Better to travel hopefully

I frequently peruse, with wonder and admiration, the travels of Fr Zuhlsdorf, punctuated as they are, with delectable meals, convivial blognics, and always culminating in a hospitable and convenient lodgement inspired by benedictine traditions, a mere post-prandial waddle from St Peter's. I, on the other hand, booked through St Christina's Catholic Travel Agency,as is diocesan policy, and found myself at the head of an orderly queue for the charter flight at Trollchester Airport in front of a mother-of-eight, four of whose offspring were inadequately contained with a quadruple-buggy, while the others were armed with overflowing Trunkies. There was also the statutory nun with guitar, assorted backpackers in day-glo cagoules, and a rather trendy looking monsignor in mufti, whose status was given away only by the glint of purple sock between his jeans and sneakers. I will draw a humeral veil over the injuries to my humerus and other parts of my anatomy occasioned by the general dash forward that took place when the flight was called. I acquired an interesting set of bruises from luggage, buggies and guitar, and made for the last seat on the plane. I was entertained for half an hour or so by the frantic kicking from the seats behind as peanuts were extracted from juvenile noses, and if ever I regretted my vow of celibacy, I renewed it with fervour as a result. I had paid an extra tenner for dinner, as I was not expecting anything too wonderful on my arrival, and was presented with this interesting combination, which, I learned from the stewardess, was bought as a job lot from Richard Branson's caterer at a knock down price.

On arrival at a Mussolini era aerodrome about fifty miles from my destination, we were loaded onto an antique bus, and transported via the wonderful B roads of central Italy, to a small modern chain hotel on an industrial estate near the outer ring road, where I fell exhausted onto my single cot bed, and fell into a fitful sleep.

All roads lead to Rome

Tempus fugit, as my old tutor used to say, as he passed me another glass of excellent sherry, in his cosy sitting room, as we sat by the fireside watching the last of the Autumn leaves struggling downwards to the pavement, and attempting to parse some particularly fiendish bits of Virgil about the Danes and their longships. My apologies for my prolonged absence, and it will no doubt take us a little while to get up to speed, but I will start more or less where we left off, with Charlie and Hetty frolicking in the glebe. As I contemplated the serendipitous circumstances of having achieved Robert Browning's poetic wish to be in England in April,I noticed Mrs McElhone waving frantically from the doorstep, holding the phone in one hand and a wooden spoon, (liberally coated in cake mix) in the other. I made for the phone, and the spaniels, less reluctantly, for the cake spoon, and little did I know then that the simple pleasures of a country co-adjutor bishop were to be suspended, as I heard the crackly tones of a long distance call summoning me to Rome.

Altar Egos

I resolved to resist peeking at Canon Lewis' minimised pages for a good long time. I cast my eyes around and found a ream of perfectly good paper in the recycling bin, next to the shredder. I thought the Canon would appreciate an effort at recycling, so I turned it over, and put it into the paper tray, but he printer did not restart immediately. I wiggled the mouse. Still no luck, so I decided that I had better go into the control panel and investigate - but unfortunately I accidentally activated the slumbering software and the grinning face of Dr Thomson sprang out at me as the printer sprang into action.

The blogmeister

I can't remember the exact post that Damian had made that day. Possibly something about George Galloway singing a woeful ballad to Rowan Williams' eyebrow while dressed as Hinge and Bracket at an ecumenical gathering of transvestite gas engineers.Or  Opus Dei infiltrating the Neo-Catechumenate. (Of course that may have been Eccles. I can't quite keep track). On the odd occasion I drop into the blog to read the posts by Paul Priest and Laurence England to brush up my apologetics, and find out what is going on at the Bishops' Conference, I try to keep a low profile.


