Shouting in Whispers: A home town pilgrimage revived old memories, unpleasant past prejudices, and feelings of awe and wonder.

Sir Tom makes his final journey

A couple of weeks ago I travelled the 130 or so miles back to my home town of Preston. I hadn’t been back since my dad died in Garstang, a nearby village, seven or eight years ago and it is many, many years since I last went into the town itself. I grew up in the middle of this northern industrial town and lived there until I was about 20 when left Preston to train to be a teacher here in Nottingham in the mid 1960s . My reason for returning to Preston itself after about fifty years was simple – a day's pilgrimage to join thousands of others at the funeral of the great Preston and England footballer Sir Tom Finney who died recently. Finney was one of my childhood heroes, someone who (together with his team mates) filled much of my waking hours as I grew up over sixty years ago. When he died and I read of his funeral I thought this was an opportunity to not only pay my respects to the man who had so often and so kindly signed his autograph in my little book and thrilled my every Saturday afternoon but to also go back to my roots, to relive my past, to rekindle old memories and to once again see the places where my formative years had been spent.

A last glimpse of the great man as his coffin enters the Church

And so I went. I stood with thousands of others in the bitingly cold wind as the funeral cortege passed us on its way to the church in the centre of town. Like thousands of others I watched in silence as the great and good of the football world - Bobby Charlton, David Beckham, Alex Ferguson, Gary Lineker, and other household names followed the coffin into the church. After the funeral I got lost on the one way system so much had the town altered since the last time I was there but at last I found myself on the Preston North End car park at the side of Finney’s wonderful statue. Having eaten my lunchtime sandwich sitting on the car park facing Finney's statue - "The Splash" recalling the iconic incident when Preston played Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the mid 1950s and Finney was photographed jinking through a huge puddle of water on the pitch -  I then spent the afternoon visiting my old childhood and teenage haunts. It was a bitter sweet day – filled with memories – many good, some not so good. I was pleased that although much had changed, many of the places which I knew were still there but  I was, too, occasionally saddened at what some had now become.

The marvellous Tom Finney "Splash" statue outside Deepdale.

Recalling the iconic photo of the great man taken at Chelsea 

the mid 1950s.

Standing outside the little terraced house - 18 Caroline Street - where I was born well over seventy years ago I wondered what it was like inside now, fifty plus years on from when I last lived there. It was neat and well kept - I was pleased about that and I noticed that it now sported double glazing and a new upstairs  window which I think was a bathroom – something that we certainly didn’t enjoy all those years ago. What tales its walls could tell if they could speak, I pondered. A few minutes later, I stood outside my long dead, and very much loved, auntie’s house at 39 Fishwick View and thought of all the happy hours spent there as a child. Moving on, I passed the houses of past school friends and wondered what happened to all these people who were once so very important to me.  And then, by accident really, I found myself outside the old fish and chip shop, still there all these years later, and just around the corner from my house – a place that provided many of my mid-week meals. “Six penn’orth a chips and a fish please” came back into my mind as if yesterday as I stood outside the shop on Maitland Street. It was now called “Bill and Ben’s” and wondered if anyone living in the area now knew why it was called “Bill and Ben’s”. In my day I don't remember having a name - it was just "the chippie" - but I do remember it was given a nickname by locals at about the time that I left the area. As I reflected on this it made me realise how much society has changed. When the shop was given that nickname – a name which it obviously later took as its official trading name - I had no understanding even though I was about 17 at the time of what was implied about the two men (Peter & Cyril) who ran it in those far off days. Today, things would be so very different – it would be painted in garish rainbow colours and presumably be called the “Peter & Cyril's Lesbian and Gay Chippie”; and every child of five and upwards would, sadly and inappropriately , be knowledgeable about the name and its connotations! Such is the unutterably depressing nature of  contemporary society in 21st century Britain! From there, I visited my old school (Fishwick Secondary Modern - now a primary school rather than a secondary school as it had been in my day) and stood outside the office.  I had stood on that very same spot on numerous occasions in the 1950s when I had received a telling off from the Deputy Head for some misdemeanour or other! Or, on a brighter note, I had stood there when I became a school prefect and we prefects were briefed by the Head or Deputy Head each week as to our duties!

