Vanishing...

...the England where I spent Saturday...

A much-loved regimental padre (C.of E), a who in retirement settled in hunting country, and was a generous host at wonderful lunch parties and dinner parties and tea-parties, died full of years and  his funeral was  in the village church. It was Michaelmas and the 50th anniversary of his ordination to the Anglican ministry. J. was unable to attend, but village loyalty and regimental loyalty - and ties of friendship - required a presence from us. A golden September day:  bus and tube to Paddington, and thence out to the West Country, changing at Bristol Parkway and meandering on that lovely route through rural Somerset to the  market-town where I would catch the local bus to the small seaside town where I would collect an elderly relative...and where we would both be met by a kind friends who would take us to the village. Yes, in modern Britain, it is still possible to do journeys like that: motorways are of no use if you don't drive.

The village church was packed. Elderly relative  ushered into a suitable front pew. I joined people in the porch...and found myself unexpectedly sitting next to J's former CO.  We hadn't met for years...not since Berlin in the 1980s, when J. was a troop commander under him...a vanished Berlin, with The Wall, and regular patrols along it, and East Berlin a strange and alien place with Marxist slogans, and we were in the West, and people could still be shot for trying to flee to us...

We whispered gosh-its-been-years and how-is-Jane? and of-course-little-Anna-must-be-grown-up-now and so on, and then the organ began and a procession of clergy, all white surplices and wide stoles with regimental crests, formed up outside and we rose and sang.  How extraordinary, as a middle-aged woman, to be singing "All people that on earth do dwell" in Michaelmas sunshine and thinking back across half a lifetime to Berlin...and all in the village where I came first as a fiancee and then as a bride and daughter-in-law, oh, years and years and years ago...

And here was an afternoon of the old C. of E., the one that is passing and won't be here much longer....and we will all be the poorer. Glorious singing. A grand sermon - some very, very funny anecdotes, and then by gentle changes a move to a message that was stirring, and inspiring,  important and  worth hearing. Dignified prayers. A final hymn "Glorious things of thee are spoken..." that could be heard in the High Street (shopkeepers all talking of it later). And, as we crowded out into the sunshine the finest sound of all, the funeral-peal of the bells, solemn, beautiful, English, unforgettable.

A splendid Tea - not just proper sandwiches (triangular, no crusts, smoked salmon) and scones with jam and cream, and lemon cake, and eclairs,  but also sherry and gin-and-tonic...and a garden of mellow Michaelmas slightly fading beauty, and quantities of Anglican clergy and their wives, and talk of Army things and country things, hunting and gardens.

Much later, booked into a b-and-b for the night, elderly relative safely delivered home,  I walked along by the sea. The moonlight made a great silvered pathway out to the horizon over the waves.  The small white cottages, once homes to fishermen and the harbour-master and so on, now all holiday-lets or comfortable retirement places, looked cosy with glowing windows.

Lying in bed, the shrieks and shouts of the local teenagers getting drunk and fighting brought me back to modern Britain and that's what life is like.