Southwark Cathedral

I’m thinking back to my first jab. Such are life events these days: weddings, funerals, first and second jabs. I’d booked mine at London Bridge Guy’s Hospital. My best friend Will (of the same age and near enough postcode) was also getting his vaccination the same morning as me, so we’d decided to meet up for a drink on the Southbank afterwards.

I got out of Guy’s Hospital earlier than Will, so I walked over to Borough Market. I didn’t fancy a delicious, overpriced coffee just yet. I strolled on over cobbled streets, under damp arches, smelling the faint ammonia and salt-breeze wafting off the Thames. 

I arrived at a lovely old building with sandy-coloured stone walls crumbling at the edges. Bright in the soft daylight, not like the muddied grey of elsewhere reminding me of a limp sponge. I made my way to the entrance. Southwark Cathedral. I had never been inside. 

I bowed my head automatically when I went through the doors. I notice I do that when I enter sacred spaces – has it been ingrained in me from Shinto shrines and the general bowing culture of Japan? You bow to show respect and humility. And I am humbled by ancient lore and spiritual sediment left behind. Old places filled with meaning is what I’m about.

The inside of the cathedral looked shiny. The stained-glass windows were clear and new, not even crazed. The stone floor tiles were smooth and uncracked, however, there was a weightiness in the alcoves. For such a large space it felt like the air was closed-off, as if we were in a vacuum. 

I checked my phone for messages from Will, but my signal had dropped. I padded around the perimeter taking in the high-relief engravings, plaques mentioning recent war, late kings, old territories. I wish I knew what stories the stained-glass windows told. 

I had walked to the very end of the chapel; if this had been a ship I would’ve been at the helm. A tannoy-speaker switched on and a woman’s voice broke the silence. ‘Hello. I am the Reverend of Southwark Cathedral. I will now say a prayer. If you can, please take a moment to stand or sit for contemplation.’

There were some empty chapel chairs in my vicinity, so I shuffled towards one and took a lonesome seat. Looming above me was one enormous stained-glass window tinted in deep blue hues, cherry reds and shafts of marigold yellow.

She spoke of wishing to curtail the virus. She spoke of wanting the vaccine to work and giving people the security, they so needed. She asked us to remember those left behind and to hope for better days. 

I was staring up at this colourful vibrant light streaming through the glass and I cried. I sniffled at the beauty of the way. I had been grieving my mother’s death all this time inside my head, I knew about it, thoughts constantly whirring whilst sitting at work, staring at screens, clicking irrevocably. All I required was a few stolen minutes, the kind of clarity you get when you smoke a cigarette. Surprisingly, this had not happened until I was sat in a church caught in a prayer.  

It might have clicked then, that what I wanted was a reason to move my body without my brain having to think. I wanted to give the relationship with my mother some breathing room. A pilgrimage. Treading a path often tread would give me a way out – an excuse! 

(I mean I deleted Instagram, as if that required any excuse although someone did ask, ‘why did you delete Insta?’ ‘too much rubbish to scroll through’. I don’t have the emotional energy for that, I’ve lost my mother, I cannot stomach seeing your focaccia.)

The prayers were over. I was given back to myself. I stood up and felt like I should bow but I didn’t and ambled through the cloisters. I checked my phone: two missed calls from Will. I went out past the Gift Shop to return the calls. ‘Where are you? I’m out of the hospital.’ ‘Cool, I’m at Southwark Cathedral. Come find me.’

Epilogue: Tomorrow, Saturday 21st August 2021, I am setting off on my pilgrimage. Me, my dog and two good friends will start from Southwark Cathedral and walk for ten days to Canterbury Cathedral. To be continued. 

 

From Peckham Rye to Rye

Take the no. 63 bus from Peckham Rye to Kings Cross. Board a train, with a changeover at Ashford Int., then you’re in Rye.

An odd town that slipped down the back of the sofa and is quite neatly tucked in to Antiquity.

‘I don’t see the sea.’

‘I don’t think we cross the sea on the way down.’