On the first tab, Canon Lewis had half finished a comment in the character of a priest called Arthur claiming that there was only ONE Mass and that all traditionalist priests were addicted to lace and incense, and were grinding the faces of the poor in order to fund their expense accounts at Gammarellis.  On the second, he was suggesting, in the character of a layman called Daryl, that Fr Arthur knew what he was talking about, and that everyone who disapproved of Vatican 2 was a giant rabbit or a member of the Russian Mafia. The third tab held an lapsed character called Phil who claimed that only .3% of the population were homosexual (to which Arthur had replied that only .3% of priests celebrated the Tridentine Rite by coincidence) and that Daryl was the best Catholic he had ever met, and the fourth was a chap called Buttonmoon whose job in life seemed to be the sexual propositioning of a character claiming to be a 5000 year old witch. There were a number of other characters, including a pro-Palestinian Jew called Terry, who quoted bits about obscure Jewish festivals and said he only liked Post Vatican 2 Catholicism. Other tabs were also open - several from Wikipedia; one from Google Maps showing the Iberian peninsula; one from the Vatican website outlining the canonical penalties for rash judgment, calumny and detraction, and one on Fr Blake's blog  castigating him for being a capitalist lackey. There was also a post-it note with various other identities and passwords, which I found much later had mysteriously  attached itself to the underside of my soutane.

At this point, however, I heard footsteps, and just about made it back to my armchair and disposed of the fairtraid coffee into the plant pot before the creative Canon re-entered he room.

He was less than pleased that I had finished the printing, but was called away before he could interfere, by his housekeeper announcing the arrival of a chap called Zachary who had some business about noticeboards. I made my excuses - grabbed the printouts and left.

Now I must take Charles and Hetty out for a turn around the glebe before retiring for the night. The wonderful thing about spaniels is that they care very little about Vatican 2 (although prone to re-order any room that they are left in unsupervised) and that their only real vice is greed. TTFN

A window on Canon Lewis' views

As one would expect of the former senior archivist of the diocese, Fr Crusty presented me with a sheaf of bulldog clipped papers, from his ancient box folder. I think I bored you enough the other week with the marriage contract of Aoife, and I did express a note of caution when it was brought to my attention that the original of the Synod of Rath Breasil was a possible forgery (it having been pointed out that its yellowing pages still had a few tea leaves attached) , so I decided to canvass Canon Lewis' views on the matter - and I went forthwith to his bijou little presbytery in Trollbury St Richeldis. (I should say that while the Catholic Church was built on the edge of a 1980's gated housing estate on land sold by the Cutleys during one of their periodic financial crises, the presbytery was in fact the old Anglican Rectory, which lay in the centre of the chocolate box village - and had been sold off by the C of E during one of theirs).

Trollbury St Richeldis, where Canon Lewis is the only Labour voter

He had offered to email me all his correspondence, but Hetty had made a bit of a dogs dinner of my printer cartridge, and I was awaiting the return of Cutley Minimus from Bristol University, as he is the only chap who can deal with the matter (and it helps that he shows an aristocratic indifference to the presence of spaniel spittle).

The good Canon was very dismissive of my concerns about the departure of the Brendanite Oblates, and said that matters had been settled  in a vibrant and forward looking way, and that I need not trouble myself any further on the matter. As I entered his study he sprang to attention, and minimised the windows on his desktop, which took a little while as he seemed to have multiple pages open - all from the Damian Thompson Blog, "Holy Smoke" in that excellent newspaper "The Daily Telegraph". I must admit that I was a little curious at his interest - given that the General and Local Election results in Trollbury Rural (which were helpfully pointed out to me by several outraged parishioners in May 2010)  were as follows:

Biffo Coutts-Leigh Sotherington (Conservative) 30785
Derek Ginjag (Ratepayers against the Channel Tunnel) 20604
Marjory Leigh-Sotherington Coutts (Forty-Shilling Freeholders and Spaniel-Breeders Alliance) 10452
Sid Millispart (Labour) 1

The good canon fiddled about with his online folders, and hit the print button a few times - but after the first page or two - the printer ran out of paper. The Canon was a tad put out, and, having told me not to touch anything, he threw  his donkey-jacket over his shoulders and dashed out to get some more from the church office - which gave me ten minutes or so alone with my temptations.

