Jersey Thoughts from an English Church Copyright © Rob Lock 2011

Extracts from the guidebook to Totleigh Barton church, Devon; thoughts about Jersey

So, no room for Helier¹ here, where windows

were selected from a catalogue which gave a choice

of kings and bishops only ... Alban, Neot, Edmund

can see me safely home, but now,

to take me further back, it’s him I need:

Helier on his rock, sea and sky his wind-eye to God –

gritty sand this uncloistered anchorite's anchor.

This warm sandstone may be cosy, but it’s not conglomerate,

granite, rhyolite: pudding-stone of pebbles cooked

in dark volcanic slurry; quartz, feldspar, mica mixed, baked

to biscuit-pink; burnt again in earth’s deep oven and thrown up.

Impressive western tower – facing down the sea:

Gorey castle - Mont Orgeuil; Geoffrey’s famous Leap;

Plemont; Grosnez’s cliffs taking on the full Atlantic swell.

Fishermen, settlers, privateers, facing down the sea.

The original Norman font has been preserved.

‘Ah but yes, eh? Mais oui.

Birthright from the Bastard;

his before he was a Conqueror.

Loyal to the crown, but independent, us.

Let’s keep the fontanelle pulsing.

Le roi le veult, mon vie.’²

Pinnacled, embattled

so snap these castles …

colour those Martello towers …

see Peirson³ do the hero’s death.

Noted for its carvings - maybe,

but where are the cows, cabbages,

crapauds⁴ (toads), tomatoes, spuds?

Lily Langtry?

This guidebook details all I want to know and more

about the cost of various additions. But does

the auditor exist to cope with Hill Street, Broad Street,

Halkett Street? Bankers hunkering down.

A concrete pedestal… looks out of place below the font,

like feet of clay - or bunkers in a holiday resort,

anti-aircraft posts, coastal batteries. Jerry built

and made to last. Slave labour casts long shadows.

A special chair for Major Collis, benefactor,

and no doubt a decent man with nothing left

to prove - but those colonels and captains,

clinging to rank in the classroom,

their war a blink away; blinking lifetime

for the pupils, eyes not fully opened yet.

The crocheted altar cloth

was handmade by the last school mistress -

who wasn’t Miss Heaton, Miss Donaldson,

Miss Arthur or Miss de la Haye,

handmaids all, presenting what they knew.

Imitation pearls? Genuine swine?

Sowing seeds.

The register survives, that catalogue of friends,

rivals and rogues; no bishops or kings,

but Tubs, Marks, Martin, Cuss, Dai,

where did you go? Jean, the boy from the farm,

your father preserving the language⁵

in your very name, as in his dictionary -

confirming me English by its remoteness -

I see you now ploughing in the States⁶.

Good luck, mon vie.

Angels holding trumpets in the roof,

ring echoes of the Sally Army band

outside a house; ship ha’pennies in a jar

to keep a South Seas mission ship afloat;

two raucous boys returning home,

Christian Soldiers, marching onward,

when the magic of a lantern show was done.

But the woven midnight air behind that inn and stable

looks as cold and clear as when it lured a student out

to walk by the light of stars he knew might well, by then,

be dead.

The screen deserves close scrutiny, we’re told:

important points might otherwise be missed …

You know where you are with an island,

high tide map shape seems so easy -

but in the litany of tides there’s ebb

as well as flow: edges get blurred.

Sands of the bait men, rocks of the vraic⁷,

shores of the hermit crab.

A shifting littoral, leaving one all at sea.

Notes

¹ Helier: 6^th century Jersey hermit

² The king wishes it, my old mate

³ A well known Jersey Picture depicts Major Pierson dying in the manner of Wolfe at Quebec defeating the French at The Battle of Jersey (1789)

⁴ Jerseymen are toads, Guernseymen donkeys… really!

⁵ The Jerrais language, or Jersey French

⁶ The States: Jersey’s governing body

⁷ Vraic (pronounced rack): seaweed