Goodwill and togetherness

Carollers gather for a song of praise.  A horse and wagon trundle past, and there's the tring-tring of a bell, as a young cyclist peddles through the slush.  People are enticed by the warm glow of the Imperial Electric Theatre, and all the other inviting lights that line the path of Queen Street.  A little further up the town, the Globe Hotel throws open its doors to winter travellers, whilst flower ladies sell holly and mistletoe on the kerb.  Austins, the drapers, is busy with customers admiring the finery, and all through the air is the smell of coal and wood fires from the nearby houses.  It is a quarter past five in the afternoon, but the edge is taken off the bitter temperatures by the lovely, iconic ringing of the bells emanating from the very centre of the town, St Leonard's Tower.  It's Christmas in Newton Abbot.

Much has changed since the Victorian inspiration behind these paintings, yet so many of the details in the above description still hold true in our little market town. The air of togetherness, the goodwill and feeling of community, which binds us so strongly at this time of year, are overwhelmingly evident in these paintings, and is a message that we can all take into the festive period, in amongst all the shopping and the rushing.  I wish every reader of this blog a happy, merry, peaceful and meaningful Christmas.

Queen Street - detail from an original painting by Annie Meakin, on a card sold in aid of Dame Hannah Rogers Trust

The Clock Tower - detail from an original painting by Annie Meakin, on a card sold in aid of Dame Hannah Rogers Trust

Merry Christmas, George Sterry

And so to a man - a great-great-great-grandfather of mine - who passed away at Christmas time in 1901.  Edward VII has been on the throne for less than a year; Parliament passes the Factory and Workshop Act, raising the minimum working age to 12; and Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, sent from from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland.  It is 23 December, and in Gloucester, George Sterry, a shoemaker, is rushing around to get his affairs in order before settling down for the festivities.  He leaves his home and workshop on Tredworth High Street, rushing in the cold weather, to Pembroke Street, where he will collect some shoes in need of mending.  The Gloucester Citizen tells the rest of the tale (click the story to enlarge):

It must have been a terribly sad Christmas for the remaining family, particularly for George's wife Ann (his second wife, to whom he married in 1893) and for his children - Elizabeth, Fanny, George, Edward, and Amelia Kate, my great-great grandmother, who lived close by in Gloucester.  No record of George's burial can be found - presumably he was laid to rest after Christmas Day, but whether this was before or after the New Year is unknown.

Jefferson David Chalfant's The Shoemaker

There have been 115 Christmas Days since George passed away.  115 times that family have swapped presents under the tree; 115 gatherings around the Christmas dinner table; 115 moments that we as descendants may have looked up to the heavens, our hearts full of remembrance, and whispered into the cold night air, Merry Christmas, George Sterry.

Here comes Christmas

We Three Kings of Orient are

Bearing gifts we traverse afar.

Field and fountain, moor and mountain

Following yonder star.

O star of wonder, star of night

Star of royal beauty bright,

Westward leading, still proceeding,

Guide us to thy perfect light.

Well, Christmas has arrived again at Oak Tree Drive, after what seems to have been a mere five minutes since last year.  There's not an awful lot new this time around - after all, Christmas is about tradition, memory, and the revisiting of timeless classics - and so it's the usual tree decorations and nutcrackers, which always fill my heart with festive joy.  I did, however, pick these two little gems up in Exeter recently.

It seems that Christmas started very early this year - the first Sunday of Advent fell on its earliest possible day, and with the general poor state of the world in recent months, it appears that people are embracing the festive life with all of their hearts.  We're probably the same as everybody else - this is a time to reflect on the many good things we have, to discover cheer and rebuff the adversity of the cold months, and to search out kindness - kindness to each other, our family and our neighbours, as well as kindness to all the wild residents with whom we share our home - the robins and the wrens, the gold crests and the wagtails, who are receiving big handfuls of seeds, peanuts and mealworms to see then safely through to spring.  Let us not forget the garden at this time of year, where the odd treat still warms the soul - the skimmia, the ever green ferns, the cyclamen, the appearance of helleborus niger - the Christmas Rose - and the knowledge that under every pile of sticks, and snuggled deep into the compost bin, there will be numerous frogs, the odd toad, and the sleeping slow worm.

Meanwhile back inside, a Yankee Candle wafts its cosy winter scent throughout the house, its flame flickering gently in the soft darkness, the undeniable smell of Christmas for me.  The curtains are drawn, the night is shut away, and the simple pleasures - to eat a hearty stew together, or to sit and read a book by lamplight - prevail.  Home is wonderful at this time of year. 

Remembrance

To Germany

You are blind like us.  Your hurt no man designed,

And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder, Grown more loving kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

Abandoned passions, silent terraces

There's a sad but interesting reminder come to my attention today, about the perilous existence of English football's lower-division and non-league clubs.  It's timely, as rumours about Torquay United's prospective new owners take a leap forward - not necessarily for the better - and Gulls fans wait, with bated breath, to hear the answers to the grimmest of questions.  Will we still have a football club?  What will the club look like?  How will it be run?  Where will it play?

Seaside resorts and successful football clubs seem to have an all-or-nothing relationship.  Bournemouth and Brighton have both come through mighty perilous journeys before arriving in happier climes.  Blackpool have tasted the sweet success of Premier League football, before plummeting down the divisions.  Morecambe and Southend seem, on the surface of it, to be making a consistently successful go of it.  And then there's Scarborough FC.  Scarborough FC, who came to Plainmoor in the second leg of the 1998 Division Three play-off semi final, lost, and subsequently spiralled into relegation, and then non-existence.  Recent chatter on a Torquay forum put me onto a website, with photos of the then-abandoned McCain Stadium, Scarborough's one-time home, and clearly as characterful as any you'd find in football.  Images of the empty ground, where spectators would once have chanted, cheered and waved their scarves in the air, seem particularly haunting, almost apocalyptic.  What a sorry affair, and what a sad demise of a football club, trying to survive in just the sort of town that makes our football pyramid unique in the world.

The eerie silence of the McCain Stadium (source: Urban Ghosts)

Of course, the story doesn't quite end there for Scarborough, with the arising of their phoenix club, Scarborough Athletic.  The team now play ten miles away in Bridlington, and are riding high, currently sitting second in the Evo-Stik Northern League First Division North.  Will they one day return to the glittering heights of the Football League?

The McCain in action (source: Derelict Places)

Back in Torquay, we wait for the news that will either confirm the future of our club, or ratify its conclusion.  Non-league football is a cruel, stark and brutal world, a million miles from the game that so many people know from Sky Sports or Match of the Day.  Winter is coming to the English Riviera - and unlike its usual balmy climate, the forecast of clubs past points towards a very cold, very dark season ahead.

Torquay in play-off action versus Scarborough at a packed-out plainmoor, 1998 (source: Herald Express)