I came, I read, I copied

I have spent the last three days in the British Library Manuscripts Reading Room going through the letters which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to his mother over a period of half a century.

Looking into them was like looking into his heart. The first letter was written when he arrived in Preston as a little boy on his way to Stonyhurst School. The last was written from a ship on the high seas where he was with his second family, enjoying the perks of a highly successful writing career.

The letters were not in date order. At times they just seemed to be thrown in any old how. One minute he was living in Southsea, thanking his mother for sending him £5 and keeping some back for boots. The next he was writing to her from Sussex saying that he had bought some of his neighbour's property and was going to build a garage and a chauffeur's house on it . There were a lot of years in between.

There was no evidence whatsoever to persuade me that the name Sherlock Holmes had anything to do with Ingleton. But it did furnish me with enough information to write about Mrs. Doyle, his mother who lived in the hamlet of Masongill, just a couple of miles from here, and also about Bryan Charles Waller, her lodger, landlord and possible lover.

Look out for the fruits of my labours.

I'm on the train!

I'm always up for something new, and this is it. I'm writing this on a train.

It's the National Express 1205 service from Leeds to London King's Cross. We have just left Doncaster and the next stop is Retford.

I'm on my way to the British Library to do more Sherlock snooping. This time I'll be reading letters that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to his mother in Masongill.

Will it hold any clues? Elementary, my dear reader, elementary.

Passionate for the Passion

The BBC has screened a four part series on the last week in the life of Jesus called The Passion. I watched a couple of episodes and on the whole I thought it was good. The actor playing Jesus didn't grab my attention straight away, but he soon did.

It was a realistic portrayal of the events and Pilate and Caiaphas came over as more rounded figures. But it was strange that Pilate had an Ulster accent. Nevertheless I think it was a very God-centred event during this year of Hope 2008.

I'm dreaming of a white Easter

This has been one of the strangest Eastertides I have ever known. It was certainly the earliest.

Good Friday was on the day that Spring began and it was bitterly cold as we trudged round Ingleton following the cross.

Easter Saturday saw me and Audrey out for a long walk with Friends of DalesRail. We met up at a snowy Ribblehead and followed a circuitous route through Chapel-le-Dale and the outlying farms, back to the viaduct. It was an easy walk but in amongst sunshine and snow showers it made for interesting weather.

This is what I saw out of my front door on Easter Sunday morning:



What a time it was: more like Christmas than Easter. Yet we celebrated Christ's resurrection in no uncertain terms at IMC. The setting and standards of the service were superb. This was very encouraging as it marked the 25th anniversary of Audrey and me attending there.

Easter Monday was spent reading and walking in the snow again. Very relaxing. But now it's back to work. Well, not work but occupying myself until I am fit for paid work.

In search of Sherlock

I put my deerstalker hat on yesterday and went to Liverpool in search of Sherlock. It was not Mr. Holmes I was looking for and yet he had a lot to do with it.

His creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a frequent visitor to Ingleton as his mother lived in the nearby hamlet of Masongill. His first marriage was at Thornton-in-Lonsdale parish church which is just a mile and a half from Ingleton.

Anyway, I've got a friend called Andy Ive who has this theory that Conan Doyle got the name for his famous sleuth from round here. You can see it all on Ingleton in Wikkipedia.

I am skeptical myself. The theory is based on the facts that there was a family of Sherlocks involved with Ingleton church and that lots of places near Masongill and Thornton are called Holmes.

Yesterday I was tracking down Cornelius Sherlock whose nephew was a vicar of Ingleton, whose brother was killed by lightening at Ingleton station and who designed St. Mary's church in Ingleton when it was rebuilt in 1886. He was an architect in Liverpool.

I found his obituary in the local history section of the Central Library and then looked in at the Picton Library, a beautiful round room which he designed after the British Library Reading Room.

Then I went up the street to the Walker Art Gallery which was also his creation. To think that we had such an inspired architect to design our parish church made me even more proud and glad that I live in Ingleton.

Here's the inside and the outside of the Picton library.





I'm still not convinced by the Holmes theory though.

Hope battle

Four score years ago our forefathers abandoned a millenium of faith and hope. Leaving the shores of the Christian faith and pulling up its anchor of hope the ship of state floated off into the sea of new morality. Now today we fight a spiritual battle in that ship.

We fight on two fronts. Members of the crew are destroying each other and the elements are destroying the ship.

Just look at the headlines today. A girl is abducted in Dewsbury and looking for her amongst family is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Why? Because she is one of many children born to her mother by different fathers.

A 15 year old girl dies in Goa, on her own. She too is one child amongst many step-children. Is this the brave new world our leaders wanted in 1968?

On the world scene we face an economic depression. Why? Because none of the American banks trust each other with money any more. It used to be said "My word is my bond." Now we say "I'll do what's best for me."

O for the anchor of hope to be cast out again by our ship of state so that we can weather the storm ahead. O for our crew to rally to the flag of the Christian faith and restore order to this chaos. This is what Hope 2008 is all about.

Can a church get too big?

Heaven knows if it's true but maybe a church can grow too big. I have spent a quarter of a century praying and working for IMC (Ingleton Methodist Church) to grow, and it has done. But yesterday morning I felt lost and alone.

Maybe it was my depression, but maybe it's the fact that you can't get to know everyone any more.
When I shared this with someone they said we should concentrate on the housegroups as sources of fellowship. I'm sure that's right, but it's sad that a church can grow to a size where people feel left out. I knew it in theory but now I've experienced it in practice, and it hurts.

Sir Sleepalot

Why do I sleep such a lot?

Yesterday I started off the day in the usual way at the computer and then took Nathan to Kirkby Lonsdale. Then it was back to Ingleton to get my front tire fixed, attend the IMC Coffee Morning and the CofE shopping service.

After lunch I was off hawking my books round local Post Offices and newsagents, and ended up back in Kirkby Lonsdale to pick Nathan up again.

Before and after tea I was on the computer. Then, at 8.00 p.m. I went downstairs to watch Gardeners World on BBC2. I managed to see a segment during which curious Carol Klein was admiring primroses in Devon, but after that I slept on the settee for an hour and a half before going off to bed.

As I recovered consciousness enough to climb the stairs I asked Audrey "Why am I like this?" She didn't have an answer of course. Do you?

A mere word

God spoke to me this morning. Challenging it was. I decided to read the 14th chapter of Proverbs as this is the 14th day of March. Beware, the ides of March are tomorrow!

When I got to the 23rd verse it hit me like a sledgehammer. "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty." It led me to set up a motto for my business, Brook House Enterprises: Work - Profit, Talk - Poverty.

Then I thought about the little word "mere". Do you know it has 13 different meanings according to the Oxford English Dictionary? One little word and all those meanings. Let my life not be mere talk but hard work. I wish. I pray...make me enterprising.

Sorry

Sorry I haven't been round here for a while. But I have been round the country. Over the last week or so I have been in Grimsby, Stafford and Painswick, Gloucestershire.

I went to Grimsby to watch Morecambe FC in the second leg of the Northern Final in the Johnstone Paints Trophy. They drew 0-0 but lost 0-1 on aggregate.

The next day I went off to Stafford with a group from IMC to listen to Nancy Beach from Willow Creek talk about releasing Arts in your Church. It showed us where we were as a church and where we could be if we put Willow principles into practice.

Over the weekend the family travelled down to Painswick to help my Dad enjoy his 85th birthday. We had a big celebration meal in a village bistro.