Connections and reconnections

Linda and Nick came from New Zealand to see me on this pilgrimage. That’s a very slight exaggeration – they had a complicated itinerary of travel in Europe, and Nick’s organisational wizardry somehow made the connection possible. They’ve been on some of my India pilgrimages, and it was wonderful to spend a leisurely evening with them.

But this morning they’ve gone early to Gatwick, and I’m breakfasting alone. When I come downstairs, with cello and luggage, at the appointed time, Kit is waiting for me in the lounge – multitasking his meditation and his coffee.

Kit and I met yesterday (he’s a volunteer at Chichester cathedral), and we’re going to cycle together today. It’s a short, flat, day, just 20 miles to Portsmouth, so we can be relaxed and conversational. We could be more conversational if there were less traffic, and sometimes the thread has to be picked up after a tantalising hiatus.

Piecing things together in these short segments we discover, after 15 miles or so, that we have met before. It took us a while to work it out, partly because it was 5,000 miles, and about ten years, from where we are now. It’s a bit of a coincidence, since today’s companiable cycling was brokered through the Association of English Cathedrals, who thought – as did we – that they were bringing strangers together.

We stop at a pretty church – I Havant a clue where – to admire an ancient yew tree, and a seagull guarding a phone box, before pedalling across a suddenly squally causeway into Portsmouth.

Portsmouth cathedral was dedicated to Thomas Beckett when it was first finished, 15 years after Thomas’s martyrdom, but it wasn’t a cathedral until 742 years later. There’s a small 17th century extension, now completely enclosed by a much grander addition completed in 1939. It was extended again in 1991.

I’m playing in the original chapel of St. Thomas, which is small and intimate. The audience, for what is a regular lunchtime concert slot, is up close and personal. This is a different kind of Meditation from those where I’m projecting to the far reaches of a long nave. I like this much better.

I can’t see Melena, the Polish verger, but I’m sure she’s listening. Melena trained as a classical cellist, at a Conservatoire in Poland, and will be lending a critical ear to what I’m doing. Perhaps for the first time that thought is stimulating, rather than intimidating, and I’m grateful.

Neither can I see Darren, who said he would be here. Perhaps, after 30 years, I just don’t recognise him. But here he is, at the end of the performance; 30 years has changed him hardly at all.

We celebrate the reunion under a trumpeting golden angel, and now here I am in his Vicarage a few miles from the cathedral, putting my feet up after a short guided tour of St. James, Milton, next door.

St. James, he points out, is so very like the church we first met in, all that time ago, and where I was once the vicar. Both buildings were idiotically over-sized for modern congregations, and our far-sighted predecessors had chopped off an East end for a more sensibly sized church, creating a huge and useful community centre in the rest.

Only in the case of St. James, you couldn’t call it an East end. The church is the wrong way round. It faces North. That’s very confusing. And I’m sure it’s not allowed.