Churches

St Swithin's Church, Wellow, Nottinghamshire

Stepping back in English history, there were times when just about everybody went to church. Family, social, employer and landowner pressures meant that church attendance was more or less obligatory. The church was at the very heart of every village community and it thrived.

All of the big stuff happened in the church - baptisms, weddings and funerals. Churches were solid and strong, built to last. They had bells that called you to worship and contained beautiful things - unlike the hovels that most parishioners inhabited.

The clergymen who presided over churches sought to explain the meaning of life through The Bible and associated prayers and songs. They built an edifice of words and holy notions that would be almost impossible to resist.

Though I have been a lifelong atheist, I recognise the key role that the church played in village life. Nowadays hardly anybody goes to church  but the voices and footsteps of those who went before us are still there - like echoes. We can't pretend otherwise. Many of them predate The Norman Conquest of 1066.

In the fourteen years I have been taking photos for the geograph mapping project, I have submitted images of over a thousand churches. I am fascinated by them and on my country rambles, despite my atheism, I always make a beeline for the church, hoping that I will find it unlocked.

Along with the top one, here is a small sample of  the churches I have visited and not one of them happens to be in Yorkshire:-

St Paul's Church, Flash, Derbyshire

Church of St Peter and St Paul, Old Brampton, Derbyshire

All Saints Church, Saxby All Saints, Lincolnshire

St Stephen's Church, Forest Chapel, Cheshire

The Cathedral of the Peak, Tideswell, Derbyshire - dedicated to St John the Baptist

St Margaret's Church, Wetton, Staffordshire

Normanton Church by Rutland Water,  Rutland

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Friday

 It’s a good day

Happy Friday

My loves

May it be

Sweet and fruitful

Full of many blessings

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Dim,Dim, Sweet but Dim

 I think it’s time for a Roger update, given the fact he’s now been with me six months now.

He is 18 months old and not a puppy anymore.

I snort….yeah right! 

There is no hiding the fact that Roger remains dim. Even with the girls providing the ideal role model, he still has not mastered the art of jumping into Bluebell for his morning walk and stands clumsily on the sill waiting to be helped.

Getting out of the car is easier, as all you have to do is pull his lead and hope for the best, but even then, that is a bit of lottery of how he in fact lands. He’s no cat after all.

The cottage stairs he has mastered, and to be fair he makes a rather good job of them once he gets his legs going. 

It’s a bit of a “hurl himself hopefully at them” sort of thing but it works…..eventually.

Like William before him , he is a gentle dog. I’ve not seen him chase bees but he’s a big leaf kicker and skips in this autumn like a little boy does in short wellingtons.

Uncoordinated but delightfully gauche.

Since everyone’s hormones have settled, his resting relationship with Dorothy is somewhat non plussed .

He and Mary will play together and Albert is gently tortured until his temper snaps and claws are shown, but for a lot of the time Roger is on guard. 

He patrols the house and the garden with rigorous efficiency being careful to bark his gentle bark at anything new. 

He is friendly with other dogs but is too quick to say hello and has yet to learn manners with a more dominant male. He smiles with his eyes and trusts everyone he meets and in the evenings will curl up on the back of the sofa next to Albert and place his head on my shoulder

In short, he is a delightful dog

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