I should have gone straight home

Friday, and overnight I had become ill with what seemed to be influenza, including an excruciatingly painful cough. Hardly any sleep. I have not been this ill for several years.

I thought about taking the day off work, but Friday was the day of the monthly Management Meeting. As it was my first one at the company I didn’t think I could miss it (if only I had known how boring it would prove to be!). It was due to start at 9.30, but was put back until 10.

The first thing I did when I arrived at my desk was to check my e-mails. There was a message from Mark Bottoni sent to all department heads (my department, Marketing, only has me in it!), with the comment which he repeated as the meeting began: “This will be an opportunity for you to report on how your department is doing against targets.” As I havn’t been given any targets yet this meant that I could relax. Looking round the table, I saw that others had done handouts with graphs and tables, and Chris Eakins (New Product Development) had even done a presentation on Powerpoint. When my turn came I just talked generally about some of the marketing initiatives currently under way. No-one asked me any questions.

Leaving the office at one o’clock, I should have gone straight home. However, I had made an appointment to look around the medieval church at a village about fifteen miles to the east of the company (I figured that now I was working in a new area I ought to make an effort to get to know the local history). As churches are often difficult to get into I decided to keep the appointment, and then go home (I had been so obviously ill at the meeting that no-one would question a half-day’s sick leave).

It took me about half an hour to get to the village. The area is very impressive in a bleak sort of way. You follow a winding road that is on the top of an enormous bank thirty feet or so above the fields on either side. Trees and hedges follow the road as it winds for miles but otherwise the landscape is bereft of trees. The road follows distinctly the edge of the former coastline before the marshes were drained. You come upon the village unexpectedly - a corner is turned and an enormous square battlemented tower, ashlar-faced, appears, dwarfing the rest of the church behind it. This tower has a fascinating quality, so tremendous is its bulk, like a castle keep. Close to the top of the tower is an arched niche within which is a white statue of the Virgin and Child, looking out serenely over the wide, empty, drained inland sea. The church is situated on a high bank, and is connected with a consecration in 1487 by a medieval bishop (a vigorous opponent of Wycliffe and the Lollards).

Parking the car, I looked out at the drained marshes - an expanse that stretches as far as the eye can see and is used as grazing land in summer and sometimes floods in winter. In times of severe frost it is thronged with skaters in scenes reminiscent of the Brueghel paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Through sturdy wrought iron gates and down several steps to meet the churchwarden, a chatty middle-aged lady who opened the building and showed me around. It was probably unwise, feeling so ill, to have gone into such a cold building, but the appointment had been made and I felt obliged to go on with it. The churchwarden was originally from London but had married into one of the local farming families (she was impressed when I told her my plan of writing a history of the local area).

There were many items of interest in the building, and the churchwarden told me several interesting stories, but I was really too ill to take it all in. Various bits I remember, but they float in my memory, disjointed and distorted by the effects of a subsequent fever (which lasted the remainder of the day and all through Saturday). I remember a huge Royal Arms of Queen Anne, garlanded in ermine and dated 1715. I recall being shown excerpts from the parish records including an entry dated 1748: “Mr Lawson cut a quantity of sparrow grass out of his garden which I had for supper” (mystified, I asked what sparrow grass was - it turns out to be the local delicacy asparagus). I remember discussing the parish charity called (unimaginatively) The Dole, which still has substantial reserves of capital: “The Dole’s still going” she said, “…but as there’s no really poor people in the village we give it out as grants to students.”

After about an hour I felt so unwell that I had to go home. My last question to the churchwarden was to ask why the floor of the building was so low compared to the ground outside. She told me matter-of-factly: “Oh, the church is sinking - has been for years”. We stood there, two Londoners adrift in the wilds, encased by the ancient brick and stone of the church, and slowly, imperceptibly, sinking into the marsh.