I'm moving - are you?

Just a quick note to say that, thanks to a confusing period with Blogger changes, I'm relocating my archive and all new updates to another service.

If you'd like to continue receiving my poisonous pieces of puff then you can do so at http://vestryview.wordpress.com which also shows off a new template. Haven't decided if I like it yet so, if you're willing to share your thoughts I'd like to know them.

And if you have been..... thanks for reading.
Pip pip!

An awful accident – and its aftermath

Neil Pickford is provoked by terrible reality.

I’ve got to be honest: we’re normally darned lucky in the Minster. We’re big enough to have a decent-sized team of professionals to keep things ticking over plus a large pool of volunteers to undertake the million little tasks that keep the show on the road. We’re justly proud of the high standards we maintain, the range of things that we do and the way in which we try to nurture future generations through our youth programme.

We set out to do good stuff, we often succeed and things are, in many respects and for many reasons, a lot easier for us than most churches around Britain.

And then sometimes, despite all our good work, life sometimes comes along, scowls at our complacency, smacks us in the mouth – and then kicks us in the stomach as a bonus.

A shockwave ran through the Minster recently when we heard some terrible news. One of the members of our youth family, Alex Lenton, had been seriously injured in a car crash. I won’t go over the details or speculate about his chances of recovery, but I’ll say that it brought a lot of us face-to-face with terrible, brutal and unfair reality, slap in the middle of our smoothly-running lives.

I don’t care how the accident happened and, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to debate about why God ‘makes terrible things occur’ because I don’t think he does – I’m confident in my own mind that ‘We Have Free Will’ and ‘Bad Things Just Happen’. It’s what happens afterwards that helps define Christianity for me.

Immediately we heard the news a prayer station was set up to allow people who cared about Alex to come into the Minster and focus their thoughts and hopes for his eventual recovery. We also remembered everyone else involved in, and affected by, the crash.

Many people now find lighting a candle to be a good way of expressing a prayer and so one of our votive candle stands was set up in St Katherine’s Chapel, along with a large card for well-wishers to sign and a prayer book for people to write down their thoughts. Our various youth leaders were available to talk to anyone who was upset and needed guidance or just company. 

Since the accident there has been a stream of people, some who have not been in the Minster before, coming to keep an irregular vigil for Alex: the burned-out candles are being kept to show him how many people have been coming in to pray for him and the writings of well-wishers are being collated for him and his family to read when he’s able.

Now I happen to believe in the power of prayer (and I’m not going to trivialise this by quoting the survival of Bristol City in the Championship this season as an example of this - although them staying up was a bit of a miracle) but even if you don’t share my belief then there’s another clear benefit from the prayer vigil – it’s been good for those who were there.

Instead of the random and uncontrolled ‘grief’ we’ve seen everywhere since the death of The People’s Princess back in 1997 the friends, family and others have had a chance to sit down in a quiet and calm place. They can reflect on Alex and their own reactions without having to explain to people around them why they may – or may not – be crying and, if they want, leave a solid token or memento of their feelings which doesn’t droop overnight.

It’s a mature way, it’s a way that can have great therapeutic benefits for those who take part and, I believe, it will also provide a real benefit to Alex himself.

And that’s one of the reasons the church continues to survive after all these years.

What’s that bulge in my pockets?

Neil Pickford delves deeply

I was alone on a silent morning in a deserted Minster when I felt something long, cold and sharp press into my thigh and bite cruelly into my flesh.

My mind flashed – I knew that feeling. Drat, I thought, my keys have worn a hole in my pocket – again - and I glumly contemplated getting out a needle and cotton to stitch it up -again. And then a rather momentous thought struck me: why didn’t I do something to stop the problem happening in the future?

I suspect this liberating brainwave follows on from my little polemic t’other week when I was banging on about how things constantly evolve and nothing lasts forever. After composing what might have been read as a diatribe against people who cannot change I suspect my subconscious must have been nagging me and saying: “OK, Big Mouth. How large is the plank in your eye?”

(This quotation references one of Jesus’ morality tales that recommends people should look at their own faults before criticising others – a good idea that many of us, especially me, might follow. If you’re interested you can find it in Matthew 7:3-5. But I digress.)

As always in life, once I’d launched on a particular line of thinking it didn’t take me too long to veer off at a tangent but this had a positive outcome. Irritated by the awkward feeling as my keys started another slow and cringe-making slither down my left leg I decided to look with fresh eyes at the keys themselves, and see if changes could be introduced.

I pulled two huge collections of angular lumps out of my trousers and studied them carefully.  Hmmmm.

A few of them were, obviously, very necessary. There was the key that unlocks the small wicket gate in our Highgate door. As this is the main entrance for most of our visitors you’d be disappointed if I told you it was a simple Yale lock – so don’t be. It’s a venerable monster, some seven inches long, which turns a lock that has maintained our security for several hundred years or so.

Another giant is used to open the door at the start of the roof tours and newcomers are always impressed when I wave it around (stop sniggering at the back, please). Normally, however, we keep that in a box.

There is a cluster of four keys that are used in the vicar’s vestry: here is another group of four that I need for the parish hall complex and two more are required to get in to the Parish Office.

But what were the rest of them for? There was a little clutch that I can easily dump because they open doors in the shop – and I never open doors in the shop. No point in lugging them around each and every day, is there?  There are also seven for the money-boxes – but we’ve only got five of those and three of them share one key. Then there are another 11 that I can’t remember ever using since I started working at the Minster.

It’s ridiculous: I’ve been carrying these blinking things around, pointlessly, for more than five years now. So I’ve unclipped them and put them in a box until I can find if they belong to anything useful, or if the locks even exist anymore.

Then I weighed the box and I discovered that I had discarded exactly 14 pounds, which is a significant Imperial weight, if you remember those things.

And this would, if this was a major news story, possibly lead to the following otherwise incomprehensible headline: “Keys - Stone Cropped” (Try reading it quickly.)

