Moving On: Part The First...

...It was - as ever it were - H who had the final, decisive say in the matter.

For years now she and I have bewailed the twin dolours of Rectory life: the damp and the expense. A huge - attractive yes to the passer-by - pile, built in centuries when both servants and coal were cheap and readily to hand; a fitting dwelling indeed for a parson plus spouse and the sharp side of ten children, as so oft could be the Victorian norm. Imposing too, silently proclaiming the might and majesty of the Church: very nearly a sacramental even - not that Low Church ever much cared for such things you'll accept.

Do not think that I have not enjoyed the essential anachronism of trying to make decently fit the pint of a much reduced modern familial and ecclesial life into the gallon pot of one's predecessors. (You will know me well enough indeed to spot that such a dissonance is quite my tune.) But such sentimentality cannot thrive in the harsh reality of hard choices - heat the damn thing to stay warm and dry, and go bust; or avoid penury at the cost of rising damp in the lower limbs and frostbite in any one of several extremities.

Ours has not been an uncommon plight - you will find any number of Facebook groups dedicated to the sad lot of the modern rural cleric - but of late it has become a matter more exigently pressing. "New roof Rector, that's what you need," sighed Edmund the builder. Not merely slates and so forth, it seemed, for the very timbers were shot; the whole thing had to come off and to be begun quite at the absolute beginning. "New ceilings at the very least upstairs" - more deep sighing - "might hap re-plastering throughout." (A sigh to break an angel's heart, that last.)

The sighs of course coming from the depth of a sad soul seeing a nice big juicy earner dangled before him, then only for it to be snatched away by the tight-fisted Dean of the Diocese who would - it is fondly believed by many - be quite as happy to have his clergy camp under canvas as pay to see them properly housed.

Edmund though now has his lucrative contract and we our new, albeit temporary, gaff. Age of miracles not over then? Well, yes and not quite so. All H's doing, as per previous intro. My modest proposal had been to begin to suggest opening discussions with the Dean about the options to be considered in advance of preparatory thinking for initial negotiations about terms of reference for a generalised debate...etc., etc.

Weak, all-in-all, you'll be keen to chastise, but then you don't know - or have to work under - the Dean. (Mickey Rourke wanted to play him in the movie, but has been dismissed as 'far too soft a pussy-cat' for the role. That will give you some insight, I trust, into the man and his ways.)

No mustard though cuts our Dean with H. On to the fellow the morning following receipt of final Edmund estimate. Not privileged to be party to the conflab, merely informed of the outcome. "You know that fine old place down by the river I've always had my eye on? The one that's been empty since Canon 'Pewter' Potts's widow passed over and the Diocese couldn't find the right tenant? Well, it's ours now for the duration of the Rectory re-build. We begin the move tomorrow. Now keep up, buck up, and pick your jaw off the ground we've shedloads to accomplish."

Been far too busy with the above accomplishments to check with H - let alone communicate to any other - just how this seeming miracle was managed. The Dean agreeing not only to shell-out nine-tenths of his annual repair budget on but our one Rectory, but also to blow the entire contingency fund on setting us up in near luxury for the duration? (If my fellow clergy are not mad with envy at present, it is merely that they have not yet passed beyond the utterly incredulous, it-cannot-be-so, we-are-in-total-denial, grieving phase.)

Did H resort to blackmail? Dare I say, the thought has crossed the reluctant mind. Was there some arcane knowledge of the fellow - privy only to every parson's wife - about his past or present predilections, that might be the hook on which he could be landed, at will, by mere hint of exposure?

Very possibly so - the whole vulnerable hidden skeleton thing, not the blackmail as such - but it was, it seems, a far more straight and straight-forward direct attack by which H threw down the walls of deanery fiscal caution. "I merely told Derek that if we didn't get our complete way, you would convert to Orthodoxy and ship off to Greece for a fine life of sun, sea and sanctity, leaving a hole in the diocesan register of priests-about-the-place not easily filled."

Enough of a threat, it transpires, for Derek to capitulate, orders for roofs to be re-made and - near enough - hang the cost given, whilst the Palladian tribe has been re-homed in rather quite a wonderful way. More on the doing of that for later. Let it here suffice that should any of my vast acquaintance be moved - in say the next ten years or so at least - to opine that change and rest are an equivalent, they will feel the blows of my disagreement with the stupid remark about their person.

Au contraire, it is my intention to track down and shake warmly by the hand whomsoever it was who first deduced and demonstrated that moving house is in the top three of all of life's most stressful events - a list that includes death and any one of the five biblical plagues, so some pretty stiff competition. Just as well then, all in all, that we are merely moving to another part of the parish and not to a foreign country. Mind you, Greek Orthodoxy has always appealed. So has the Mediterranean life. A long, long way from the misty, murky riverside of 'down-bank' Woldean living. More to come...