Angels' delight

A DILEMMA arises; a temptation, anyway. On the side of the angels, as always, how does the "church" column embrace Bamforth's seaside postcards - most familiarly termed "saucy" - or for that matter The Beatles, who've sometimes been called worse.

The Angels are at All Saints church in Staveley, near Knaresborough, an exhibition so vivid and so popular - "Like walking into a Christmas card," said the lady of this house - that it has been extended until August 31.

Both Bamforth's and Beatles are embraced by Ian Wallace, a brightly colourful entrepreneur and self-professed "bit of an eccentric" who attends All Saints services about three times a year, but goes to his village church all the time.

"It's an unbelievable church, a total, total chill-out experience," he says, resplendent in candy rock-striped jacket. "It's wholly different to all the things that can go on round you all day. You can just come here and sit."

Though Ian's reluctant to talk too much about things earthly at an exhibition of angels, it's impossible not to like his sauce - and we shall have another dollop very shortly.

Meanwhile, there's a songs of praise service, 6.30pm, the hymns including God Moves in a Mysterious Way. Happily, it is so.

STAVELEY'S a conservation village not far from the A1, the lovely parish church the third on the site since 1351.

The east window, created in 1874 by the Belgian stained glass artist Jeane-Baptiste Capronnier at a cost of £1,650 19s 2d, is bulging dangerously. Estimates to rectify the problem rise to £12,000.

"The first reaction was to cry," says the Rev Christopher Wray, rector of Staveley and of four other rural parishes.

Tears dried, they looked skyward. Someone knew Celia Kilner - Holmfirth based, as Bamforth's postcards long were - an artist who has painted 59 "life-size" angels from classical originals. She loaned them free, the exhibition opened on June 14 by the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds.

They are angels from the realms of glory, mostly, maybe one or two from nether regions. There are angels on trumpet, angels on violin, even an angel on kettledrums.

The exhibition has been much admired - "Wonderful, I look forward to heaven," someone wrote in the visitors' book - and has won Staveley a place in

the Windsor Castle final of an Ecclesiastical Insurance competition to find the Church's most innovative fundraising idea.

The Royal Oak, conveniently next door, is selling Angel ale, specially made by the Rudgate Brewery near York, with 25p from each pint going to the fund. Many sponsorships are in memory of family and friends - "real angels", almost inevitably.

Though they're reluctant to talk figures - "We don't want to appear boastful," says David Dawson, an organising committee member - it's believed that the target has already been reached.

David began working life as a £2 18s 11d a week reporter on the Whitley Bay Guardian (and Seaside Chronicle), became public relations officer at 24 for the still-fledgling Tyne Tees Television and later of Rank Films. Staveley's where they'll stay. "It's a village," he says, "with life."

THERE'D been a sun-blessed garden party the day previously, music by the Tenderloin Rag Time Band, Mr Wray announces that it raised £1,920. Last Sunday, Sea Sunday, it poured down.

The service starts, as well it might, with Angel Voices Ever Singing, includes both Those in Peril and O God Our Help in Ages Past, and the dedication of a seat in memory of the rector's wife, who died last year.

Beneath the umbrellas, Mr Wray prays that it may be "set aside from all common and unhallowed purposes".

The theme is gardens and nature. Someone reads Kipling, The Glory of the Garden, someone else the familiar lines about being nearer God's heart in the garden than anywhere else on Earth.

A third lady recites Old Custard, about a redundant garden gnome left to moulder behind the rhubarb patch.

I know I'm not very pretty and stately

But have THEY looked in the mirror lately....

It ends with Jesus Shall Reign, a phonetician's dream just now, and with English Country Garden on the organ. It's still raining outside; good for the roses, anyway.

IAN Wallace was born in 'uddersfield, as he and other Yorkshiremen like to say, and has an office in - well - 'unslet. Long a collector of Fab Four memorabilia, he owns The Beatles shop in Liverpool and six years ago bought Bamforth's - or what the papers called its intellectual rights, though the term may be almost an oxymoron - after the Scarborough-based owners went into receivership.

Bamforth's had begun by making magic lantern slides, later producing picture postcards and, from 1918, almost exclusively the saucy sort with pneumatic ladies.

In 1963 they sold 16 million, by 1994 the figure had dropped to two million. The favourite's said to have been the one where the busty policewoman warns the red-nosed drunk that anything he says may be taken down and used in evidence. Genteel readers can doubtless work out the punchline for themselves.

"It's the humour of Carry-on films and Benny Hill, they're just plain daft," Ian told The Northern Echo at the time, adding that he planned to market the concept far beyond the traditional twopenny ha'penny postcard.

"The result will be an audacious assault on the post-modern iconic market," said The Independent less penetrably.

By 8pm, we're all in the Royal Oak, raising a glass of Rudgate's. Like the whole evening, Angel delight.

To reach Staveley, leave the A1 at junction 48, the village about three miles south-west. The "Angels" exhibition is open daily, 10am-6pm, until August 31.