In Search of a Tree

 

Americans fret over how to make a “pit stop” in England, and rightly so. Travellers in need are directed towards the nearest supermarket, or pubs which are often miles away.

Hardened English folk caught short in the heart of the wilds go in search of trees. We who are too timid to enter pubs for fear of the publican’s dark looks search for accessible trees and thickets instead.

Many years ago, I was once travelling with a handicapped friend a far distance, and I’d suggested a side trip to see Queen Eleanor’s Cross at Geddington to break the journey.

My friend was in need

She limped across, with me accompanying her, to The Star Inn which faces this ancient cross. It was five to twelve, so it was only a few minutes before the opening hour. Even luckier the door was open and the publican was standing just outside his pub.

We asked permission to use his facilities, and were shocked when we were refused. I was mortified. We would have bought something at his bar afterwards, soft drinks, packets of crisps, something to mark our thanks. Perhaps we would have sung of his praises too, and those of the glories of his pub; but instead my friend, a person who does nothing but good in the world, was turned away, and we had to go in search instead of a farmer’s windswept field with suitable tree and thick cover.

I vowed I would never step into that pub from that moment on. The Star Inn at Geddington is a place I shall always shun and would never wish to step inside. He lost good custom that day.

Entering pubs in search of their facilities, before I purchase something from their bar unnerves me. It is not for the timid such as I especially after the Geddington experience. Usually, if I do muster enough courage to approach a pub, then I find that that pub is locked.

So those who have found pubs shut against them have for centuries gone in search of nearby trees and thickets. This has no doubt over the centuries done much to aid the greening of England’s green and “pleasant” land.

However, when the need arises, these deepest darkest corners of England that can be ‘greened’ in such a time honoured way can be tricky to find. The thickest cover just happens to be where a farmer is trimming a hedge; and who is right at that moment sat high upon a piece of machinery that gives him unrestricted views across half the county. The next likely trees ahead of us in the lane are to be found to  lie within the garden of someone’s house; and I somehow doubt that they would be happy to find me crouching in the bottom of their garden operating a sprinkler system of my own. Another likely spot turns out to be next to a building site where a palatial residence together with stylish stone pillars for its gates is being built by burly builders who I’m sure would not want me to contribute to their drainage problems by raising the water table in any way.

Any-old-how, we find the place we have come to visit and I ‘walk’ around it with crossed legs. It’s the first church I’ve ever seen that offers its visitor tea or coffee and has a kettle to the ready. This would have been brilliant but for a more pressing need.

This church at Castor is what we’ve travelled this long way to see. It was founded by Cyneburg; and the church there, called St Kyneburgha, still bears her name. She was perhaps the mother of Rumwald whose birthplace we’d visited a few days ago. She was a Mercian princess one of Penda’s daughters who together with her sister Cynewith founded a monastery there atop of a once splendid Roman villa, once the second largest roman villa in England.

Cyneburg and her sister were seventh century princesses.

I am thrilled to be in such an ancient place even though the church’s present form is much changed from the original; which was burnt to the ground by invaders keen to find ancient Mercian gold and treasure.

There is a mensa, a table top altar, that has been restored to the church and placed in a side room of the church. I wonder if it may have been an altar once used by the Romans to worship their pantheon of gods.

The church has an open feel to it. It is welcoming and spacious. It was once used as a school and something from that time has changed the atmosphere despite the scent of incense that tries to cling onto a patina of holiness. It’s a church that holds onto its history and binds it within modern trappings. There is a modern carving of Cyneburg herself, and nearby woven banners that tell of how she escaped from ruffians and walked to safety upon a carpet of flowers. There are carvings of dragons and carved stones that tell of stories that I can not read.

However, I am in desperate need of a tree.

We travel away from Castor in the direction of Peterborough and in wild desperation I swing the car off the main road and onto a side road that dips in the direction of the River Nene’s flood plains.

Flood plains seem an appropriate spot.

We have accidentally stumbled upon the edge of Ferry Meadows. I head towards the nearby bushes.

‘I wouldn’t go there,’ warns the teenager.

He’s right.

Two more steps beyond the bushes is the busy A47 with lorries thundering by. It’s the meeting of roads here that led to the development of the Roman villa and later the Mercian princesses deciding to live within its ruins. Far too much history for me to cope with at that moment in time. Instead I rush off in another direction to green the land.

Afterwards we realise that we have accidentally stumbled upon a lovely place.

There are lakes, footpaths and bridges across the River Nene. We walk awhile enjoying the sight of birds. There are swans, death mask birds (coots) a heron and a grebe. There are autumnal colours in the trees. There is the reflections of the sunset in the still water of the lakes and a misty moon rising. We have never been here before and we are enchanted.

Smoke is rising from the direction of Peterborough. I imagine how centuries ago similar smoke, that rose in that direction for fifteen days, heralded the sacking and burning of the cathedral of Medeshamstede by the marauding Danes.