At his wonderful statue at Deepdale

It was a day for remembering and sober reflection on what I was, where I had come from and who I am now. It again brought to my mind the story that I have so often quoted – told so eloquently by the great left wing Labour politician Michael Foot of his friend and mentor Nye Bevan the Welsh MP. Foot explained that Bevan would often go for walks in the hills near his Ebbw Vale constituency in south Wales. Occasionally the mist would descend and he would become disorientated. Bevan’s solution was that he would look around him until he could see the glow through the mist of the fires from the great steel mills and furnaces in Ebbw Vale, his home, and he would know where he had come from and as a result where he should go next. Bevan explained to the young Michael Foot  “You need to get your bearings and it’s only by looking back at where you have come from that you can get a sense of where you are, and from that you can know where you should go next”  I think that is how I felt as I stood in the streets where I had grown up. It is surely good not to forget our past, our heritage, where we have come from, what has influenced us – it is who and what we are – or at least it should be. I have absolutely no doubt that he who betrays his past also betrays his future.

There was, however, one bit of my day that stood out and which gave me rather different and mixed feelings. It was not planned, but simply somewhere where I just found myself – and it brought back all sorts of memories, emotions and thoughts.

My house - number 18  (the white faced house with
the car outside) - where I grew up

At the top of the street (Caroline Street) where I lived all those years ago is a large Roman Catholic Church – St Joseph’s. After I had stood outside my old house I looked up the street at the distant church and remembered. I parked near to the church. My mother, for reasons I could never fathom, was always strongly anti-Catholic and as a child I can vividly remember being constantly confused and no little upset at my mother’s never explained views. Many - indeed most - of the families living near us were Catholic and my two best friends were also of that faith and went to St Joseph’s school. I went to the local Church of England School, St Matthews – although it would have to be said that neither my mother or dad were in any way obviously religious. My mother, however had a strong, and in my view today, totally irrational and unpleasant anti-Catholic streak. Such was her vitriol and vehemence that as a child I always viewed the church at the top of the street with misgivings and no little fear – what went on there, what terrible things did these Catholics do to make my mother so resentful and full of hate I so often wondered? My Catholic friends seemed just like me – the only difference was that many of them went to church regularly – but I always wondered, in view of what my mother so often disparagingly said of Catholics, if there was, unknown to me, something that I should be wary and suspicious of? For reasons known only to my mother, she had no problem with me playing with the Catholic boys who lived in the street - indeed (and even then I thought bizarrely), she almost fussed over them, felt sorry for them and would often comment that it wasn't their fault that they had been born into that faith, as if they were carrying some terrible life burden upon their shoulders. But my friend's parents and other Catholic neighbours were dismissed and frequently vilified for their beliefs. My mother’s viewpoint always seemed strange and illogical to me. I’ve never reconciled it. As I became a little older I can remember walking past the main entrance to St Joseph's Church - especially on my way to the football match each Saturday and when perhaps a wedding was about to take place - and I would stop to look through the open doors into the Church to see what it was like. But I did this always from a distance, never daring to actually poke my head through the open door, such was the anxiety and guilt that my mother's words and ire had built up in me. It all looked very grand and elaborate as I peered in from the pavement but I never saw any terrible events occurring; it was all very confusing, and no little worrying.

A modern picture of an Orange Parade, but just as I
 remember it from sixty years ago.  Still slightly menacing, and
unpleasant and covering intolerant thuggishness with a
veneer of city gent, bowler hatted respectability.

Each Whitsuntide (Whit Monday) the various churches in Preston ‘walked’ through the streets with their banners and flags flying. This would start at early morning and go on for much of the day. There was often fear of trouble between the respective religious groups, as they marched and when the parades came up New Hall Lane at the end of Caroline Street, where  I lived, I was taken to see them. I say I was taken to see the parades, which is true, but such was my mother's hatred and disdain for the Catholic faith that watching the Catholic church parades was never an option - I was kept indoors when "them bloody Papists are marching". But, as the other faiths marched we watched and clapped and cheered.  And the groups that my mother applauded most of all where those she called “the free churches”. To my young mind this was all very confusing - why were they "free", and what was so special that they gained my mother's special approval?