Hahahahahahahaha – sorry

The virgers’ way to complete health

Neil Pickford talks up his keep-fit regime

I’m not going to labour the point this week, dear readers, so if I just say: “Chairs, staging, unstaging, stacking, chairs” then I’m sure that you can fill in the extra descriptive passages yourself.

However, that’s not the only physical thing I’ve been doing. We’re getting busier with roof tours and, as I pull my bloated body up the 113 steps, I hear the jocular phrase: “This must keep you fit,” many times.

And, in fact, I now have medical proof that it does indeed keep me fit.

Because I have a heart that only works at just over three-quarters efficiency (biology students may be able to work out what I’m saying here) I am occasionally summoned to a big building on a hill (Castle Hill, to be precise). There I have to perform faintly fatuous feats of physicality while various bits of me are monitored via numerous wires stuck on my wobbly torso.

These days the medical weapon of choice is a cycling machine and I’m glad to say that I quite enjoyed my latest experience: the monitor was showing interesting things such as my respiration rate rather than rubbish music videos on MTV. My heartbeat did leap at one point when a rather statuesque medic leaned over and inadvertently rested a bit of their anatomy on my hand but otherwise everything went according to plan. 

Then I waited many long, lonely weeks to find out if I was going to die. As I continued to be alive on a regular basis then I went back to work in the Minster, where I shifted chairs around, climbed lots of stairs and waited.

And, dear readers, it appears that this regime is actually a magnificent way of keeping fit because my blood pressure was ‘perfect’, my stamina was excellent (I equalled the efforts of a young medic who’d calibrated the machine earlier, without becoming breathless) and my lungs were working fine.

Granted I’m still fat, overweight by a factor of 33 per cent and ugly but that’s not really important – it’s the inner man (or person) that counts, or so we’re always being told. And, as what we virgers do in the Minster seems to be so good for the inner person, I started wondering about making a keep-fit video, in the same style as Jane Fonda or various modern bit-part actresses from Coronation Street. Obviously I’d be no good as the star - during this thinking process I had a sudden flashback to the 1960s and a nasty image of Ena Sharples doing a workout video that made me shudder – but I digress.

Anyway, I wonder if we could get someone who looks the right shape and is willing to be filmed while stacking our chairs (“Feel those biceps BURN”) and unstacking them (“and LIFT and stretch, and LIFT and stretch”).

Then they can demonstrate how to climb our stairs (“Every Step is One Step Closer to Healthy-Heart Heaven”) and, for advanced followers of the Virger Way, how to create and dismantle a complete concert venue overnight. I think it could be a huge commercial success.

For a reasonable fee I’m sure John and I would be happy to personally teach and share our unique knowledge, honed through many years of intense meditation and hard, disciplined study, to true searchers. Just turn up before the next big concert and we’ll show you how.

Meanwhile, couch potatoes could spend their time productively by reading from my archive of 180+ rib-tickling, provocative or annoying articles – just go to www.vestry-view.blogspot.com for hours of innocent amusement.

Thank you.

Fiona Bruce isn’t helping any more

Neil Pickford studies some spreadsheets

I’m afraid the column is going to be a bit boring this week although insomniacs may be very grateful to me by the end of it. I shall be addressing figures.

Actually I shall be addressing statistics – and not vital ones at that – so the previous, tantalising little sentence is about as interesting as it’s likely to get. Sorry.

Right, having lowered expectations sufficiently, let us begin:

It’s fair to say for most of us that, regardless of what statisticians or analysts may claim, it is virtually impossible to compare ‘like for like’. Perhaps a giant company such as Tesco can influence so much of its environment that it can genuinely identify how changes in, say, levels of profitability can be traced back to individual management decisions, but we lesser mortals cannot.

Everything we do is affected by events around us over which we have no control. Sometimes they are immediate issues such as whether or not it is raining (which is, apparently, completely unpredictable if you follow Met Office weather forecasts). At other times we may also see changes due to more slow-moving trends such as the shift away from public transport to car, or the ageing profile of the population.

Certainly it is difficult to put my hand on my heart and swear on the Bible that some statistics I have been compiling over the last five years are, of themselves, an accurate reflection of changing trends but as they’re pretty much all we virgers have to go on then I will start this week’s in-depth analysis by concluding that the ‘Antiques Roadshow Effect’ is wearing off at Beverley Minster.

It is almost two years ago to the day that large BBC vans rolled up in Minster Yard North to begin a week of frantic activity for the virgers - and many others. Then, in September 2010, the results of these efforts saw the light of day – for the first time ever the consecutively-broadcast programmes of Songs of Praise and Antiques Roadshow had been recorded at the same venue and there was a certain amount of overlap as presenters Aled Jones and Fiona Bruce made crossover appearances in each other’s shows – all on prime time Sunday BBC1.

It was a great advertisement for Beverley Minster and we certainly benefitted from it. Visitor numbers were up and many of these newcomers quoted the BBC programmes as being the reasons for their visit – informing us that we were “an undiscovered gem” and suchlike high praise. Our roof tour numbers were up and everyone was happy.

This year, however, the numbers are down by nearly one quarter – at least as far as the tours are concerned.  In January we were down 21%;  February down 42%; March up 25%; and, so far in April, just about holding level. We’ve tried coming up with explanations: the weather, the different date of Easter this year and so on, but there’s no escaping the overall trend – it’s down. John and I are still doing the work (91 tours compared to 93 at the same time last year) but with smaller numbers each time.

It’s depressing really – everyone who comes up is (almost without exception) really delighted with the tour and promises to tell all their friends, but so far their friends haven’t shown up.  Feedback from visitor reports also shows that the Antiques Roadshow has virtually dropped off the radar in the ‘reasons for visit’ box, so we need another blockbuster, quickly.

I shall write to Doctor Who and invite them away from Cardiff for a few days of filming – after all, at the moment we could easily be the setting for an abandoned planet.

Anyway, time to wake up now. When I say ‘Hello’ you will feel refreshed and mysteriously eager to climb 113 steps into the roof of Beverley Minster. Let no one dissuade you.

Hello!