I’m trying to interest The Teenager in this history. Trying to get him to imagine Romans navigating the River Nene to this point. I’m trying to tell him of the Danes who later struggled across this river with their bags full of ecclesiastical treasure. I’m trying to recreate a busy wharf where goods are being unloaded where a lone duck now paddles. I’m talking of bogs and drainage and of the hard work of the monks who worked the land overseeing the construction of dykes and ditches. I talk of how treacherous the area was once to walk. I imagine hermits on the higher reaches of ground, islands surrounded by bogs, glow worms and treacherous shifting waters.

He’s not interested.

He doesn’t hear a word.

He needs a tree.

He goes off the path, and I walk on a little ,and wait for him to re-emerge after affecting the water table to some degree.

I wait and wait.

Eventually, he emerges. He’s walking differently. It seems that instead of walking upon a carpet of flowers as Cyneburg had once done centuries before him, he had instead stood upon russet leaves that sank instantly beneath his foot and plunged him into a bog. He had to struggle to free himself.

There is black mud nearly up to his knee.

The thick black mud has seeped into his socks through his open toed sandals. He says there are worms wriggling in the mud and other creatures. He hobbles towards the car like John Wayne. His hand is hurt from where he tried to save his fall by grabbing onto a briars and stinging nettles.

This pit stop for the teenager nearly turned out to be the bottomless pit of a quagmire. I’m wondering how many people trying to cross the River at that point long ago met a similar fate long ago. I’m wondering how many of them were answering a call of nature at that time. I’m wondering if the teenager can now imagine some of the difficulties of travelling and living here long ago.

The Teenager is tired of my wondering and wants a bath and food.

I drive home imagining the bones of those from long ago, who were not so lucky in extraditing themselves from the mud. I know none of them were American but undoubtedly this fear and lore about the difficulties of travelling through England was taken to America. No wonder they now feel a little nervous about freely travelling around this land; as a pit stop in England can teach you more about the land and its people than anyone could ever wish to know.

 

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A Place Where a Deer Now Stands Alone.

 

Strange events occurred in Deepest Darkest England hundreds of years ago.

Some not too far from here.

Few people are aware of them, but as I love stories and am drawn to such tales and their associated sites like a moth to a candle I am often to be found standing in lonely country fields looking over a windswept landscape where something strange once occurred.

There was a deer standing in this particular field and it seemed an omen that we had indeed found the place: Walton Grounds, where once a princess had given birth to a remarkable prince 1347 years ago.

We’d travelled south-west towards the very edge of Northamptonshire’s border to where it touches the gentle hills of the Cotswolds. We had found a village called Kings Sutton: a delightful small village which had proclaimed its existence with a strikingly narrow church spire. This place had once belonged to the ancient kingdom of Mercia at a time when England’s diverse regions were being ruled by different warring kings.

I didn’t think that the church would be open, so many churches are locked these days, and did not dare to turn the handle for fear of disappointment; and so I was delighted when as the handle was turned the old door swung slowly open upon its weights.

We saw the treasure we had come to see immediately we stepped inside the church, and I was thrilled.

Others seek gold and silver, whilst I seek stone.

The stone we had come to see was in a side aisle.

A font.

A font quite different from the ornately carved fonts that can be found in other ancient churches: this one was resplendent in its ugliness.

I touched it and felt a brief electrical charge before it became dull stone once more.

This was reputedly the hollowed stone that an infant saint had once demanded to be brought to him, long ago in AD 662, so that he could be baptised. A stone that initially could not be moved from its position in a lowly hut until the infant saint declared that it should be brought to him by the Christian clergy in the gathered company.

This infant then named himself Rumwald (now written as Rumbold), preached, and then died, just three days after his birth.

This is the reputed hollowed stone that was used for the baptism of this extraordinary infant.

It looks wrong.

The kingdom of Mercia was pagan and on the cusp of falling into Christianity at the time of Rumwald’s birth. This heavy, hollowed stone would therefore have been pagan in origin. A stone used for the older pagan traditions associated with rebirth, knowledge and the gift of prophecy. Similar stones can be found in Ireland at Knowth. They are rounded, and some have carvings inside. They are usually softly rounded, or even unhewn.

This stone that now serves as a font has been roughly treated. Whatever was once carved upon its outer sides have now been scoured away.

Its once rounded form has been hacked into the rough geometric shape of an irregular heptagon. It is as if the craftsman working upon it suddenly felt that a seven-sided stone would have more resonance than an octagonal one, or even a hexagon; but had unhappily reached this conclusion long after he’d already begun his work. So the stone has irregular sides that are difficult to count with accuracy and which perhaps betray darker motives afoot in the separation of the stone from its original purpose and tradition.

Worse is the lead lining that blackens the stone’s interior. The lead poisons the water within the hollow; and I wonder whether it was placed there because of a crack or to hide any inner carvings.

The light reflected from the water’s surface is remarkable and suggests it could once have been used for divination, or perhaps even scrying before it was subsumed into Rumwald’s story.

 

This font, I later discover, was discovered hidden in the churchyard in the 1920s before it was taken into the church. Perhaps the church sensible of its pagan association had not wanted it within its walls. Perhaps it is a fake. I can easily imagine that it was at that time that the ugly brutal rough crosses were incised into its sides.

There is therefore some doubt that this is indeed the correct stone, but I can imagine it to be so.

