St George and the Blessed Julia

Each month we’ll be taking a look at what’s been happening in St Mary’s through the eyes of one of the churchwardens. It’s a very different take on life in the church, which continues to play a hugely important role in our town – as it has for centuries. Roy Abel invites you to join the churchwarden for a pint and to look back on recent events.

Why hello…that’s a splendid hat you’re wearing! No, I don’t own the place …was my greeting so proprietorial? – but I am honoured to be able to claim ownership of this little corner, in a metaphorical sense only. I sometimes wonder in fact if heaven doesn’t comprise a table like this with an endless supply of Sussex Ale and good company! Well, yes I mention heaven as matters spiritual are never far from my thoughts. Indeed, I am the churchwarden, and as for that endless supply, it seems to be dwindling at the minute ..Oh you are? How sweet of you.

Oh yes, always much to report on with regard to St Mary the Virgin, our parish church that wants to be a cathedral – well, churches too can dream, no? We have had a busy time recently with the Rye Jazz Festival just past and the Arts Festival kicking off in the church with Rye’s very own Marsh Choir. Just recently the church resounded to blues, rock and jazz of the highest quality, her old columns and mouldings swept by multi-coloured light shows and her prayer-filled stonework drenched in the soulful agony of Ruby Turner’s ‘Please don’t leave’ or Davina and the Vagabonds channelling the fragile and raunchy assurance of Amy Winehouse.

Now this may be connected to the noise levels of the music but let me whisper to you of an event our Roman cousins in Watchbell St would probably claim as a miracle – St George has moved! No reaction? Ah…you didn’t hear. St George is on the move! What do I mean? Well, after the tremendous organ of James Taylor – Hammond organ that is, of course – rounded off the festival with a set that must have made some of the occupants of the churchyard think they heard the last trump, it was observed that St George had marched forward. Well, shuffled if you must be literal, as it was only a couple inches at most. You see we have a plinth in the Clare Chapel,- hmm, yes, yes it was the bar for the duration of the festival, but we don’t talk about that- halfway up the north wall, and when things returned to normal we observed that something had stirred our national patron whose feet were now projecting beyond his plinth like a fledgling about to try his wings.

What might have prompted him to move? Well, exactly: there are no more dragons, are there? But you’re saying it coincided with a lot of activity centring on the saint’s emblem – the red cross of our national flag? You think he might have been summoned by the sudden visibility of his flag on the M20 or outside pubs? Are you suggesting that George popped off his plinth, jumped onto verger Ruth Hurley’s white horse and rode the countryside decorating roundabouts and street signs with red spray paint, even making it as far as Westbury to decorate the chalk horse? You would say that the troubled times called forth this national champion, woke him from his slumber? Well, who knows?

However, where is the dragon for him to fight? Surely not in the small boats and cheap hotels housing our illegal visitors? I would suggest that perhaps there are dragons uncoiling their scales in our current politics, descended from those worms that paraded in Cable St in 1930s London or rampaged through sixteenth century Paris driving many a French Protestant to seek refuge in England, not least in Rye. Now would those monsters not be a fitting enemy for our national hero? George? No, not English of course, Greek by breeding and fighting for the Romans, but might he not scent the whiff of his ancient enemy to shuffle forward ready for the call? I like to think so anyway. In any case I will get a ladder next week and nudge him back towards the chapel wall – until the next time he wanders.
A bit fantastical you say…well you’re right, I admit, so let me continue in the same vein – if encouraged – by any small gesture …that might be offered by an open-handed companion – only if headed in that direction of course – Oh, you’re on your way to the bar? How very kind!

So, if you have visited our church or walked along Church Passage on your way from Layfields to the Mermaid, for instance, you might have noticed pots of flowers blooming joyfully in the shade of the damp green wall, which until recently grew only dog-pee saturated dandelions. This is the handiwork of the blessed ‘Julia of the North Passage’ who alighted from her perch on a corbel high up on the church near the Quarterboys to enliven the area with colourful, vibrant potted blossoms which have changed as the summer season has waned so that there is always a delightful show. Even our war memorial on the other side of the church has benefited from her generous touch, unsolicited and freely bestowed.

Truly we are in an age of miracles! Speaking of which…see you in church? Sundays at 8.30am and 10.30am or the contemplative Morning Prayer 9am weekdays.

God bless you …till the next time.

Image Credits: Roy Abel .