The Albert Version...

I have been over to see ancient Canon Albert in his nursing-home fastness, in the hope of prizing out of him some useful tips regarding the aforementioned Ceremony of the Blood Letting - and to enquire as to why there was no reference to it at all in the, again, aforementioned Book of Record he so otherwise diligently furnished me with when I arrived to take over the pastoral baton.

Taking everything all in all, I found the place itself - St. Martha's - less lowering than I had anticipated it to be. True, there were a goodly number of elderly coves whose grip on reality as ordinarily taken was somewhat remote, but as these fellows seemed exclusively to be found among the patients - the staff being to a woman cheerful, kind and caring - I minded little being mistaken for a couple of nephews and the odd father by some of the inhabitants.

Canon Albert himself was introduced to me as having 'one of his better days', which did make me wonder the deep patience and skill required of the good nursing nuns on any day less than better. Nonetheless, with a certain occasional side-step down a by-way of misplaced memory, we did manage between us to cut to the chase on the matter of family feuding and the non-noting of it.

Re-hashing his tale in line with more traditional narrative protocols - leaving out then asides on the devilish behaviour of some of his neighbours past and present, etc., - this is the Albert Version:

Albert was posted to the Wolds in the late 1960s - which in local time would have been nearer to the early 1950s for the rest of the country. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll may have been big in the outside world, but over here - apart of course from sex, we being a farming community well versed the in functional breeding if not the recreational pleasure aspect of the matter - the lives followed a pattern and a rhythm laid down over centuries and not much altered by developments elsewhere. ('Orgasmic' would have been confused with 'organic' - and each treated with equal deep suspicion as something invented by ignorant townies.)

'If it moves you milk it; if it doesn't you reap it' more or less summed us up, with the occasionally interspersed festival to liven the mood. These festivals, as Albert soon discovered, had their roots - and sometimes their very branches and twigs - nourished as much by ancient pagan fancies as by traditional theological imperatives. For the Church this was not on the whole unduly problematic: a convivial 'hunting parson' - as incumbents mainly were - neatly bestriding this duality with a foot in either stirrup as it were.

For Albert though this matter was not quite so simple, he being of the Old School - or rather perhaps the new school - of true believer for whom no compromise with the profane could be easily or readily countenanced. Albert had served in the War as a paramedic and had been present when Belsen had been liberated. He had seen pure evil and knew in his heart that only pure good could withstand that sight yet maintain hope for human kind.

It had, therefore, been a struggle for Albert working in what one could best describe as a 'mixed-faith' community of believers, who happily kept penates corn dollies for harvest home next lares Crosses for eternal salvation. Early evangelism vigour had enjoyed a limited success among a few, but had in at least equal measure caused friction and ruction with many of his flock. Over time his innate goodness had won many to accept him for his well-meant kindness, his material generosity to the labouring poor also contributing to the high-regard in which ultimately he was held in the village.

The matter of the Feud though remained for him an indelible stain on the fabric of local life, with no amount of spiritual scrubbing on his behalf able to transform it into the wished-for, prayed-for, white wool of the Lamb. The particular dilemma for Albert was that the Church had already become caught up in this whole matter as an accomplice, being the party as it were that held the ring to ensure that none should actually come to harm therein and equally that the inter-family violence should be quarantined to that narrow sphere.

To wash, therefore, his hands of the matter in the manner of a Pilate was not an Xtian option as Albert saw it. His endeavour rather was to attempt further diminution and entropy until - as he hoped - the ghost could could be laid to rest for lack of energy for the continued haunting. It was he who had introduced the notion of mutual thumb-pricking to lessen the opportunity for real harm, but also with a view to making the whole thing seem so trivial as to not to be worth the effort.

He sought further to dampen the fires of retributive vengeance - which were indeed by then burning low - by loading the whole Ceremony with such a lengthy liturgical burden as to seek to bore the combatants into submission. (A standard clerical device which we are all taught in Year Three of the seminary curriculum!) Thus it was that his choice for 'prayer for the day' at his last hosting of the Ceremony had been the entire contents of Psalm CXVIII, a fine vehicle of prayer in its way but at 176 verses not usually recited all in one go by even the most devoted of monastic houses let alone lay clergy.

For Albert this final tactic appeared to have worked. There was an ennui about the whole affair that he hoped might be the much desired - by him at least - coup de grace of the warring and the feuding. It was, therefore, for that reason - a hope that the last had been heard of the matter - that he had chosen not to include any mention of blood letting in his otherwise masterful Book of Record duly completed for yours truly on my arrival.

I have no doubt the Good Lord loves his good Albert, but clearly He felt that one more test of his faith was needed finally to purify the soul within. How else to explain that, yes the Ceremony would have been finally laid to rest were it not for the new life breathed into it by the respective representatives of the two families due to engage in combat this time - Mildred and Maurice - who were now positively relishing the prospect of being met at almost literal 'daggers drawn' as they have been metaphorically for too many of their years?

This sad news it seemed not fit to pass on to Albert to spoil his final days ('months maybe' thought Matron) so I admit I lied to the old fellow and told him my only interest was purely historical not current, and that I had only heard mere mention of the matter over a pint at the Dragon.

I have enough I deem of the background to the whole thing to be going on with for now. There are but a few days left to plan a strategic campaign and to assign tactical disposition of one's forces. To horse! Or rather, in my case, to bicycle!