It wasn't meant to happen

It wasn’t meant to happen

I wasn’t meant to be ordained. When I turned up on the vicar’s doorstep and said I wanted to be a priest, he almost said “who are you?” but restrained himself. I went off to Lincoln Theological College and then the Director of Ordinands visited and told me I shouldn’t be there. There had been a mix up. Finally after three years the principal recommended that I should not be ordained. But my Bishop, Robert Runcie, said he wanted to ordain me anyway.

So my ministry was controversial from the start. They said I had a problem with authority, I thought authority had a problem with me.

At about that time a book came out called the Little Red School Book. It was an anarchic view of school and gave advice on how to avoid too much work, as well as controversial chapters on drugs and sex. At the time there was little or no sex education and schools certainly didn’t mention drugs. Avoiding the sex and drug issues, although it was at theological college that I discovered drugs and sex, Alan Caldwell and I adapted the education chapters as a guide on how to survive theological college and circulated it around the college and to a few other colleges as well. 

Alan and I, together with a few others, also began a student magazine, Nihil Obstat, which we duplicated and left around the college for students to pick up. As well as a guide to what’s on in the area we included a few articles on the church and education. Needless to say my contributions rarely reflected Anglican orthodoxy.

After a year in college I moved out to stay with David and Janet Lake. David was the son of Frank Lake who had founded the Clinical Theology Association to bring theology and psychology together and to better train the clergy in counselling skills. While I was there we began to hold poetry readings and parties in a big garden shed at the back of their house. One of those who came was Nadia who was working on an archaeological dig in Lincoln. I met up with her again at one of the first of the open air festivals, held at Bardney just outside Lincoln. When it got dark and cold we shared a sleeping bag and began a friendship that lasted until she went back to London at the end of the dig. On one occasion we went walking along the canal and she gave me a joint and took a tab of acid herself. She had a bad reaction to the acid and so naturally I took her back to my room at the Lake’s only for Jim Cotter, a tutor at the college, to turn up. I then had to explain why I had to keep nipping upstairs to check that Nadia was OK.

I never found out if that appeared on my record. Though Jim probably wouldn’t have mentioned it. But I still had rather too close a knowledge of drugs and drug users for their liking. I had helped out in the churches tent at another Bardney festival, 1972s Great Western Express, where most other churchgoers had been hopelessly out of their depth. Dragged out of the tent at 3.00am as someone was acting strangely. It would have been more of a surprise to find anyone acting normally at 3.00am at a rock festival. And then they got into a state the following day because a user had asked to sterilise his needles in the kettle. Seemed sensible to me but the powers in charge didn’t want to seem to be condoning drug taking. They seemed less worried about getting traces of heroin in the tea. Then to really rub it in (as it were) he proceeded to shoot up in front of them.

Jim Cotter had a great love of the theatre and introduced me to the people at the Theatre Royal. As part of the training we were taught voice production by the producer. From these contacts I became a regular at the theatre and sat in on some of the read throughs and rehearsals. In college Jim produced regular performances – Clive Sansom’s The Witnesses; and for a couple of years we performed in the deanery – Hadrian VII and The Man for All Seasons, using Cardinal Wolsey’s own chair. I was usually in charge of lighting. Jim took me off to the Radius summer school in Durham. There were a lot of his old friends from Manchester where Jim had been a curate, and I spent most of the week walking barefoot around Durham with Bobby Shaw who was one of them.

There was also a magical evening sitting beside the river reflecting the lights of the city. It had rained during the day and the grass was just recovering. I sat in silence for a while and absorbed the feeling of being a part of nature. I was one with the grass and even the rain as the city rushed by around me.

Back in Lincoln I led a church youth group on the now notorious St Giles estate in Lincoln who were in revolt against the vicar who seemed to think they should go to church. If they had it would have put them off Christianity for life so I advised them not to. The vicar insisted and we all trooped in to listen to a sermon which was clearly written several years before as the “topical” references were at least two years out of date but given as if they had happened that week. I took the club off to the Derbyshire Dales for the day in a very old, but cheap, hired minibus. It failed to make it up the hills but broke down at exactly the right spot as we discovered that a cave in the hillside gave access to the back of the Blue John mines and we didn’t have to pay to get in. We then turned the bus around and rolled it down the hill till it started.