So as for the rest of story:

Long, long ago, a princess of the ancient Kingdom of Mercia, a daughter of King Penda was travelling with her husband and their retinue late in the year. In Walton Fields near the village of Sutton, on perhaps November 3^rd she gave birth to a boy. This child immediately called out, ‘I am a Christian’ three times. He then demanded to be baptised using a special stone that none could move save the Christian chaplains.

This child was subsequently baptised by Bishop Widerino (Widerin), assisted by Eadwold, a priest, in water contained within a hollow stone that was found lying in a field. Following his baptism Rumwald was immediately confirmed, and then took part in communion. Upon receiving these sacraments he commenced to preach for three days. Finally, he predicted his death and gave detailed instructions for his burial and shrine before he died.

Some say his mother was Cyneburh (Cuneburga) ,who had married a prince from Northumbria called Alhfrith. Some say that she had refused to have anything to do with her new husband until he’d converted to Christianity. He had willingly agreed to her request. Some also say that they went on to have another son called Osric who later became a king in Northumbria.

Rumwald, the boy saint, was first buried at Sutton by Eadwold as he had requested. The following year he was transferred to Brackley, again according to his request, by Bishop Widerino (Widerin) on perhaps the 28^th August, and finally in the third year after his birth his remains were moved to Buckingham, where a shrine was erected for him in the church. This shrine and the saints relics were then lost during Cromwell’s reformation and the collapse of that church.

Holy wells in Astrop, Brackley and Buckingham became associated with the name of Rumwald and miracles were associated with them. A chapel was also built in his memory in the meadows where he was born, but this was neglected, crumbled over time and was eventually taken down.

A cult formed around Rumwald’s story. Kings Sutton, Brackley and Buckingham becoming the focus of pilgrimages and devotional offerings, the associated churches thrived until the cult was suppressed and almost forgotten. Perhaps this suppression was because the story itself seemed to have been derived more from folk lore and fanciful oral traditions and owed more to a pagan past than to a Christian future.

Whatever happened, for five hundred the people in the south of Northamptonshire had a most unusual cult of their own, which also unwittingly carried into the present time a little ancient pagan lore to a place where a deer now stands alone.

When I’m famous

 

A gypsy once said to me, ‘Your face is your fortune.’

This probably explains why I am so slight of coin.

One of the Big Brother contestants once commented to another that he would stop his car to allow a woman to cross the road only if she was pretty.

I guess that’s why I’m the one who stands for ages on the kerbside watching the wheels go by as Big Brother clones and their acolytes drive by.

So it was nice to be invited to a dinner party; especially when one of the guests had travelled half way across the world to be there.

I looked forward to it.

The place for the venue was changed.

‘What time?’ I asked.

I was given a time that with the distances I’d have to be travel that day I’d be unable to meet.

‘Would it be all right if I came a little later than that?’ I asked, after explaining my circumstances.

Apparently it was.

On that night I rushed back the many miles from work, raced around a supermarket, came home, cooked the teenager his dinner, before I bathed and changed into my very special dress. A dress that is very sensitive to water stains.

Then I bought wine and flowers and set off to drive to the new venue. I was expecting conversation, lively chatter and humorous banter. I was tired and weary after a long difficult week so this was really going to be a treat.

I arrived just after seven.

‘You’re too late,’ I was told.

In confusion I proffered the wine and flowers.

I don’t understand.

‘What a shame. You’ve just missed them.’

I’m puzzled now. It’s embarrassing being told I’m late, when I’d already explained that it would be unavoidable.

‘They’ve gone,’ I’m told.

Had they eaten the entire meal in half an hour? I don’t understand. Had there been yet another change of venue?

Eventually, I fathom out that the guest from far, far away has gone off drinking with his friends.

‘Oh,’ I say, foolishly imagining that he’d be returning soon to eat with us, or that perhaps his friends would also be joining us.

Then I’m told that my friend’s boyfriend won’t be there either.

He sends a text to say that he’s ordered pizza and dancing girls for the evening. He’s just a few miles down the road.

So it’s just the two of us together with my friend’s parents (we are in their house).

However, apparently they aren’t going to be eating with us either, despite being in the house and not being distracted by dancing girls. They have already eaten.

It seems I’m also mistaken about the guest from far, far away returning to eat with us either. It seems he won’t be.

It is to be just me and my friend.

Which is fine.

I realise a table hasn’t been prepared for us. My flowers lie untouched. The wine unopened. I’m told they’ll drink it tomorrow. The food comes out of packets, and we are to eat on out knees.

I wish I’d worn my jeans. I feel foolish in my dress and I’m deeply hurt that the other two guests hadn’t bothered to be there.

I worry about my dress. I avoid the hot spicy food and try to hold the plate off my dress and negotiate a crumbling samosa.

‘Have some of this,’ my friend’s mother suggests placeing a dollop of something red on the plate.

I dip a samosa into it. It’s hot. It burns my throat, waters my eyes and instantly I’m choking.

‘Shall I do the Heimlich Manoeuvre?’ My friend asks.

She doesn’t move.

I’m coughing, my eyes are watering, and I’m trying to reply when a fiery piece of samosa goes flying through the air and lands splat upon my dress.

A widening stain instantly spreads around it.

