Ten Highlights of My Forties
- Chris Maunder
- Mar 26
- 51 min read
Updated: Apr 4
1. Head of Steam
The planets Uranus and Neptune came into conjunction on the 2nd of February 1993 at 1.01 p.m. This was their first ever conjunction observed by humans, as the last one was in 1822 before Neptune was discovered in 1846. Quite exciting for those with an astrological frame of mind! Added to that, the conjunction was very close to the position of the Sun at the time of my birth, in Capricorn. So I reckoned that it had to mean something for me. It occurred at the beginning of the second minute of the second hour of the second half of the day of the second day of the second month; well, that had to count for something too. And, indeed, the second half of my life began in that February of 1993.
On my fortieth birthday in January, the way forward was clear. I was to be married to Sally on the 15th of May in Leeds and move with her in September to Birmingham, where she was to train for the Anglican priesthood. We had lived together in the Leeds flat since I left the seminary the previous July. But in February we started talking about postponing the wedding. In retrospect, all the ups and downs of my time in the seminary the previous year had probably intensified our relationship beyond where it really stood. So initially the marriage was postponed but, in reality, that meant cancelled. Because of the late cancellation, we had received some wedding presents which people didn’t want back; they were put in a cupboard. A few months later, I was burgled and they were all stolen, which seemed somehow appropriate! The ending of the relationship was very amicable and took several months before it was final: we even went on the honeymoon in Alnwick as we had already paid for it. As the years went by, I spoke at Sally's ordination and attended her wedding to Bobby.
There was a very large silver lining to all this upheaval. Now I didn’t have to move to Birmingham, and my career in Yorkshire, where people knew me, began to open up. Elizabeth Baxter, the vicar’s wife when I lived at All Hallows, had recently been ordained herself. She trained at the Northern Ordination Course (NOC) which included Anglican and Methodist students who wanted to stay at home and study part time because of work and family. When Elizabeth found out that I was staying in Leeds, she phoned to say that NOC had a vacancy for a tutor, one third of a full-time job. I also put feelers out with my current employers, and Ripon & York St John College offered me a position with the Theology department at Ripon where I had worked part-time already, equivalent to one half of a full-time job. And the beauty of the situation was that the College had just agreed a partnership whereby NOC students in Yorkshire would get qualifications accredited by the College. They would enrol on the Ripon and York St John Theology postgraduate programme, which included diplomas and an M.A. The two parts of my work therefore came together.
Eileen Bellett, a lecturer whom I had met when working previously at Ripon, was now the Head of Department. I owe her a tremendous amount; she and Adrian Hastings together ensured that I would have a lecturing career. She set up the postgraduate programme to start in September 1993, and it included one class at Ripon and the other for the NOC students (and anyone who wished to join them) at Leeds. When I entered Ripon to start work, she presented me with a large bundle of papers (we had not quite reached the fully electronic age yet!). She trusted me to take charge of this new postgraduate programme, and now my NOC work would dovetail closely with my job at the College. I would teach postgraduates at Ripon and ordination trainees at Leeds, as well as take some courses at Ripon for the undergraduates.
It was an interesting contrast. The undergraduates were mostly young school leavers. The postgraduates were mainly people of my age and over. I enjoyed the range of teaching: the enthusiasm of the young with the challenge of inspiring them to do sufficient work; the serious commitment and intense concentration of the older ones. The challenges were quite different, to keep the young involved and engaged, and to stay on top of your subject for the postgraduates. Having said that, the young students included several in teacher training, who had a clear vocation focus and were therefore usually conscientious.
The involvement with two different institutions with their staff meetings, protocols, and ways of doing things ensured that I had a very busy job. I don’t think I have ever been under as much work pressure as I was in the years between 1993 and 1995. NOC taught their students at weekly sessions but also at monthly residential weekends; the organisation was based in Manchester, together with centres in Leeds and Chester, which meant a lot of travelling from Ripon. I can remember arriving for the NOC weekend in Manchester, eating the meal which opened the programme, doing some socialising, and then retiring at 11 p.m. to my room to do preparation for the next day’s teaching. Fortunately for my work-life balance, I was excused the NOC weekends and staff meetings in 1995 after I had turned full-time at the College.
During this time, I went back temporarily to All Hallows’ Vicarage in September 1993 when Sally left for Birmingham; I then moved to a rented flat in Harrogate in the April of 1994, and began a twenty-one year period of living alone (this suited a busy work schedule!). In September 1994, my two part-time jobs were amalgamated in one full-time one. I applied for the new post of Head of Programme for Postgraduate Studies in the Humanities. The College had decided to place the four humanities postgraduate programmes – Theology, History, English Literature, and English Language – under one umbrella. The Theology programme with its ordination students was far larger than the others, and I had already run that for a year, so I got the job. This meant that my first full-time post was at ‘senior lecturer’ level. When I told Adrian, he laughed and said that I would never have got such a quick promotion at Leeds! But there were to be no more promotions (except for a temporary one much later on); I was destined to stay a senior lecturer for many years, and I have no regrets about that. At the same time as I got the postgraduate post, a young lecturer that I first met when returning to Ripon in 1992 was appointed to the parallel job as Head of Programme for the undergraduates. His name was Richard Noake, and we were destined to work well together over the years and become good friends.
Initially, the Head of Programme role was described as ‘Head of Scheme’, and I am glad that they changed it to the more natural sounding ‘Head of Programme’. ‘Head of Scheme’ sounded too much like ‘head of steam’! Mind you, the Theology postgraduate programme did build up a head of steam. In 1995, we added a York centre and, not long afterwards, a Sheffield one and also a base at Ampleforth Abbey. I got to know the region’s roads quite well. The College kept the postgraduate programme relatively cheap compared to other institutions, and so it grew like Jack's beanstalk. Eileen was a skilled entrepreneur popular with the College management, so she made the argument for the reasonable fee. When a new College principal arrived in 1999, we were able to report that 227 students were studying on the Theology postgraduate programme in the five centres; admittedly, some were very part time, and several dropped out due to the demands of studying while working and bringing up families. Yet it still sounded pretty impressive. The postgraduates comprised mainly middle-aged to elderly churchy people, plus a few of our graduates who wanted to stay on. Some of our lecturers came through the M.A., like Sue and Lynn, who had been mature undergraduates at the College just as I had at Leeds, and Ann and Gill who joined us at the M.A. level. It felt good to work with colleagues who had been students on the postgraduate programme.
In running such an extensive programme, I was extremely busy but very happy in my co-ordinating role in which I was given a free hand by Eileen. The College definitely lost money on the programme, but I had to remind people that it was all very good marketing, as many of the students were at an age when they would have children going on to do degrees, and we certainly didn’t lose money on undergraduates. Eventually, the postgraduate bubble burst when the fees went up considerably and the numbers of people who hadn’t tried it yet dried up. I gave the programme over to someone else in 2006, just as it started to shrink dramatically, after thirteen years of looking after it.
2. Vicars and Witches
On the undergraduate programme in my first years as a permanent lecturer at Ripon and York St John, I taught two courses which stayed with me throughout my career. Doing Theology (later called Theology: Action and Reflection) I inherited from Eileen, and it was a natural module for me to take on, with my background in a Leeds vicarage community in a deprived area. It involved students going on visits, or listening to invited speakers, in order to see how people put their Christian belief into practice amongst the neediest members of society. The visit hosts and speakers were mostly priests or ministers in the Church of England, Roman Catholic, or Methodist traditions. Churches had set up homeless shelters, or worked with refugees, or had projects for local people needing help, including school-leavers. Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Middlesbrough, Bradford: we visited all these Yorkshire cities with plenty of reasons for churches to get involved in trying to show that Christian faith was practical, compassionate, and in some cases quite political. And there were projects in York too, where I was based from 2001 after the Ripon campus closed.