For Those in Peril

Phew! I spent an uncomfortable morning smuggling the linen despoiled by the spaniels out to the laundrette in Trollford, where Mary McCarthy took pity on me and offered me a service wash with free ironing, as a work of corporal mercy. I am a great believer in social networking, and I count someone whose great-aunt was the lay seamstress in the old Magdalen Laundry as a jewel among contacts. I also popped by the shopping centre and replaced the Thorntons Truffles and sneaked them back into the pantry, having removed two pralines, and left another on the radiator for a few minutes, to create a plausible cover story .

Mrs McElhone was surprised to see that her Easter present had migrated from the airing cupboard, but I explained that I had woken in the middle of the night, and worried that the cold air would trigger the frost thermostat. I pointed to the melted chocolate - and she agreed that I had got there just in time - and thanked me profusely - shutting the pantry door firmly, as Charles and Hetty are not above sneaking in if she leaves the Yale lock on the snick.


I may have escaped explaining certain uncomfortable things to Mrs McElhone, but I fear I must offer some sort of excuse for my absences during the greater part of Lent. I suppose I had better begin with the news that arrived on my doorstep on Ash Wednesday that the Oblates of the Order of St Brendan the Seafarer were about to quit the Diocese, and could they please have their rental deposit back, having left the place in good order, with the usual dilapidations etc etc.

I was surprised to hear that this order had had plans to retrench to their chapterhouse in the Hebrides for some time. I was somewhat perplexed, in fact - so I rang Father Crusty to make enquiries.

The good priest turned up on my doorstep within half an hour with a box folder full of press cuttings about this issue, which, it appeared, had been rather a bone of contention in the north western section of the Diocese.

St Brendan's Chapel

It appeared that in 1862 a group whose apostolate was to care for the spiritual needs of seafarers had set up shop in the quiet fishing village of Trollers Quay, where the Troll estuary met the Irish Sea, and there they pressed some local craftsmen and sailors on shore leave to construct a worthy place of worship. As the local economy was geared to fishing, rather than architecture, the local geniuses decided to stick to what they knew - and a couple of boat builders got involved with the project - giving the diocese its first and only naviform church - which appeared for all the world as if a boat had been upended and plonked at one end of the picturesque harbour. The oblates were very happy with their new abode, as they were followers of St Brendan the Mariner, who sailed the Atlantic - either in a coracle or on top of a millstone, depending on which medieval chronicler you choose to believe.

All proceeded according to plan, and for a century the good oblates tended for the lost and impecunious among the seafaring community, but like so many Catholic orders they took Vatican II a little too seriously, and decided to re-form and re-order, just as the dockers at Westerport decided to go on a ten year strike to protest at the introduction of docker-proof containers - and the result was, sadly, that St Brendans lost a large slice of its income, and most of its parishioners, and the oblates had to start buying their bananas at the local Tesco.

High Camp

Dear me - Easter Tuesday - but I had better keep going, as Mrs McElhone may confiscate the laptop again at any time when she finds out that I forgot to close the airing cupboard door earlier tonight when removing a bath towel, and that, as a consequence, the spaniels  made short work of her Thorntons' Truffles and have subsequently been taken queer over all her Irish linen tablecloths on the third shelf.

I know it was weeks ago that I began this little tale, but you may remember that Fr Lonergan's church in Trollington was built by Italian prisoners of war. As we pressed on towards the sounds which were more unearthly than any I have heard before or since (with the exception of the noise made by two overfed lapdogs being sick in an airing cupboard - which  runs pretty close) the mist lifted, and we saw a collection of little huts in varying stages of disrepair.

Hut - a picture taken later, not showing the guards

One, a little distant from the rest, was in pretty good nick, and I was surprised to see that a number of Trollingtonians were standing guard around it, armed with various bits of ancient weaponry including the odd pitchfork. I was rather reminded of an ancient engraving of the '98 Rebellion which hung over my grandmother's mantelpiece.

As I approached nearer -Fr Lonergan himself emerged with a large key in hand, and locked the door behind him.

Monsignor Porter was a sorry sight as he trudged over to my side. He looked as though he would rather have been tucked up between his nylon sheets, after a Radox bath in his avocado acrylic tub (a cruel touch by the lone beadsmen).

