29.2.08

                               Tendring Topics – on line

 

                                       Our Earthquake

 

Did you experience the 'earthquake', centred in Lincolnshire but felt, so it seems, through a very large area of eastern and south-eastern England during the night of 26^th February?  Its effects were pretty minimal in our area.  In Colchester, it is claimed that someone's bedside tv set moved and in Wix a pile of books is said to have fallen from a bedside table.  And that was about it – apart from a few dozen sleepy voices saying,  'It was a minor earthquake dear; nothing to worry about; now let's see if we can get back to sleep'.

           

Did I feel it?   As with so many things in my life nowadays, I'm not quite sure.  I did find myself unaccountably wide awake at one point during the night; so wide awake in fact that I knew I'd have to make myself a cup of tea and take a couple of aspirin tablets if I were to have any hope of going to sleep again.

           

For me, this is not exactly a unique experience but it isn't a particularly common one either.  As I waited for the kettle to boil I glanced at my watch and noted that it was ten past one.   It seems likely therefore, though by no means certain, that it had been the quake that woke me up.

           

A real earthquake can be a very different matter.  Grandson Chris, who teaches in earthquake-prone Taiwan, assures me that it is a terrifying experience – and one to which, however often you may experience it, you never become accustomed.  Earthquake drill is a feature of Taiwanese education, the children diving under their desks at the word of warning.

           

Real earthquakes rarely come closer to us than the Balkan peninsula in the east or the USA in the west.   However, it is worth remembering that the last recorded serious quake in Britain occurred right on the edge of the Tendring peninsula.  In 1884 – yes, a bit before even my time! – the Colchester area endured a twenty second tremor from an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, that inflicted serious damage on well over one thousand buildings.

           

We are not totally immune!

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                                  The Spoken Word

 

            I warmed to a letter published in the Clacton Gazette on 28^th February from a Jennifer Kersey of Frinton Road, Holland-on-Sea.  She doesn't say whether she is a Mrs or a Miss and the content of her letter suggests that she wouldn't really want to be referred to as Ms, so I am compelled, in plain Quaker fashion, to use simply Christian and surname

 

            Her letter complains about the prevalence of slovenly and sloppy speech quoting the often-overheard 'I ain't got no money' as an example, and the increasing use of Americanisms such as 'Mothers Day' instead of the English 'Mothering Sunday' and the practice of referring to and addressing groups of people as 'guys' (a word nowadays used for both men and women) instead of 'Ladies and Gentlemen', 'Boys and Girls' or, in Quaker circles at least, 'Friends'.

 

            I wholeheartedly agree with her – especially over the use of 'guys'.  This is a fairly recent innovation.  I well remember when I first heard a Blue Peter presenter urging a group of adolescent boys and girls to 'Come on you guys – have a go!'

 

            Have you watched the BBC tv series 'The Choir' about the young choir master who managed to fashion melodious choirs from the most unpromising human material?   In the first series – a year ago – he turned young people from a very ordinary North London Comprehensive School into an award winning choir, good enough to compete with the best choirs in the world in the Beijing choir Olympics! 

 

In the second series, recently transmitted, he performed the seemingly impossible task of producing a choir from a very macho boys comprehensive school in the Midlands, and training them to a level at which they could perform with choirs from all over Britain in the Royal Albert Hall.

 

            This was a much more difficult task because this was a school with a 'sporting' specialisation.  Rugby was the principal game played and there was not just indifference towards the idea of choral singing, but positive hostility.  'Boys don't sing' was the title of the series!  Not only did he win the boys over; he also managed to form a subsidiary adult choir from the staff, including the headmaster and the very tough rugger master!

 

I noticed that whenever he spoke to his chosen choir, whether it was to praise or admonish, and whether they were at their most amenable or their roughest and toughest, he always addressed them – not as 'guys' or even as 'boys' - but  as 'gentlemen'.

