High up on a white-washed wall was an Australian flag, commemorating an eighteenth-century son of the village who went off to explore the southern antipodian coasts (doing this mostly in a whaleboat). The silence in the church was beginning to feel oppressive (absolutely no sound of any kind despite the presence of a noisy rookery nearby) so I left the building and went out into the fresh air. Outside the birds were singing, the sun was shining, and my emergence from the church provoked an outburst of cawing in the rookery.