Fishers of Memories

First, let me apologise for not offering an article in May’s magazine, I had so many medical appointments it was hard to keep apace with time.

June for me is a month full of mixed emotions, on the one hand it’s the anniversary of my fathers passing followed three days later by Fathers day and then seven days later my own birthday. However, by the time the month has settled in the gardens are abundant with colourful floral displays, bird song, children playing and the odd plane going overhead.

I always think of June as being the month running up towards the holiday period, it always seems to be the time when Holiday brochure prices start to go up. In particular, I remember two holidays when I was at home, one spent in Kernow and the other in Tenby. The Tenby one was memorable because it was the year that Prince Charles was created Prince of Wales and the one in Kernow was special for the trips to Lands End and Mullion Cove.

However, perhaps the one special holiday memory I have, was spent at my grandmother’s cottage in Huntley, and ‘working’ for my uncle, picking blackcurrants, all of us sat on wooden boxes with our heads shoved into a blackcurrant bush, I ended up with the blackest, stickiest fingers you have ever seen. Each berry had to be picked one by one, nothing else was allowed. At that time, all the blackcurrants went to Beechams to be turned into Ribeana. Now, whenever I treat myself to a warm glass of blackcurrant Ribeana, the memories come flooding back. Nevertheless, put a bowl of blackcurrants in front of me, and I seem to go over all feint at the thought of some poor soul having to pick them all, one by one.

If any of you can cast you minds back to the Summer of 1976, you’ll remember it was a particularly hot one, so my memories where all hot ones, having to wear one of those big floppy hats which protects the neck, needless to say, I still got burnt! But not where my fingers where covered in the juice from the blackcurrants.

Well, those were the memories away from home. However, those spent at home were spent each Saturday by singing in the church choir, for weddings. I think we used to get sixpence (that is in proper money and no such thing as minimum wages then!) and believe me that sixpence burnt an enormous hole in the bottom of my pocket, and it seemed to buy no end of wine gums and gobstoppers. It’s a pity that I never allowed that sixpence to be joined together with the following weeks ‘wages’, just imagine what I could have spent it on!

Summer weddings at St Marks were full of memories; of the strong sunlight against the golden Northamptonshire stone walls, the myriad of different coloured confetti thrown, “outside the main gate please“. I also allowed my hay-fever to get the better of me by mowing the grass in the churchyard, I don’t think that a ‘child’ today would be allowed to be left in charge of a petrol mower, and was there such a thing as a ‘risk assessment’ back in the 70‘s? I do not think so.

The church then, as well as now, is somewhere where I feel comfortable and I like to think of our church as a huge net, where each Sunday I am caught with all my friends and drawn into the biggest harvest festival of thanksgiving. “All are safely gathered in” for a celebration of our Lords love and sacrifice for each of us.

There cannot be anything more wonderful than to pass the peace from one another to each other, like knitting together the net after a huge harvest. Nets, of course, are a very expensive piece of equipment which any fisherman would be lost without, and to maintain them is crucial. Forget to mend your nets and all sorts of wonderful beings can be lost and slip through.

Whether we are part of, St Marks’ prayer groups, Yeast groups, Junior Church, Mother’s Union, Guides or Scouts or Stepping stones and the many others I might have forgotten, we all need one another, young and old alike, to keep drawing in together the love and memories of those past and present.