Don’t talk to me about the weather

Neil Pickford tests the temperature

I write this dispatch surrounded by the sounds of gunfire, explosions and the screams of dying men.

I’m at home and my son is playing ‘Call of Duty’ on Xbox LIVE next to me.

I was taking a few days off work and had been thinking about rain. It’s not surprising– my wife had democratically decided we should use this time to lay a new path in the garden and it was quite important to timetable parts of the process around the weather or the whole project would be a disaster.

Regular consultations of the Met Office website were therefore in order – and we were delighted to see that it’s been rejigged to give even better, far more localised information. Now we can choose to receive weather forecasts that focus on either Beverley Racecourse or The Friary – far better than a generalised Hull-centred picture. I registered from the 5-day forecast that a given day was going to be perfect for concrete-laying – then was somewhat surprised to find it raining on the morning in question.

As I kept going back to the site I started to notice that things weren’t quite as fixed as I might expect. It seemed to me that all these tables, so confidently predicting what was going to happen within a few hundred yards of me during any given period over the next 100 hours were somewhat – how can I say it politely? – flexible. Data seemed to be changing constantly.

I thought I owed it to myself, and my readers, to conduct a scientific exercise and find out how reliable these Met Office Five Day forecasts really are.

I selected mid-afternoon on my first day back at work as my focus. I then downloaded the prediction for that day on each of the five leading up to it, noting the changes. Here are the results:

Four days in advance – Met Office prediction: Light shower day

Three days -  Prediction: Light shower day

Two days -  Prediction: Thunder shower day

One day -  Prediction: Thunder

The day itself - Prediction (on-line at 8am): Heavy rain

The reality was different. At 8am (when I was cycling to work) it was raining fairly heavily but soon the rain had ended and, apart from a few spots at lunch time and late afternoon the day was mainly overcast with occasional flashes of sunshine. In other words, pretty much a total fail (excuse me – that’s one of those modern phrases I’ve recently picked up from my gun-toting son).

Remember that these results come from the same computers used to tell us how climate is going to change over the next few hundred years. Hmmmmm.

Mind you, there were flash floods in Pocklington at lunch time, so that might be where the water all went but, hey, it’s not me who’s claiming to predict where each individual rain drop is going to land.

Many years ago The Two Ronnies joked that the man who stuck his finger out of the window to test the weather for the Met Office had gone to work for British Railways, where he got twice as much job satisfaction. On current form I reckon they need to tempt him back.

And that gives me an idea – a Minster-orientated service that’s far more accurate than the Met Office and doesn’t need millions of pounds spent on stupid computers.

I’ll send my son up the north tower and he’ll be able to tell you whether the weather is going to waver - it’ll do us both good to get him away from the Xbox.

Today is not forever

Neil Pickford considers the long term

So last week I achieved my one hundredth column in the Beverley Advertiser – a big achievement. And then I thought: ‘so what?’

It wasn’t an emotional reaction, more an understanding of my non-existent ranking in the cosmic scale of things – so completely unlike that of a great philosopher who once said: “For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer” (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Not all of us have the single-minded drive of the Terminator, our ambitions are lower than of becoming governor of California but it does appear to be the nature of humankind to strive; for some to achieve - and for these achievements to eventually turn to dust.

The drive probably comes because most of us have the sense that we are unique and, therefore, because we are unique we are important.

By extension there is a temptation to assume that ‘our’ moment is different to any other in history and that this particular ‘now’ is different to any other.

You see it among teenagers during their normal route through adolescence: they believe that no previous generation has ever been as essential, as concerned, as sensitive, or as environmentally aware as they.

Similarly no previous generation has ever been so daring or interesting in its music or fashion and no one has ever worried as deeply about emotional affairs as this one.

Sorry kids but you’re wrong. Those boring old fellows you see tottering around on the edge of dotage (you know, the over 40s) were young once too and we had our moments.

For instance, some years ago there was a bit of a ‘punk’ revival and I saw a young gentleman sitting rudely in Wednesday Market, He sported the standard uniform of torn clothes, safety pin in one ear and a spiked-up pile of green hair. He was obviously enjoying his reputation of being a ‘bad boy’ and the reactions of people as they first noticed him. He caught me watching.

“What you staring at, Grandad?” he bellowed out, obviously expecting me to jump like a frightened cat.

I smiled gently.

“Memories dear boy,” I replied. “Memories.” And so I was.

Our normal egotistical view of the world, while entirely understandable (and, don’t get me wrong - I share it) leads to another common misunderstanding: that everything around at this precise period of history is immutable, unchanging…and always will be.

A good example of this can be found in the Rose window in the top of our northern transept wall. In one segment of the leaded panels there is a small diamond-shaped piece of glass etched with the name: ‘John Hunsley, 1798.”

Next to it is a more modern piece of glass, bearing the signature of AA Hunsley, who was the glazier charged with rebuilding the window in 1986 and the great-great grandson of said John H.  He was so excited by discovering his ancestor’s signature that he promptly wrote the names of the vicar, churchwardens, bell-ringers, even virgers involved with the Minster in that year, obviously intending to give their great-great grandchildren a chance of experiencing the same thrill that he had on discovering this contact with his ancestor.

It’s a lovely vote of confidence in the expected survival of the Rose window.

But how confident can we really be about the future? Things do change over time – take the Minster itself, for example. It’s always been there and it’s always been like it is, right?

Wrong. It’s been around for 800 years but inside it’s varied from having bright colours splashed on every exposed surface to today’s naked stone.

It once had a gallery over the north aisle, now it doesn’t.

The current choir stalls in the nave were, only 40 years ago, some three feet closer together and were only moved back to give the congregation a view of a brand new altar.

The pulpit has moved around like a stop-motion animated dancer over recent centuries.

Before Henry VIII we never had a pulpit or pews and the main body of the church was a mad free-for-all where people gathered to discuss almost everything apart from religion.

Eighty years ago none of the present trees or bushes in the churchyard even existed: one hundred years ago the churchyard was still an active cemetery: two hundred years ago there was a dome above the central tower: three hundred years ago the central tower itself was a huge spike even taller than the towers at the west end: four hundred years…. Well, I’m sure you can see where this is going.

