We stepped into the church at Middenwold (we were off on one of our excursions) and it was dark and dozy as any other old parish crock. I signed the visitor’s book, she donated. Duty done.
The roof was being repaired as they always are and the building was the usual miscellany of the old and the young. In these places I have noticed time is often kinder to stone than precious stuff like gold or lead. The font of course was very old.
There was a huge black Bible on the lectern opened to Leviticus with a big bookmark hanging over the edge of the page. We wandered around the place half seeking half aimless, not knowing what to look for or to avoid. We reconnected at the pews, sat at the back, two sly girls trying to avoid the teacher. But who was the teacher in this empty old barn? this miscellany of stone? its chancel as per usual painted up into one enormous mass of stained-glass grief, of passion then redemption. But as the world now has neither the one nor the other I could see no point to the endless light pouring through the glass each day.
Who is the teacher here? Revd Amanda Marston D.Div. (so I read) who I presumed would read out the levitic text that coming Sunday? or the man (so I presumed) who long ago wrote it? or the spirits that inspired the presumed man back when?
At length we both stepped out of the church into the pub (‘The Unicorn’) and before long we had taken each song of obedience we had found in that church and we drowned them all in our beer.