The course couldn’t help but be successful. It was one of those that I wished I could have taken myself at Leeds, and which showed Ripon and York St John to be a place of creative thinking in education. The students really appreciated visiting these projects and seeing ‘real life’; they learnt more than they could have ever done from theology books alone. I could tell a hundred stories, but one I will retell is our visit to St George’s Crypt hostel for the homeless in Leeds. The hostel was right next door to where I had lived in All Hallows, as it was the old vicarage. It was designated a ‘wet’ hostel; in other words, the effort to prevent the men who lived there from succumbing to alcoholism had failed (they were allowed to drink themselves to death). The men’s eyes lit up when a group of young students, usually several more females than males, entered their premises. When undertaking these visits, I had to trust that the organisation and oversight of the projects we visited were sufficiently robust to prevent any problems occurring between clients and students and, over twenty-seven years, I am very glad to say that none did! On this occasion, a youngish resident of the hostel asked the female students if they would like to go into his bedroom as he had something to show them. I quickly pushed myself forward; if anyone were going to go into his bedroom, I needed to be there at the front to protect the students! But it was all very genuine. The man showed us markers of his previous existence before he became a homeless alcoholic: he had photos of a family, a job, and a life. The students were incredibly moved. To cling onto one’s identity in those circumstances is very difficult, and this man wanted to let us know who and what he was, not reduced to being one of life’s failures but a person with a history and memories.
The visits were 95% successful over the years; I have to admit that they didn’t always work! I tried to brief the project leaders well and give them a breakdown of what the course was and what the students needed to learn, but they didn’t always listen. It was quite a task of diplomacy to thank a project host who had just bored students to death with a welter of irrelevant information, or come to an abrupt end halfway through the allocated time, or the opposite, completely overshot so that we had to prise ourselves out. And church halls can be very draughty and cold! I learned to stay with the projects that I could trust to give the students a helpful and stimulating session and prayed that they would be available year on year. But, overall, the module showed students that Christianity can be practical and hands-on, and this gave them a view of Church rather different to the stuffy, moralistic stereotype. Some of the priests, like Paul Wordsworth who founded the homeless centre in York and then went on to work with refugees, were particularly inspiring.
The other module that became my mainstay was totally different in content but similar in one important aspect: we met people from the outside and went on visits! This was a course that I developed myself based on my past in astrology: New Age (later called New Age and Pagan Spiritualities). The students expected to learn about the great world religions when taking a Theology and Religious Studies degree: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. However, few expected to study all the fringe beliefs that are quite popular around the world. And they loved it! This time the visitors were witches, pagans, shamans, and healers.
When I started New Age, I heard about someone who had been designated the ‘Pagan chaplain’ of Leeds University. This had caused something of a fuss at Leeds and it reached the newspapers. I contacted the woman concerned and asked her to come and speak. Her name was Susan Leybourne, and she referred to herself as a witch. She turned out to be an entertaining speaker and so she became a mainstay of the module programme over several years. The first time she came to speak, the Ripon Christian Union was informed of it, and I was told that they intended to pray outside the room while Susan was speaking. I warned her but she agreed to come anyway; she was used to a little bit of controversy! We approached the teaching room with nervous anticipation, but outside there were just two students who looked a little sheepish. It was a storm in a very small teacup. The next year Susan came to speak, one of the two decided to attend as she regretted her stance of the previous year, She had learned that you needed to hear someone before you made a judgement.
I have always been somewhat scornful of Christians who get overexcited about a few pagans and witches; there are plenty much more pressing problems in the world to tackle! In New Age, we found out that they were just earnest and genuine people exploring their spirituality in an uncertain world; no conspiracy was involved. The Pagan ceremonies I attended (and later presided over) were all rather quiet and reserved, very English, rather similar to a service in a small Church of England parish! Pagan spiritualities are not so much of a challenge to Christianity, more a reflection of its general failure to live up to its own gospel message. And they appeal to young people concerned about the environment. But the numbers involved are not particularly large.
The New Age course was always acceptable at the College (and from 2006, the University), despite its Church of England foundation, for which I am very grateful as the module worked well. One year, I even had to teach it in the College chapel at York! The speakers helped make the course what it was. There was an evangelical Christian who had turned Pagan when he realised that nature was his cathedral; a charismatic Shaman who called himself ‘Creeping Toad’; my great friend Ratnadeva who spoke about the resonances between Druidry and Buddhism, both of which he practiced; and many others with interesting life stories. We also visited Lime Tree Farm in rural Yorkshire which, thanks to the inspiration of the farmer, Peter Foster, boasted a newly placed stone circle, a roundhouse, animal conservation projects including a bird hide, an observatory, and a sacred spring. The farm hosted Buddhist and Druid camps (and hence Ratnadeva told me about it). There was also an optional visit to the Mayday festival (known as Beltane) at Thornborough Henge, a very impressive neolithic temple in the countryside near Ripon.
Several clips from videos enhanced New Age and allowed the students to see and hear how people practiced and described their beliefs. The 1990s were the golden age of New Age documentaries in the media, and so they got a bit dated by the 2010s (hairstyles and technology give it away)! One featured a vicar, an evangelical Christian, who travelled around meeting New Agers and Pagans and, while remaining friendly and respectful, strongly disagreed with them. One year a Lancashire-based student on the course e-mailed to tell me that the chap in the video was her own vicar! As a consequence of that, we made contact and one year he came to speak. I kept it quiet. The students were surprised to see the man from the video emerge through the classroom door at the end of the viewing! My own surprise was that he turned out to be far more more liberal and tolerant in real life than in the documentary. But the clear lines he laid down in the film did help to show the contrast between conservative Christianity and the alternative spiritualities. I also gave him a copy of the video as he had mislaid his own.
I taught several other courses, but those two were there at the beginning and end of my full-time career. They changed a lot over the years, as I tried to keep up to date with reading and developed the curriculum according to social changes and new insights, but the principles remained the same. They were based on learning about people, lives, and beliefs through personal encounter. And that provided a focus for the reading matter and the theories which are always necessary for academic courses.
3. Guests of the Black Madonna
When I was studying for my PhD, someone introduced me to Sarah Jane Boss, who like me was researching for a doctorate in a subject related to Mary, in her case at Bristol University. In 1993, Sarah invited a group of people, all of whose academic subjects were in some way associated with Mary, to a series of meetings of a study group. She then invited four of us to become trustees of a new charity, the Centre for Marian Studies, of which she would be the director. It was founded in 1995 and held its inaugural lecture in 1996. Over the years since, we have been involved in many lectures, courses, conferences, summer schools, the building up of a library, a journal, and publications. Thirty years later, I am still a member and serve as the treasurer. In such a niche subject, it has provided me with a great chance to discuss the finer points with other people who are absorbed in the topic. The Centre has always maintained its academic freedom and independence from the churches, but it is no surprise that its main participants and donors have been some shade of Catholic (Roman or Anglo-). However, by way of demonstrating its ecumenical nature, one of its founding trustees was Jewish, some of its members and trustees have been Orthodox or Methodist, and we have had a shared event with Muslims, for whom Mary (Maryam) is also highly important.