So, if such things can change so radically over time then what can we reasonably expect of our own age to still be around for our great grandchildren to appreciate?

Will the interior of the Minster still be plain stone, or will modern lighting recreate the mood of lush and vivid colours that our ancestors would have expected? Will the Minster still be a church? In 200 years it might be a cathedral, a museum, a mosque or a ruin – who knows? It is unlikely to be as it is today.

I am also confident that no one will remember ‘View from the Vestry’ in 2212. Once that would have annoyed me intensely but now I really don’t mind. You see, I’ve changed too.

Where’s my telegram, Ma’am?

Neil Pickford marks a milestone

Last week four members of the (greater) Beverley Minster family got to meet the Queen in York– but not me, oh no.

Not that I expected to, mind you, because these were four carefully selected sober, upright citizens of impeccable character who have given years of loyal service to the church. They were recipients of Maundy money and had to be over 70. I miss out on at least one of those requirements but I did think Her Majesty (Gawd bless ‘er) might have swung by Beverley while she was in the area, just to drop off a quick OBE or something. After all, it’s not every day that a humble contributor to the highly prestigious Beverley Advertiser gets to complete 100 columns for its august readership is it? But here it is – my centenary. Surely a cup of tea and a vellum scroll, at the very least.

I’ve been a loyal subject. Worried about the costs of the 2011 Royal Wedding in Westminster Abbey I suggested that the ceremony should be hosted in Beverley Minster because, after all, the West End of that rather big building is directly modelled on our own towers. It would have saved Charles a fortune, but I didn’t even get a ‘thank-you’ letter from the Palace.

What about my suggestion to replace the uninspiring national anthem with “Hey Jude” - a truly happy-making song that epitomises the best of modern Britain and would be perfect for the Olympics. Nothing!

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Her Majesty hasn’t even heard of me. She doesn’t get the Beverley Advertiser delivered, no uniformed flunky opens the newspaper at the right page, irons the paper flat and presents it on a silver platter for her to enjoy. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

I thought long and hard about the matter and realised that, basically, I’ve been wasting my time over the last two years. I had, rather foolishly, assumed that utilising the best quality vocabulary, precisely blended intonations for each finely crafted sentence and frequent whimsical inserts to produce a weekly wonderland of words would guarantee me world fame. My efforts would soon reach the highest and humblest of our fair kingdom. Virtue brings its own reward.

Well, as a business model, it’s worked fine for my wife’s marvellous bed and breakfast enterprise, Hunter’s Hall in Beverley (currently #5 and rising up the TripAdvisor tables – very comfortable beds and excellent breakfasts, visit www.huntershall.net for further details, thank you).

Due to hard work she got a silver award for service last year and another for the quality of breakfasts and, by concentrating on these things, we have been sustained through the winter with a constant flow of repeat bookings, boosted by word-of-mouth recommendations.
Total advertising costs - £60 for a bunch of business cards, of which we still have a huge reserve. Total revenue – much higher than last year, thank you very much and, of course, it’s good to provide something that people enjoy receiving, because it makes them happier people as well and nicer towards you. Gill isn’t wearing herself out trying to reach new customers; she’s conserving her energies to concentrate on providing a super service.

But modern marketing insists that this gentle approach is the wrong way to go about things. We’re supposed to aggressively chase business.

Apparently you should regard both existing and potential customers as idiots, offering mad too-good-to-be-true incentives to tempt new ones. Then, once they’re on your books you can treat them as ‘mugs’ or, as Goldman Sachs insiders apparently have it, a ‘Muppet’.

We had this demonstrated only last week when my older son tried to renew his car insurance. He’s now over 20, he’s acquired an extra year of no claims bonus and, surprise, surprise, the premium from his existing insurer has gone up by 10 per cent. What they didn’t bother telling him, as a loyal, trouble free customer is that, if he signed up with the same provider, providing identical details, but as a first-timer, they would offer the same service for £210 less.

One of the reasons for this is that the institution spends huge amounts of effort and money thrashing around and creating lots of fuss in a pathetic attempt to look ‘proactive’ or whatever rubbish middle-management buzz-word is in vogue this year.

And, of course, this need for frantic activity has led directly to that most cursed and despised of the all tools currently used in modern marketing, the telephone call centre (against which I have ranted in Advertisers passim). However, it now seems I may have to join them.

I had hoped that my weekly warbles, using the highest quality jokes, the profoundest observations and the bestly-editated paragraphs would have built a loyal fanbase that gradually grew through recommendation, but that’s not enough. I’m considering changing my approach.

I’ll see if I can get my wife to offer a fried egg to all new readers.

While I’m working out how to do this I’ll probably be too distracted to think of a new column so I’ll just chuck in one of my old ones.

Apparently, most of you Muppets will never notice.

And if you’d like to re-read more of my columns before I dredge them up again for the Advertiser just go to www.vestry-view.blogspot.com where there are actually about 180 of them.

Bring on the rotten tomatoes

Neil Pickford incites the crowd

This week I thought I’d produce a pot-pourri of petty ponder-points.

Gosh, I wonder if any of my dear readers will notice that this particular column has been sponsored by the letter ‘P’?

No, of course not!

OK then, let’s go.

“Please reserve parking spaces for two Roman centurions.”

Plainly this particularly peculiar petition taken from the virgers’ emails could potentially puzzle plenty of perusers – but not us. This passage was a portent of an event that should, at the very least, make shopping in Beverley on Good Friday a little more interesting than normal.

From the content of the message the Head Virger and the Assistant Virger (yours truly) immediately realised that we were in the period preceding another production of Beverley’s precious Passion Play. Soon several dozen members of different Beverley churches would unite to hang a poor person from a cross in Saturday Market in front of all the prospective purchasers and perambulators present.

This victim must, by tradition, be bearded and have long hair, but don’t worry folks it won’t be me. I am at least eight stone over the ideal weight required by producers when casting this particular character, and 25 years too old.

Phew.

