Death and Glory

Last week I had a visit from my oldest friend.  Oldest, in the sense of having known me the longest.  We met at primary school when we were 6.  She was a new girl, and I was asked to look after her.  It was June.  We went home from school together and played in our garden, where we saw fairies. Or very nearly.

Obviously, now we are sober middle aged women we no longer play games of make believe.  Unless you count the game of 'Can you believe we are actual grown ups?'  Bishop's wife and accountant!  It seems ludicrous.  My friend is rather dashing.  Don't be misled by the accountancy thing.  She was a bit of a hero to my boys when they were young: 'Angela, who has a big motorbike!'  She also owns a black sports car, which she can't justify.  But I can't justify my posh house, so there we are.

After lunch we went for a spin.  (BISHOP'S WIVES WHO MOTOR!)  It was a rainy day, and we were on a pilgrimage to the nearby village of Dungworth, which we assume is where her ancestors hail from.  From the low slung vantage point of The Motor we kept glimpsing flashes of reservoir through the trees.  Gorgeous landscape, this seventy-times-seven-hilled region.

After a tour of Dungworth, we pootled on to Low and then High Bradfield and parked by the church.  We have reached the stage of life where we rather enjoy wandering round country churchyards in the rain, pondering our own mortality.  Rather than playing hide and seek, for example; which is what we used to do in the local graveyard as small girls.  (When we weren't jumping on the conveyor belts in the quarry.)  No, at 55 we mooched in the rain, peering at gravestones, and sighing at the fleeting span of human life.  And because we are that age, it didn't occur to us to take a selfie.  But here are some pics without us looming in the foreground, smiling winsomely up at the camera:

We are not so old, however, that we are longer amused by lavatorial surnames.

The Grave of Farewell Crapper

We were puzzled by some little wooden signs pointing us to 'Hood Grave'.  Could it be something to do with Robin Hood? we wondered, having just driven up Loxley Lane.  We tracked the headstone down, and it revealed itself as a 'Flood Grave'.  It turns out the beautiful reservoir we'd been glimpsing between trees has not always been so placid.  On a stormy night in  March 1864, the Dale Dyke Dam failed. At least 240 people were killed in the greatest industrial disaster of the Victorian age: The Great Sheffield Flood.  There's a short film about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVdptJeXvDY

For a while we stood looking at the grave.  We read the pious verse warning that a similar fate might befall any of us at any time.  The words resonated round the nonconformist chapel of my mind.  The day is coming, like a flood in the night.  Stay awake, therefore.  My oldest friend and I acknowledged it: We are going to die.  One day.  The hills and the trees and the quiet graveyard would outlast us. And yet, how unimaginable death still is.  As unimaginable as our ancient 55 year old selves would have been to those fairy-spotting 6 year olds.

We wandered back to the car, through long grass and half-toppled gravestones (some archdeacon's headache).  On one weathered stone a group of snails had gathered, as if auditioning for a sermon illustration about The Shelter of the Most High.

As we passed the church, suddenly there came a waft of soaring music, half-muffled, from behind the closed door.  Piano, and a glorious tenor voice singing an English art song that a more cultured person would have instantly recognised.  We stood spellbound.  My oldest friend and I, who will both die one day.  The rain misted down all around.  In the distance, sheep bleating.  And the music soaring, like some hidden glory, waiting for us on the other side of the door.