I sense the disgust of my friend, and I feel even more embarrassed and upset.

I sigh inwardly knowing that a trip to the dry cleaners is now inevitable at a time when I have very little money to spare on such frivolities.

I am now sat like piggy in the middle of the settee and turning first one way and then the other to answer questions, while precariously balancing my plate.

All the time music from a Bollywood movie is blaring from the wide screen TV. I can not follow properly either the film or the conversation. I am given a magazine article to read that has something to do with the film and my balancing of the plate above the embarrassing stain becomes even more awkward and precarious.

My friend is tired and eventually I manage to say my goodbyes. The door is shut firmly before I’ve even turned from the porch. I step around the corner and my foot slips into the hole where the soil has been removed from the side of the house and between the path creating a gap. I fall and lie sprawled upon the ground.

‘Are you all right?’ a voice from just inside the porch calls. Nobody steps around to look.

‘I’m all right,’ I answer. ‘I fell.’

Nobody helps me up.

Once back inside my car I sit and catch my breath before driving away.

I am deeply hurt that the two other invited guests hadn’t thought it worth their while to be in my company; I’m bruised from the fall and upset about the dress.

I’m guessing that had I been a famous person, even with these looks, then the others probably would have turned up. I’m guessing that if I was famous and glamorous then the other guests most definitely would have turned up.

I’m thinking all this while I wait for someone to let me make a right turn so that I can return home. With my looks I know it will take a while. The indicator light flashes for an age before some most likely half-blind driver mistakes me for a siren and allows me to make the turn.

I imagine that if my name had been Obama then the guests would have turned up.

Once home I resolve that I will have to become famous in order to give future get-togethers more chance of success… and to make something more from the gypsy’s words.

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Moth Holes

 

As a child I was warned of moths.

I was warned of the way they can eat their way through clothes or leave holes in precious linen stored in chests.

It is an atavistic fear that has been taught throughout the ages.

Moths have steadily picked holes in the fabrics of civilisations as mighty nations crumbled to dust around them. They leave holes, spaces and ruin before they take wing and fly.

There have been holes in my life. Little things. Important things that I’ve lost. Things I couldn’t find. Missing things that have unsettled me.

I didn’t raise any alert. I keep quiet about the things that I could no longer find, thinking that I’d been careless or that perhaps my brother had taken them. Little treasures vanished and I said nothing. I didn’t want to make a fuss. I said nothing becoming suspicious of others instead.

I lost the small gold cross that I was given as a present for being a bridesmaid. I was troubled when I couldn’t find it in my old bedroom at my parents’ house. I wondered if I’d taken it to college and had lost it there. I grieved over its lost. It was the first necklace given to me. It was special. It meant something. Perhaps it had slipped away. I was sad to lose it.

I lost my bag of old sixpences. Nothing much I guess, but when The Teenager was a youngun and losing his baby teeth I had wanted to put such coins under his pillow. That had been my plan all along. Different old silver sixpences had been put under my pillow and I wanted to keep the tradition going. It was a little thing but it would have been special. The bag of coins was not to be found in my old wardrobe. I suspected my brother’s sleight of hand.

I lost my stamp collection and felt so sad about it that I gave the others I had recently collected away. The lost stamps were the heart of my collection. I’d particularly treasured them. Their loss meant I gave up stamp collecting. They featured the Bayeux Tapestry. I had all the stamps in one long unbroken line. But when I looked for them they were gone. I thought my exchange partner’s adopted son might have helped himself to them, after all, his father had taken my rug.

I lost a book one that I was using on my course. I thought that my boyfriend had taken it by mistake. We had a long argument about it. He gave in and gave me the book, but looked at me with different eyes from that moment on. And I now distrusted him too. Could that have been in part why I said no to him when he asked me to marry him?

Little things went missing. Nothing of great significance perhaps, but they were things I looked for and thought I’d lost. Their absence caused holes in my life and a little bit of worry and sadness.

There were holes in my fabric. Loss. Little things missing that brought down the rest and made me feel insecure. Things like the books I wanted to refer to when planning lessons, where could they have gone?

Recently I found the gold cross, the sixpences, the stamps and the book amongst other ‘treasures’ that I lost, together with certificates that proclaimed some passing merit in the world and which had caused me great worry when I couldn’t find them last year to verify my qualifications.

Unbeknown to me they’d been put into a box, and this box had been put into the attic by my father together with other boxes; as the things I’d once kept on the shelves inside my wardrobe were steadily replaced with stored linen and towels and moth balls.

I didn’t know.

So many things I’d looked for in my old room and could no longer find were in this box.

So many little things that had caused me to become a little estranged and suspicious about my brother, my boyfriend and that poor wild boy from Seattle were in this box.

I touch them now all too late. I have to keep them in a box because they no longer fit into the holes they’ve left behind, and it’s too late to undo the harm their absence caused.

Little things.

Nothing much.

Things that could have helped me to fly just a little.

 

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We are each other’s gods

 

I turn to Farm Town on Facebook in the way that a beaten dog crawls into a hole to lick its wounds.

