Trust in Wales

What a good present; life membership of the National Trust. When our children were very young my mother bought each of them such a present - at that time, nearly fifty years ago, it cost £50 (and you also received a silver coin with the Queen Mother's head on it). A couple of years later I decided to buy life membership for Jane - it almost broke the bank, for by then it cost £75.  I think that's much the same as annual membership for a family today. Certainly it is the best £75 I have ever invested.

Last week we were visiting family in South Wales; so in a lull between showers we decided to visit Tredegar House. This was the seat of a fabulously wealthy early industrialist, and the house is a baroque gem, very much in the Dutch taste of Mary Stuart and her unspeakable Orange spouse. And the first picture (above) is not of the house, it is merely ths stable block.

This is the House, with its marvellous restored wrought iron screen. Despite having been a school, and before that having been taken over by the military during the war, there are some grand touches to the interior.

 

 

How about that for a handrail? The Trust have a fifty year lease on the house, and are doing a great job of restoring it and its formal gardens.

 

 

The house had a particularly notorious owner in the early 20th Century. This is part of his boudoir (he had become a Catholic to annoy his father, but his real interest was in the black arts, as practised by Aleister Crowley). Curiously the painting above the fireplace is a religious subject, Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac... the blameless two ladies resting by the fireplace are in the picture simply to supply scale.

As if this restoration project was not enough for NT, they have also leased another house on the other side of Cardiff. This is more famous for its gardens than its architecture, but here too the National Trust is reclaiming the almost derelict High Victorian mansion. Dyffryn was also built on the proceeds of mining and industry, like its earlier counterpart.

 

 

This amazing fireplace is being reinstated along with the original panelling; some of the floors are a little unfinished! The house is a wonderful amalgam of styles; here you can see an almost Palladian pediment over the garden front, with rather French Mansard roofs and an Italianate terrace. The local authority held the building and gardens for some time, and added a meeting room and other ancillary building which are quite out of keeping. We can only hope the Trust removes them before they get listed as marvellous examples of 1970's design.

So, if you are in the vicinity of Cardiff, both these houses and gardens are worth the journey.

 

Congratulations to the Trust for taking them on - and thanks for the great bargain you sold us with life membership all those years ago. Now we are back home enjoying 'retirement' with three Masses so far this week and a couple more to come.

 

Tied up in Notts

A flying visit to the Ordinariate Group in Nottingham at the end of last week.

Fr Simon worried at what I might say

Fr Simon Ellis had cunningly invited me about six months ago to speak to his people on 'the Year of Faith', and it is hard to plead a prior engagement at such notice. So on Friday the Cross-Country train took me up to Stapleford, where Simon and Kate's long-suffering daughter Anastasia turned out of her bedroom for me.

On Saturday morning we were off bright and early to go into the centre of the city, to the Cathedral. What a wonderful pile it is, one of Pugin's great works for the Catholic Church, with a very convincing attempt at Early English Gothic Architecture. It is no mere pastiche, though, but a lovely building in its own right. There is a house for the Cathedral Staff next door, and a good new building providing conference facilities.

We met first in the Conference Centre to begin to get to know one another. We were a marvellously diverse bunch, with a few of the
regular Cathedral congregation who joined us for the day. There were people with  roots in Port Talbot and Liverpool, Hong Kong, Hertfordshire and Derby. Indeed, there are some who live in Derby but worship regularly with the Ordinariate Group. Unfortunately the Group is not able to have a Mass every Sunday, but besides the weekday Mass there is worship together on one Sunday each month. I do hope a way is found for them to have Mass together Sunday by Sunday - certainly in our Bournemouth Group I think we could not have survived and kept together without this.

After a time of prayer in the lovely Blessed Sacrament Chapel we went to our meeting room to share our picnic lunches. Good to find other old friends there, not least Fr Peter Peterken who has been such a support for Fr Simon - despite being somewhat older than the Holy Father.

In the afternoon I did my spiel, speaking about the opportunities which the Ordinariate has - provided it is genuinely humble in its approach. We thought about the way our background shapes us - my own schooldays in Plymouth asserted that Francis Drake was a great hero; to those brought up as Catholics his reputation is rather less sunny. We looked at small ways in which the Ordinariate can encourage Catholics to move out of a ghetto mentality into Mission mode. All the participants were very kind, and though I was not home until after 10pm (and the following morning, today, was preaching in Bournemouth at 9.30am) it was well worthwhile - for me if not for them.