The players will be re-enacting the final steps of Christ en route to his crucifixion, starting in Wednesday Market, staging a mock trial, then finishing in Saturday Market. At various stages along the way there will be little vignettes taken from the Gospel reports of the day and the whole thing has, in previous years, been regarded as a hugely successful way of bringing the original events that evolved into our present Easter Bank Holiday back to public attention.

If you end up as part of that particular Friday crowd, puzzled, provoked, pained or generally pushed around without really knowing what’s going on then you are, inadvertently, participating and providing practical plausibility to the performance. The Palestinian shoppers on that original Friday would have been just the same, being bullied around by Roman centurions as a poor unfortunate was being led to his painful death. Perhaps it will make you ponder….

And moving on….

I was dumbfounded t’other day to discover, courtesy of Wikipedia, that there existed a society called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Their thesis, apparently, is that humanity is a cancerous organism of no importance compared to the wonderful thing that is planet Gaia and all other living things. Our destructive species is of less value than the most commonplace insects, so they recommend we just stop breeding.

Apparently, they theorise, the final humans will be so full of happiness at saving good old Earth and all other things that dwell therein that they will contentedly wander around this renewed natural garden paradise, hand in hand, with no impure thoughts about S*X until they diminish into history.

It sounds like a rather twisted tweak on the original tale of Adam and Eve to me and there is only one suitable word to respond to this extreme ecological dream – and it doesn’t begin with a ‘P’.

One wonders at the level of self-loathing from which these individuals obviously suffer or, more worryingly, at the level of hatred they must feel for the rest of the society that spawned them. Notice the inbuilt sense of superiority that these people also display – they want us all dead but they don’t think the cause requires them, as superior-thinking individuals, to lead the way.

“Don’t do as I do, do as I say,” It’s the slogan of despots over the centuries and should always be exposed for the hypocrisy that it is. (As an aside, that’s why I believe we need a vigorous and scandal-searching free press in this country. Once you start controlling it then you prevent investigation into corruption – and who else is there who will do it?).

There is a very simple moral conclusion to be drawn from the two tales above but I’m not going to patronise you by making it. I believe my readers have far too much intelligence for that to work.

Talking of intelligence I found our old friend Pimple again when cleaning up in a distant part of our domain and we had a long chat.

Pimple had been ready to explore pastures new after Christmas but realised it liked the Minster so much that it decided not to float away as originally intended.

In fact it managed to find one of the very few places in the church that John and I haven’t Henry’d to within an inch of its life over the last few months - and I’m not going to tell you where it is – Pimple has as much right to a private life as any other piece of fluff (he said without feeling any twinge of hypocrisy).

It told me that it loved the constant turnover of new people and emotions – it didn’t need to travel any more but could experience the whole world from this new perch. It especially liked the energy and excitement of our semi-regular Youth Cafes.

There was only one thing that spoiled this perfection – it complained that the music at these events for young teens was rubbish. I promised to play some of the finest Led Zeppelin and Who through our PA system when the Minster is otherwise empty and, pleased by this, it promised to stay.

Proving that providing pleasurable products produces positive payoff for Pimple-partisans.

Sorry.

The end of an era

Neil Pickford looks back on a golden age

Last Friday was somewhat unusual because, for the first time in five years I was in Beverley while 200 young teens were having a good time in the Minster – and I wasn’t there.

I didn’t realise it when it happened but February saw me wash out my ear plugs for the last time after a rather excitable Youth Café. I’ve been the duty virger at almost all of them since 2006, standing stern and unsmiling in the corner to show that there is at least one responsible adult looking after the church while all around me youngsters were having fun.

Mostly my duties consisted of said “standing stern and unsmiling” plus pointing at the mop and bucket whenever a can of cola or similar had been spilled on our venerable stone floor. Maintaining a constant supply of black bin liners for the sweet shop, toilet rolls for the loo and strolling around to spot any problems occupied much of the rest of the period before lights-up and, on a few occasions, I had to offer official First Aid-approved tissues and sympathy when a little knock or graze has occurred.

Back in the (Bad) Old Days I was there on the front line when a miscalculation about the number of adult helpers meant we had to limit entry, to the annoyance of people outside. In that period the average age was higher and we had a few problems with girls sneakily carrying booze in their handbags  (although, once we’d wised up it was easy enough to spot them – they were already half-sloshed when they arrived).

But for the last few years things have been so much more organised and peaceful. It’s mostly 12-14 year olds coming these days, we’ve got a solid core of helpers who do the same essential jobs (checking in, cloakroom duties, sweet shop, cleaning, building and un-building) every time and Lee has a group of younger people who do most of what’s necessary before, during and afterwards. That just leaves the duty virger to move various bits of church furniture back where they should be and, hopefully, make a start on Henrying the floor to remove the most obvious piles of sweet papers and chewing gum before we reopen next day.   

As an aside to the various grumpy-drawers who complain that the Minster shouldn’t be hosting such a noisy, happy event I can only say: “Pooh-sticks!” Some 800 years ago our ancestors started building Beverley Minster to be a magnificent multi-use structure that would act as a triumphant venue for music, activity, movement, commerce, singing and special light shows – with a bit of religion in the background. We’re maintaining that tradition, not setting a new one.

Sorry, veered off-subject there – so back to my theme for the week.

I don’t want you to think that I gave up the Youth Cafes because I’m getting old – because I am NOT.  In any case, I’ve actually stepped down to make way for an older person – part time virger Kevin. So there.

I know all about old people – they were everywhere when I was a wee slip of a lad (but not nowadays – odd that). Anyway, they used to sit in the corner at Christmas time, smelling of mothballs and sipping sherry. Once the happy-juice had kicked in they would utter banal observations such as: “It’s turned out nice again for the time of year, hasn’t it?”

Quite often further ‘conversation’ (and I use that word in its loosest sense) then revolved around the dreadful ‘Youth of Today’ and one area of elderly consensus was in the world of music. We youngsters shouldn’t be listening to: “that beat rubbish – you can’t hear the words,” and their control of the media made sure we got very little exposure to it. Just about the only form of music we were allowed was on “Childrens’ Favourites”.

