On the rails

It's Festival time again - the racing version - and the daffodils have come out to order. This little array lines the railings of a house in Park Place - I biked past this morning en route to the (deserted) shops. Everyone is bent on getting up to the course in good time.

Yesterday, we drove West into the setting sun for my talk to the Lingen History Fellowship on my ancestor's Diary. En route, we stopped in Kingsland, but neither pub there was then serving food. We found something eventually at the Mortimer Cross Inn, near the place where 4,000 soldiers were killed in February 1461. So I read in the menu - enough to spoil your appetite.

10 years on

For the second time this week, I found myself catching a train from Cheltenham Station to go in the opposite direction to the race crowds. (I left it a bit later today, so was all but swept aside by the incoming tide on Platform 2.) Arriving in a rainy Sheffield soon after Midday, I saw that I could catch a tram to the City Centre: all very clean and efficient, and they accept bus passes. Then, on the look out for the tourist information office I found myself passing St Marie's Cathedral, where a mass was just starting. What luck! Because it's exactly ten years today that my mother (Mary) died.

Under starter's orders

Ten days or so ago, as hinted at the time, I walked past Cheltenham Racecourse, where preparations were at an advanced stage for this week's invasion: the population of Cheltenham temporarily doubles. Tonight, at Mass, we were bidden to take home one of 115 slips of paper lying in a basket, each with the name of one of the Cardinals who will enter the Sistine Chapel on Cheltenham's opening day. However, "This isn't a sweepstake," our parish priest emphasised: "we should just pray especially for the Holy Spirit to guide the particular Cardinal whose name we pick out."

Mine was Cláudio Hummes, a 78-year-old Brazilian: quite a good egg, it seems from Wikipedia. Probably too old to be a strong candidate himself, he will surely back someone willing to lead the fight for social justice. I'm praying so anyway.

Half a million others have signed up on the Adopt-a-Cardinal website. Might all this prayer mean that the Catholic Church is not entirely a stranger to democracy?!

Cleevewards

From the Plough in Prestbury, we walked today Northwards to Southam, past the vulgarity of the Ellenborough Hotel. Skirting Cleeve Hill, we then made for Bishop's Cleeve, clinging on gamely to its apostrophe notwithstanding the rash of illiterate housing developments spawned there in recent years. Having crossed the A435, we aimed towards Swindon Village: this photograph was taken looking back towards the Racecourse and the escarpment - a surprisingly tranquil scene when you think of Cheltenham's suburban tentacles reaching all around that area. It was a cold morning: the sun only broke through as we arrived home after lunch.

I'm still thinking about last night's Film Society offering, Monsieur Lazhar. Continuing the theme mentioned briefly in last Thursday's post, it portrayed an Algerian asylum seeker: his family having been murdered as they were about to join him in Canada, he bluffed his way into a teaching post left vacant by the suicide of his predecessor. Without any excess of sentiment, we watched his growing engagement with the young teenagers in his charge, his comforting them in their bereavement acting in turn as a comfort for himself. Brilliant.

Sounds Good

Independent record shops are, I guess, as rare these days as independent bookshops. We are lucky to have a good one, in Henrietta Street, just off Cheltenham's lower High Street. As with all such shops, you go there as much for the advice and a chat as anything else: it's a totally different experience from shopping via Amazon.

And yet Sounds Good does 20% of its business by mail order, some with people who have never been to the shop. "Was it full during the LitFest?" I asked. "No, but we had a busy morning last Saturday - with people coming to Cheltenham for the Races." That surprised me somewhat!

I have to admit I don't very often shop there, pleasant though the experience is. What with Radio 3 and Listen Again, I don't often buy music; and I have a couple of shelves full of rarely-played CDs. Yesterday, however, I was looking for (and found) a classical ballet DVD for our granddaughter Ida, whose 4th birthday it is tomorrow: she's smitten.

Greenbelt 2011

As always, festivals abound this bank holiday weekend. On Monday, we shall be at Presteigne for one of their final concerts. We passed the Reading tented city on the train on Thursday. Edmund and the boys are camping at a festival in Leicestershire, and Upton-on-Severn was also awash with campers when I drove through yesterday.

At Cheltenham Racecourse, meanwhile, there's Greenbelt, and I biked up there today, to do duty on the Christian Ecology Link stall: plenty of people showed more-than-polite interest, and it was good to catch up with other long-standing CELites such as Tim Cooper (on the right here).