I was one of the founders of the Lincoln Shelter Group. I had met Des Wilson at Cardiff and when they were looking for people to get groups together around the country I offered to set up one in Lincoln. This involved getting around the local churches and other groups to talk on housing issues. Usually there were six old men and a dog but I would send out a press release which would make the front of the Lincolnshire Echo with lurid headlines such as “Shelter man slams government policy”. This often led to correspondence which the paper delighted in keeping going. At one point the Lincolnshire Echo called me a “Libertarian Syndicalist”, I had to wait for Google before I could find out what one of those was. 

At college everyone had to have a job around the college. These were meant to circulate among the students taking a term at each job – librarian, sacristan, and so on. I became the bar manager for my three years there.

None of which endeared me to the college principal.

Among the students was Tony who, with his wife Alison, had come from Rhodesia. Just before Christmas 1971 we went to see Sydney Carter and they introduced me to a friend of Alison’s and so I met Sue. I joined the local folk club where Sue sang and after a year together we married on the last day of term in December 1972.

We moved into a rented flat just down from the college. All went well till it came time for us to move. We had collected some furniture ready to set up our first proper home, but this was against the rules. So when I gave a months’ notice that were going to leave the landlady came to check the inventory, found some of our own furniture there and gave us two weeks’ notice to quit for using the flat as a “furniture repository”. She seems to have missed the fact that I was working for Shelter and so I threatened her with a rent tribunal – which would not only have given me security of tenure, but also fixed the rent on the property for the next five years. She backed down and let us stay.

Towards the end of the course we had a visit from John Hester, then vicar of Soho. He gave a talk on life in Central London and led into a debate on the legalisation of drugs, including cannabis. After some debate, during which I had kept quiet, he made an aside that at these events everyone seemed in favour of legalisation but no one admitted to trying it. I simply said, “I have” and the college principal quickly closed the discussion.

Despite the college recommendations, Robert Runcie said he wanted me in the church and so I was made deacon on the first of July 1973, priested on 30^th June 1974. There were many who, like my theological college principal, said I wouldn’t last and many have told me over the years I am in the wrong job.

I started out as curate in a parish on the edge of Hertford. There I was responsible for two small villages, Chapmore End and Tonwell. Ministry around the village pond seemed idyllic as was the possibility to get to know everyone in the community.

As is usual for a new curate, the vicar went on holiday as soon as I was ordained. And inevitably there was a death that week. For some reason college never prepares you for that. I knew the practicalities but wasn't expecting the body to be laid out in the front room, just inside the front door. At that time the clergy would often be expected to turn up at a death, even before the doctor in some cases. Prayers had to be said and the body anointed before the body could leave the house. And the police used the clergy to break the news of a death to unsuspecting relatives.

Other visits included Mrs Rusted, who lived in a damp house with no electricity. She had to have coal fires and light the gas mantles each evening. She had lived there for many years and her health was beginning to break down. With frost on the bed covers on winter mornings it was hardly surprising. But always welcoming, she would pour me a glass of Wincarnis as soon as I arrived and we would chat about her life.

I decided that "something should be done". And got the social services to visit and then contact the landlord. Needless to say as soon as the builders arrived to cure the damp and install power, she threw them out. She claimed she would dry out and die if the house was fixed. She was probably right.

And the Bedingtons. Two sisters who lived with their elderly mother. Very much part of the church, they also lent us their holiday cottage in Heveningham and later offered to sell it to us for £500. Sadly that was too much for us at the time. I visited "mother" over several months up to her death. Towards the end she lapsed into a coma and I visited to say some prayers for the dying. As we came to the Lord's Prayer, something reached her and she joined in. After she died her daughters asked me to call round as usual and they said their mother had wanted me to have her pen. They gave me rather a posh Parker box. When I got home I discovered it contained a cheap ball point. I am not sure if they knew the pen wasn’t there and hadn’t the heart to tell them.