But there was one group that was even more special for my mother. Amongst the “walkers” on those Whit Mondays were the Orangemen (why were they called that I wondered as a child?) and at the appointed hour I would be taken to see them walk along New Hall Lane with their banners, drums, flutes, whistles, bowler hats, medals and sashes. "Look at them, Tony" my mother would say as we watched, "they're the best of the lot" These were good people my mother annually reminded me – because, she told me each year, "They kept the Catholics and the Irish in their place".  As we watched the Orangemen walk up New Hall Lane swinging their banners and beating their drums, I can still hear her voice across the years“If it wasn’t for the Orangemen we’d all  be overrun by Catholics and Irish tinkers!”.

And, yes, King Billy is, after all these years, still stuck in that
river - and 300 year later still reminding people to hate.
That poor horse will have foot rot!

I was very confused and I spent a long time trying very hard to work out the significance of banners showing a long dead king called ‘Billy’ on a horse in a river and waving his sword (I learned later that King Billy was William of Orange and the river was the Boyne in Ireland). It didn’t seem very relevant to my life and I wondered just why these nasty Catholics and Irish had to be kept "in their place" by these Orangemen and what it would be like to be “overrun” by them! But as I watched the Orangemen parading - middle aged and elderly men all dressed in black with grim faces and black bowler hats - something else began to gnaw at my sub-conscious; I increasingly found them frightening, intimidating and disconcerting - and totally out of place on what was usually a bright Spring day. This was a day that was supposed to be a festival, a happy time - brass bands, girls dressed in pretty dresses, smiling faces and cheering crowds - and as a child and in those far off days I found these Orangemen with their drums and flutes and their stern, arrogant faces both threatening and thuggish - men to be feared. Still today, when I see on Orangemen on TV in Northern Ireland I feel those old emotions that were set in train in my childhood;  Now, in my eighth decade, I  recognise in their grim faces, their body language and their strutting demeanour what was behind this facade  - it was nothing more that unadulterated, bigoted extremism masked in a cloak of  black suited, bowler hatted, genteel, but false, "respectability". Even all those years ago my young eyes could recognise in their faces and demeanour the same vitriol, unexplained hatred and bigotry that I heard in my mother's voice. I have never lost that feeling and neither have I ever understood my mother’s animosity as she spoke of the Catholic faith. Such, I suppose, is the nature of simple prejudice and hate – totally illogical, unfathomable, unpleasant, frightening and, ultimately, insidious as it weaves itself into the very fabric of our being and our world. It demeans us and makes us all the poorer; it lessens our basic humanity. Over the many years since those far off days I have watched and read of the "troubles" in Northern Ireland and always came to the same conclusion. The source of the problem rests firmly in the Protestant and "Orange" camp - they represent a belief and value system that is anything but Christian. I am firmly of the view that they represent the very worst thuggish and prejudiced elements of society and their extremist doctrines cloaked "faux respectability" and in the jingoistic waving of  the Union Flag is a black mark and an affront to common decency and humanity.

But, in my own, small quiet way all those years ago, I rebelled.

You see, my two particular friends, Tony & Gary Clarkson and their friends were Catholics and during the long summer holidays they would often go to play football in the garden at St Joseph’s Church at the end of the street – and I didn’t want to miss out! Through the gate at the side of the Church and behind a high wall there was a huge and rather beautiful garden with lawn large enough for a small football match. The lawn was surrounded with rose bushes, trellis work and bedding plants and one or two bench seats – all beautifully maintained. Looking back it must have made a pleasant place for the priests to enjoy a bit of peace and tranquillity - I'm sure, too, that it made a pleasant place for wedding photographs and the like but on summer days it was not unusual for a gang of us to turn up at the entrance way to the garden with our football or cricket bat and seek permission to play a game on the lawn. The surrounding streets were barren concrete affairs – no grass or gardens - and the local park was quite a walk away so this hidden garden was a wonderful football stadium or cricket pitch for us! And as my friends asked if we could play there I would hang back, unspeaking, on the edge of the group – my friends were Catholics,  they knew the priests, but I was an interloper and fearful of where I was and what I was doing. My mother and her unexplained and unfathomable  hatred for Catholics sat on my shoulder but I was, too, desperate to be part of this gang and part of the game. At the same time, however, I knew that should I be found out I was risking eternal damnation either from my mother or maybe a thunderbolt from above!

