The new monthly parish magazine just arrived. Now that the Church of England is in decline, each vicar has to take charge of more and more villages. Around here in the remote countryside we are arranged in groups of five. One man has to rush around taking services in five different churches; not all five on each Sunday but at 'special' times of year like this one - Harvest Festival - they have to be fitted in pretty close together. This means that the whole idea of a little community arranged around its church is very much watered down.

Lonely places like this don't attract the thrusting front runners of the priesthood anyway. We are between vicars at the moment, with no sign of any candidates. There is a brisk turnover as only the old or/and strange are unambitious enough to take the job. It is unusual too that this is very much a Roman Catholic stronghold with the majority of the upper-middle classes, usually in charge of all the church charity work, flowers etc., all ignoring the village churches and going off to Catholic services in the local towns.

We have lived here for ten years and seen three vicars with huge gaps of no vicar in between.
The first parish magazine we ever saw had a long letter at the front from the current minister thanking everyone for their kindness in keeping things going while he was in the drying-out clinic and sending apologies to anyone that he might have offended as he had no memory of the past few months. We thought that it was a weird joke but soon came to realise it was not unusual. He returned with a scarlet face and rather overfamiliar manner and finally had to 'retire' after being banned from all the local pubs, (mainly for consistently leaving his dog behind at closing time), and having a very public affair with the young daughter of the neighbouring parish priest.

The next vicar was a woman. This was quite soon after women priests had finally been allowed after years of vicious debate and they were generally pretty unpopular. Unfortunately, this one had been ordained very late in life after a nasty divorce and we were her first posting. It was revealed, when all five parish councils had a secret meeting to discuss how much they hated her, that she had been the only candidate after more than a year and it was her, or a merger with another five villages. She had quickly developed a 'hurty back' which meant that she slowly retreated from more and more of her duties until she spent most of her time 'resting'. She occasionally emerged to boss important things like changing the pew cushion covers. Finally the nicest and most persuasive man in the parish set off to sneak to the Bishop and she was forced to accept a face-saving move to do light clerical work (due to her back) on the other side of the county.

The last story is of bizarre tragedy. Finally, a totally normal, youngish, pleasant, hardworking vicar with a charming wife was appointed. No one could believe their luck. They spent weeks in advance of the move coming down and getting to know people and were universally popular. Just before they were due to arrive, the wife collapsed and died. The vicar decided to carry on anyway and was brave and wonderful and everyone was delighted when, after a year, he became engaged to his wife's best friend and clone. A few months later he was diagnosed with cancer, totally out of the blue, and died within a few weeks,on what would have been their wedding day. One of his friends is a radio producer and, as a tribute, he is writing him into Britain's longest-running radio soap 'The Archers. A Story of Country Folk', (going for 40 years), as the new vicar and the story will be his story. There is no way I will be listening to anything as sad as that.

Anyway - this magazine has nothing so riveting. It sounds patronising, and probably is, but you could have read this in 1950 and not noticed the difference. Once a month they play Bingo in the Village Hall for prizes of fresh meat. Highlights of the social section are a talk on weaving, (with slides), and an invitation to join the church bell ringing group. I suppose village life has always been this odd mixture of pottering dullness and weird drama. Last month's magazine had an open letter to the parish from 'Sandra', saying that she knew that there was a whispering campaign against her but she had not been out with her lover when her husband doused everything with petrol and burnt himself and their cottage to a crisp.
- posted by Iris @ 10/04/2003 08:05:00 PM comment