Fr Lonergan got straight to the point - as one tends to do, at the age of 94, when one's mind is on the last four things.

He claimed to represent the political wing of the Trollbridge Catholic Conservation Association which had no connection with the Lone Beadsmen, who were a splinter group who had separated from the Provisional Wing of the TCCA back in the 70s. However - he was happy to act as honest broker, and would use his best endeavours to ensure that things would return to normal chez Porter.

He produced a handwritten contract for the Monsignor, and explained that if he saw fit to sign it, his house would be returned to its erstwhile elegant self. The Monsignor gritted what remained of his teeth and signed on the dotted line, and the Monsignor disappeared around the corner to get a mobile phone signal, having handed his keys to the Monsignor.

We entered the Nissan hut with some trepidation, to find the ACP, who were, in the main, a pathetic spectacle of the Irish clerical estate - rather as their bishops had appeared after the Apostolic Visitation recently. The Monsignor explained that there had been a temporary setback in the Great Leap Forward, but that orders had come from Rome that they were to return to their parishes, and prepare for the 50th Glorious Anniversary of Vatican 2, and the Eucharistic Congress.

Fr Lonergan followed us in and encouraged them in rather earthier tones to feck off back where they came from, and that they were a sorry set of boggers, corner boys, seaneens and gombeen men that would not have got a job clearing the pigsties in Maynooth in his day. The coach driver (who turned out to be Fr Lonergan's third cousin twice removed) chimed in that he would put them off the coach at Dun Laoghaire to make their own way home if they gave any trouble - and that their next trip would be to Lourdes, in the Jumbulance - if they were lucky. The locals escorted the sorry crew back onto their coach, pausing only to relieve Fr Alfredo and Fr Oscar of a couple of German uniforms which they had found in a box at the back of the hut, and which they were loathe to part with.

Fr Lonergan hooked up the Monsignor's car to his Skoda, and heaved it out of the ditch, and we returned  to civilisation via the Little Chef on the Trocklesfield Bypass, to find that the Vetus Ordo had been restored. I could have sworn that I saw Florence Cutley's ancient Landrover  reversing into a nearby cul-de-sac as we turned in at the gate - but it was late, and I was tired - which reminds me that I had better get some sleep before slipping out to get more chocolates tomorrow. TTFN

Scotched in the Mist

Dear me - Easter Monday, and I haven't posted since Mrs McElhone caught me breaking my blogfast and confiscated my laptop. Lots has happened since then, but it was rather unfair of me to leave you all wandering about on the moors so I had better update you on the goings on at Trollington.

The Moors

The Monsignor and I were forced to slow to a crawl, and eventually, thanks to a flock of sheep, we ended up in a rather unforgiving ditch.  I saw a gate, and a cart-track, and suggested that we head along it,in the hope that a friendly farmer might offer us his tractor to heave us out of the quagmire, and perhaps a few fresh eggs to pacify Mrs McElhone. The Monsignor took a more jaundiced view of the potential helpfulness of the theoretical farmer (something about the Kulaks being revisionists and capitalist lackeys) -  and grumbled as he picked his way through the boggy terrain in his Gucci loafers. 

Our journey became more and more like the final sad return of Fanny Robin, in Far From The Madding Crowd, but as I listened to the plop plop of the Monsignor's shoes in the cowpats, his muffled groaning appeared by some acoustic trick or other to get both louder and farther away. As I was about to comment on this, I suddenly bumped into the boot of Fr Lonergan's ancient Skoda. good heavens - what was the equally ancient prelate doing out here, in frail health, after his operation? Paying pastoral visits to sheep farmers? What a trooper! 

With a spring in my step I skipped along the path, confident that I would soon be inside the farmhouse of a welcoming Catholic family, with a beaming housewife, a cosied teapot, and a plate of fresh scones. The moaning got louder, however, and I could make out some fierce oaths and rather a lot of rattling and banging going on. I turned a corner, and there was a fifty-seater coach, with  

Lonergan's Coaches, 

Lonerganstown 

Co Wexford

Trips to Knock a Speciality

 written upon its boot.

It was empty, the keys still dangling in the ignition.