In our first year, at Easter 1996, Sarah organised a trip for some Centre members to the shrine of the Black Madonna at Rocamadour in France. It was the first time I had returned to France since my inspiring research tour of 1988. Rocamadour is a sensational place, an entire town built into the side of a rock gorge, and it benefits from some well-placed lighting at night. You gasp when you first see it!
The statue of the Madonna and Child was carved in walnut in the 12th century and has many miracles attributed to it. Its age and slightly battered look make it appear quite severe. The chapel containing the statue is at the highest point of that part of the town that is built on the cliff face (there is a chateau at the top), up a considerable number of steps. Climbing up is a good way to gauge how old you are getting! It seems appropriate that the Madonna welcomes the pilgrim after such a climb (there is a lift for those who need it). Yet, surprisingly, there was one building even higher than the chapel on the rock side, a diocesan retreat centre with an entrance just by the chapel door and with stunning views over the valley below. Sarah had managed to book this centre for one week for our group. We shared talks and ideas, and with us we had Cathy Oakes, an art historian, who led us on visits to churches in the area with interesting wall paintings. A Marian enthusiast’s paradise!
My French isn’t great, but I managed to understand part of one priest’s sermon in the chapel. He made the congregation laugh by telling us about a boy who asked whether the Black Madonna could help his football team to win. Later that week, I phoned my father to see if he had any news on my purchase of a house in Knaresborough which was at that time in process. In those days before everyone used the internet, you really got cut off when you went abroad. Without my asking, my father – who had zero interest in football – mentioned that my team, Southampton, near the bottom of the table, had surprisingly beaten the mighty Manchester United, almost unbeatable that year. When I got home, I found that United were 3-0 down at half-time and had decided to change their shirts, as the grey they wore at the start of the game was preventing them from seeing each other properly, A very notable and famous game, and a clear indication that Our Lady of Rocamadour really did help your football team to win!
That same year, several members of the Centre were at the Catholic Theological Association Conference, which was always held at Trinity and All Saints’ College, Leeds. The 1996 topic was Mary. The organiser, whom I knew through having done some part-time work at that College, asked me to step in for a speaker who had dropped out. I think he expected me to talk about apparitions, as I had a PhD in that subject, but instead I decided to try out my theories about Mary in the New Testament. These all went back to the ideas that initially came to me in York in 1984, and I had finally presented some thoughts on it to the Centre members when we were in Rocamadour. And so I risked it for the conference. I enjoyed pushing out the boundaries rather than playing safe with my research topic. My main point was that the gospels included plenty of evidence that Mary was enormously influential in the development of early Christianity, even though the New Testament, following the culture in which it was written, downplayed the role of women. It was a feminist argument which some people loved, and some people hated, but at least it was an attempt to be creative. In 2022, some twenty-six years later, I published Mary, Founder of Christianity based on those ideas first shared publicly in 1996. This was something I always wanted to write, and the pandemic gave me the chance to sit down and do it.
The Centre was always useful when York St John students chose Mary as their research topic, just as I had done at Leeds. It meant that I could recommend its library or its summer events to them. My wife Natalie was originally one of these students, and she attended a study day in Durham and met some of the members. Now she is the website organiser and social media secretary!
I have always been grateful to Sarah for setting up such a useful forum for sharing in our favourite subject; it has been a great support for my academic career. We have always said that we should organise another visit to Rocamadour and I hope that we do. My football team could certainly do with the help of the Black Madonna at the moment!
4. Knaresborough and its Chapel
If you had been walking along the footpath leading down the gorge from Knaresborough Castle to the River Nidd at about 11 p.m. on a Saturday in early June 1996, you would have found a 43-year-old man looking at the stunning view with tears in his eyes. The railway viaduct is lit up at night adding to the effect. That man, of course, was me. I moved into my compact, terraced house not far from the river on the 31st of May 1996. I knew the local vicar because he had taken the College M.A., and he invited me round for drinks. The vicar’s house stood at the top of the crag near the castle. A bit tipsy on the way home, I was quite overwhelmed by the beauty of the town of which I had just become a resident.
5 Claro Mews was the second property that I owned. I had lived in twenty-six different homes in the first forty-three years of my life, and then I stayed in Claro Mews for twenty-seven. The wild rover had settled down! My house was in a new build cul-de-sac, constructed in 1987 on the site of an old gas works and next to the abattoir. I could hear the grunts and smell the animals. I accepted that a meat eater probably deserved to experience at first hand the process by which the meat arrived on the plate, but I was relieved when the abattoir moved out after a couple of years.
Now that I had a full-time job with a decent salary, buying a house made a lot of sense. I lived in Harrogate temporarily, but Knaresborough is only three miles away and two stops down the all-important railway line by which you could reach York and Leeds. It was a beautiful town with its own Chapel of Mary, Our Lady of the Crag, carved into the rock of the gorge in the 15th century. I had visited the Chapel before and knew where the key was hidden underneath a stone. The estate agents suggested a viewing of 5 Claro Mews even though it was on the market at £65,000, a few thousand above my stated maximum of £60,000. It was a clever move on their part. The house was under five minutes’ walk from the Chapel and its position down in the gorge gave it a wonderful back view across the Nidd to the trees beyond, the famous Mother Shipton’s Cave being visible when the trees were bare in the winter. I couldn’t really resist. I offered £62,000 and for that amount bought the property, which was being sold as part of the estate of the previous owner, an elderly woman who had died. I became its second owner.
In a nice coincidence, the Chapel’s annual day of celebration with a procession was on the 31st May, the day that I received the keys of my new house without any contrivance on my part to fix the date. At that time, the Chapel was run by a local woman whom I got to know, but after only a few months she told me that she was leaving Knaresborough. I attended the local church, St Mary’s, so I made myself known to the priest and suggested that I form a committee to take over the Chapel. He agreed although, sensing my enthusiasm, said, unforgettably, “If you are thinking that you are going turn it into a new Lourdes, let that remain a thought!”
Several volunteers came forward, mostly but not all from the parish, as we included a local yoga teacher, Jane, who also agreed to be a speaker on my New Age course at the College. She lived in a very grand house at the top of the crag overlooking the viaduct, which is now owned by my friends Polly and Leighton (with at least one owner in between). In addition to Jane, the committee included parishioners Julie, Marie, Peter (who are still on the committee), Bernard, Catherine, Helen (who worked as a librarian at the College), Mary, and Heidi. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone! Our first activity was to field a radio programme. Sarah Boss put me in touch with a certain Sacred Land Project, which was set up to encourage the revival of shrines in Britain of any religion, and the Chapel was chosen as one of four main beneficiaries. This project was launched in the Spring of 1997, and we were featured on the Radio 4 Sunday morning service to mark this event. The project also financed a new statue, arts workshops, and a children’s poetry competition, all with the Chapel as the focus.
The radio programme featured hymns from the parish church and interviews at the chapel itself, and was the first of many media involvements, both radio and TV, at the Chapel during my time there. Because the Chapel is an historic, grade 1 listed site, the media returned a few times, including just before the pandemic, when the BBC included it in Songs of Praise and a local teacher brought along a group of schoolchildren to join in and sing hymns. They jumped at the chance to be interviewed!