And, apparently, what we really enjoyed were musical whimsies celebrating young boys killing wild creatures; tales of brass instruments that felt sad, or mice infesting a Dutch windmill. “Childrens’ Favourites” - my bottom.

And yet, despite the oldies in the BBC, we had brilliant music being made: The Beatles, The Move, The Who, The Kinks, Pink Floyd and hundreds of almost-as-good wannabes. Then, the next generations followed with Queen, Nirvana, The Prodigy, Placebo, Muse, the Foo Fighters and Rammstein. I had thought the music of my youth would keep rejuvenating itself for the future to enjoy.

Sadly I was wrong. The music of THIS generation has different roots, and it’s rubbish.

Oh, I know I’ll be accused of sounding like my Gran but there’s a big difference. Today it’s ME who can’t make out the words.

However, I don’t mind. My music was of my time and for my time, and I mustn’t condemn the younger generations because they are different. Instead, I must judge each person by how they really are – which, after all, is one of the lessons of Christianity. The teenagers in the Minster Youth Cafe are well-behaved and have a good time without annoying anyone (much) and you can filter out the noise if you want to.

And last Friday evening I contentedly took off my wig, spat out my teeth then settled down with Led Zeppelin and a nice cup of cocoa.

Happy Daze.

The Minster: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?

Neil Pickford contemplates the physical nature of things.

Last year my younger son and I had a fascinating debate about whether yoghurt was a solid or a liquid.

I contended it was a solid because you couldn’t suck it through a straw, whereas something like Actimel was described as a ‘yoghurt-drink’ (being yoghurt with added water) and therefore had made the transition into being a liquid. Simples!

My son wouldn’t accept the logic of my argument, and even called in science to back up his dubious thesis, using ridiculous phrases such as ‘phase transition points’ to claim the opposite position was true. I eventually won by pointing out that I was bound to be right, being both a virger at Beverley Minster and master of our household and he was going to suffer dire punishment if he didn’t agree with me.

Afterwards, however, I thought it might be wise for me to check on the accuracy of my argument, purely to clinch my position you understand. Good old, ever-reliable Wikipedia was my friend here until I read, with mounting confusion, that: “a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container”. Was I wrong after all?

The key, I  started arguing with myself, is what timescale is involved in this description because, if it’s big enough, then lead counts as a liquid – and I don’t mean just when it’s being heated in a furnace either. No, in the same way that yoghurt takes the shape of its container if you wait a while, so does lead – it just takes much, much longer.

That’s completely obvious once you start looking at the old lead drainpipes at the Minster. Visitors who come on our roof tours find themselves in the workshop area of Steve Rial, Minster craftsman extraordinaire, whose expertise in lead-working is vital in keeping the rain out of the building.

In one corner is a collection of new drainpipes he has constructed as part of a long-term replacement programme– and boy, is it necessary. Hanging in one place for 200 years has caused the metal to creep slowly under the influence of gravity (just like yoghurt does!) and, at the very top, the old ones look decidedly translucent.  

A lead roof may last for several centuries so most of the time the Minster can forget about them – just concentrate on the rest of the building and let nature take its course – until it finally starts wearing out. At this point something has to be done.

Guess what stage we’ve reached in 2012.

You may remember a piece I wrote earlier this year highlighting the patch-up repairs that Steve and his colleague Paul  have been doing on the ridges of the transept, replacing severely worn and corroded sheets with new ones. Well, that’s all fine and dandy for now, but it’s really only applying a sticking plaster to a huge wound. Sooner or later the rest of the stuff is going to have to be renewed – and, actually, it’s going to have to be sooner rather than later.

Yep, any year now the collecting tins will start rattling and the fund-raising campaign will begin. And, yes, of course, a howl of misery will go up from the usual ignorant chorus who wonder why the Church of England should get any help at all. “After all, it’s one of the richest organisations in the country.”

Yeah, right but even if that was true it’s irrelevant.

The Church of England itself doesn’t own Beverley Minster, we in the parish of St John and St Martin do and it’s our vicar’s name that appears on the title deeds. It’s the same with almost all working parish churches. They are the responsibility of the church membership.

But we’ve still got vast wealth available to us in Beverley Minster, haven’t we?

Of course we have, we’ve got a huge building that’s a real asset. One option is to do what those clever financial people at Woolworths did – sell the lease for a huge sum of money and then just rent the property back.

Oh, hang on. That didn’t work out very well, did it?

I suppose we could cut costs again, like not turning the heating on until the temperature drops below 40. That would save the Minster about £1,000 each week during the winter – or, in real terms, about 0.01 percent of the £7 million we’re looking for. So, if we allow our congregation and visitors to freeze over the next 200 years we’ll be able to fund the repairs ourselves.

Of course, this action would make the building fall down as well, which is rather counterproductive.

Maybe we should be sensible and, if we can’t afford to mend it ourselves, just shut up shop and move somewhere easier and cheaper to maintain. From today’s perspective Beverley Minster looks like a terrible burden that rationalist thinkers would happily dismantle.

But if you look at it over a long enough timescale things are different. Then you find that Beverley Minster has inspired such love and affection over the centuries that it not only survived even bigger repair bills but was also improved and enhanced at the same time.

So, to answer a question that used to be raised on an old radio quiz show: “Beverley Minster – Animal Vegetable (or) Mineral?” (in other words: white elephant – a growing thing – (or) - a solid substance?)

My answer, and that of many others, is always going to be: ‘Mineral’ – a gem.

Why are we waiting? Why are we waiting?

Neil Pickford gets impatient.

Oh dear, I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to upset some people this week (unlike most weeks, of course) and so I’d better get my apologies in early.

I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry. I’m incredibly sorry. I’m really unbelievably sorry, I truly am.

I do apologise.

And before I proceed any further I must also put in the inevitable qualification: all nurses are angels (bless them), doctors do their very, very best in very difficult circumstances (bless them) and consultants are the source of all wisdom – gods of expertise that we mere mortals can count ourselves lucky to share a planet with (bless them).