When I wasn't talking to people at our stall in the G-Source exhibition area, I was taking photographs: my collection illustrates what a happy time apart Greenbelt offers for a wide range of people and Christian proclivities. All the encounters I had filled me with hope, everyone giving so much more of themselves than they do at a sophisticated Cheltenham dinner party.

Carducci concert

At this morning's Cheltenham Festival recital by the Carducci Quartet, I sat next to a Sixth Form pupil from Dean Close: it is the quartet-in-residence there, a great boost to the school's budding string players, much as the Tewkesbury Abbey "residency" is for the school's young singers.

The programme included the European premier of a Festival commission, Arlene Sierra's Insects in Amber. I am not greatly in favour of programme music, such as this was, but I have certainly endured less pleasant quarters of an hour at previous Festval premiers. The performances of Shostakovich's 8th Quartet and Dvořák's American were excellent, and sent me off in a good humour.

Normally, we are in the cheap seats at the back of the hall - excellent acoustics there - but today I was able to sit close enough to take a photograph (at the end of the new work) because we were the guests of the Summerfield Charitable Trust: it had made the Quartet a grant in the past. The Trust was launching an initiative, seeking to add to its endowment by entertaining a cross-section of the town's lawyers and accountants, so we all went on to a jolly lunch in the Royal Box at Cheltenham Racecourse - one of the perks from Edward Gillespie having taken over as the Trust's Chairman.

Commercial consumer waste

Not often these days do you see me in a suit, and only very rarely escorted by a polar bear. I was at Cheltenham Racecourse, not for the horses, but as a guest of the Commercial Group, whose 5th annual CSR Day took place today. This was a follow up from the chance meeting I had with someone from Commercial at the Cheltenham Connect pub quiz earlier in the year.

It's quite a big deal, CSR these days. On the whole, it seems right for Commercial to shout from the rooftops about their success in meeting carbon reduction targets etc. Their Green Angels scheme sounds good fun, and really does breathe life into the organisation, as claimed. And it's good that being green doesn't have to cost more.

I was drawn to go by the prospect of hearing Franny Armstrong in the flesh: she had made an impression on me with The Age of Stupid and 10:10; but today she looked weary. And by the end I too was weary of the relentless proferring of consumer items - albeit recycled - by those manning the many stalls, which pay to finance the Day. As Franny says, the problem is that we see about 200 advertisements every day: how can we counter their effect?

"Take an olive seed"

Today's photograph is of the sign outside the Greenbelt Festival pub, one of the very many and varied tents erected on Cheltenham Racecourse for the weekend. I was helping man the stall of Christian Ecology Link at Greenbelt, an interesting experience for me. I wore a CEL T shirt, to increase my visibility (as if needed). Normally I am not to be seen dead in one.

"Take an olive seed" was the theme of the Sunday Morning Worship at the Festival, said to have been attended by 15,000 people. It was brilliantly devised to celebrate the diversity of those attending, and of the traditions that come together within the Holy Land: there were prayers and readings in both Hebrew and Arabic.

And the Kiss of Peace, for these Swine Flu aware times, was transformed into the elbow bump of peace, as demonstrated here by two of my neighbours. They were volunteering on behalf of CAFOD, drawing attention to the need for climate justice. Appropriately, the CAFOD stall was next door to CEL's: both were well-patronised, any any rate during my sojurn.

Of course, masses of those at Greenbelt seemed intent on other things than climate justice or a greener church: that's why CEL is needed. However, the people who bothered to stop by seemed keen to meet up with others in their local area: I collected quite a few email addresses, and have been busy since I returned putting people in touch with one another. It's good to be able to help with the sort of introductions and connections that only a national organisation like CEL can make.

rus in urbe

It's Bank Holiday weekend, but why join queues of cars on the road? I did venture up to Greenbelt last evening: amazing crowds, transforming Cheltenham racecourse for the weekend; but going for the evening only, I felt more a tourist than a pilgrim. (John Bell of the Iona Community impressed me as a speaker; and it was good to talk to those on the CEL stand.)

Yes, here we still are, in Cheltenham. The sale board remains up, but it's more than a fortnight since anyone came to look at the house. On a rare dry August Saturday, Ida (aged 10 months), having discarded a sock, sits under the russet tree to eat her lunch... and gets her beans in a row.