Being on the committee provided me with plenty of voluntary work over the years as its working group chair and then treasurer. The working group scheduled a rota for opening to the public on Sunday afternoons during the Summer months and we received the very many passers-by who admired the site. We arranged Masses when I often played the guitar, and we welcomed groups of pilgrims. The site was owned by Ampleforth Abbey, and we ran it on behalf of the Abbey and the local parish church, but neither had the stomach for the maintenance costs. So we took it off their hands in 2017, forming a trust to look after it, and we raised £36,000 for the urgently needed retaining wall, preventing the earth from the site drifting down onto the road.
The Chapel gave me a chance to put my love of Marian shrines into practice. I was now the organiser of one. I saw how shrines were maintained across Europe by local groups and what they managed to do with fundraising and enhancing sites. Now it was my chance to do the same. There was a limit to what we could do because of the grade 1 listing, but some members of the working group were green-fingered and made the gardens look really good, winning the odd award in the process. No, it wasn’t the new Lourdes, but in a secular world, it did provide people with a glimpse of the sacred. And celebrating Mass with the sound of birdsong, surrounded by tall trees which rustled in the wind, with the river trickling by: all this did create a fantastic atmosphere. Yes, the cathedral of nature!
Knaresborough was a wonderful place to live, and family and friends were always keen to visit. It did get a bit busy with tourists as the years went by; the town seemed to get an ever-better presentation in the media. But there were plenty of quieter moments in the evenings and in winter to walk along the river and look up at the buildings dotted up the crag side. I still miss Knaresborough now, more than two years after leaving, and so does my wife Natalie. While she was visiting me on the 21st of November 2014, I asked her to come with me to the Chapel on a dark evening in wild, wintry weather. And there, in the rock cave that had been carved into a chapel in the 15th century, I proposed! Foolishly, she said yes, and as a consequence lived in Knaresborough herself for eight years.
5. Elfenland and El Grande
As a child, I loved it when the family boardgame came out. Monopoly and Cluedo were the obvious ones, and I had a few others less well known too. In my teens, I either created or enhanced some boardgames for my brother and sister. I also liked the global war game Risk, playing with my friend Nigel in my late teens and early twenties; it is scary now to remember that most of the big and decisive battles in Risk were fought in Ukraine! We stalked around the board like generals with brandies and large cigars. But, generally, boardgames faded into the background until I rediscovered them in a big way in my forties. In the UK, we had little idea of what was out there, particularly in Germany, the capital country of boardgames with its own Oscar-style annual awards, the Spiel des Jahres (‘Game of the Year’). It was exciting to find a whole new host of games! Two couples that I met in the mid-1990s became my main gaming buddies; I made friends with them around the time that I moved to Knaresborough.
At Ripon, we often had to go to the other campus in York for various activities: teaching, meetings, open days. One day in January 1995 we were summoned for what turned out to be an extremely pointless meeting to decide on a new Faculty of Humanities strategic plan (or was it a mission statement - what was wrong with using the College one, I still don’t know). As we sat there, taking hours to come up with something like ‘to boldly teach where human beings have never taught before’, unbeknown to us the snow was swirling around the college buildings. That dramatic night, six people died in Yorkshire after getting caught out in the drifts, and it took commuters five hours to travel twenty miles. It so happened that I had promised Richard Noake a lift back to his house in Ripon before returning to my flat in Harrogate.
When we got to Ripon through the blizzard, Richard discovered that he had locked himself out. However, there was a window open on the first floor, and he went over to some neighbours to borrow a ladder. Those neighbours happened to be Bryan and Judith Jones. Bryan I already knew a little, as he worked as a college librarian at Ripon. Not long after that, I was invited to a games evening at their Ripon house, and Bryan and I also started a series of chess games over e-mail, which is still ongoing (although we now use an online chess site).
Bryan and Judith introduced me to many really good and absorbing games, not ones for the faint-hearted but with plenty of rules, strategies, and components. Two that I really liked in those days were Elfenland and El Grande. Elfenland involved transporting yourself as an elf around mountains, rivers, forests, and desert by various means, including pigs, clouds, and dragons. Complicated it may have been, but nowhere near as difficult as getting yourself around the British railway system over the last forty years or so! El Grande was all about gaining the upper hand in olden day Spain. Boardgames teach you a lot about geography if nothing else! I know where Valencia, Seville, and Granada are even though I have never visited any of them. The boardgaming evenings with the Joneses were very enjoyable and increased in frequency when they moved to Knaresborough, little more than a hundred yards from my house, after the Ripon campus closed. Now I was their neighbour! We also went to pub quizzes together.
Couple two entered the stage when I decided, as soon as it was clear that I would be living in Knaresborough, to go back to some voluntary work to meet more new people in the area. I was assigned as an organiser to a group called ‘Time Together’, which involved socialising with men with some form of learning or mental health disability. The other organiser in my group was Mark Cudworth, and the omens were good when I met him, as that was the day my mortgage came through. He lived in Knaresborough in a flat that overlooked the gorge and the viaduct. We got on well, and I was invited to his place on Christmas Day in an unusual year when for some reason I didn’t travel south to see my family (I can’t remember why; I probably went a few days later). His fiancée Susanne was there; as she came from Germany, she was familiar with boardgames of various kinds. I had a brainwave and took a game called Diplomacy with me as a present. This was a big hit. In the coming months, Mark and I played out a series of 24 games of Diplomacy which ended 12-12! We then moved onto many other games, including some card games, and I saw a lot of Mark and Susanne over the next few years. They bought a house together in Starbeck, a couple of miles from Knaresborough.
Mark, Susanne, and I once decided to have a league that included all the games that were in our possession. It took about a year. Having played each and every one, we were all still locked together on equal points, and we decided to end the league with a card game, Rummy (using Maunder rules; my family were always keen on Rummy, and I inherited a particular way of playing it). I won’t bore you with who won, but it just shows how close we were, and it’s always more fun when everyone is pretty well equal and has a chance to win.
Boardgames have been a staple diet for my socialising since the mid-1990s. Several years later, they were also very important when I was developing a friendship with my to-be-wife Natalie; it turned out that she was a boardgame geek too, and we are as equally matched as it is possible to be. My nephews also took to them, as did my godson, which made childhood presents rather easier! They are a kind of brain food, as they keep the grey cells ticking over and stimulated. And there are limitless possibilities for creative rules and designs, as well as some interesting themes. I wrote about boardgames in my blog of 10 February 2021.
But please note that playing boardgames does not suppress good fun and true friendship. You can still chat, drink, eat, and laugh as the game goes on. And you can play them in pubs where you will find that people come over to see what you are doing. The ones we play are usually unfamiliar to most people, although boardgames beyond the normal British (usually rather unchallenging) selection have started to appear in shops and supermarkets. And gaming groups are springing up. So what has been normal in Germany for some time might have begun to take root over here too.
6. RIP Donald John Maunder
The coincidences that I wrote about in the highlights of my thirties seemed to have dried up in my forties. It was as if spiritual awakening brought about these kinds of experiences, but when this was consolidated, I no longer needed that form of divine encouragement, if I can put it like that. But there was one quite remarkable exception. This involved the circumstances of my father’s death in 1998.