Bill & Ben's fish and chip shop

We had to be careful, however. It wasn't just a case of going straight in and playing – we had to get permission. There lived at the Presbytery a housekeeper. She was a veritable dragon and we knew if we asked her then permission would be instantly refused and we would be sent packing! But there were always a number of Priests there and often amongst them were young men who were, perhaps, still in training. We always waited until one of them appeared – and permission was always granted!  One or other of these young men would arrange the game for us, helping us to pick teams, deciding who should be in goal, or who would be wicket keeper or who should be captain.  Coats would be put down for goals or the priest would nip inside and re-emerge an old upright chair to serve as a wicket (while the housekeeper scowled disapprovingly from the Presbytery window!) and then we would all soon be chasing about kicking and heading and scoring goals on the lush grass of the immaculate lawn! Sometimes the priests would be in their cassocks but always there to enjoy the fun, to settle disputes and to show off their sporting skills to us kids. But, there was something  else – and it stays with me to this day.  Even in the most exciting game, such was the tranquillity and atmosphere of the garden and the adjoining church, that I remember that we always talked in whispers and even shouted “goal” in a loud whisper! And as the game progressed I was increasingly just part of the group, I was accepted and not noticed – there was never any comment or thought about whether I should be there – I was simply welcomed with no questions asked about why I was never seen at church or who I was. And I wondered what it was that my mother so hated about these people? But my mother was at work so she had no idea that I was committing what to her must have been one of the deadly sins by stepping foot inside this den of iniquity! Of course, I was terrified lest she found out but I never told her – the repercussions would, I knew, have been too painful.

At  the end of the garden were some old outbuildings that led to a door in the outside wall of the garden. These rooms were places for garden tools, old disused church impedimenta and the like – I can remember the Priests referring to the rooms as “the glory hole” and in my naivety I wondered if this was some deeply religious reference and whether it was “glory hole” or “glory hall”. The reality, of course, was that the Priests were simply being disparaging about these junk rooms! If the weather was bad we would often play in them – hide and seek, hunt for treasure in the old dusty cupboards (we usually only found old torn hymn and prayer books!), talk football, swop comics, play marbles or flick cigarette packets (I wonder if I can still do that?). I remember that one day we found an old wind up gramophone and one scratched old record! We played that record over and over again! Looking back the song was dreadful – but it became ingrained on my mind and the whole experience part of my growing up. Even today it reminds me of my mother’s intolerance, of the fear of my getting caught by her and equally of the exciting and secret things we did on those wet summer afternoons in that magical place. And the record?  - I can still remember every single word of “The Hand That Wore the Velvet Glove”

“Last night as I was strolling by,

There on the ground I found a velvet glove,

Whose can it be, and where is she,

Oh where is she,

The hand that wore the velvet glove........”

At this point my memory has perhaps played tricks. I have always firmly believed that it was sung by Jimmy Durante but on researching this blog I can find no record of a recording by “Schnozzle”. It was certainly recorded by many singers of that 50s generation but which one I may never know. But as I write this I can still hear it, I can still picture the and smell that "glory hole" on those wet afternoons and feel the feelings of those far off days!