In those days the church was a very different place. The Book of Common Prayer was still used for all the main services - in my first parish not even in its 1928 form. "Series 3" had just come out and was used occasionally for daring “experimental” family services - of course few people came. The communion service was fully sung to Merbecke, which meant I had to stay in key unaccompanied throughout the eucharistic prayer. And the ritual was much more elaborate than it is now.

But as the services have changed so the congregations have grown. The most dramatic falls in attendance were earlier, in the sixties, before the introduction of new forms of worship. I am always being told that the church is in decline but in 40 years I have never served in a church where the congregations have fallen while I have been in post. Now there is something for everyone, a service to suit all tastes.

The other major change has been in visiting. I was expected to spend every afternoon knocking on doors. I had a schedule of streets and was expected to visit them in turn over a year or so. With little or no admin to do it was possible. We were meant to stay only as long as it took to drink a cup of tea. Even in the Lakes in the late 80s I saw everyone who lived in my parishes at least once a year. Like doctors and teachers and policemen, clergy now spend most of their time form filling and most people are now unlikely to be in or to welcome a call from the vicar if they are.

In the parish - in suburban Hertford - I couldn't see why we should worry about a deficit of £500 (now about £7000) when around the table at the finance meeting there was a junior minister from the Ministry of Defence, Allen and Hanburys' far eastern sales director, the local squire and six other worthies. I suggested we got our cheque books out, gave £50 each (half a months wages for me, half a day for them) and got on with discussing something more important. I was never invited to another finance meeting for some reason.

Finance has seldom been a real problem. If people identify with their church and value its ministry they are only too willing to contribute to it. But I was expected to raise my own stipend (paid by the parish at that time) and so had to dedicate some of my time to fund raising. Spending many hours sorting newspapers for recycling and organising events.

When we moved south we joined the Hoddesdon Folk club and Sue became one of their musicians and I made an occasional appearance as St George in the mummer’s plays. That gave us a group of friends outside of the church, but also a group who could help us with social events. Sue organised a ceilidh with her folk band and we sold fifty tickets, mostly to people on the fringe of the churches who didn’t know one another and hadn’t met the church leaders. As we were setting up, the local major (retired) came up to us to say he hoped it would make money as it seemed a waste of time to him.

At another concert of early English music on authentic instruments there was uproar because one of the singers had brought beer into the church. There was no water supply to that particular medieval building and the nearest pub didn’t sell bottled water (this was 1974 after all).

Despite rapidly becoming widely known as a folk musician, Sue was never invited to play or sing during services in church. Music was strictly traditional. The organ presided over by the vicar’s wife. She said that she and the choir could adequately cover anything that was needed and tapes and records were unnecessary. But when, one Easter, I asked for the Stabat Mater from Penderecki’s St Luke Passion, it was not forthcoming.

But as Robert Runcie had ordained me to work on the margins, I also spent much of my time developing work outside the church. If anyone needed a service in the open air or unusual settings they called on me, often with Sue on the accordion. I led donkeys through the streets for Palm Sunday; held services on dodgem cars at fairs (making page 5 of the Sun – “Dodgem Vicars round ‘em up”); at steam rallies with the steam organ wheezing away to Abide with me; at waterways festivals with the Salvation Army band. And I kept up my contacts with the press, ensuring regular coverage for all that we did.

There was also a notable youth weekend where as leaders we were totally non-directive and let the young people set the agenda. They came from a variety of backgrounds. As leaders all we did was take up some camp beds and a whole lot of food to a disused church in Bedfordshire. As the young people arrived we welcomed them but did nothing else. Soon they began to get cold and we asked what they wanted to do about it. Some went off to find firewood for the stove. Later some began to get hungry and we pointed to where the food was. We joined in with them but didn’t lay down rules or a timetable. Early next morning, it was the public school boys who rang home and asked to be picked up. The weekend ended with a final improvised act of communion which everyone joined in.

Then I was having sherry with the Bishop of Hertford as you do when the phone rang. He answered and then turned to ask if I wanted to be the chaplain at Hatfield Polytechnic. They had interviewed and appointed but the candidate had withdrawn. The Poly insisted another set of interviews but I was told I had the job.