 

Some of the day's participants

This afternoon our Bournemouth Mission celebrated Evensong and Benediction, conducted very splendidly by Fr Brian Copus and our teams of servers and musicians. On Tuesday Bishop Philip Egan has invited some of us from the Ordinariate to join his priests in a day on "The Clergy and the Curial Review" - a review shich is taking place in Portsmouth Diocese now that the Bishop has been here long enough to have his priorities clear. It is good to be seen as relating to the Diocese, even if we have to be a little tangetial to it.

A Privilege

With our parish priest from New Milton away on holiday in his homeland (Poland) I've been among those assisting at Our Lady of Lourdes. Today was very special. The funeral Mass and burial of Ray Clamp was entrusted to me. Now Ray was a one-off. An accomplished musician all his life, he had been drummer with the New Forest Plonkers for several years since retiring to the South Coast.

 

 

Above is how Ray appeared on his Funeral Service booklet: but many will remember this below as the company in which he was usually seen.

 

He was greatly loved. There were family and friends from far and wide - all parts of England and Ireland, and I made sure that Fr Howard Levett (formerly of St Alban's Holborn - now Anglican Chaplain in Venice) was aware of Ray's passing, for whenever he visits us in Lymington we try to take him to the New Forest show, where he is a devotee of the Plonkers.

 

The singing was particularly good and heartfelt today, and at the end of Mass and again at the graveside Gordon and Janet of the Plonkers played and sang for us. I found it very moving - Jesus the 'glutton and winebibber' by repute, the 'friend of publicans and sinners' would have loved it, too. A holy and a happy send-off for a lovely man.

 

After that, a dash home to catch up with a former student now an Anglican Vicar in Winchester. He is a friend of the owner of a newly opened delicatessen and cafe, "Ciao Belli" in Gosport Street, Lymington - and conveniently near the Catholic Church. Very good it is too - so Jane and I were treated to a lovely authentically Italian light lunch and a chance to catch up on news of this part of the Anglican Communion.

 

 



Lively Week

Our Ordinariate Mission (no longer just a Group) discovered only last week that we were to host young Confirmation Candidates from across the Avon/Stour Pastoral Area on Sunday. Everyone leapt to it, and we hope we made them and their parents welcome. It involved printing off around 120 service sheets (instead of our customary 40) and tweaking the music so that some at least was familiar to the Candidates.

Entry Procession

 

One of our number, Martin, was already due to be confirmed that morning, so it served as an object lesson to those preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation. He took the additional Confirmation name of Anselm, whose day it was.

 



The Confirmation

 

 

After Mass the candidates had a day of recollection and instruction in the Church Hall. It had been very good to welcome them. Now we are gearing ourselves up for Evensong and Benediction at 3pm on Sunday week, May 5th. Oh, and for a coffee morning this Saturday for Aid to the Church in Need. It is proving a busy Eastertide.

 

 

Photos courtesy of Brian Harrison



Keep a hold of nurse ...

Belloc gave a sound warning. But this week perhaps Scripture's advice about not falling into the hands of the doctor might have applied to the nurse too.  They are very good indeed, the Practice Nurses here in Lymington - just that I wished they did not have to practise on me.

Well it is my own fault. I knocked my ankle. Not a wise move at my extreme old age; for the little knock would not heal - all because of poor circulation, they told me (seems I am in the same situation as the daily papers). In short, nurse took one look and decided this was a good time for a dressing - not just a little plaster over the 1/4 inch wound, but an entire bandage from foot to knee.

Thus encased, there is the question of how to bathe or shower. Nurse had an answer; a LimbO waterproof protector. You might be amused by the "Additional Warnings" on its use. It is a long plastic bag with an elasticated top, which encases the dressing. But we are told 'Never use the LimbO in recreational water activities' (so I shan't wear it for my water skiing): 'do not attempt to use the LimbO as a flotation device' (so I shan't keep it under my seat in an aircraft to use in emergency) Worse still, 'Children or persons with special needs using the LimbO must be supervised at all times'. Now I know it is probably a defined category in some government directive, but do I have special needs? I sometimes feel I need a stiff G&T: does that count? If so, who is to supervise my ablutions?