Looking up Caroline Street - St Joseph's at the far end

So, I parked my car near the church gate where all those years ago I used to stand, on the edge of the group as we kids asked if we could play on the church lawn. I walked through the gateway and stood in the entrance. I still felt an intruder and uneasy about breaking the calm of the place just as I had done all those years ago. In front of me stood the Church buildings, the Presbytery with two or three cars parked there – just as I remember it from all those years ago.  I felt instantly at home, the feelings flooded back. But then I realised it was not the same. Where once was a lovely rose bed with trellis work there now stood some rather depressing and poorly maintained garage like structures. And the beautifully manicured lawn which had served as our Wembley stadium or Lords cricket ground – had gone. No benches for priests to sit and think great religious thoughts, read devotional works or click their rosaries, no peaceful tranquillity, no place of beauty in the middle of these rows of mean  terraced  houses. Instead the area had been turned into a children’s nursery – with a substantial looking wire fence and metal climbing frames all painted with garish bright colours - what had once been a lovely garden now resembled a prison's secure exercise area; indeed for the safety of the young children that was exactly what it was. All very functional and “today” but all beauty and magical atmosphere gone. I couldn't imagine that the children who come to play in the nursery today would shout in whispers as we had done for there was no sense of tranquillity or of the magical or the beautiful. It was - although beautifully maintained - just garish, cheap and rather nasty tat which I felt would simply encourage loud and unthinking behaviour.  For us, all those years ago, we knew that we were privileged "guests", we had no entitlement to be there and this fact combined with the beautiful specialness of the place ensured that we looked and acted in awe and wonder. I looked into the distance through the security fencing and there, indeed, were the rooms, the “glory hole” that we used to play in but now, I suspected, playrooms to lots of squealing young children as they are brought there each day by their parents. All as it should be in our modern world – but I wondered if, just sometimes today  we increasingly fail to provide or insist upon places of reverence and respect,  as we constantly encourage and legislate for open access and entitlement. And I felt a twinge of sadness for what has perhaps been lost and which children of the future may never experience.

Of course, in this day and age that is what we do – we take a pragmatic approach, utilitarianism is the watchword, value for money. The Church has to be seen to be doing something, playing an active role in the local community – there is less and less a place in our modern world for a Church to be simply a place of devotion, beauty and spiritual renewal – it has to be useful. And what better way than allowing or promoting a nursery for the local youngsters. It happens everywhere and with every faith – and who am I to complain – after all it is what society wants and demands. But is it what society needs I wondered as I stood there? Perhaps for the Catholic church – so often in recent years on the back foot in the face of allegations of abuse or lack of understanding of the modern world – it is a good PR exercise and something that they have no option but to be involved with. And in this context a beautiful lawn and trellised garden cannot be justified – “turn it into something useful” would be the church's mission statement and business plan! I'm not against children’s playgrounds and the like – they are, rightly, part of the very fabric of our modern society. But I do sometimes wonder if, in our rush to satisfy society’s every whim and demand we are in danger of losing much else. That we must have HS2, or another London airport; that we must do away with “red tape” so that houses can be more easily built; that we must ensure that an area like my local and very beautiful country park here in Ruddington has an even bigger (it’s already huge!) children’s play area complete with (so the advert at the entrance to the park tells me) a mediaeval castle – all these and a million other wants, needs and demands are all very understandable and laudable.  But whilst they might satisfy our physical, economic and leisure needs will they sustain our deeper emotional instincts or any spiritual needs? Will we be the better and happier for them, will they provide food for the soul and make us glad to be alive? – I’m not too sure about that.   

Outside my house: Gary Clarkson, Tony Clarkson
and me

Somewhere, deep down, I feel that we are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water and possibly losing something that will only become apparent when we no longer have it. When society has done away with all its beautiful and quietly inspiring things, when all that is left is concrete, security fencing, garish climbing frames or fake mediaeval castles and there is no family silver left in the "awe, wonder & reverence cupboard" – what then, I wonder? The answer to that question is short but true: we will have lost a little of the very things that make us human.

As I stood in that gateway I was pleased for the local kids that they had a nursery to go to, just as I had gone there all those years ago and played football and cricket on the manicured greensward. But I also thought that they might also be missing things that the shady church garden offered to me and my friends – peace, tranquillity, a green haven in the middle of the cobbled streets and the tightly packed brick houses and the towering, long gone, cotton mills where my mother worked. It was a time and place for us to learn about respect, calmness, simple beauty and perhaps see birds in the trees or maybe the odd squirrel..................  in short, experience the awe and wonder of the place. And, as I stood looking I wondered if today's youngsters will ever experience or feel the need to "shout in whispers" as we had done on sunny school holiday afternoons when we scored a goal or hit a six in that hallowed place. But, of course, shouting in whispers or seeing a squirrel doesn’t have an economic worth,  they don’t win votes or impress banks or gain government grants – all things that are so important in our modern busy,utilitarian, pragmatic, unforgiving world.

