Picnic by a grave

I’m presently sitting in the Northampton Music School car park. I’ve found myself a wonderful spot in the sugary early evening sunshine. I’m particularly excited to be here because tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary reunion concert of the Northamptonshire Music School - or NMPAT as it’s now called. Various ensembles have been formed which feature former students. There’s even a full symphony orchestra. I’m singing in the choir, but gate-crashing the string sectional rehearsal. I can hear the sounds of Jupiter from The Planets echoing around, melded with the driving rhythms of a concert band playing the Star Trek theme. 

It’s rather nice to hear the big melody from Jupiter, not only because it’s a deeply stirring piece of music which goes directly into the soul of every English man, but also because it was repurposed as a hymn (I Vow to Thee My Country), which happens to be called “Thaxted”, on account of Holst living in Thaxted when he wrote the piece. 

I’ve been in Warwickshire all day with my family. It’s my Grandmother’s birthday today. She would have been 105, I think. We had a picnic in the water meadow behind her old house, next to the oak tree we planted in her memory, which itself is right next to the picture-perfect church yard where she’s buried. I put a stone on her grave every time I visit, but they keep getting moved away. Perhaps they don’t like Jewish customs in English churchyards, or perhaps people don’t know leaving stones is a thing... 

I got very emotional as I drove along the country lanes towards Stoneleigh, which is the village where my grandparents lived. I was listening to a CD “mix-tape” I made once to ape an old tape my Dad recorded whilst listening to the Terry Wogan show in 1978. It was very much the soundtrack to my childhood. As I entered the village, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers started playing. The deep theatrical melancholy of the melody almost destroyed me and I met my parents hastily brushing the tears from my eyes. Did anyone else think that their Dad was Terry Wogan, or was that just me? 

The weather has been remarkable all day. The sun has been glaring down. The sky has been bright blue. There’s been a gentle breeze. It was cool in the shade. It really was one of those perfect English summer days: the ones they always have in Merchant Ivory films. There were an abnormally large number of butterflies fluttering about. The fields over the hill behind the village had just been harvested and the butterflies seemed to be particularly keen to explore the hay up there. 

The churchyard would have made the most wonderful setting for the film version of A Month In The Country. It’s in such a magical place - by a crystal clear river, where the lime green reeds sway like fronds of seaweed in an incoming tide, in the middle of a wild-flower-covered water meadow which wraps its way around the medieval village.

I’m not sure we were ever aware of quite how remarkable and uniquely beautiful my Grandparents’ village is. I think perhaps I felt that all grandparents lived in idyllic rural settings like that. Well, except my other grandparents, who lived in Sunny Nuneaton, which was somewhat less salubrious!
Northampton, by comparison, was looking a bit rough around the edges. It’s now full of homeless people. Seemingly every church wall, or town centre bench houses a cluster of down-and-outs, all looking like life is not treating them well. There are huge divisions in our society and a trip into one of the troubled Midlands towns will prove this fact conclusively.