Dad had not taken well to retirement. My parents bought a guest house in Bournemouth when he left the civil service in 1984, but at Christmas time in both 1986 and 1987, he suffered what are best described as CVAs (cerebrovascular accidents), as they were not strokes in the normal sense but brought on by a condition known as polycythaemia – too many red blood cells. He had no idea that he suffered from this condition until the first episode in 1986. The result was stroke-like: temporary paralysis that fortunately cleared, but the whole business left him with loss of taste in eating and a general unsteadiness. As an active man, this worked against his enjoying full retirement, which started when my parents sold the guest house in 1988 and moved to a bungalow in Highcliffe. He was also forced to give up leadership in scouting when he reached 65, due to the rules of the Scout Association.
Just after he had the first episode, he surprised us all on Christmas Day by asking us to say grace at dinner. He had given up on religion in the late 1960s, and regarded himself as a Christian only because it had given him a good moral upbringing, in his words. In all other respects, he was near to being an atheist; he did not believe in the resurrection or the Holy Spirit, for example. Saying grace, which we had never done, not even when churchgoers in my childhood, told us that he was drawing on his own childhood Christianity in a time of crisis.
When the second episode happened, which was more severe than the first, I thought about what I might buy him as a Christmas present as a way of trying to reassure him, as I was now the only religious person in the immediate family. I bought a statue of the Madonna and Child in wood, designed to be hung on the wall. It was a risk. He had never been a Catholic nor an Anglican, and I worried that it might be a bit self-centred to offer something that reflected my own spirituality far more than his. But the gesture seemed to work; the statue took place of pride in the dining area, and every Christmas he placed a piece of tinsel on the Madonna’s head. I have the statue now, and keep up the tinsel ritual every year.
Wind ten years forward to 1998. My father was clearly not well that year. The Summer before, my parents had visited me in Knaresborough and he looked out of sorts even then, having just turned seventy. I made a private and unvoiced prediction based on how they appeared in terms of energy and liveliness that my mother would live to ninety-five, but my father would not see seventy-five. The former was not wholly accurate (she lived to eighty-nine), but the latter certainly was, unfortunately. In May 1998, he was finally diagnosed, after a couple of months of medical uncertainty, with terminal lymphoma, cancer of the lymph system.
Encouraged by the success of the statue, I told my father at some point in the early Summer that I would ask my church in Knaresborough to have a Mass said for him on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. This occurs either on the 15th of August or on the nearest Sunday if the 15th falls on a Saturday or Monday. That year it would be the 16th. This is the day that Catholics celebrate Mary’s passing into heaven at the end of her life. It is the most important Marian feast day of the year. Once again, I was not sure whether he would appreciate this gesture or whether it would mean anything to him.
I visited my parents regularly at that time, as my father’s condition worsened, and saw them around my mother’s birthday on the 8th of August. When I left, I said that I would see them again in a couple of weeks. The six hour journey and my busy work schedule made anything sooner quite difficult. My father, not normally an expressive man, looked straight into my eyes for a few seconds without saying anything. I understood. I told a work colleague the next day that I thought my father had just said goodbye to me. Yet it seemed as though the cancer still had a few months to go.
The following Saturday, the 15th, I phoned my mother to see how things were going. She said that my father wanted to ask me something. He came on the phone; he wanted to check that the Mass was going ahead the next day as arranged. It had been a couple of months since I told him about it, and I was impressed that he had remembered. I said that I had asked the church for the Mass, previously arranged for 10 a.m., to be moved to 6.30 p.m. as there was a reunion of my old All Hallows friends the next day. I wanted to be there for the Mass, but now I couldn’t be there until the evening. OK, he said.
I gave a couple of my friends a lift home after the reunion, and the busy traffic meant that I was in a bit of a rush to get to the church for 6.30. When I arrived with no time to spare, to my dismay I found that they had not made the change as requested. The Mass for my Dad had taken place at 10 a.m. There it was - I couldn’t do anything about it. In those days before mobile phones and the internet became generally used, you could not always find out things. When I arrived home after Mass, there as a message from my mother on the answerphone asking me to call her back. I did so, and discovered that my Dad had died at 10.30 that morning. It was not the cancer that killed him; he had had another CVA, this time fatal.
It was extraordinary that he knew he was going to die, and that he died during the Mass that was being said for him even though he thought it had been moved to 6.30. I was left seeking an explanation for it all. One theory was that he had deliberately stopped taking his medication for polycythaemia in order to bring on a CVA that would kill him mercifully before the more unpleasant, lingering death of the lymphoma. That would explain his nonverbal communication; he had decided to try this around the time of the Mass, which was before I would see him again. That makes sense. But he could not have been certain of success and certainly the exactness of the coincidence of death with the Mass can’t be explained. There is only one explanation for that in my mind: that Mary, to whom he had no special devotion but perhaps an implicit recognition that was expressed through the statue, had taken him up with her at the celebration of her passing into heaven. In a rationalist world, that kind of interpretation may seem tendentious and over-sentimental. But it gave and still gives me an enormous amount of reassurance which I will take with me to the very end of my own life.
7. The Great Shrine Tour
In 1999, I was reading about a book about shrines of Mary in England and came up with the bright idea of creating a new pilgrimage trail from the east of England to the west of Ireland. It would include my own local shrine of Our Lady of the Crag at Knaresborough. It would start at the famous English shrine of Walsingham in Norfolk and end in Ireland near to the Atlantic coast, where there were several suitable endpoints. I decided to travel the route myself, and mentioned the project to Mark and Susanne. They were both very keen on history, being members of a re-enactment society, and they asked if they could come along too. The plan was to coincide with the total solar eclipse on the 11th of August 1999, as this was to be the closest total eclipse to Britain in our lifetime. The path of the eclipse did not quite reach Britain or Ireland at any point, but it passed very close to the south-western tip of Ireland. That is where we would head for. We would begin at Walsingham on the 4th.
Then, a few weeks later, Mark and Susanne suddenly announced that they were getting married on the 1st of August. OK, I would have to go on my own, I thought, but I could forgive them given the very good reason for the cancellation. They said, not at all, they were still planning to come. It was a perfect trip for a honeymoon! So had I collected the set: doing the best man’s speech at a wedding because the actual best man was too nervous (Rachel’s wedding in 1986); being present at a birth because the actual father could not be found (in 1989, see the blog on highlights of my thirties); and now travelling along with a honeymoon couple.
The wedding went well, with a reception in Fountains Abbey. After Mark and Susanne had spent the weekend with their wedding guests, we set off on Tuesday 4th. Walsingham was packed because of a popular Catholic Charismatic pilgrimage there that we did not know about, and there was little accommodation free. We were offered a family room for the three of us in a pub. We all agreed that that really would be too weird, and the happy couple took it for themselves, while I managed to find one small room in a Sue Ryder hostel. It was full of Charismatic Christians; the early morning conversation that I overheard was very interesting. It seemed that the Holy Spirit was most intimately involved in all manner of mundane matters. Well, perhaps that’s true, but it sounded strange over breakfast!
