Our Rector has written articles over the years for The Church Times Diaries. We reflect this month, at looking back at the article written in April 2024.
Being somewhat conservative in my work clothes, all my clerical shirts are double cuffed, hence I am the proud possessor of some thirty or so cufflinks. Sadly among these thirty, there are only some five matching pairs: I have about thirty single links, having lost their partners ages ago.
Like socks, pens and dog-collars, cufflinks (for me at any rate) seem to have a weird life of their own, wilfully wandering off into the ether. When first ordained, I started wearing them for a bit of variety: having always enjoyed wearing colour when young (I looked dead good in scarlet) I found endless black rather stultifying. (Pretty pastel clerical shirts, anyone? Over my dead body). So, cufflinks were a creative outlet. I originally had some beautiful, precious ones; silver and amethyst from Rome, silver-gilt from Covent Garden and my grandfather’s gold pair. Added to these were college ones from York and Oxford Universities, and from my theological college, St. Stephen’s House. I also accrued among others pewter Celtic crosses, silver lovers knots, wrought iron nuts and bolts, delicate mother of pearl creations and art deco enamel pieces. Alas, (apart from the gold ones whose chain mercifully broke and which have awaited repair for over two decades) most are now single. These days, I wander round the charity shops in Uckfield (at the last count, there were fourteen on the High Street) looking for cheap pairs and now my current “working” cufflinks include starbursts, the atomic Agency and Van Gough’s sunflowers. Leaving them to fend for themselves in my shirts in the washing machine probably doesn’t help their preservation. Mind you. Maybe I should be totally radical and wear unrelated singles, as Peggy Guggenheim used to do with her earrings. No. One can go too far.
I have never before had to take the funeral of an institution; it was, contrary to my expectation, joyous. Our Church School, Holy Cross Primary, died at midnight on 31st December last year having served our town for some 173 years. At one time it had a roll of over 300 pupils and was a flagship school in the local area; but as the town grew the new satellite estates acquired their own schools and we gradually lost our catchment area. Added to this, there were some 17 years of “Requires Improvement” in our OFSTED report and – even though we finally got “Good” & paraded round the town centre telling people – our numbers carried on haemorrhaging until finally, when we closed, we had just 11 children. I have a photo of them with me, the interim Head and the last teachers. It was heart breaking.
Like any death, there was much grief, hurt and disbelief, not just for our church community but for the wider town. Generations of our townsfolk had been there, and so we needed to have a Thanksgiving Service (i.e. a funeral), which we held a few weeks ago. As I said, against expectation, it was joyous. Some 300 came – former pupils, teachers, staff, volunteers and governors. It began with the old school hymn “Glad that I live am I” (sung “ad nauseum” I was told to make the pupils grateful to be there), followed by an opening talk from the lovely Clive Cooper (the “Son” in “Cooper and Son”, a local family Funeral Director’s) who had been at the school in the early 1950’s. “I want to tell you about one of my teachers, Miss Bastick”, he began. A pause. “I hated her: she was ‘orrible”. There was a wave of laughter, and you could see everyone relax and the event took off. Like any funeral, if you can get people laughing and crying, you’re doing a good job, and this service was no different. Other pupils, teachers and Governors spoke and talked of their lives there, finishing with a girl who had left recently, now training as a midwife. Afterwards, there was a wake: it should have been in our Church Centre which had been the buildings of the Victorian School before its move to an adjacent site in the 1960’s, but we were double booked so had refreshment stations in the church itself. That actually worked better, as people stayed and chatted, friends and colleagues who hadn’t seen each other for years. All in all, a cathartic and good experience. It still hurts though.
I duly did my jury service as I flagged up in this column a few weeks ago, and, after much deliberation, I turned up at court in a dog-collar. I wasn’t chosen on the first day and at the beginning of the second I was nabbed by a Jury Officer and told my collar made me look conspicuous and so, for my own wellbeing, it was probably not a good idea. So I took it off. But then what to wear? The only direction was to dress “smartly in comfortable clothes: no swimwear.” But (if swimming trunks were denied) what? I never wear ties: if it's a formal occasion, I wear clericals (with aforementioned cufflinks): if informal then chinos & sweatshirt which felt a bit inappropriate. In the end I went for an open neck shirt and warm woolly jumper which was fortuitous as the Jury room leaked with buckets on the table, and on my last day the heating broke down and there was no hot water. The judge sighed (I actually knew her & sent a note to that effect) and said this is what things are like in court these days. It all felt very odd as the last time I’d been there in court was with the High Sheriff as her chaplain wearing full choir dress. At least this time no cufflinks were harmed in the proceedings.
With thanks to The Church Times to allow us to publish this.