So I stood in that gateway and thought back to those long gone summer afternoons and remembered. As I stood there I hoped that perhaps a priest might emerge and ask if he could be of assistance. I already had my words ready – “Could I look in the church?” I would ask. Could I satisfy my curiosity as to what it is actually like in there after all these years. I have stood and marvelled in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of great churches, mosques and temples throughout the world - the Taj Mahal, the Church of the Blood of the Saviour in St. Petersburg, Canterbury Cathedral, the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, York Minster, St Mark's in Venice, Hagia Sophia  and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the Mesquita in Cordoba, the Duomo in Florence, the achingly beautiful cathedral in Burgos ...... an endless list. I have stood humbled, inspired and awed in St Peter’s in Rome and in the Sistine Chapel, I have looked in wonder and jaw dropping amazement at the frescoes in the Basilica of St Francis in  Assisi, and I have quietly wept inside at the glorious magnificence, the awe inspiring spiritual reverence, the humility and the humanity shown by Sikh pilgrims at the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar. So I knew the sort of thing that I might see in St Jospeh's – the confessional box, the high altar, art work depicting the stations of the cross perhaps, statues of the Virgin and so on. And I also knew that all these places are, in the end, only an arrangement bricks and mortar which could, if some builder wished, be re-arranged in a different form to make a hotel or a prison or a large mansion.  But I also believe, profoundly and certainly, that as places of worship, reverence, awe and wonder and spiritual renewal (as that garden certainly was) they are vital to us for they give us just a little glimpse of what it is to be human; that is why they are worth preserving – but of course “spiritual renewal” and “awe and wonder” don’t sit well on a balance sheet.

Off to the secret garden for a game of cricket
while mum is at work! You can just see the church
in the far distance.

But no priest came out. I stood in the gateway and remembered and thought back to my friends – my best friend, Tony Clarkson now long dead. And I wondered what had happened to the young priests who ran around the grass often with their cassocks swirling, passing the ball and scoring a goal and celebrating, almost silently, with us – and at the same time, kindly, keeping us in order. Maybe they are all aged bishops and cardinals now - I hope so.

By now it was late afternoon, my pilgrimage into my past was almost done. Home called. I climbed back into my car and set off up New Hall Lane to the motorway and south to my home in Nottingham. As I drove down Brockholes Brow towards the M6 I couldn't stop myself looking up at the last house on the left as you leave Preston - number 17 - high on the Brow above me. More memories - where my first girl friend, Anne Rigby, and her sister and brother had lived. And  my mind was suddenly filled with the feelings of the late 50s; young love, teenage angst, endless talks in the dark outside her back gate fearing all the while that her architect father would come out and move me on, pop songs, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, hand in hand walks by the Ribble, stolen teenage kisses...………...another time, another life. Where did the years go? Whatever happened to the years, I wondered as I took the motorway slip road. What happened to Anne, her sister Sheila and brother Bill...… I wonder if Anne still remembers me from those long lost times. It was all so very long ago - but still very much part of what I am today.

And as I accelerated into the motorway's fast lane thinking that  perhaps I would return to revisit my roots once more before I can no longer make the trip I knew what I would do when I returned. I'd stand in that church gateway once again, but this time, I promised myself, I'll wait until a priest does appear. I won’t knock on the Presbytery door – that old dragon like housekeeper just might still be there and even after sixty years she will surely say "What, not you again, no you can't play football - clear off" and she will send me packing! So I’ll just wait and when a kindly looking Priest emerges I’ll step forward and ask him “Please, Mister, can I see inside your church?” And just maybe he’ll allow it – and in doing so I’ll be able put behind me my mother’s irrational and unpleasant  rants and the stern faced Orangemen and  I'll remember only the good things like the tranquillity of the garden, the games of football and cricket, the kindness of the young priests, the old scratched  record and, yes, the “shouting in whispers”.