My farm is small and bright with flowers, and it’s a comfort. From time to time I go to the market and ask someone to harvest my few crops. Usually I warn them that my farm is very small, and that I have only a few fields. The people who visit to harvest the fields usually complete the job, and leave very quickly. A few chat a while, which is nice, but it’s rare. This virtual world can offer comfort when the real world seems set on imploding.

I had a few fields of grapes that needed harvesting. Grapes in this virtual world are notorious for going to ruin if not harvested quickly. Yesterday, I went to the market and hired a helper, but this time was too weary to explain the small size of my farm.

I was unlucky.

‘You must be joking!’ my helper snapped when she saw my small scale operation. ‘You could have harvested them yourself.’

She has a point, and one or two more maybe, but I don’t hang around to find out. I wonder about her forthrightness and her self-confidence that allows her to make such criticisms, and I’m saddened by the encounter especially after the day I’d just had when I’d just found myself hamstrung by bureaucracy and temporarily (for two months) denied a chance to earn a living.

The grape fields needed harvesting today. Tentatively, I went to the market, this time writing a long request which warned of the small scale of my virtual farm.

Someone kindly volunteers. I apologise for my small farm that won’t do much to swell her virtual coffers, but she is quite unconcerned. She also harvests a few cherry trees and then invites me to visit her farm.

She is an American and her farm is a tribute to the military. She has designed an American flag out of the flowers such as can be planted on Farmtown. She has used poppies in part as she says they symbolised the fallen. I wonder if she has lost someone close recently in Iraq or in Afghanistan. I worry.

She hasn’t.

But she talks of joining her husband soon and I begin to worry for her anew.

She tells me her husband was a victim of Agent Orange the dreadful defoliant used in that war. She tells me he was killed on his bike.

She says he was a Native American, a Cherokee.

I am saddened by the thought of someone from that noble tribe meeting their end in such a terrible, pointless war.

He used to call her, ‘My Little Deer.’

She tells me that he’s close.

When her friend appears on her virtual farm I leave. Hoping that she will be well, and find comfort amongst both her real and virtual friends.

And I take just a little of the spirit of the wild Cherokee back with me.

To help me brave the world again.

 

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Mellow and Cordial

 

Well, it seems I’m going back onto the supply system.

The computer retired me apparently.

The woman who has replaced the person whom I first met way back in the seventies, when I first went on the supply register, is not a warm soul. She’s an officious impatient type. She’s fat, and wears the most appalling clothes, revealing a dreadful cleavage and even more fatness! Oh dear, you can easily see I didn’t like her at all.

I was having a lot of trouble keeping calm as she demanded this paper and that paper; barely giving me time to comply with her request. I was trying hard to keep the words ‘cordial’ and ‘mellow’ in my head as I tried to give her the right documents. I did manage to remain polite, but only just.

Luckily, I had all that she needed. The notification letters I showed her confirming my teacher’s certificate (which I’d luckily gleaned from my parents’ grand attic clearance) were thankfully enough to confirm that I was indeed a teacher.

The fact that I’ve worked for the county since the seventies and I’ve been on their paper system and computer system for all that time probably would not have been enough!

I had to pay £36 for the CRB check. Even though I showed her my CRB certificate dated 2008. It seems each department needs its own CRB check and certificate. Which is madness! The innocent are being made to pay for the sins of the guilty.

She did apologise though for dropping my name off their computer screens. She is going to put my name back onto the supply list. It will take a month or so. Oh joy!

She stood with hands on hips answering some of my worried questions with the door open wide behind her letting all the noise from the reception area come into the small little room.

I felt her people skills needed a tad of a tweak.

And now I have to wait for the CRB paperwork which could take two months or more.

I have to notify schools that my CRB paperwork is not current and then the Head Teacher can then decide whether or not to employ me. One school has already decided to wait for my new CRB number, as I’m sure will another. So that means no work there for the foreseeable future. I am hopeful that the Head Teacher at my favourite school will be more understanding especially as I’m supposed to be doing 1:1 tuition there soon.

So it looks as though I’m going to find it difficult to find any work in the next few months. Which will give me lots of time for painting and writing…if not eating!

I might have to sign on the way things are going but I really don’t want to.

I must look at this as an opportunity!

It’s an opportunity!

It is it’s an opportunity!

It is!

Oh heck!

 

.

"My Love"

.



"My Love"

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

Can you hear me, my love, I'm shouting in the wind,
Can you hear me
Can you see me, my love, I'm drawing in the sand,
Can you see me
I hope that I'm still with you, as you are with me
You always will be

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

Can you feel me, my love, I'm hurting so bad
Can you feel it
Can tell you about my thoughts, I wish that
You were here
Do you know it
The time that I've had, don't need anymore
You're the one I wait for

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

Please, come and find me, my love
I'm ready now, to come home
Please, come and find me, my love
Let's leave this place, let's leave no trace

.

The End

 

‘You’ve been terminated.’

‘What?’

‘Terminated. Ended.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were deleted from the computer on the 30^th June.’

‘Why?’

‘There was an error.’

‘What?’

‘So you need to bring in all your certificates, and you’ll need a new CRB check.’

I try to go along with what I’m hearing as calmly as I can.

‘My teaching certificate is lost.’

I try to explain about the attic which was emptied and how the certificate was lost.