After Walsingham, we travelled to King’s Lynn, Lincoln, and then Doncaster, which is Mark’s hometown. It once had a medieval Marian shrine in a now destroyed priory. The shrine has been reconstructed in the local Catholic parish church of St Peter’s in Chains, and it impressed us all by the importance that had been placed on local history. The best shrines are good at that. In the 19th century, when Catholicism was restored in Britain after a three-hundred-year suppression, Catholic researchers were interested in finding out where all the destroyed shrines were and encouraging the rebuilding of them wherever possible. Doncaster is one such example. King’s Lynn’s shrine, the Red Mount Chapel, was not destroyed as it remained a place of local historical interest, but the Marian shrine element was removed. It had originally been an important step on the road to Walsingham. The local parish church has built a replica of the Chapel of Our Lady of Walsingham inside the church. Lincoln was once dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the old Guildhall still has a frontage depicting the Annunciation. Well, I could go on, but I’ll leave it there! Suffice it to say that each place we visited has its own interesting history; people in the modern period have tried to reconstruct that and recreate a sacred place, exactly as has been done in Knaresborough, which was our destination on the second day. We stayed in our own homes on the second night, and recommenced the journey by travelling to Fernyhalgh in Lancashire and then moving on into Wales.
One of the non-sacred highlights of the trip was a pub known as Simon’s Place in Wexford, which is near to Rosslare, where the ferry from Fishguard in Wales arrives in Ireland. We loved Simon’s Place, and visited it again on the way home. It served very traditional meat and two veg dinners which have remained popular in Ireland. The young barman was very friendly, and his name was Simon. We were impressed that such a young person owned a pub and had named it after himself. “Oh, no,” said Simon. “I’m young Simon. The owner is Old Simon.” And he pointed to photographs on the wall which depicted an older man in various triumphant fishing exploits. If you’re familiar with traditional pubs in Ireland, you will have a sense of how wonderfully cluttered the place was, with photos, books, and just general clobber. In other words, very homely.
We stayed in Bantry, County Cork, for the eclipse. It was agreed that I would visit the local pitch and putt golf course while Mark and Susanne did their favoured round of local charity shops. We all had special eclipse glasses. But when we woke up, we could hear the rain coming down in torrents. It was one of those days when the Atlantic decides to move inland: August daytime but very dark and all the lights on in shops. I had to join the charity shop tour. We joked that it got very slightly lighter during the few minutes of the eclipse; of course, we could not see a thing through the clouds. Everyone else across Ireland and Britain saw the eclipse, at least partially.
On the way home, we started what became a tradition in trips away, and one which I still continue with my wife Natalie. This is a quiz on various aspects of the holiday. The one rule is that everyone must have been present when something occurred, or would have seen the thing that is being asked about: the colour of curtains, for example. On that trip, the one question that I will never forget is: ‘On which side were the hinges when we knocked on the parish priest’s door at Doncaster?’, and the answer was ‘the left’. I tend to lose these quizzes, not being very observant, although I am good at remembering the names of towns we pass, so those types of questions have been banned!
Mark and Susanne came with me again the following year when I expanded the route to include a southern branch, and we went from South Wales to Cornwall and then across to Kent, before coming home via Suffolk. The low point was the landlady in Glastonbury who swore blind that we hadn’t ordered a cooked breakfast when we most certainly had. We had a better reception from my Mum, who still lived on the south coast and now being alone was pleased to see us.
Over the next few years, I added more shrines in several journeys. It became a great shrine tour of places sacred to Mary and the female saints in Britain and Ireland. In 2006, I stopped at 150, a symbolic figure as it is the number of Hail Marys in the Rosary based on the number of Psalms in the Bible. Marie, a member of the Knaresborough chapel committee who is an artist, helped me compile a map with pictures. It is a little out of date now, as some places have closed and some are not very accessible, while I have heard of others that should really be included. So, one day, I will have to update it. The beauty of all my travels across these islands is that rarely does anyone come from anywhere that I haven’t visited or travelled nearby to. I can always say, oh yes, that town has an interesting cathedral, or the marketplace there is very busy. I might come across as a bit of a clever dick, perhaps, but it does help the conversation move forward!
8. Pitching and Putting
My Grandad Small was a keen golfer. He was a working-class man living in a council house, so back in the post-war world he probably wasn’t the most typical golf club member. But he was cheerful and generous, so I would imagine that he was popular there. He achieved a single figure handicap and retained a lifetime passion for the game, playing until his eighties. I still have one of his cups in my collection of family memorabilia, although it is rather misshapen after many years of being carted about.
He encouraged us as children to play golf. Unfortunately, the miniature irons he bought us went into permanent storage after my brother predictably swung his club straight into my sister’s head. The resulting lump made it look as if a golf ball had been transplanted into her skull. Not to be deterred, sometimes Grandad took us around the local pitch and putt course where you could hire clubs. However, I always had a problem with hand-eye co-ordination sports. I wasn’t a natural and the ball went anywhere, if it went at all. But I always had a sense that it was a sport I would like to play one day. There was a local council short course near where I lived in Croydon as a young adult. To illustrate my lack of skill, I will recount the time when I reached the second tee with my friends only to find that a queue had built up there. We had to wait a good number of minutes and then tee off with a gathering crowd watching behind – scary! When my turn came, I did an air shot, completely missing the ball. Titters could be heard. Then I did another air shot. Laughter. My third attempt went off at an impossible right angle into a nearby bush. Helpless mirth erupted. I hadn’t made people laugh that much since I attempted to play the trombone in front of my secondary school and emitted a series of fart noises, despite having had over a year of lessons.
When I moved to Knaresborough at the age of forty-three with a steady job and a mortgage, the time seemed to have come to try the sport seriously for the first time. I bought some clubs, a bag, and a trolley. I am grateful to my colleague and friend Richard, then a member at Ripon Golf Club, for accompanying me on my first efforts as I hacked my way round. He was certainly patient! Released in 2021, a film called Phantom of the Open stars Mark Rylance as the real-life man who blagged his way into the British Open Qualifying Round in the 1970s. He was dubbed the ‘world’s worst golfer’ because he scored 121 before being booted out. Yet, to give him his due, he was not a member of a golf club and hadn’t played a full length golf course before, just practiced on open land and the beach. In those days, 121 on a Championship level golf course would have been dreamland for me.
I came to realise that being able to bash the ball towards the green in two or three shots was not enough if you couldn’t then chip on and putt down. So the fact that Knaresborough had a pitch and putt course was perfect; I could hone my short game skills. And I spent many hours there, even going on a Summer evening to play when it had closed, being careful to miss the dog walkers. I also paid for some lessons at my local golf club. It worked; my golf improved. A basic sense of technique and a half-decent short game are essential for some success. While never achieving excellence, I got to the point of at least being able to compete with other people.
One day, I noticed that the Council were running a competition at the pitch and putt course. You put in your score on a trust basis, and they wrote to the people who had the lowest scores over the Summer to compete in September. There was an adult competition, and one each for two levels of childhood. Anyone who had cheated with their score looked silly on the day, as it was all organised with people checking each other’s cards. I decided to go for it and practice as often as I could. I got my letter of invitation.
When the day came, it was scary as the adults teed off first with all the children (up to the age of sixteen) watching. But there was no re-enactment of my previous disasters when under scrutiny. Thanks to continual practice, my ball soared and landed a hundred yards away on the first green. After that, it continued to go well. We had to play two rounds of eighteen holes each. When the scores were put together after everyone had finished their rounds, well, guess what? – I won. The winning score? Yes, of course, it was 121 (although over thirty-six holes, not eighteen). I had become the 1999 Knaresborough pitch and putt champion! It was a shame that the trophy plaque read ‘over 16’ as that rather dampened the illusion of brilliance but still, a win is a win.
