Bolton

Bolton

I don’t believe anything I have ever done has been straightforward. My time in Hatfield had been rewarding. I had learned that I had none of the skills, competencies or the aptitude to be a teacher. I had enjoyed working in the Borstal and indeed out-with the Borstal with the young lads who were allowed out to undertake community service. But I had no wish to be a prison chaplain, although I changed my mind about that later. I had enjoyed visiting RAF Lindholme but again, had no wish to be a services chaplain.

Talking to Ted and to Bill I came to the conclusion that I needed to become better qualified and so I began to explore the possibility of returning to University to study for a degree. I applied, and was offered a place at Manchester. That was the easy part.

I applied for a grant but my application was refused because, even though the University would not accept my three years at Salisbury as a degree equivalent, the funding authority rejection letter stated that I was repeating a degree level course in the same subject.

I had found a part-time curacy offering a flat, expenses and a small stipend but without the grant I could not accept the offer. I then wrote to the Bishop of Manchester, Patrick Rogers and explained my predicament. His response was to write back with the offer of a job in Bolton. I accepted and we moved across the M62 to Lancashire.

Two of our daughters were born in Bolton at Townley’s Hospital, Sophie on the 23rd May 1972 and Charlotte on the 19th March 1974, two Lancashire lasses as my Mother would say and indeed, sing and play.

The job was a cross between a second curacy and a Team Vicar. I was paid accordingly, almost £900 a year, but during the four years we were in Bolton my pay remained the same, whilst its value was eroded by inflation.

My job was to prepare the congregation of St Georges Church in the town centre for closure and amalgamation with St Peter’s the Parish Church. I guess my colleague appointed to Holy Trinity, Ian Corbett didn’t quite understand the job description so he tried to build Holy Trinity up, whilst I actively worked towards closure. By comparison I was a disappointment to the congregation of St Georges whilst Ian was successful and popular at Holy Trinity.

One evening, at a social at the Vicarage, a house newly built in the graveyard of the Parish Church, the Vicar Harold Fielding, by then Archdeacon of Bolton, told a wonderful story of returning home, with visitors, from a local restaurant and his wife throwing open the French Windows to the sight of a couple having sex on the lawn. She screamed, the couple fled, Harold arrived breathless in response to the scream and she described what she had seen.

‘She was a slut’, she declared, ‘but he was a gentleman’. Harold frowned, ‘how could you know this?’, ‘Well’, his wife replied, ‘His clothes were neatly folded, but hers were scattered everywhere!

In Bolton I started or became involved with five projects, a counselling service called Concern, a day centre called Work Piece, an open and topical discussion group for young people called Mouth Piece, a hostel called Nightcap and an anonymous squatting project.

This last project resulted in a letter from the Local Authority to the Bishop complaining about my activities, officially I was reprimanded but unofficially encouraged to carry on with the good work!

All this was in response to a concern that unemployment and homelessness amongst young people was increasing dramatically.

But there were other activities. My typical working day was from seven a.m. until two or three a.m. the following morning. I firmly believed that if I worked tirelessly and for the good of people, albeit at the expense of my family; that my efforts would be recognised and my ambitions rewarded. I was too young and naïve to realise that the Church simply doesn’t work like that. The church is predicated on the concept of patronage and without a patron preferment is almost impossible.

But I gave my time and energy selflessly even though Janet with three young children under three years of age saw my selflessness as selfishness. I recall on one occasion when after much hinting on her part I took a day off.

We set off to travel to Grange over Sands for a day at the sea-side with the children.

Almost as soon as we left Bolton the arguing started and we literally screamed at each other as we drove North. The children cowered in the back of the car. Looking back I am ashamed of my behaviour, but at the time I simply thought that it was my job, as Harold Wilson had described ministry in his valedictory address to the class of sixty nine, to ‘burn myself out in the service of the Lord’.

In Bolton I made a pretty good job of it.

Apart from being neglected for the three years we were in Bolton, for most of which she was pregnant, Janet offered Bed and Breakfast to overnight guests.

I would frequently offer a bed to a homeless youngster, some of whom were drug addicts. On one occasion she found our youngest rifling through a bag in the spare bedroom left behind by an overnight guest. It contained ‘smarties’ as our daughter cried with glee, there were many colours, indicating  uppers and downers, Dexedrine  and   Benzedrine to Valium and Nembutal.

What good came from any of this?

At the end before I left I was offered a job by Elizabeth (later Dame Elizabeth) Hoodless of CSV. I discussed this with my Vicar Harold Fielding the Archdeacon, his advice was take the job with CSV because you will never be understood or appreciated or offered preferment in the Church, you are too radical and creative.