‘Then you’ll have to write to the GTC and get a letter from them to confirm your certificate. You can’t do any teaching until this is sorted out. You’ve been terminated.’

The word has a dreadful finality. I realise I’m at the bottom of a very difficult mountain, and that obstacle after obstacle is already rolling into place to block any attempts to re-ascend.

It was Anita who’d alerted me to a possible problem, but I hadn’t expected all this. Anita had had half a day’s supply work for me; but then puzzled me by asking if I’d signed and returned the letter.

‘What letter?’

‘The letter that was sent out to all supply teachers. You can’t be employed or paid if you haven’t returned the form that came with the letter.’

‘I’ve not had a letter or a form.’

‘You won’t get paid for any work you’ve done if you haven’t filled in that form. ’

This was how Anita had alerted me concluding by saying she would not be able to employ me on Wednesday after all.

I worried about it all day as I taught spellings, the meanings of words, lines of symmetry, who certain characters were in the Bible, handwriting and listened to children telling me about the Titanic in show and tell.

Working it seemed for nothing.

However, I thought that the matter was something trivial, something that could be easily put right. A phone call here or there perhaps, and all would soon be sorted. All I had to do was to ask for this letter with its form, return it and all would be set right.

Simple!

I was so wrong.

So, very wrong!

More wrong than I’ve ever been before.

‘You’ve been terminated,’ I was told after my third attempt to get through. ‘There was an error. Your name was deleted from the computer. That’s the reason why you were not sent the letter. You’ve been ended.’

The words are bizarre, unreal. ‘Terminated?’ ‘Ended’

I felt like a scrapped computer. Something defunct and obsolete. A programme no longer required.

‘I’ve been terminated? Ended? What do you mean? Why’

I can hardly understand how the words can possible relate to me. Why am I being spoken to with such words? ‘Terminated’ ‘Ended’. They are fearful words. Does she use them with others? I’m shocked and appalled by the way she speaks.

She repeats them mechanically and then tells me I’ve been deleted from the computer. Apparently it happened on the 30^th June.

I have no idea what I was doing on that day as a living breathing person, whilst in their offices my professional dead self was being de-cluttered from their system.

I’m wondering which person did this thing. I’m wondering who had walked by this idle computer, and casually pressed delete upon seeing my name. Why would anyone do such a thing?

I’m wondering what insidious twists of the universe converged at that point to send my name into oblivion. How ever do they know it happened on that date? Have others been affected or was it just me? I’m bewildered.

Whatever happened I am now de-barred from teaching.

I can not be paid for the few days’ work I’ve already worked because I’ve fallen out of the system. I don’t exist.

And I’m now falling into chaos.

I know I’m about to walk into an absolute nightmare to get reinstated. There will be forms I will have to fill in. There are papers I have to find. There will be the problem of the missing teaching certificate. I have to prove who I am by finding my birth certificate. I have to find proof of my address. I have to show a bank statement. I have to attend a face to face meeting if the post delivers all these forms I now have to fill in on time.

I’ve been terminated.

It’s a very strange sensation.

My arms are tingling.

I’ve been ended.

Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something!

 

.

Northamptonshire Destiny

 

‘Okay where do you want to go?’

We look at each other with blank faces.

‘Where shall we go?’

We have to be back at two, so we can’t go far.

The Teenager has cabin fever and needs a trip somewhere, anywhere.

Our usual haunts hold no appeal and the weather forecast is for heavy rain. I’m sitting on the carpet in the  weather forecast defying bright sunshine trying to think of where we could go.

I haven’t a clue

Somewhere in our conversation I catch two words that seem to be somewhat significant..

On a whim I suggest that The Teenager should type these two words into his computer and that we should take it from there.

He types: “Northamptonshire” and “Destiny”.

He googles and scans the pages. We discover amazing things: there is a pop group called Destiny. There are pages describing a match when Australia played Northamptonshire at cricket. We muse upon the unfairness of a small county like Northamptonshire taking on the might of such a mighty antipodean continent. It seems an unequal match.

Then The Teenager makes a find.

‘Oh,’ he says ‘there’s a suggestion that that Battle of Brunanburh took place in Northamptonshire.’

I’m instantly hooked.

The Battle of Brunanburh was when King Æthelstan the king of England together with his brother Edmund defeated the combined armies of Olaf III Guthfrithson, Norse-Gael King of Dublin, Constantine II, King of Scots, and Owen I, King of Strathclyde around the year AD 937 in a mighty battle.

The exact location of this battle has been lost. Various locations offer tenuous claims to be the site of the battle. Academics have spent lifetimes pouring over old manuscripts and looking at the etymology of place names in the search for it.

I am amazed that there is a suggested location in Northamptonshire. I have never heard of this before.

I’m buzzing with excitement, ‘Find out where and we’ll go.’

The Teenager locates the tiny village with the tenuous claim. This village is mentioned in a footnote in an ebook. On another site he finds a picture of the village church. We make it our goal to go there and to take a picture of the church.

Within seconds we are in the car and heading there, and I’m thinking of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which tells of the battle:

937:

Here, King Athelstan, leader of warriors,

ring-giver of men, and also his brother,

the aetheling Edmund, struck life-long glory

in strife around 'Brunanburh' ...

