As is her wont my wife likes to book holiday cottages, and so a few weeks ago we arrived in Pembrokeshire. It is also her wont to believe that I am getting older and so require a break whilst driving and so she books B&Bs as relief stops during the journey. This year we stopped off near Aberystwyth when, during a visit to the town, we gazed out over the Irish Sea and then sat in a wooden shed on wheels whilst being winched 778 feet up a hill. At the pinnacle we wandered around to take in the views and a cup of coffee and bun prior to descending to sea level.
The sun shone for most of the day although, as is usually often case with West Wales, one could not escape the suspicion that grey clouds were forming over Dublin which would soon pop up over the western horizon.
To cheer our spirits and banish morose thoughts about the weather, we sat down in a Greek restaurant and reminded ourselves of the glorious certainty of sunshine during holidays in the Aegean. Our waiter introduced himself as ‘Dimitri’ and we quickly imagined him to be an olive grower from Delphi on the lower slopes of Mount Parnassus but; as with so much else in life, things were not what they seemed. As the evening wore on it turned out that he was really a retired Welsh slate miner from Tregarth under the shadow of the Carneddau Mountains.
The day after our arrival at the cottage near Narberth coincided with the Iron Man of Wales contest. This involves a lot of swimming, running and cycling and, as the road near our cottage was on the route of the race we were not allowed out of our lane until after 6pm. This meant that we spent the day reading C.J Sansom novels about Tudor times and looking at maps of the area.
Pembrokeshire has a number of interesting small towns, and luckily the sky was clear during daylight hours and so we were able to visit, Tenby, Carew Castle, Havorffordwest, St David’s, Saundersfoot, and Fishguard. We also dropped in at Milford Haven but decided it was a place to go through and not to. We did find a couple of nice restaurants and so will probably go back another year. This will certainly include a visit to St David’s ruined Abbey and the ‘intact’ Cathedral.
I expect a number of readers will have been to a daily sung Evensong in a Cathedral? We find that sitting in an ancient place whilst listening to the musical cadences of the forty minute service of readings sung and chanted by the choir to be movingly unique. Personally, I find it impossible not to think about all those people, now gone, who have shared that same experience. No wonder many who go to church or chapel take great strength from what is termed the “Communion of Saints”.
We do not sit in the Nave but always in the choir, usually in the stalls immediately behind the singers. This means we are able to hear each part of the music as it undulates in pitch and volume. To be in the midst of such sounds opens up the mind and seems to take it beyond the hustle and bustle and, frankly, the triviality of much of life today. The final hymn which is sung by both choir and congregation is, for me, an opportunity to join my voice with the ‘Communion of Saints’. Some may think me silly, but I am also conscious that the air I use in singing is the same air used by them as they themselves chanted the psalms and sang many of the same words we use today.
It can be humbling to realise that the elements, such as air, vital for our life today are the very same ones crucial to the lives of the ‘Communion of Saints’. No wonder that the Old Testament contains those ideas which pre-date everything the Green Movement preaches today. We really are just the “Stewards (not the owners) of the earth and the fullness thereof.’
Realising that each of us will eventually become a member of the ‘Communion of Saints’, brings to mind a story in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. It concerns an unwary grandmother who, although not using her credit card for some time, had not cancelled it prior to her demise. She died in September 2016 just before the annual service charge was added, and so by December the debt including fees and interest totalled £60.
When her grandson rang the bank to give them the news he was told that, as the account was open at her death he, or the estate, was liable for the ever increasing charges and that, unless paid promptly, she would be reported to the Bank’s Fraud Department and the Credit Agencies. Despite sending a fax of the death certificate and repeatedly telling them she had died the Bank refused to acknowledge the fact.
Finally when they demanded that he tell them her latest address, in desperation he said, ‘Heaven’ Plot 2473, All Saints Cemetery, Newcastle NE2 1NL. Then he asked them to look again at the Death Certificate. Just then the spokeswoman closed the conversation by saying, “As our system isn’t set up for death I don’t know what more we can do to help you.”
Then … The phone line, like the grandmother, went dead.
View from the Pew 