And the NHS (bless it)  – which is the envy of the world (of course) has built up a pool of management expertise that is second to none (bless), having been granted vast resources to train and develop the skills necessary to coordinate this enormous organisation.

So why in the name of all God’s creation does it take so unbelievably long to get the results back from any simple test?

OK, you’ve probably guessed by now that I’ve had a trip to Castle Hill recently – and you’d be right. And let’s just nail down another set of qualifying remarks as well before I get going. Castle Hill is terrific, a fantastic facility that doesn’t want for investment or the latest equipment –  it’s clean and well-lit, it’s a pleasure to visit and I always feel better when I get inside compared to my condition when I stick the parking ticket inside the windscreen.

So why do I have to wait so long to find out if I’m dead or not, or about to die or – perhaps more irritatingly - if I can expect a trouble-free stroll to my dotage (because if I am then I’d better start thinking about pensions and retirement planning Pretty Darn Quick).

Long delays are not exclusive to our local NHS providers – I’ve been to a lot over the years in all parts of the country (mostly for other people, I’m glad to say) and the one thing you hear time and time again is that you’ll have to wait – for weeks and even months.

Oh, it’s never said like that, of course, because that would be an admission that something is not right – but you never hear: “I’ve just completed the tests and we can give you the answers you want before you leave.”

Actually, that’s not quite true – whenever my wife went in for a foetal scan to check on the development of various Pickford Juniors then we got a print-out of the best picture then and there – which was sensible really. After all, when a mum-to-be is six months pregnant there is a sort of deadline. You don’t want a delay of three months or so if you need to know whether to paint the nursery pink or blue.

So if the Health Service can gear itself up to let you take home pretty scans of the forthcoming baby, why not do the same for other results? Most of them aren’t particularly critical but if they need some expert interpretation then the consultant should be able to sit right down during their next shift and skim through the printouts from the previous day’s tests. Then communicate their conclusions to us as part of the same process – that’s why they have administrative assistants on hand, after all.

And don’t tell me it’s because there’s a backlog – it’s not beyond the wit of man to get rid of those. Once upon a time, just before I became a virger, I was News Editor for NHS Magazine. This was a glossy award-winning publication that collected examples of best practice from parts of the health service and promoted them to the rest. One particular case I remember was from Dorset where waiting lists for a routine form of surgery were stuck at around 18 months from referral.

With the cooperation of surgeons, staff, management and some lateral thinking they buckled down for about four months, imported additional staff, worked weekends and evenings, and got that waiting time down to two weeks. TWO WEEKS! And it’s stayed there ever since despite the staff going back to their normal working patterns once the catch-up was over.

Waiting is a killer – it leads to anxiety that makes the stomach turn acid, destroys sleep patterns and peace of mind, makes the old chuckle muscles weaken through lack of use – it leads to bad temper, a lowering of the overall global happiness index, a breakdown in relationships, a negative instead of positive frame of mind, chemical or alcohol overuse, an increase in weight due to extra comfort-food snacking – in other words, it makes people unwell.  And that is NOT what the NHS (bless it) is supposed to be doing.

That’s something that we virgers know all about, which is why we are always dashing about as fast as we can, responding to problems as soon as we are aware of them – sometimes we manage to travel so fast we go forward in time and get them solved before anyone notices.

That then leaves everyone free to worry about something else instead, like why can’t you ever actually find a virger when you want one.

It’s probably just that we’re keeping someone else happy somewhere else – so please be patient.

Patience is a virtue, you know, he said, (without a trace of hypocrisy).

Normal day, nobody killed

Neil Pickford has a chance to relax.

I had a surprisingly quiet day recently and this was such a shock that I thought I’d better write about it quickly before the whole event started to feel like a dream.

This strangely low-activity shift occurred on one of the two days in my normal week when I am guaranteed to be the only virger on duty (sometimes I’m the only virger on duty for my entire working week, but that’s a different story. This was just part of my ordinary rota allocation and means that, if anything vaguely virger-ish has to be done then I’m the only one around to do it).

I already knew we didn’t have any services planned for the day and, after the church closed at 5pm, I wasn’t expected back for a Youth Café event until 6.30pm – and because there was going to be a Youth Café then I couldn’t do much advanced setup for Sunday services. This meant the rest of the day was clear for cleaning, roof tours and general faffing around. Oh, and the tiny matter of moving all the chairs in the nave to allow a small instrument to be wheeled across every single square centimetre of the floor – and the Minster has a lot of square centimetres.

This strange and demanding tool actually looked a lot like a traditional baby walker trolley that so many loving parents or grandparents buy for new toddlers. We had one for our own children, hoping that it would help them a) walk and b) spell. I’ve always suspected they were slightly more successful with a) than b) but that’s not important now.

However, this grown-up version of the Baby Walker contained something rather more expensive than simple coloured cubes: the trolley was designed to transport a powerful Ground Penetrating Radar that had been borrowed for the occasion by Yorkshire Archaeological Trust. It was here to scan our ancient foundations and, let me tell you, a lot of staff and volunteers in the Minster were pretty darn excited by this.

You see, underneath the present glorious building is (we believe) the remains of a much earlier church – the one that was built (or extended) back in 1037 when Bishop John became St John of Beverley, patron saint of the deaf and dumb (and if you can’t see a glorious money-making opportunity for the Minster in another 25 years time then you’re not paying attention).

And now, thanks to modern technology that could detect irregularities some five metres below our stone floor, we finally had a chance to discover exactly what we are built on.

Let’s not pretend we didn’t have a few ideas already – there was a small-scale archaeological dig back in the 1990s that found our (not very deep foundations) were largely made up of stonework from the previous church. It also showed that the modern Minster is aligned nearly 10 degrees differently to the older one – for which we have yet to find a sensible explanation, although I have a few theories of my own.

There was already a lot of evidence above ground indicating that the old west end finished roughly where our Highgate door now stands, so we weren’t surprised to find clear signs of a solid wall in that spot – but we weren’t expecting some of the other stuff that the probing uncovered around it.