We travel miles, negotiate new roads and tiny lanes until we find ourselves in the tiny village. We spot the church, park ,and walk there.

The church is locked.

There is a man with a dog is in the graveyard. He tells us that the church is locked. I ask him if he knows of any battles taking place in the vicinity. He mentions Brunanburh and says he’s never heard of it being associated with his village. I’m amazed that he’s even heard of it, so few have.

We are about to leave when he reaches into his pocket and brings out a large church key opens a small side door and invites us inside the ancient church.

Our guide is a wonderful. His black dog comes into the church with us. Her name is Holly. She barks for the return of her small yellow ball and then runs up and down the aisle.

We are shown the church’s secrets and treasures.

There are the carved heads. One is a prototype of a green man without the leaves coming out of his mouth.

The more we marvel the more is shown to us. One carved head we are told has a monk’s tonsure which can only be seen if viewed from above.

We are shown rare medieval glass; just fragments, all that could be found after Cromwell’s men smashed the once beautiful windows. They are fragile golden yellow pieces depicting strange mythical creatures,

Our guide peels back the carpets and reveals wonderful strange grave stones. One depicts a puzzle. Could the woman who was buried really have given birth to a son at the age of 75?

We are thrilled and amazed in turn.

As we leave we thank our guide, amazed that we should find such a place and also someone who was happy to spare the time to show us around. Someone who just happened to be there when we turned up, and who just happened to have the key in his pocket.

The landscape in which the village lies holds two low  hills from which opposing armies could easily have ridden down and done battle. There is a small brook at the bottom of the hill which might have once witnessed the clash of the opposing armies.

This may not be the site but I can imagine a battle taking place there, eerily so for though we have had unexpected good fortune in the village there is something that repels and makes me feel uneasy there, in the same way that the Battle of Naseby site leaves me feeling chilled and uncomfortable.

So we leave with the certainty that this was indeed the place in Northamptonshire where some did indeed meet their destiny.
We certainly did.

The Dog

 

Right now I am exhausted!

I couldn’t find an alarm clock in my friends’ cottage where I am staying, and I was so frightened that I would oversleep, and not have time to walk their dog that I’m looking after, before driving the twenty miles to get to work on time, that I kept waking up throughout the night.

When I finally woke up, later than I’d planned, I did manage to walk the dog, before dashing off…but had no time for breakfast.

I got lost of course along the little lanes but managed to get there in time.

All the time there I was worried about the dog being on her own.

School was fine ( I was only there for the morning.)

I dashed back at lunchtime. Negotiated all the lanes the right way this time, and there was the dog sound asleep on her bed quite calm and unperturbed.

So I thought I’d take her for a quick walk as a treat before I had anything to eat or drink myself.

Off we went into the village and I allowed her to choose the direction she wanted to go.

Big mistake!

I had a terrible time.

I lost Witchy.

She was right by my side, not on the lead, and then when I next looked she'd walked back some of the way we'd just come. I called her and walked on a few more steps. Usually she would catch up with me, the trick had always worked before, but this time when I turned she'd gone.

Vanished!

I ran all the way back to where she had been but there was no sign of her.

I call but there is no sign of her.

The scruffy village fields did not have a border collie walking amongst their nettles. There was no sign of her behind or inside the nearby barn. She’s not wagging her tail as she investigates the farm yard machinery.

She is not to be seen.

I walked back to the cottage three times taking different routes that she might have taken and… no sign.

On my third trip back to the cottage I’d leave the gate open so that if she does find her way back she could at least sit on the patio.

I am by this time absolutely frantic. I’m stopping everyone in the village to ask if they'd seen a black and white Border Collie but no one has.

I even asked the chaps who were sitting in parked vans on the High Street munching their sandwiches if they'd seen her...no joy. I asked fellow dog walkers, builders, a woman carrying a guitar, an old man on a bicycle. I asked every single person I met and there was no luck at all.

Nobody had seen her.

I then heard a horn blare on the road, ran to check, so terrified and frightened you would not believe.

And there was still no sign of her.

By this time I’m imagining her getting knocked down by the drivers that speed through the village. I’m trying to imagine what my friends will say when they discover that their dog is missing, hurt or dead.

I’m imagining cars swerving to avoid a collision with her, crashing.  People getting hurt. Cars getting smashed. Huge insurance bills. Angry car owners. And a dog lying in a heap of white and black fur by the side of the road.

I’m beside myself with worry.

I’m absolutely terrified.

I’m shouting…shaking the village from its very foundations as I call out her name.

Panicking, I managed to reason with myself that I should go back to the cottage again, try to calm down, make a cup of tea, formulate a plan, and catch my breath before taking the car out this time to check the little side roads in the village. I’m thinking that perhaps I could cover more distance that way.

I’m a gibbering, blubbering wreck.

And on my fourth return to the cottage there she is.

Safe and sound, barking and wagging her tail.

Phew!

 

I'm going to kill her now!

Meet behind the Teazels

 

The dog leaves little post-it notes of wee in different places around the village.

It is while waiting for her to complete her reading of the smells around a telegraph post that I spot the sign.

