eamon Duffy's book, Voices of Morebath. What a marvellous book it is. Duffy has taken the accounts written by the parish's priest, Sir Christopher Trickey, and extracted from them both a series of snapshots of the life and people of the parish, and also a history of the course of the Reformation both locally, in the diocese, and nationally. It is a tale of unmitigated sadness. Sir Christopher had been priest in the village for nearly twenty years when Henry VIII began his piecemeal dismantling of the Church.

The parish was a strong community. There were "stores" or funds for various devotions connected usually with the image of a saint in the church, and every year each store elected two wardens to organise events, collect money, and keep the relevant accounts. Some of the stores had sheep which were alloted to parishioners to look after. The young men organised the "church ales" which were a great source of income to the parish. These happened in the Church House, the parish's social centre.

Money was collected for images, for candles, for vestments, for adornment of the church and statues, and for the general upkeep of the plant. The system meant that not just two church wardens were elected every year, but up to a dozen wardens of the various stores. The young girls even had one, so their wardens might be young maidens in their early teens (though if they were too young their mother or father might act for them). A vivid picture is conjured up of a vibrant community with a strong Catholic faith.

Then came Henry with his cynical approach to religion and his need for money to fund his wars. There weren't many protestants at all in the West Country, but the king exploited the desire for "reform" which there undoubtedly was in some parts, for his own ends. Morebath and parishes like it were bankrupted under Henry and his successor Edward. They had to sell off their images and vestments, buy new prayer books and other prescribed reading matter, pay fines for not doing all this quickly enough, disband their stores, close down the church house, the setting of the lucrative church ales on which a lot of their income depended. Bequests to the church dried up.

In short, the parish lost its sources of income while being expected to pay out more and more to the government. There was a brief respite under Queen Mary, but her restoration of Catholicism led to more expense of course, and finally under Elizabeth Protestantism was established for good. In the process a small community, and many like it all over England, lost their religion, their social cohesion, their soul. And poor Christopher Trickey had to lead his people throught the whole process, given that he was their priest over the fifty years that span the Reformation in England.

So a sad book, but a wonderful one, evoking pity for the crushing of a dream and anger at the religious, social and economic despoilation of the Tudor monarchy. I do recommend it.

10 September 2003

Last night brought our first appreciable rain for many weeks. As far as I can see the new roof has done its stuff and kept the wet out, which is a good thing. Damp books are awful. Around twenty years ago when I was not long started up we were offered some books in Wisbech, an inland fen port some thirty miles north of here. A bookseller from London had split with his business partner and they had divided the books (at random as far as I could make out) by subject. The Wisbech man had got the theology, which was very good.

However, he lived on what I think is called The Brink, in a glorious eighteenth century merchants house by the edge of the river. The National Trust owns one of these houses, Peckover, just a few yards away. These houses had warehouses attached, and here the bookseller had kept his books. The theology was in the basement, and as it was there only just above the level of the river in summer, and possibly under it in winter, the books had got damp. They had been there, untouched, for around ten years I think. Some were almost wringing wet. All had mouldy covers to some extent, though usually the actual pages dried out nicely with little damage to the text.

We bought them, and put them in their own shed to slowly dry out. And then we sold them over a period of time. They weren't worth as much as they would have been had they never seen that cellar, but there were so many that they made up in quantity what they lacked in condition.