As to where the east, or altar, end may have been there were theories but no evidence. Once the results have been analysed (hopefully, by the end of this month) then we will be more knowledgeable - perhaps.

We’re pretty sure we have found the crypt of St John – luckily, it’s roughly where the guide books claim that his remains are buried, although initial evidence hints that the vault may be bigger than we first thought. 

There were also various other seemingly random blobs and blotches picked up during the patient surveying. These will probably raise more questions than answers, but that’s one of the fascinations of academic research.

Something that came as a complete and very pleasant surprise, however, was that I wasn’t required to move the chairs myself. John Phillips, who had organised this whole voyage of discovery, contently shifted the pews as required by the professionals, and spent the rest of the day clucking happily every time the machine went ‘ping’, or whatever it is that the machine did.

He put them back as well, so the day shift required far less effort from me than I had been expecting. Mind you, many of the chairs ended up in the wrong place and so I faced a fair amount of shifting to get everything as it should have been, but that was a chore for tomorrow. All I had to do now was just work through to 11pm, and help tidy up the transepts after the Youth Café.

And no, despite a host of wild rumours that spread like measles through the highly excitable youngsters, we didn’t find a corpse, or even the slightest hint of blood. Just a normal haul of empty (and sometimes not-so-empty) drinks cans and a scattered carpet of sweet papers.

So, it was quite a quiet day really. I suspect it doesn’t seem all that interesting to an outsider, but I can only report what really happened.

Could have been worse.

It was 50 years ago today. Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play

Neil Pickford remembers things.

I don’t listen to the radio these days. Oh, radios Humberside or Two are on for other members of the family to sample as they wish but I rarely listen as closely as once I did.

So it took a long process of drip-drip-dripping before I realised that I was hearing a higher-than-normal ratio of really good music among the vintage pop and modern chatter.

It then dawned on me that most of these good songs came from one particular four-piece, guitar-based beat combo as ‘Hep Cats’ used to describe this sort of thing back in the ancient days of black and white telly – The Beatles!

Finally, it dawned on me that this was 2012 and, therefore, 1962 was 50 years ago. TARAAA! Suddenly it all made sense.

You see, in this month exactly half a century ago, a gentleman at Decca wrote a letter declining to sign The Beatles to a recording contract on the grounds that: “Guitar groups are on the way out.” Nice one Decca.

Well, EMI were a bit more broad-minded and, later that year, released the group’s first single (‘Love Me Do’) which just scraped into the Top 20 and the rest, as we say, was history.

You may think I’m overstating the case but I truly believe that these four gentlemen changed the entire world, and I’m prepared to defend this statement.

Certainly, without the Fab Four Britain would be a very different country and I’m old enough to remember how drab it was before 1962.

(As a side issue, my home town of Dursley remained drab for another 30 years. Interestingly, when JK Rowling was looking for a suitably horrible surname for Harry Potter’s dreadful guardians, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, she picked on ‘Dursley’ because it was a town she absolutely loathed. I share her feelings and, in fact, when I first-ever used a new-fangled spellcheck device in the days of good, old black and green computer screens, instead of accepting ‘Dursley’ it suggested ‘drowsily’. I felt I was in the presence of brilliant Artificial Intelligence – but I digress.)

The Beatles’ success took the international image of our damp group of islands and gave it a good polish, coincidentally transforming the cities of Liverpool and London into icons of ‘cool’ – an image that we are still deep-mining to this day.

Go into any British airport or retailer of tat to the tourists and what do you find? Models of double-decker buses and black taxi-cabs, that’s what, of the kind that haven’t worked the streets of the capital for years, but which are indelibly linked to trendiness and Beatle-style. The moulds were made in the 60s and are still working overtime now.

Because London was the trendiest city in the known universe creative types flooded here and started making things, because people wanted to buy things made in London where The Beatles were.

Britain’s film industry became commercially successful and still is, producing mega-hits such as Star Wars as well as James Bond and Harry Potter. The London Symphony Orchestra then performed the movie soundtracks that shaped the tastes of a generation, Superman, Jaws, Star Wars etcetera.

Britain’s music ruled the world: if you listened to a foreign language pop station in the period you heard: “Gabble, gabble Rowling Schtones…gabble, gabble Rode Schtewart… gabble, gabble Da Kinks!” Occasionally there would be a local wannabe artiste singing an unmemorable ditty (in English) but then it was back to the real stuff.

We conquered America, first with the pop bands that followed The Beatles as fast as work permits could be negotiated, then the louder guitar-based bands (thank you Decca) such as Cream, Led Zeppelin and Queen who found they could fill stadia effortlessly. Even rubbish like Judas Priest was treated with respect.

Back in the 1980s one third of all the records in the US Top 100 were British and EMI was the biggest record label in the world. The rest of the world copied the literate three minute pop song format popularised by our heroes (ABBA being the most obvious example) and the entire globe followed our fashions, football and TV.

Even the French, not normally fans of le rosbif (us) succumbed to the joys of The Avengers and The Prisoner while everyone else consumed Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, period dramas and the like.

We also had Rolls Royce, the Mini, Harrier Jump Jets and Concorde – we RULED!

That’s why, to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of Her Majesty in a proper way I launched a campaign to make ‘Hey Jude’ our national anthem in time for the Olympic Games. So far it’s not made much headway, but we can live in hope.

And 2012 also marks the (approximately) 80^th anniversary of the monster tree next to a northern wall of which I have written in the past.

The tree is younger than some of our Thursday morning congregation but they, unlike it, do not need pruning.

In a nice piece of circularity I found out that The Beatles had written a song on this very subject: “It Came in Through the Transept Window”; and you must also remember Paul McCartney’s marvellous chart-topping “Band (saw) on the Run.”

Ahhh, glorious memories.

And if you want more glorious memories of my writing then why not pop along to www.vestry-view.blogspot and sample a further 170 sparkling gems. You could even become a ‘Follower’ – which would be nice. Every mad egoist needs a few.