The Sunday Times Magazine • 23O
ne day in 1985, when
I was 23 and the
unlikeliest pop star
since the Singing
Nun, my manager
put a piece of paper
in front of me and
told me to sign.
I did, without
looking, like any
self-respecting artiste. Fortunately it was
not a wildly inequitable contract but a
pension scheme.
Thirty-seven years later I signed another
document, a deed to the bishop declaring
that I was irrevocably surrendering the
living of the parish of Finedon in
Northamptonshire, where I have been the
incumbent since 2011. Two signatures
separated by nearly 40 years, the promise of
the former paying out to enable the latter.
After Easter I will no longer be vicar. I will
leave the vicarage and the parish and go
south, to a pretty little English village
between the downs and the sea, with
a farmers’ market and an
ancient church, an old
bakehouse, a village green
and a pub, where the locals
gather over a pint of locally
brewed ale to reminisce
about their Baftas.
This was not my original
plan. I had hoped to end up
with my husband, David,
living in a tiny place on a
wild peninsula in the west of
Scotland, but he died in 2019
and when widowerhood
arrived I looked forward and
saw nothing. Then lockdown
happened. “Will you be OK?”
my friends asked, anxious for
my wellbeing in the double
isolation of bereavement andand creativity of the communities we serve,
members and non-members alike.
I was a late adopter of online worship,
reluctant at first to switch to a technology
many would not be able to access, but
as weeks turned to months, my curate
persuaded me and Zoom evensong began.
It is perhaps a counterintuitive fact, but
Christianity has always been an early
adopter of communications technology,
from the codex — pages bound in book
form — to printing, to broadcast, to
online. My parishioners turned out to be
surprisingly adept too, and not only them
but others who join us from London and
Scotland and Germany and Nigeria, nation
speaking peace unto nation. We are now
back in church with choral evensong
restored, but Zoom evensong continues.
As lockdown’s weeks turned to months
I realised I was going to have to come up
with more than just a new way of gathering
a congregation. I began to think I needed a
new way of life. “Don’t get stuck, Richard,”
said Irene, David’s mother. “Get out there,
meet people, do what you
need to do. It’s what David
would have wanted.” Actually
I think he might have quite
liked me in eternal freeze
frame, but he is not here
any more. I am and there
is life to be lived, and I
realised I needed to do
that somewhere new.
But where? With whom?
Doing what?
The former manager came
again to the rescue, with a
proposal that I move to the
village where she lives to a
house at the end of her lane
that had just come up for sale.
And so on Low Sunday, the
PREVIOUS PAGES: TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. THIS PAGE: RICHARD COLES / ORION PUBLISHING, BBC first after the high and holy
quarantine. “I don’t know,” I said, and sat
in the garden unable to read, or listen to
music, or follow a box set in that loveliest
of springs, watching the roses David had
planted bud and bloom, a daily bouquet
from my absent beloved.
Church was closed, by order, even to
its priest — a rule I broke without any
hesitation, sneaking in to pray in solitude,
for I refused to be the only vicar of my
church not to offer worship to God since
1349, when my predecessor John de Colby
died in the line of duty, ministering to his
flock when the Black Death arrived and
killed half the clergy of England.
Unable to come together in church we
went out to the community, forming the
Parish Support Team so every household
had a named person with a number
they could call if they needed anything,
prescriptions picking up, shopping, and for
our most vulnerable neighbours ensuring
basic support. The C of E, for all its flaws
and failings, can still act as an agent of
goodwill, lightly organising the generosityBelow: with Jimmy
Somerville in the
Communards
on Top of the Pops,
July 1988Right: as a young
chorister, centre,
with his brothers,
Will, left, and Andy➤