So here I am, trying to get the air out of the device to stop my leg floating away in the bath, and trying not even to consider limbo dancing... I write this not for sympathy, but just as a warning. If you must keep a hold of nurse (for fear of finding something worse), then do; but you might have to face the consequences.

PS Sorry I am not joining the twittosphere in posting about the divine Margaret: after all, de mortuis nil nisi bonum-  but I can't help wondering why the hymn at her obsequies is "I vow to thee, my country" and not (in view of her grandmotherly statement) "We vow to thee, Our country"

Happy Easter (still)!

A Cold Coming they had of it...

As well we did not get a donkey; the RSPCA would have been after us for letting the beast out in such bitter weather. The journey from Church Hall to Church this morning was more like Christmas than a Palm Sunday - more the Journey of the Magi than a Primrose Path in Spring.

Gathering in the Hall for the Palm Gospel

 

Fr Brian was celebrant, and the choir managed to keep us more or less in time with "All Glory, Laud and Honour".

 

 



Time was difficult,though, since the parish's 8am Mass was only concluded a few minutes before we were due in church. Then after us the 11am congregation was thronging the doors (though we managed to be out by 10.35). Holy Week will be a little easier; we join together for the Triduum, up to the Vigil of Easter. Our only solo Mass will be at 11.45am on Sunday morning.

Priests and Servers set a cracking pace

 

Now we are off to bed, ready for an early start tomorrow - the Chrism Mass is in London, and our presence depends on some rather close timing for trains and tube.

 

The Proclamation of the Luke Passion

 

Photos courtesy of Brian Harrison

 

 

Waiting for a Medal

Everyone is going on about enthronements or inauguration or whatever we are to call these events so today I am off at a tangent. The Prime Minister was addressing a little group of former sailors at Number Ten earlier this week. He became quite emotional saying what an honour it was for him &c &c. It would have been good if he, or better still his predecessor but six or seven, had seen fit to honour them when more of them were still alive. The men he was meeting had all served on the Russian Convoys in World War II.

 

 

Mother and I had gone first to Birkenhead, since Father was to sail from Liverpool. We had only been there a few days when a night raid of German bombers dropped a land-mine just outside the house where we were lodging. So Father decided that since his next port would be Greenock on the Clyde we had better go there - it was, he said, safely out of the range of German bombers.

 

It proved not to be so. Within a week of arriving we were bombed there too, the house where we had digs was uninhabitable, and we had to find somewhere else to stay. I think I was six at the time. When Father returned from that Convoy, he took a litle time finding us.

 

So I have memories of the Russian Convoys; the "Whoop, whop" of destroyers leaving port or returning home, the shore towards Gourock barricaded with barbed wire. My dad did not say much about his life at sea - but he had a little oak leaf on one of his medal ribbons, signifying he had been Mentioned in Dispatches. He also had a permanent souvenir in the pockmarks of shrapnel in his neck which he bore until his death - at the age of 58. He had served in the Royal Navy for twenty two years, joining in Boys' Service a year before he was legally old enough; his older brother signed his papers for him. He was Commissioned as a Warrant Officer Gunner, but was invalided out of the Service only a couple of years later aged 36, his health having been undermined by those terrible Arctic voyages.

 

Now he is to receive a medal. I shall put it with his others, ready to hand them on to our Grandson in due course. I went back to Greenock a few years go, and found it, to my surprise, quite beautiful. The view across the Clyde to the snowy hills above Loch Lomond were magical - my memories from childhood had only been of greyness and cold. Also the misery of being an English boy in a Scottish school mocked for being unable to roll my r's. Our own son suffered similar humiliation when we moved to Hull from Surrey, and his schoolmaster told him the word was castle, with a short a, not 'carstle" .. "there are no r's in Castle", he said. Yet our son has a great affection now for Hull. He has a more generous spirit than I possess - for I rather hope the Scots will make fools of themselves and vote YES in next year's referendum. But don't tell my Scots brother-in-law that I said so!