This advice was later made public in his sermon when I was licensed as Vicar of St John the Baptist, Little Hulton. ‘Your new vicar’ he said, ‘is a radical in the truest sense of that word, he will get to the roots of the matter and begin rebuilding from there’. Later when I left Little Hulton for Newcastle the bishop rather confirmed the Archdeacons advice when he said, you would never have got a job like that in this Diocese.

Bolton was hard work for both Janet and I. The town is set in a bowl surrounded by hills and there is often even in summer a layer of low lying damp cloud in the bottom of the bowl. There were sunny days but they were few and far between and the grey skies were overpoweringly depressing. The house in which we lived in was a large Lancashire semi-detached and our neighbours, a lovely African Caribbean family were friendly and especially kind when Janet was in hospital having first Sophie and then Charlotte. Their offer of help allowed me to visit the hospital and then my mother would come from her job in Manchester to take over baby-sitting duties whilst I continued to work. My mother was uncomfortable with people of colour, something that Mrs Green noticed and commented on and with which I could only agree.

The work in Bolton had been defined originally as working with the Council of Churches in the town centre, but despite the Vicar’s offer of my time as an ecumenical officer paid for by the Diocese the ecumenical committee were nervous of an Anglican take-over so I began to concentrate instead on working with young people.

I started by hanging out in the shopping centre in the town centre and on one occasion after some weeks of sitting around, being noticed, scrutinised and largely avoided, I saw a group of lads being accosted by one of the security guards, I intervened to say that the boys were not doing anything wrong their behaviour was perfectly acceptable and questioning why the officer had intervened so aggressively. My reward was to be thrown out of the centre with the young people.

From this opportunity I was able to invite a group to the old St George’s school where, together with a local councillor, Peter Swain and a college lecturer, Bill Mckinnie, we started a youth training and employment scheme that we named Work-Piece.

Like all such initiatives the project suffered from a lack of funding, lack of adequate support and a lack of full-time professional staff. On one occasion I was awakened at three or four in the morning having only just returned home and joined Janet in bed, by the telephone. It was the police saying that they had found a group on the premises who said that they had my permission to be there. I agreed that this was the case and went back to sleep only to wake up a few moments later to wonder what had been happening? Had drugs been involved? Would my giving permission make me responsible?

From this uncertain and decidedly shaky venture I went on to acquire a lease on the old Deaf Mission building and open a hostel for homeless young people which I named Nightcap.

I took as my text lines form a Bob Dylan song The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest:

What is this house said Frankie Lee, where we have come to roam     It’s not a house said Judas Priest, it’s not a house, it’s a home

Nightcap provided accommodation for twenty young people who were, for one reason or another homeless, some were supported by social services and we had the tacit support of the Director of Social Services for the venture, but the local council were not supportive and there was opposition. Again a lack of money and professional staff was a handicap, the manager was a volunteer and the ‘staff’ were community service volunteers. At least one volunteer, Stuart Weiss, a young American, has remained a friend and some years after I last saw him disappearing down the departures track at Manchester Airport he was waiting with his family to welcome us at Logan Airport when we arrived for our sabbatical at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I can only reflect that when Night cap was handed over to the South East Lancashire Probation Service the building was burned down by the residents, fortunately without loss of life or injury.

So maybe the volunteers brought different skills than the professional’s skills which were valued more highly by the young residents.

Things Draw to an End

Biddenham

If Hatfield was the beginning of the journey Biddenham proved to be an amenable and satisfying place for the journey to end.

After Newcastle I was continually disapppointed by the Church. Even before I applied for the job in Cumbria I had been interviewed by Canon Ian Hardaker, the Archbishop’s Appointments adviser and he had warned me that my reputation was such that I was unlikely to be considered for a senior job in the Church.

Apparently I was a ‘good starter, but a poor finisher’. Whilst I agree that my boredom thresh hold is fairly low I would not agree with that assessment. Certainly I started things, projects, initiatives, courses, jobs but I always handed them on to people more interested in maintenance than innovation.

But apparently both the reputation and the instincts went against me in being considered, for example for the position of a Team Rector. When I pointed out that the Home Office had appointed me as a Team Leader and that I was making not too bad a job of it. I was told yes but after two years you are looking for a new job. Again I had to point out that I had a three year contract, four children, three at University, a mortgage and that I needed to plan for when the job ended.

So the Church had clearly made a decision. I was not to be one of the chosen ones. I recall meeting a Vicar from Newcastle on the train North. Michael was ambitious, he had clearly set his sights on preferment and was working hard at fast tracking himself. He came along the carriage and I greeted him, ‘Michael, you’re heading in the wrong direction, First Class is that way’. I think that whilst pretending to be angry at my remark he was secretly quite pleased that I had recognised his potential.