As Witchy the Dog reads the different aromas emanating from the grass at the base of the post telling of the passing of Great Danes, the meanderings of mastiffs and the peccadilloes of poodles I am reading of a walk.

“Meet Ed behind the teazels,” the sign suggests

What ingenuity I think.

Wow teasels! What a place to meet.

Ed has probably had laminated posters advertising his availability tied to lamp posts throughout the village.

What an enterprising chap!

I imagine doing something similar in Northampton, “Meet the World’s Worse Mum behind the Nettles.”

I wonder if anyone would turn up.

I doubt it.

I resolve that I will indeed meet Ed behind the teazels in the nearby country park. What a wonderful place for a rendezvous. The teazels. Even if the poor chap can’t spell the word. I can already imagine the scene: the teasels swaying gently in the breeze, their silhouettes dark against the pale glistening blue of the lake. Wow! How could anyone resist such an invite?

I go.

I leave the dog in the cottage. The poster didn’t make it clear whether or not dogs were allowed to also meet with Ed behind the teazels too.

And I arrive.

I discover that ‘The Tea zels’ is the name of the wooden framed café.

Ah!

There are others, six in all, who have responded to Ed’s alluring siren call. Ed appears. He is tall and wears a special yellow vest that proclaims his status as a walk leader. There are formalities to go through. I have to fill in a form and declare myself to be healthy enough to attempt the walk, and I have to give the name of a next of kin to contact should I not make it. I’m beginning to wonder what I’ve let myself in for.

We are all introduced. Ed can’t remember any of the names of the people he’s introducing despite leading many such walks with them before.

Then we’re off.

The pastures are dry. We haven’t had much rain these last few months so the usually squelchy grass is dry and the going is flat and easy. There are soft-faced, creamy coloured cows who watch us with interest as they chew the cud.

The walk seems to be a race.

Two young women, with purpose built child carriers on their backs are setting the pace. Ed is in the middle and I am at the back with John who is elderly and is brandishing a walking stick to help him negotiated the tussocks of grass and Pam.

Pam is the woman who has drifted to the back to regal us with tales about various grandchildren and their ages.

At one point I walk with Ed who tells me a very unpleasant story about two huskies that worried a field of sheep. I’m unable to look with outward eyes at the lambent light that is flickering over the lake, or watch the birds as they take flight, as I’m looking with an inward eye at a worried sheep being pulled out of the River Ouse half drowned from the weight of its wool before it is taken to the vet’s for a very unhappy ending. Ed hasn't noticed how quiet I'm becoming as he continues his tale.

After half an hour the walk is done. We are back at the café. The young women arriving there a good five minutes before John completes the circuit.

I’m disappointed.

It’s a walk I’ve done many times before. I was hoping to learn about the wildlife, the names of trees and the lore of the place. I hazard a question.

‘Do you get any rare birds here?’

‘Yes, sometimes,’ Ed replies, in fact I saw a lapwing by the first lake today.’

Perhaps I have the name of the bird wrong, but I’m disappointed he didn’t point it out to the rest of us, and I’m disappointed by the ordinariness of the walk. Ed bids us all adieu and then we sit at the café.

I commit a cardinal sin.

It seems the tradition is to buy coffee after such a walk, and there I am sipping tea.

‘This coffee is nice,’ someone says stressing the word coffee and all eyes shift to me pouring out my tea.

‘Yes,’ this is delicious coffee,’ they concur looking at me askance.

There are five of us sat around the table. The two younger women have already gone, perhaps they are tea drinkers. However, we are blessed to be sitting there as Pam is a great teller of tales.

I learn of her mother-in-law who was the terror of three counties, and thankfully according to Pam no longer walks the earth. This woman apparently came from Yorkshire and was a besom. I’d never heard the word used in conversation before and I’m thrilled to hear it. I query it, and yes she did mean the woman was a brush. I am delighted. Thrilled.

She was, according to Pam, one of those women who could make you feel very small. She was a school teacher.

‘Oh,’ the others say understanding only too well what she means from their past experiences of horrible school teachers.

She also like John, who is sitting by my side, suffered from arthritis so much so that her toes were no longer in alignment. Pam does things with her fingers to show us how her toes folded in one upon the other.

‘She used to buy the biggest shoes she could find and then wear them on the wrong feet,’ Pam tells us.

And I feel delighted and blessed to hear such a wonderful description and already I can imagine this woman, and I feel sorry for her. Even the Terror of Three Counties should have been able to walk comfortably in the wrong shoes she wore.

‘So tell us about you. Where are you from? I’m asked. Eyes turn towards me.

I stall.

I decide it is probably better that I don’t admit to being a Yorkshire Lass after what’s just been told.

It’s probably not a good idea to admit to being a School Teacher too.

I opt for the easier, “I’m from Northampton. I’m just staying here a week while I look after my friends’ dog.”

Disaster averted.

Phew!

The conversation moves on and I’m left behind.

I arrive back, and Witchy the Dog greets me at the door. She sniffs me carefully to ensure that I am indeed the same the person that left the cottage earlier.

She seems to think I am, and lets me pass.

She did not notice I was wearing my shoes on the wrong feet!