Well well

Oh and as I was wandering by the river and the canal at some remove from the fair meadows of glorious Oxon, and thinking of Brideshead Revisited and A Draughtsman's Contract, it must be said, with fond memories of the Sebastian Flytes and Fritzes that used to grace our memories in the old days of glorious evangelisation through film and Tv in the 1980s and 1990s, courtsy of the Merchant Ivory collections, I came across two charming, swish, elegant, and urbane prophets of the cloth, in their robes, two vicars of the Church of England, now much renewed in all the country parishes and monasteries and convents of the new CoE OSBs, and these spoke to me on the butterflies of the meadow, the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air. And there in their company revealed that they were talking about Canterbury. I asked them, "And what of Canterbury?" And they looked at one another, saying unto me somewhat astonied, "Surely you are not the only person in Britain and Ireland this last year who has not heard of the great things that have been happening this while in the Old Church of England, how the Archbishop had shown himself to be a great prophet, and how he had convinced many by his words and deeds, and how at last he had been handed over to the porterhouse bloggers of Cambridge? Our own hope had been that he would assume the throne of Cambridge as mighty chancellor and thus continue unabashed." I looked at them quizzically and asked who might succeed? They looked askance for a while and then said, "Oddly the local bishop of old Oxon town is but 64 summers in age, maybe he ten who shall not be named?" We shook hands, concurred, and parted company; I to the meadows with the butterflies and my butterfly net, with thoughts of meadows and A Room with a View, a la Mr Beebe, and they to the Greyhound pub not far away near Rockley Cumnor. Thus we parted. The Old from the New.

Of a muster

Some of the local kiddies nr Crick up here nr Lichfield and the Beaufort are wont to sing a little rhyme about one of my previous incumbents - the lovely Rev Simon - and his horse-riding hobby, because he was always seen on Boxing Day riding out with the men at fox-hunts in the past -

All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things white and wonderful
The reverend kills them all.

A somewhat jaundiced and peremptorily judgmental position on the part of these kiddies who seems to forget that out here in the countryside little old ladies have to keep their chicks alive against the marauding and destructive foxes. The fox often does not eat the chickens, merely kills them, so there is little argument for the ethics of it all. Also townie kiddies have a tendency to adopt carte blanche townie attitudes to the country and so disrespect the rhythms of the same. So I would urge the townies to be less judgmental about vicars that ride out to the hunts with all the local huntsmen - it is his job as a vicar to do so and this has always been the case for vicars with cure of souls in the country. Especially after the decretals of the papal states banning clerics from becoming matadors on their days off.

Ah the scent

Ah the sweet scent of success. A royal regatta. A princess in scarlet. The bishops of the old soviet union active again. Anything to keep a revolution of rioters simmering for another pot-boil this summer. Of course if I were a mate with a few navy men or air force men, I might be tempted to visit a few episcopal palaces just to acquaint the camp incumbents with the seriousness of their remarks and their ululating phone calls to news editors, as more royal gossip is shelled out to the sewage farms of the modern internet based media. The royals did well, and the queen and the prince-consort and commander-in-chief stood for most of their voyage down the old river Father Thames. A nice extravaganza with lots of new flags to consider, but understated too with lots of ordinary folk and boatmen and boatgirls participating. Yes very nice indeed. But who pays the ferryman to shell out his Ussr sewage around Britain? We do need to consider cleaning up these foreigner soviet episkopoi. And a rich princess can always sue them. Not for their diocesan monies but for their private income. Via moscow.  

Oh eheu

Well actually, despite what people say up at chancery in the learned Dr Feever's office at the episcopal palace at Peterborough, your correspondent at Oakham and Melton is not just a simple anglo-catholic getting ahead of the pack. I do have a role and a mission here. Even if it is just to remind people of the good old days of Christ within Christianity, when he had not deserted the communists of 1992, when the faith was alive in Britain, and people liked a bit of the old customs, before Communist chinese style ideology came rooting in and upturning everything in the 1920s and then again in the 1990s. Yes the old faith, which the ordinary British punter liked, and did not repudiate despite the vituperations of well-meaning but largely unwelcomed low church types of the old Geneva kind - les protestants et hugenots du roi Edward VI. Not really welcome. Les anglais like their churches untouched, their altar rails, their statues and their saints dedicated on the church frontals. They even like antependia on the front of their altars. Not for them the luddite feeling for stripping altars and their dullard lollard passion for naked starkness or Edwardian communion tables and the ubiquitous flaggons of disrespect. No we in England like our holy customs. We like our Christ boy ni his Christianity.

And so

And so, on to tea on the vicarage lawns. There is nothing more enjoyable than the sight of cucumber sandwiches on the memorable lawn and the goodly lady wifey pouring tea for the guests of the vicar. Such timeless bliss.

Brutus orator

Friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears ... What joy what joy now that April is here and the Spring upon us and the sun is shining upon all our green of greenest lawns in all the vicarages of the country, as we vicars learn to listen to our Scarlatti Stabat maters or our Schubert masses. Joy what joy. The sheer timelessness of this primaveral Eden. So the old arch is going from among us and leaving us for poverty and penury in scholastic Cambridge. A shame. He could have saved a few vicarages. Those dioceses of course that still have vicarages .... and which have not flogged such sceptered silver off to the highest bidders. But can one really flog public ecclesiastical property and holy vicarages into the hands of the privateers of the captains of industry, the pirates of the Aegean?

Joy what joy

To cease upon the midnight with no payne. Joy what joy. There is nothing more pleasante in this little world of ours than spending a Sunday evening with a local vicar, dining out, nibbling on a slice of Madeira cake, and drinking a fine glass of the best Fonseca port. Joy, what joy. Yes the Rev was in good form last night. Lots to download. Lots to discuss. Lots of coq au vin, roast potatoes, roast parsnips a favourite, and carrots and broccoli. Then the finest slightly over-cooked bread I have tasted for years from his goodly wifey. We discussed the passing of a great figure, the outgoing Archbishop of Cantuar - red as the ace of diamonds, but lovely chappie, sorely missed already. Very nice evening indeed. The Rev was in fine fettle.