WHAT CAN WE AFFORD

 

Visits to the cinema are not as regular as they used to be but we made a big effort to go and see The Time Traveller's Wife which turned out to be a science fiction romantic comedy with tragic overtones; a little bit of everything as they say. You have only to look at the success of the Doctor Who epic and Avatar, in which strange beings control the air and fire with alarming consequences, has just received an Oscar nomination for best film to see that science fiction is as popular as ever. I'm fond of a bit of it myself and am an admirer of Terry Pratchett's stories about discworld, which is of course, flat and things can fall off the edge.

 

Regular readers of this column will know that I am a good customer at Penketh Library although usually I don't venture much further than the aisle marked 'Fiction' and once there, choosing a few books is a process of random selection. Now and again I see a title which fascinates me and when I heard of a book called The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England, I thought that a look at it might well be interesting. It turns out to be a history book only the story is told as if it's a guide book, which is quite successful

 

Things were a bit rough, to say the least, in those days and about the only people who lived in comparative comfort were the rich and famous, who in those days were merchants and nobility and clergy rather than footballers and pop stars. Even so they didn't enjoy the benefits of running water, central heating was a fire in the middle of the room and sewers weren't going to be around for another four hundred years.

 

There is evidence to suggest that the Romans had sewers as long ago as 800 BC but they were probably not covered let alone underground. So that favourite of the media, sewage in the streets, was a common occurrence, there were foul smelling cess pits beneath houses and it took many years and a great deal of nagging at Governments before anything was done. Paris led the way in the 1860's.

 

Fortunately, there weren't as many people around in the1300's, the population of London being only around forty thousand and neither Manchester, Liverpool nor Birmingham are mentioned in the list of the largest cities in England. Second on the list after London, is York and then such unlikely places as Shrewsbury and Bury St. Edmunds. There isn't a single Lancashire town in the top thirty, and that's not my fault. In fact, Manchester and Liverpool apart, there aren't many in modern day lists and that isn't my fault either.   

 

Despite the limited population and the fact that the majority of people were poor, nearly every town had a parish church and every city its cathedral. How some of these magnificent structures came to be built and how they were financed would need more research than I have the time for but we know that the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool was financed by public subscription - the pennies of the poor - and over the centuries, churches have been maintained in similar fashion and they are in need more than ever in recent times. As kids we were given a penny, which was a two hundred and fortieth of a pound, to put in the collection. But churches were full in those days and many things could be bought for a penny. Now, a pound is probably needed for the same thing.

 

A book about the life of Jesus was given which was written in 1968 by a BBC correspondent called Ronald Allison, who was a newsreader and something of a celebrity at the time, although I cannot recollect seeing him. Nothing unusual there then? The book is written as if he were the Jerusalem correspondent during the thirty years of Jesus' life and the story was, I thought, a bit skimped. He goes on to draw conclusions. One of these is that if he were only allowed to use the word miraculous once, he would use it in to describe the survival of the Christian Church, through two thousand years of oppression, wars, disasters, the human instinct for self destruction as well as the foolishness and often unbelievable wickedness of its leaders.

 

It has survived, despite its frailties, its waste and its ability to pursue anything but what it is supposed to pursue, because there are countless individuals who have, since 27AD, been unwavering in their faith and dedicated to His church.

 

No doubt they will be faithful again and see the church through and out of it present parlous state unto greater glories in the centuries to come.

 

Clive Stannard   January 2010