A Somerset Lad

You get back from a week away and you could predict what the post would be.

A couple of flyers from local takeaways, a leaflet from a useless politician, an advertising brochure for cruises (seriously, do I look like someone who would go on a seniors’ cruise), and the wage slip from the Luddite government department which thinks that posting letters to every teacher in the country on a fortnightly basis is a good use of money.

Why couldn’t there be something exciting? Why couldn’t there be a letter from a solicitor advising me of a legacy from some rich person I had known years ago? Why couldn’t there be a letter from an old friend who had not spoken to me for a while? Why couldn’t there have been an invitation to some exciting event or gathering? (It would have to be particularly exciting and particularly interesting, I had a pair of complimentary tickets for an Ed Sheeran concert next Sunday night which I gave away because it offered the prospect of neither excitement nor interest).

And why does the washing multiply while you are away? Not enough that my bag was filled with washing, but the clothes that I left behind must have gone out by themselves, for the laundry basket was completely full.

Why does your world not change when you are away? A week can seem a long time to be absent, so why are there not the sort of changes that take a long time?

The feeling is one that has been around since childhood years, the wish to return from holiday and to find everything different. I am not sure why it lingers. While most teachers would probably be happy not to return to work next week, I would be anxious at any further absence (as it was, I worked up until last Thursday afternoon). Yet there remains a vague hope that turning the key in the door will mark the beginning of some new dispensation.

The one thing that I would have most welcomed was a letter or card from the old friend, but it is a vain hope. As Neil Young sings in Four Strong Winds.

Still I wish you’d change your mind
If I asked you one more time
But we’ve been through that a hundred times or more

So in the absence of an inherited fortune or a word of reconciliation, there remains nothing to do other than start the washing machine.

Galahad sat at the top of the stairs looking glum, his master has returned to sea and is currently somewhere off of the north coast of Scotland.

Simple things make Galahad happy, sitting in the front of the car and watching the world pass by. Sitting on a stool at the bar of the King’s Head inn listening to the conversations.

‘Cheer up, Sir Galahad,’ I said as I passed him. There was a slight wag of the tail.

I would not think of addressing him as anything other than ‘Sir Galahad.’ It is Arthurian country here, one has to be careful to show respect to tradition.

Arthur, Galahad’s monarch, died tragically five years ago. A road traffic accident ending the life of one that evoked the days of legends.

Arthur’s place was taken by Guinevere, a dog less depressive than Galahad, a dog who will use Galahad’s withdrawal from company as an opportunity to eat his dinner.

Proper respect demands that she be addressed as ‘Lady Guinevere,’ although she is probably less a stickler for protocol than her companion. Her assertiveness means barking loudly at any canine stranger which means she is excluded from the King’s Head. It is hard to imagine she would be troubled as to how she might be addressed, as long as her tin dish is regularly filled with food. Should there be any delay in the provision of food, she will pick up the dish and drop it to draw the attention of those who serve her to the fact that they have been tardy with the Pedigree petfood.

Someone once told me that people kept dogs as ‘an emotional crutch.’

It was a comment that was undoubtedly correct, indeed they are. My conversations with my sister’s dogs are those of a person who leads a solitary life for most of the year.

And if dogs are an emotional crutch, then don’t most human relationships fall into such a category? Don’t people look to others for validation, affirmation, purpose?  Don’t children and grandchildren become a shield against the meaninglessness of life that people might fear? Don’t most human relationships derive from a refusal to accept existential realities? People live their lives vicariously, afraid to be themselves for fear of having to step out from the lives they have created.

The passing years have taught that a conversation with a dog is something more useful than many conversations with humans. Dogs show unconditional love. Dogs are not capricious. Dogs understand graciousness and bear no grudges. Dogs do not believe themselves infallible, do not pretend to have views that are normative. Dogs do not cause you hurt.

All in all, it is not hard to see why a dog has been called a man’s best friend. It is certainly a far better friend than most people.

Pleasant rays of paschal sunshine warmed the medieval building. The clear leaded glass of the south side of the nave has filtered eight centuries of light.

It is more than half a century since a scrawny undersized schoolboy first sat in pews that offer little by way of comfort.

Being sixty-one and not seven years old meant a freedom to choose where to sit, a freedom that would have been unthinkable for a primary school child under the eye of a teacher who had qualified in the early-1930s. The back pew would have been uncomfortably close to the organist, but the organ has long since gone, its replacement an electronic device in a corner of the chancel behind the rood screen. For his senior counterpart, the choice was instinctive, to sit as far back as possible.

Dating from 1476, perhaps it was the rood screen that started the train of thought. Or perhaps it was the fading notice that has hung on the wall in the baptistery for the whole of my memory. “Norman Font, 1100-1135:” the words always intrigued a schoolboy. The boy would wonder why if the dates could be as precise as 1100 to 1135, then why could they not say what year the font had been placed in our church?

It is decades since I had seen the church so filled, including a sprinkling of children from the village school. Perhaps the reaction to the Covid lockdowns has included a re-engagement with community activities. Perhaps real life, in person encounters have become preferable to the world of Zoom and Teams and the platforms of the social media groups.

In the silence that followed the Communion, a strange calmness seemed to fill the air. The aged hamstone pillars of the nave exuded a confidence, a timelessness. A thread of cobweb hung in the sunlit air, unmoving in the stillness. For a moment, it could have been 1967 or any other moment in the time since. Had I turned and seen the boys from my class sat beside me in the pew, it would not have been a surprise.

The reverie was broken by the realisation that such moments were finite, that it would seem no more than a moment before I would be no more present than were those whose fading names declared their presence beneath the stone flagged floor.

It seemed a happy thought. To stand in a tradition where time is an instant and in which every moment is present. Perhaps resurrection is to remain forever in a single such moment.