 

At first this seemed just plain incongruous but I believe that it was by such means as this that he managed in a few months to produce a male voice choir whose members behaved like 'gentlemen' and who, at the Royal Albert Hall, sang like a choir of angels.

 

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                           A Continental Sunday

           

In those now all-but-forgotten days 'before the war', newspaper articles were written and sermons preached about the vast difference between the British Sabbath and what was called the Continental Sunday.

           

On the Continent of Europe, we were told, people made their confession on Friday and then (presumably after a sinless Saturday) attended Mass early on Sunday morning.   They then had the temerity to enjoy themselves for the rest of the day.

 

In Britain, on the other hand, Sunday was a solemn all-day affair.  Shops, cinemas, theatres and other places of entertainment were closed.  Pub opening hours were severely restricted.  There were no football matches.  It was a day for long country walks or cycle rides, a good book and family board (but not card!) games.

 

 My parents were loyal Anglicans and regularly went to church on Sunday mornings and evenings.  They were by no means either fundamentalist or puritanical, but they did make it clear that there were some activities – noisy, violent or boisterous ones for example – that simply 'weren't done' on a Sunday.  I remember once, in all seriousness, asking my Mum what happened when 'Bonfire night' (5^th November) fell on a Sunday. 'It is held on the Saturday, of course', came the immediate reply.

           

In Britain now, of course, the Keep Sunday Special Brigade (of whom I was an ineffectual member!) has been totally defeated.  From many points of view, Sunday is no different from any other day.  Shop opening hours are restricted – for sales. However they may be open all day for 'browsing' – a loophole in the law of especial value to garden centres and furniture stores. Many pubs are open and full of customers throughout Sunday afternoons. Places of public entertainment are open and important football matches are played before cheering crowds.   Lorries and delivery vans thunder along our highways.  Religious broadcasting, which once occupied a high proportion of tv and radio Sunday time, now claims an ever-diminishing amount – and even that is resented by the ever more clamorous secularisation lobby.

           

It used to be claimed that one of the benefits of Sunday opening was that 'the whole family would be able to go along together to the garden centre or furniture store'.  And so they now can, except of course, those of its members who are among the growing army of people required to keep everything going on a Sunday!

 

And the Continental Sunday?   I had an unexpected opportunity to experience one on 24^th February.   To celebrate daughter-in-law Arlene's recent birthday and his own appointment to a job with the European Travel Agency in Brussels, much-travelled grandson Nick arranged to take Pete and Arlene, Zoe the dog (complete with newly issued dog-passport) and me across the Channel for a day in France.

 

            Driving off the ferry at Calais we headed south to Rheims where a warm, sunny day was forecast.  And so it proved to be.  We lunched at leisure at a pavement café (another 'first' for me), had a look round the town centre and visited the magnificent Cathedral.  I can't help thinking that even Richard Dawkins would have been moved by those soaring stone Gothic arches, the magnificent stained glass windows, and the quiet side chapels, lit only by the flames of the votive candles of the faithful.  Thinking of generation after generation of worshippers kneeling before those shrines gives new meaning to the creedal affirmation of belief  'in the communion of saints'.  I lit a candle and murmured a prayer in compensation for my absence that day from both church and Quaker meeting!

 

            There was no charge for entrance to the Cathedral, nor were we pressed for a financial contribution to the building's upkeep.  Many of the people walking round that day were non-Roman Catholic visitors like ourselves but I was struck by the reverential atmosphere that all helped to preserve.

           

Outside too, in the town, the only crowds were in the immediate vicinity of the town centre and the Cathedral.  There were plenty of busy cafes and restaurants there, but the only shops that we saw open were tobacconists and confectioners, offering in addition, picture postcards and souvenirs for tourists.  There were no noisy motor- cyclists, no 'boy racers' with car windows open and radios blaring 'rap' or 'rock', no all-pervading aroma of fried onions from burger bars or other 'fast food joints'.

 

Yes – the 'Continental Sunday' that we observed in Rheims brought back to me those well-remembered  'British Sabbaths' of 'before the war'!

 

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