After the tournament, I had to rush as I was due in Manchester that afternoon welcoming the new NOC contingent onto the postgraduate course. In my running off towards home, the plastic golfer on the trophy lost his club which he should have been swinging proudly in front of him. The tiny club wasn’t fixed. The figurine now looked as though he were giving someone a mighty uppercut. I was desperate to find the club, so a couple of days later I did a police-level search of the footpath that led from the course and found it. People must have been wondering what I was looking for; the thin piece of plastic was well hidden among twigs, leaves, and bits of dirt. I then foolishly placed the trophy on my mantelpiece next to a statue of the Pieta (Mary holding the dead Jesus in her arms). It was Mark who commented that it looked as if Jesus had been decked by the golfer! I had to move it somewhere else.
And so I finally emulated my Grandad, although with a pitch and putt trophy rather than one achieved on a full golf course. Jacqui’s family came up to watch the tournament the year after, although this time I finished fourth. Then the Council discontinued it. But the trophy with its little golfer still stands proudly on my shelf in a position that avoids appearing as though he was the one to finish off the Saviour.
9. The Virgin Mary at the BBC
At Medjugorje in 1986, I was interviewed by the BBC but not included in the final cut of the programme that they made, entitled The Madonna of Medjugorje. I finally made it to the small screen in 1997, when my colleague Gaye, who had media connections, found out that ITV were planning a feature on the New Age movement and recommended me as a contributor. It was a segment of a regular Sunday morning slot on religious topics and recorded live in Leeds. The session was chaired by Gloria Hunniford. I was paired with a conservative Christian from London named Doug, who ran a centre known as the ‘Reachout Trust’, if I remember that right, which rescued people from the New Age. I, as a liberal Christian who found the New Age interesting and normally harmless while teaching a module on it, was briefed to discuss (which meant dispute politely) the New Age movement with him. That went OK, but the thing that rankled was the fact that I had been instructed to wear plain clothing, as it suited the cameras better. So I wore a bland shirt whereas Doug had not taken any notice of the instruction and sported a multicoloured cardigan which looked perfectly fine and made me look somewhat dull. And I was the one who was supposed to be the New Agey type! Gloria was nice, however, and I am always pleased to see her on Loose Women right up to the present day.
My media 'career' continued with a programme, I think it was broadcast by Channel 4, on miracles, where they included as one of the miracles the apparitions of Mary at Fatima in Portugal. This was recorded in London and this time it included just me with an interviewer. I was taught that it was important to answer the questions without a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as they often use the clips without the interviewer’s question. So you have to repeat the question in the answer so that the audience knew what you were talking about. I think the programme aired in 1999, and I was asked to comment on what I thought the hidden secret of Fatima contained. The famous secret was then revealed by the Vatican in the year 2000, which showed me and many other commentators to be mistaken! If only they’d made the programme a year so later.
But the climax of my media presence came in 2002, when Sarah Boss and I were invited to a stately home in Oxfordshire, where the BBC were filming interviews towards a programme on Mary, called simply The Virgin Mary and due to be aired just before Christmas 2002. This followed a similar programme on Jesus. The programme attempted to find the woman behind the myth. Sarah didn’t like the general thrust of the programme, and was relieved not to be included in the final cut, but they used several clips where I was interviewed.
The filming was odd. Even though it was done on a bright Spring day, we did the recording in darkened rooms, so it had the effect of making the contributors look as if we were all whispering heretical things in the shadows. As someone who believes that the virgin birth is metaphorical and not historically true, I had no difficulty with trying to discover who Mary might have been as a figure of history, reaching beyond the biblical image. The disappointment I had with the programme is that they didn’t really take up my argument that Mary was a remarkable person who can be regarded as one of the prime founders of an enormously influential world religion, but rather they treated her as an ordinary woman of her day, and focussed on her as a very young mother in a hostile world. If the virgin birth is metaphorical, why focus on it in an historical reconstruction?
Nevertheless, it was quite an experience, and apparently a great number of people watched it; The Guardian reported an audience of three million. The BBC got quite a few complaints from those who felt that Mary’s honour had been compromised, which included the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth! I did hear from several people who watched it, including an old school friend with whom I hadn’t communicated for over thirty years, which seemed to prove that there must have been a wide audience. Those were the days when increased use of e-mail and pre-Facebook means of contact like ‘Friends Reunited’ encouraged people to seek out those they hadn’t seen for a while. Before those developments, we would have normally let the past lie, as there was little chance of finding a lost friend unless you were very determined.
After that, I did a couple of sessions of filming on Marian and religious matters for the Discovery Channel. That was particularly frustrating as, unlike the programmes on the mainstream British channels, I didn’t ever see the final result. No one sent me a copy or told me how to access it. You can easily be used by the media because of your natural desire to become something of a minor celebrity with all the opportunities that might present. So you give up a day for nothing more than travel expenses and a free lunch if you are lucky, and then people manipulate you into talking about the things that the editor thinks make good TV rather than the things that stimulate you and which you feel are important. So, although the TV opportunities dried up after the early 2000s, I have no regrets.
Overall, it was good fun to be involved in a few programmes and see how filming for television works, and of course there were also the TV and radio features on the Chapel in Knaresborough that I have already mentioned. In one of those, I got to do that thing that actors do when you film one person in a conversation over the shoulder of the person listening, and then turn it around and film the other, so that what appear to be continuous conversations are made up of two parts that are only put together in the final cut!
I have also done a few radio interviews in more recent years, for example, one recorded in BBC Radio York on the hundredth anniversary of Fatima in 2017, and then, arranged by the publisher, a couple to promote my 2022 book Mary, Founder of Christianity, which I did from home over the computer. You don't have to worry how you or the house looks on radio! There was also an interesting discussion featuring myself, Sarah, and someone in America on the topic of Marian apparitions recorded at the BBC building in Salford Quays.
So, as I wrote in the highlights of my childhood, I followed my father into enjoying my fifteen minutes of fame on TV and the radio. Like him, I enjoyed what I did but it didn't lead to anything long-lasting. At least I know what it feels like when I see people being interviewed as supposed 'experts' on various topics in the media, and I wonder what they might have said that didn't make it past the final edit!
10. One Soggy Day in Saugues
a. The Chapel at Estours
The last highlight of my forties involves two places in France just a few kilometres apart that I came across on the same day. I’m not even sure of the date, around the end of August or beginning of September 2002. Yet they made quite an impact, and I have visited them both many times since. They have also become favourites with my wife, Natalie, whom I did not meet until 2008 and to whom I was married in 2015. So they have stood the test of time. We are both desperate to get back there now and take Bea.
In 2002, I arranged a holiday with Ratnadeva (then called Seán) and a colleague from the York St John Music Department, Liz. Ratnadeva wanted to walk along parts of the famous pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. One of these routes started in France at Le Puy in the Haute-Loire department and the Auvergne region. I was very keen to see Le Puy again, after stopping there for a couple of nights in 1988. It is a picturesque town, built around two spectacular volcanic rocks, on the larger of which is the cathedral and a huge bronze statue of Madonna and Child made from cannons captured in the Crimean War. On the smaller, on a long spindle of rock known as ‘the Needle’, is a chapel of St Michael with a very demanding stairway up. The cathedral contains a famous Black Madonna, a copy of the medieval original which was destroyed during the French Revolution.
