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.