At Your Service
Marian faithful
A blizzard didn't stop church folk in Newton Aycliffe taking part in a rosary procession. The column tagged along
IT'S Newton Aycliffe's 24th annual
procession in honour of Our Lady
of Walsingham, the second time
the column's tagged along and
probably the first that they've been
snowed upon from a great height.
It's also the first time that today's lamentably
litigious society has compelled
the formality of road closures, form filling
and a cheque for getting on £250 in
order that a small group of church folk
may walk a Sunday mile.
The greater danger to health and safety,
in truth, may be in venturing out at
all instead of stopping in, toasting, by
the fire.
One of the attendant councillors,
who'd best remain nameless, recalls that
a few weeks earlier the BNP had had a
bit of a stroll through Chilton. "I bet it
didn't cost them £250," he says.
Walsingham is a village in Norfolk and
must on no account - as the earlier column
observed in 1996 - be confused with
Wolsingham, which is in County
Durham. That they are confused is perhaps
inevitable.
The late and much missed vicar of Escomb
and Witton Park graphically recalled
hordes of American tourists
bounding from their Wallace Arnold
coaches in Weardale, demanding to be
directed towards the shrine.
The Earl Spencer's daughter, of
course, recently made a similar mistake
in heading for Chelsea FC and pitching
up in North Yorkshire.
Sometimes sub-titled England's
Nazareth, Walsingham is said to attract
250,000 pilgrims a year - and almost as
many souvenir sellers - since the Virgin
Mary appeared in 1061 to Richeldis de
Faverches, the lady of the manor.
The churches being what they are -
the churches, for heaven's sake, can't
even agree on the way to pronounce
"Amen" - there are now both Anglican
and Roman Catholic shrines, Anglican
and Roman Catholic prayers and Anglican
and Roman Catholic Walsingham
associations.
In Newton Aycliffe, though the procession
is firmly left foot forward, the occasion
is ecumenical and the emphasis
on unity.
As usual, proceedings begin in the
chapel of St Joseph's RC school, with its
attractive apse. The column's among the
first there, joined early doors by the mayors
of Sedgefield and of Newton Aycliffe
who, humbly, sit several pews back.
Clearly having been reading the parable
of the wedding feast, an organiser invites
them to go higher. "Is that the
walk?" asks one of them.
Father Michael Campion, recently arrived
in Newton Aycliffe after a spell as
dean of Newcastle's RC cathedral and a
long time out with a bad back - "When
you've got a bad back, you've got a bad
back," he says - leads a 15 minute devotion
before the procession moves off in
a blizzard towards St Clare's Anglican
church in the town centre.
In 1996, the crocodile had snaked -
may a crocodile snake? - for around 150
yards. It was Carlin Sunday, the sky as
heavy as a stone of grey peas.
This time the procession's much
shorter, female police community support
officers huddled against the elements
at each road end. Most seem surprisingly
diminutive and look like
they've drawn the short straw.
Someone's carrying a rucksack. In the
apparent absence of a St Bernard, it may
well contain a half-bottle of brandy.
The procession is led from the front by
four people carrying a statue of the Virgin
and from the rear by a chap with a
megaphone, suggesting new meaning to
the phrase Hail Mary.
The megaphone, happily, is working
perfectly. Its earlier wailings had greatly
resembled an elephant in the final
stages of a particularly difficult labour.
We're followed by a police van and by
a coach which has brought folk from
Tyneside.
AT St Clare's, the statue is censed
and the boosted congregation
sprinkled with water from Walsingham.
Michael Gobbett, vicar of what
now is called Upper Skerne - Sedgefield
way - looks at the snow and suggests it
may be the first that anyone's wanted
the sermon to go on quite a long time.
He'd wondered if the procession might
have been cancelled. "You're obviously
more intrepid than that," he says.
Blakes, the pub across the road, has a
black-clad bouncer even on a Sunday afternoon.
The Sabbath bachelors stand
outside, tab in hand, watching with
some incredulity as the procession again
emerges. Clearly they are not the Marian
kind.
The hymn to Our Lady of Walsingham
has 23 verses and gets us as far as Tesco.
Outside that great concrete carbuncle of
a town centre, a leer of loafing lads -
baseball caps, outgrown bicycles - is
being seriously skittish. One of their
number urges them to show a bit of respect,
if not quite reverence. Maybe he's
been reading about Barabbas.
The procession ends at St Mary's
Roman Catholic church, where there are
more devotions and, afterwards, a welcome
tea in the school next door.
There are more prayers for unity, a
hymn exhorting Mary's return:
Lady of Walsingham,
Lady of England
Listen to a pilgrim's prayer
Come back O Mary,
come back to England
Back to your dowry,
this island so fair.
Joan Thorns, who promoted the first
procession a quarter of a century ago -
"These days I just push buttons and it
goes" - had the idea after visiting Walsingham
itself and admiring how much
the churches did together.
"People thought I was crazy to try it in
Newton Aycliffe and maybe I am. It's not
about what separates us, it's about what
brings us together," she says.
Already she's thinking of the 25th procession.
Whatever the long range forecast,
it's still heading in the right
direction.
10:53am Saturday 12th April 2008
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CommentPosted by: Fred Jones, London & Leicester on 2:28pm Sat 12 Apr 08
Instead of taking a spiteful swipe at the BNP you should realise that the BNP is the only political party which acknowledges the origins of political correctness and would do something about red tape and H&S over regulation
Instead of taking a spiteful swipe at the BNP you should realise that the BNP is the only political party which acknowledges the origins of political correctness and would do something about red tape and H&S over regulation
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