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Tuesday, July 10, 2018

"CHRISTMAS" ENCOUNTER, BILSINGTON CHURCH


On my cycling jaunts over Romney Marsh I like to stop occasionally to ease the posterior and wrists (legs are not too much of a problem due to the electric genie). Cafe stops are for a proper coffee and cake or lunch, but a need to sit down usually means finding a churchyard which has a seat. My days of sitting on the ground are past, once down there getting back up presents difficulties and is less comfortable anyway!

Hence an afternoon stop at Bilsington church. Sitting there, drinking coffee from my flask, I was able to see the field path rising up to the church from the Royal Military Canal below the escarpment. A lady of mature years was making her way through the yellow rape (canola) towards me.

Breathing heavily she approached my seat. "Do you mind company for a bit whilst I get my breath back?" I made room for her beside me. "Would you like some coffee?" (Luckily my flask has two cups, stowed "Russian Doll" manner.)

She was dressed in well used but quality "country " clothes and had an educated accent. "I do this walk every day. It keeps me supple since my son took over the farm and I have more time to myself. Also I can have a look how the crops are coming along." She was widowed, but lived in a bungalow on the farm, now run by her married son.

I had noticed a couple of gravestones with unusual names and asked if she knew their history.


"Ah, the Christmases. All gone now, but they were once local chimney sweeps. He started off with his brushes tied to the crossbar of his bike, but then had a motorbike and sidecar later. The bell? It used to be in the tower but they had to take it out as its wooden frame was getting dangerous. It is cracked anyway so couldn't be rung."


She got up to go. "That's better. Thanks for the drink. If you haven't been inside yet the reredos is unusual and worth a look."

It was, and very poignant too. An eminent judge, with two sons, well educated and started in the legal profession, had had it dedicated when he lost them both in the first few months of World War II. One with the British Expeditionary Force and the other dying from wounds at Dunkirk. Kipling's poem came immediately to mind, although relating to an earlier time.

(click to enlarge)





11 comments:

gz said...

well worth the stop! very interesting

Roderick Robinson said...

Couldn't help noting "educated accent" which I haven't seen for years. I could never have claimed such an asset for two reasons: (a) I was never well enough educated, and (b) despite years of aural cross-fertilisation a residuum of West Riding remains and with it centuries of obloquy.

Interestingly the phrase arrives with the implication that augmenting one's vocabulary, sharpening one's syntax, and a discreet peppering of Latin tags are never going to drag any member of the Great Unwashed out of their local mire. In another words it isn't education that counts but the "sound of education".

More pathetic whingeing from the provinces you'll say but I was lucky. It was my job to ask questions, often relentlessly; this tendency once established carried over into my social life. Using the adjective "rebarbative" (easily my favourite, and for obvious reasons) in a question could do wonders. It all depends on whether you wish to emerge from conversations as a full-tummied leopard or a well-used doormat. I'm told there are other options and will take that on trust.

Avus said...

gz:
Thanks for visiting - all the way from Scotland!

RR:
I toyed with how to describe her speech. It wasn't "country Kent" and it wasn't the braying that sometimes goes with gentry. It was well modulated, understandable with no "cockneyisms" that have infected our real south eastern accents.

That's twenty eight words to "educated"'s one. How would you have described it?

Roderick Robinson said...

Aspirant middle-class.

Tom Stephenson said...

There are gems like that church all over the place, and they all have their own stories to tell. I suppose they were the focal point once, not that long ago. Births, Deaths and Marriages, etc. I love them.

Avus said...

Tom:

Hello again. I agree about these churches, I enjoy visiting them as interesting havens of serenity. Larkin's poem "Church Going" sums it up for me (even to the "bicycle clips"!

Avus said...

RR:
"Aspirant middle class" does not fit my view of this lady. That phrase conjures up a businessman or someone aspiring to higher things.She was a farmer's widow of a "motherly" type, secure in her lived life, but had obviously not just been village school educated.

Give me another, please.

Roderick Robinson said...

I'm afraid you've missed the point. That phrase "educated accent" suggests you think you can judge someone's mental development from the way she speaks rather than from what she says. As if "well-modulated" were a measure of education.

Looked at another way people with pronounced regional accents will always have - using your criteria - "uneducated" accents.

And then you switch your viewpoint; "had obviously not just been village school educated". This is totally unjustified. There is absolutely no reason why someone should not have have been properly educated there. I'll go further. Even those who blare may only be guilty of lack of sensitivity, not necessarily mis-education.

What appals me about this phrase is it resurrects a way of thinking that prevailed in British institutions long after the war (especially in the BBC). To get anywhere it was necessary to speak "standard English". This had nothing to do with grammar, syntax, etc, and everything to do with accent. Outrageously this la-di-dah, Home Counties speak became equated with a superior form of education. As I listen to the narration accompanying old news coverage my teeth curl at the affectation and condescension I hear.

And since I'm in the mood I would warn against "gentry". A far better word would be "toff" all the more so since it's pejorative.

Your view of "middle class" is quite strange. Time to read Nancy Mitford on U and non-U.

Roderick Robinson said...

PS. All of a sudden the sign-post pointed elsewhere. see Tone Deaf.

Kay Cooke said...

I love this. Thanks for a glimpse into some well-observed moments during a ride into the lovely English countryside.

Avus said...

Kay:
It was an interesting, enjoyable day and I saw "new things" and conversed with "old people"