We rendezvoused in Le Puy; I had taken my car, a Citroen. On the first day, Ratnadeva walked the first 30 kilometres of the pilgrim route (known as the Way of St Jacques, as Santiago de Compostela is where St Jacques, James in English, is supposed to be buried). This took Ratnadeva from Le Puy to Monistrol d’Allier, a village in the Allier gorge. Liz and I drove around sightseeing and met him at lunch and at the end of his journey. We then returned to Le Puy. On the second day of walking, it was agreed that the three of us would walk together starting from Monistrol; I would leave the others part way along to return to Monistrol and get the car.
The rain started to come down and I was glad to be the one in the car. I drove to a town called Saugues, which had its own Romanesque church and medieval Madonna, and met the others there. The rain stopped but they had got into something of a mess while walking, with sodden and torn clothes. Ratnadeva wanted to continue walking on for a few miles, but Liz was happy to get into the car. I had noticed a site not far away on the map in the middle of the countryside described as ‘Notre Dame d’Estours’. After looking around Saugues, I suggested to Liz that we drove there to investigate. I have done this many, many times, seeing a name with a possible Marian connection marked on a map and then driving a few miles off the route to see what might be there.
The chapel of Notre Dame d’Estours defied all expectations. It was simply mind-blowing. A Romanesque chapel had been constructed on a rocky promontory half-way down a steep and narrow gorge, at the bottom of which ran the little river Seuge. Even being involved in the rock-carved chapel at Knaresborough in its own gorge did not render me immune to the stunning sight. Several years later, I took Natalie to Estours, a couple of years before we married. Her memorable statement was, “You told me that the Auvergne would be beautiful, but I didn’t think that it would be this beautiful.”
On that first visit to the chapel, I noticed a sign that advertised an annual procession at Estours on Sunday, the 8th of September, which is the traditional day on which Catholics celebrate the birth of Mary. Although, by that date, the three of us had moved on by several kilometres in our tour, I was very keen to drive back to Estours for the procession. Ratnadeva was enjoying his walk along the Compostela way and left the two of us to go back.
The feast day consisted of two parts. In the morning, the procession down the steep hill of the gorge to the chapel was centred upon a group of local men dressed as Pénitents. They wore white cloaks and hoods which unfortunately remind you of the Ku Klux Clan, but the practice goes back many centuries further than that unpleasant organisation and has no ideological connection to it. They carried the Madonna of Estours down on a bier while hymns were sung. I learnt that this Madonna is a copy of the valuable medieval one which is kept in a secure cage for public viewing in the church at Monistrol d’Allier. This statue was the subject of a legend in which it was lost but recovered by cows mooing as they passed the place where it was hidden.
The morning’s events ended with a Mass in the area outside the chapel. In the afternoon, Liz and I stayed for a while at the site and met an English-speaking Frenchman named Patrice who was studying for the priesthood. For the evening procession, the bier and statue were carried down by ordinary men without the Pénitent attire. Patrice pushed me forward as a volunteer to take my place among the six (or eight?) doing the carrying. It is difficult to describe how wonderful an experience that was for me. It was as if a trainspotter had been asked if he would like to ride aboard the steam engine of the Orient Express, or a birdwatcher had suddenly come across a rare species in the wild. The place and the occasion were quite magical. Estours was now inscribed in large letters into my life story of Marian devotion.
b. La Terrasse
Rewind to that day when we first saw the chapel at Estours. When Liz and I returned from Estours, we collected Ratnadeva from where he had reached after his day’s walk and returned to Saugues which, like Estours, lies on the River Seuge but upstream and no longer in the gorge. The discussion began as to where we would eat that evening. We had managed to get hot drinks that afternoon at a hotel called La Terrasse, drinking them on the terrace of the name. Someone suggested that we eat there, but I was sceptical, as it seemed quite respectable; Ratnadeva and Liz looked bedraggled after their rain-drenched walk hopping across wire fences. I said that we should eat in the rough and ready café over the road from the hotel. It was a typical holiday discussion; I was overruled by the two of them, as they fancied the hotel restaurant and didn’t feel unduly embarrassed by their state. Odd, as it’s usually me who has the laid-back view of dress sense! I was soon very happy to be proved utterly wrong. The hotel restaurant staff were welcoming; it was a weekday and not too busy.
La Terrasse was not pricey, just a standard restaurant situated in a small hotel in a small town. But it is listed in the Michelin Guide and, most importantly, it is French. The French take it for granted that a restaurant will serve excellent food. It is amazing that I made it to forty-nine without tasting food like that. I had never been very well-off; when I had eaten abroad, I chose cheap places. La Terrasse awoke taste buds that I didn’t know I had. The meal was so well designed and paced, beginning with a nice off the menu mise en bouche where you got a pleasant surprise. Then the hors d’oeuvres and the main course, followed by a cheese course before the dessert. The cheese trolley held over forty different types of cheese, each with their own flag telling you what they were. You chose three from which pieces were cut for you by the waiter. The Auvergne is a specialist region for cheese, the most famous being Cantal and Saint-Nectaire.
However, the pièce de résistance was the wine. We looked at the wine list and couldn’t decide what we wanted, but we knew we wanted white. So we went mad, as one sometimes does on holiday, and ordered the most expensive at thirty euros a bottle, an Auvergne wine known as La Légendaire, a Chardonnay grape with a strong, oaky flavour. It was sensational, and the food brought out its flavours perfectly. Wine would never again be something I drank without a meal. I walked into La Terrasse a typical English tourist with a total ignorance of good food and came out a gourmet!
When I got back to England, I bought a book of French recipes, and surprised one or two people with my new prowess. I always did a small mise en bouche before the hors d’oeuvres and the cheese had to come before the dessert, as the latter is a palate cleanser. Why do English people think that, after a big dinner, sticky toffee pudding and custard followed by cheese and biscuits is a good idea? I write with the zeal of a convert. To try and recreate La Terrasse, I sought out oaky Chardonnays which costed a few pounds above the average. I couldn’t get La Légendaire in the U.K. but there was one rather like it from Meursault in Burgundy which, at that time, came at £15 a bottle, worth it for a special occasion.
Fortunately, there are more and more restaurants in Britain which serve several but small and very tasty dishes. I sometimes go for two starters as often that is the part of the menu where the tastiest dishes are, and that leaves plenty of room for dessert.
The next year, 2003, Ratnadeva, Liz, and I went back to Saugues and this time stayed at La Terrasse for several days. I have also been back twice to stay for a few days with Natalie, who loves it as much as I do. In addition to the wonderful evening meals, breakfast is a plentiful buffet where you can eat pretty well anything you like. My sister-in-law Trish has also eaten an evening meal there and agrees that it is the best restaurant in the world!
The owner, Denis, was a charming host and very hands-on, often acting as waiter. His English was far better than my French, and so he nagged me to improve it. He was quite right, too; after all, I visited his country several times over a few years and could not have expected people to speak English to me. Sadly, I am not much of a linguist, although I do better if I am reading rather than speaking. Denis had the annoying habit that some French waiters do of replying in English when you tried to speak French, but replying in French when you spoke English!
Denis spoke about selling up, and I understand that he has now done so. It was a tough working schedule; he shut the hotel from November to February, but he had to be at work for the rest of the year and therefore throughout the Summer. Being on the pilgrim route meant that the restaurant and hotel hosted walkers and tourists as well as local people eating out. However, although Denis has gone, the website suggests that La Terrasse continues to serve excellent food and provide overnight accommodation. Saugues is a little out of the way for anyone other than St Jacques walkers, but if you’re ever there, make sure you try it out whatever state your clothing might be in! I really hope that it's still there when you turn up.
Comments