Eventually, as I have described, Cumbria came and we moved on and then the curious circumstances surrounding the move which followed, to Bradford, and all that meant for our health and what is now called well-being.

So it seems that I fulfilled Ian Hardaker’s view of me that I was a good starter and a poor finisher, by leaving Bradford and the Millennium Project to others to complete some of the responsibility for what followed was laid at my door.

But vocation is a complex matter, some are called but few are chosen, here I am send me. The decision to leave Bradford arose during another meeting with the Millennium Commission in London. I had been called down on some pretext or other and had decided to take advantage of the meeting to visit my daughter Charlotte and Son in Law Scott at their home in Croydon.

Travelling into London the next morning I picked up a copy of The Guardian lying on the seat of the train. It was open at the jobs section and I looked inside and the first thing I saw was an advert for the post of Director of the charity Toc H. The advert stated ‘Help us build an organisation to break down barriers’. The potential of this post appealed to me enormously and immediately there and then on the train I rang the telephone number.

Following an interview in Leeds with the head hunters who were acting for the charity and a formal interview in Wendover I was offered and accepted the job.

For the first two years we lived in Liversedge on the edge of Bradford and I travelled extensively to begin to get grips with this large unwieldy organisation which was haemorrhaging money and people.

I will come to my time in Toc H later, for now I want to focus on another aspect of my time as the Curate, non-stipendiary and House for Duty, of the Parishes of All Saints, Kempston and St James, Biddenham near Bedford.

After two years I began to realise that the Toc H job’s centre of gravity was the South East and I was being required to spend more and more time travelling, either using Travel Lodge Hotel’s or more often sleeping on the office floor.

When I saw the post advertised I didn’t immediately apply but after a short holiday, I re-visited the advert in the Church Times. Eventually I contacted the Vicar Richard Sutton and he invited us down for a visit. On the drive South Janet aired her misgivings, most of which I agreed with. Eventually we arrived at the Biddenham turn off and drove slowly into the village, turning into Church End we drove into the historic part of the village, past the vicarage, a lovely roomy, airy, sixties house which proved to be a great venue for parties and parked outside the Church.

As we got out of the car and started to walk down the Church path lined as it is with the Cedars of Lebanon, Janet turned to me and said, ‘You know, it might just work’.

And it did.

I can say with absolute confidence that the happiest and most rewarding years of my ministry were the five years in Biddenham where I was not the Vicar. I enjoyed leading worship, making pastoral visits, taking communion to the elderly and house bound, conducting weddings and Baptisms. I had regular and positive feedback to my sermons from a highly intelligent and critical in the most positive sense of that word, congregation and I enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship with Richard and in due course his successor, Stephen.

I enjoyed village life and was able to use my time creatively to spend quality time with family, either in Biddenham or on the back of my travels with Toc H. I organised a pilgrimage to Poperinghe where Toc H was founded in the dark days of World War I and Biddenham became a place of quiet retreat and friendship.

Janet had her own car and a mobility scooter and was able to get around on the days she spent at home, able to enjoy the walks around the village using her scooter, she also enjoyed the garden and the large comfortable house.

What made Biddenham so special?

First, I think it was not being the Vicar. At interview Richard had asked me how someone as important as I had been, would cope with life in a quiet backwater. My answer was that my experience suggested that in the Church of England if you are the Vicar then you are the Vicar. If you are not the Vicar then you are not the Vicar, and I would not be the vicar.

In fact when I was in hospital following an accident at home I later wrote in the Biddenham Bulletin how much I valued having a Vicar rather than being a Vicar.

The second reason was, I’m sure having a significantly higher disposable income than a Vicar. With free housing, no Council tax and a reasonable salary there was for the first time more money than we had ever been used to. That brought with it, until we bought our retirement house a sense of freedom and the opportunity to relax and not worry about money.

The third reason was having no sense of responsibility to the Diocese or the Deanery or the hierarchy. They had no responsibility for me, as later became clear. And I had no duty towards them. I was unpaid, I claimed no expenses and as far as was possible I tithed my income after tax.

The fourth reason, which was probably the most important was that I had arrived at a theological position which stated that Jesus requires of us that we honour God, Love our neighbour, break bread and spill wine in memory of Him. This is all that is required of us and the means by which we bring Him into our lives.

This was a theological position that made the burden of ministry so much lighter than it had ever been.

There was also stuff to have fun with.

I arrived in Biddenham with one motorcycle, I acquired two other motorcycles which I enjoyed for three years and then on my sixtieth Birthday I sold all three and bought myself a brand new Harley Davidson which I rode back from Silverstone Harley with a big smile on my face.

We also bought our second MG Roadster a lovely black model which gave us enormous pleasure until eventually we left Biddenham for Cumbria and retirement.