I thought it was a coastal town right up until the time we were standing in Rye. Feet firmly on cobbled streets, looking through thin panes of glass at nick nacks from another era – proud porcelain cats and those hairbrushes that have horse hairs for bristles. All the houses are lopsided from age. Red roof tiles slacken and look like they are slowly slipping downhill, pulling the plaster and the weight of the houses with them, sinking with decrepitude. But the wooden beams sprout upwards, holding up the entire town, lifting masses up to St. Mary’s church spire. Which has ‘one of the oldest working church tower clocks in the country’, says the free pamphlet. Dating to ‘1561-2’ it tells me, with the sort of accuracy only someone with smalltown pride would insist on hammering in. I mean, it was like 500 years ago. But this clock face has emblazoned on it an inscription, which I stare at morbidly when the bell sounds a delicate chime:

For our time is a very shadow that passeth away

-       Wisdom

That makes me think accuracy may be all we have. Quite timely too, as we arrive three hours early to check-in at the Tea House, next to the Mint. It is lovely, though the guesthouse owner surprised by our early arrival wants us to get out of her hair, so that she can tidy the rooms in peace (completely fair, but we only want to leave our bags here, so that we can walk on down to the sea – there is a sea nearby). He tells her full of gestures and charm (because he’s better at it than me) and Brenda who is accommodating and glittery, in persona, grabs her keys to the Mercedes and offers to drive us down. What a winner.

On the way to her parked car, she tells us a strange story of a cantorial monk who had done the deed with a local girl in the Medieval times.

‘He was holed up in here – Right here.’

Pointing to an embankment of green presided over by a weeping willow.

‘They buried him alive.’

I expected her to tell us tales of singing ghosts, but none followed.

Camber Sands. That’s where the sea is at! The Camber is a huge stretch of sand with wide open seas all round, rolling waves. Surfers and dogs. The weather was unusually warm so I took my socks off and got my feet sandy, then wet. Strolling. You can see Rye rise up in the distance. It sits on a ridge, which according to Wikipedia is the reason for the town’s name. I was almost right too, about it being a coastal town, because in Medieval days the sea reached Rye. It was a port town – one of the Cinque Ports – renowned for smuggling. But in the proceeding centuries landowners who wanted to expand their farmlands, reclaimed the marshland from the ocean. They stemmed the flow of the River Rother so that it became the only waterway that let ships sails right up to Rye, until the seascape changed to what it is today. Rye is about 2 miles from the sea when it used to be on top of it. I guess that clock face has seen a lot of change.

Cormorants and sturdy sheep. Tumbling border collies; funny scruffy looking dogs out on walks with their funny scruffy looking owners. It takes an hour or so to walk back to Rye. We eat sweet vinegary mussels from styrofoam cups, which reminds me in Normandy there was a dish on the menu called fruits de mer. We pass under Land’s Gate built in the 14^th Century, again Medieval, looking immoveable. Rye is really pedalling the School for Wizards & Witches and I’m starting to see a pattern. Anything that is so old that it could be deemed mystical is on the menu at Rye. The Mermaids Inn is very famous for being a smuggler’s haunt centuries ago. I eat two day’s running at Simon The Pie Man, where the older waitresses wear white pinafore aprons over their sombre black skirts and have their hair tied back in exquisite buns. I enter and buy books from the Tiny Book Store, where the bookshop owner gives me a knowing speech about his collection –

‘Like I say. Books come to me. I don’t go looking for them… We got a load of Vintage Penguins in. A whole load but it’s hard to find a First Edition… Can’t for the life of me get hold of any Seamus Heaney, not these days.’

I like Rye. I like how peculiar it is, or is trying to be, but does that matter? There’s a rusted blade of a short-sword sticking out of one of the beams in our guesthouse. No one attests to knowing what it’s doing there. Gold. I’m a tourist and I love it.

On the final day we go to Rye Castle and Museum. £4 entry. Bargain. A well kept Medieval castle later used as a jail. Also the first prison in Britain to have a women’s tower, how thoughtful. I particularly liked the exhibition cabinet on Coopers: craftsmen who made barrels. I learnt a lot of barrel facts, such as, ‘All barrels are casks but not all casks are barrels’. Did you know that a barrel is a measurement? And a Hogshead is one up from a Barrel? Me neither.

On the walk down steep cobbled streets to the station I’m inordinately glad I found Rye. For no good reason, I feel like I’ve made an important pilgrimage from my hometown featuring Rye in its title. (Do New Yorkers feel the same when they visit York?) As we leave, hand in hand, I am met by the exuberant copy of the tourist information board…

Welcome to Historic Rye

Perched on a hill, the medieval town of Rye is the sort of place you thought existed only in your imagination.