A Fête Worse Than...

...is there indeed anything more to be dreaded than the impending annual fête de village, that terrifying mix of warring egos all gathered together for the alleged greater glory of the parish coffers though in reality assembling but for an occasion of ferocious factional fighting?

You'll not have failed to spot that there has been a lacuna not far short the span of the Missouri River at its very widest (round about where it whacks into the Mississippi if you must know one gathers) of tales of local derring-do and other country matters in these writings of late.

In truth, one has been walkabout much this past year - both interiorly and externally - and thus heart and mind as well as travelling body has been largely absent from Woldean parts.

H has been a brick throughout it must be said at once. If one were to describe this whole thing as a reverse 'Brief Encounter' climax - you know the lines "You've been a long way away." "Yes." "Thank you for coming back to me." - that would be wrongly to impute that romance of an adulterous kind, howsoever unconsummated, had been the fell matter in hand.

Au contraire - as the visiting Victorian Frenchman replied to his English hosts when asked after a particularly rough Channel crossing if he had partaken of luncheon - there have been fewer than two persons involved in this tricksy little shindig of mine. Moi seul indeed has been somewhat lost in transit not found in any wrongful place or arms.

One has though in some ways been off-piste as well as off-colour. 'Male menopause' might be the glib - if singularly organically inapposite metaphor - to have thrust at one by way of explanation. Yes, there has been some nostalgic sense of 'a great future behind him', but then one has always been somewhat of a gloomy cove for whom the obvious impermanence of the fragile glass was always more to the fore than whether its contents should be considered half way up or half way down.

Nor indeed has the time of life quite yet been reached when one by instinct turns first to the Telegraph obits. for the latest news on one's cronies. ("Ah dear Parson 'Mildew' Millhouse. Never knew he toyed with Roman ways in his youth. Quite the proto-Oratorian it seems he was. Too much dry sherry at an impressionable age I'd call it." That sort of thing.)

Though by happenstance, it must be said, it was only the other evening when old Canon 'Hanging' Jeffries - a pal since seminary days - phoned for a chat and enquired, inter alia, how our mutual friend Prior Margaret of the Sisters of the Lost Souls did, to which one could but only reply "Still dead I fear" she having passed on to glory a decade or more since. Bit of a teeth and malt sucking moment for all that one.

No, not death but life has me in a jangle, and jangling one doesn't know for the life of one what quite the matter is. A troubled faith perhaps, though what faith deserves the name if it is not so assailed by frets from time to time? Certainly some ill-bodings on perhaps the irredeemable nature of our land and its people - that rank heresy of course but not an unarguable position.

Bit foxed without a clear route to a bolthole it must be said. Maybe there are no boltholes anymore, the ones one thought were there merely illusory even.

Dear Dom. Robin would never have stooped to the "Get a grip boy" confessorial line, but if he had he might be so tempted now.

Cannot in any way dispute that a firm grip on this wretched - no stripe that, wondrous - village fete heading my way is needed. Squadrons of helpers of all sorts from showers-in to shovers-out to be recruited. Legions of impeccably fair judges to be lined up for all the varied and desperately important competitions from pony dressage to melting-moment cakes. One or two families even to be sharply warned that the archery display is quite not the time to settle ancient festering feuds!

The mettle of a warrior priest must be summonsed from far distant dusty attic rooms. The mantle of battle shaken out of its moth-strewn cupboard. The motto of Hannibal - 'Aut viam inveniam aut viam faciam' - once more to adorn the Palladas crest.

That's the way to do it. I trust!