Shaken, and Stirred

When in a pub or a bar I am the most easy-going of persons, especially when sipping a drink, but I confess that in such places, and restaurants included, I have a serious complaint that seems to apply to all but the most traditional of establishments. It involves the ordering of a most special drink. The martini.

In countless, unforgivable, moments in this part of the world, I have asked for a martini, only to be asked if I would like a gin or a vodka martini. An educated reader will join me in silently screaming at this point. Why? Because a martini is always made with gin, unless the customer (who is always right) asks for a vodka martini.

It seems that bartenders in New York where the most diverse cocktails in the history of drink o’clock were created are, now, sadly, guilty of this ignorance. And that’s a sobering shame.

Something so small. So old.

Let me begin by clarifying something: My father was never one to tell stories, exaggerate or reminisce. In fact he avoided telling any tales, be they of his many wartime missions as a bomber navigator in the Royal Air Force (and his times in India after the war ended.) Or his early childhood in Fishguard. Or his times in seminary. In fact, and I hope that I am not doing his memory a disservice, I do not even recall him reading me a bedtime story. And I hope that my recollection is wrong in that respect. For I loved him dearly.

My memory is crystal clear in one exception to my father’s reticence, even shyness, when it came to telling a story. I can’t recall the exact time and situation, but certainly remember the place. It was his study in the huge Victorian vicarage in Worcester, a house that would engulf at least three modern vicarages! (Ah, how times have changed!) And something must have sparked off a conversation. Perhaps something we had seen on television, or a homework assignment. Whatever it was prompted my father to begin to tell a story. And what a riveting story it was.

It had taken place only a couple of years previous to us moving into this suburban vicarage. We had lived for many years in the small rural village of Himbleton, and it was there that my father had been asked, as vicar and priest, to visit a farmhouse that was host to extraordinary events.

I can close my eyes and see him now, sitting at his roll-top desk, and telling how, in this farmhouse, the family was afraid. Furniture was moving in violent ways. Windows were being inexplicably broken, and a threatening aura prevailed. There had been, he told us, no recent tragedy in the house (which dated to 1420). Neither were there any young people involved, which, he explained, could sometimes create spiritual mischief. And I remember him smiling at this point. What next?

He went on to describe how he insisted on celebrating the Eucharist in this house, with the family attending. Then, how during that mass he felt a great sense of relief, and (and here’s where it becomes different) an urge to tell the family to look for a stone in the house. That he did. And the house was at peace.

He paused, saying that a couple of weeks went by, and then the farmer called him to say that in replacing a floorboard in the old scullery they had found a piece of amber, about an inch in length and less than that in width. But they were afraid to move it because the disturbances in the house had resumed. And so, he told us, he had to go and lift out and destroy the stone with a coal hammer. In his telling, as he took the stone outside there was a great deal of spiritual reaction and even violence in that large bookshelves were toppled and kitchen pots spilled, but once the hammer fell peace also descended.

Do you understand that story? I certainly don’t.

A Pictorial Blog: Provincetown Color

Provincetown, on the furthest tip of Cape Cod, is renouned for its color, in more ways than one. It's buildings and its signs exemplify this! For your enjoyment, and mine, a few images taken on my last trip a week ago.

Telling it on the Mountain

Although not my first experience of what is inaccurately described as the “supernatural” a meeting, extraordinary in retrospect, on a snow-blown mountainside in Wales is as clear in my mind today as it was then, nearly forty years ago.

Several of us from the Upper Remove of the King’s School, Worcester were taken for a long weekend camp at the Old Chapel in a long and lonely valley in south Wales. The valley was the Grwyne Fechan. Yes, I know that placename creates problems for non-Celtic readers, but please enjoy it, as that name was in place well before most cultures drew maps. With the exception of the Italians, Aztecs and the Greeks, of course, but as none of those groups have an historic foothold in the Welsh mountains, and do not speak Welsh, at least to our knowledge, they are both welcomed and then excused.

The two teachers responsible for our party were Mr. Cunningham and Dr. Cattermole. The Old Chapel, once a place of worship for rural Methodists, was and is an outdoor activity base for the school, owned by them since the 1960s, and is now a well equipped building that probably offers better facilities than some of the farmhouse B&Bs in the area. Not so in 1972.

You see there was no running water, and so the first task of any group arriving was to collect water from a fresh spring some five hundred metres up the hillside to the west of the chapel. I, together with Rick Mayall and Simon Curle, was dispatched - three water bearers, each of us carrying a plastic ten gallon container.

The conditions were near “white-out” but we were able to follow a rocky trail up the slope. I was in the lead, but as minutes went by I realized that the visibility was getting worse and I was unsure where the spring, and its sticking-out pipe was.

Then the man told me, “You’ve just passed it. It’s over there.” And he pointed to a rocky outcrop about twenty feet away. “Thanks,” I said. And stumbled over to the pipe. Rick was the next to arrive. “Who the f___ were you talking to, Tim?” “Just this guy who helped us out,” I said. And he looked at me in a weird way. “Yeah, really?” We carried the thirty gallons of water back to the camp.

About a year later, on a similar trip, I told this story to a mountain guide, a local ranger, who quizzed me about this man that I had met. All I could say was that he was not dressed for walking on the mountain, snow or no snow. The ranger then told me that I was one of dozens who, over many, many years, had possible seen a man who had died looking for a lost sheep in the hot summer of 1927.