Each week I send out a short, fresh reflection from the road – photographs, sketches, and observations from old places that still have something to teach us. What follows is a moment from that ongoing journey.
John Keats
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness…”
I'm lodging at Grafham in Cambridgeshire and I decide to walk the mile to the pub from the campsite. The lanes are full of bobbing cowslip and blossoming hawthorn. The community pub is just beyond the centre of the village, but before I arrive, there’s a loud crack from a darkening cloud on the other side of the village.
I stand outside the village church of All Saints and watch the clouds massing to the south. They move fast, and within minutes, I’m in the eye of the storm. I do what countless others have done before me and head for the church porch. Thankfully the door is open and I duck inside as the heavens swell and rain beats down onto the roof. I stand inside the porch and watch the chaos outside. Everything is full and swollen - the sodden ground, the breaching gutter, the pregnant atmosphere. Birds that are normally so predictable in their movement are frantically flapping into the storm and then cutting back on themselves. I’m still caught up in my world - recording the puddled rain, taking photos, posting out on social media.
Then I do something incredibly stupid. I think a selfie might be a good idea - a pic of me in the porch - so I run out into the churchyard and place my iPhone onto the top of a monument. It falls over, I try and balance it with a windblown twig. I’m getting soaked. It falls over again and then - just as I manage to lodge it up behind a stone - there’s a tumultuous flash and crash and I’m blinded for a second. I run back into the porch blinking my eyes in a vain attempt at reviving my bleached retina. I'm guided back to safety by a potent line of yellow lichen that underpins the church and stops directly at the buttress next to the porch.
When I get there I turn around, put on an air of normality, tap the remote on my watch and pose for the camera. After I retrieve my phone, my mood crashes down to earth. Why on earth did I do that? I feel bruised by my foolishness.
The storm refuses to abate and it looks likely that I will be here for at least an hour. I turn into the porch and catch something out of the corner of my eye. I can just make out indentations on the west wall. My eyes haven’t fully adjusted from the flash of lightning but, as I become accustomed to the shadows, I can see a face.
"My eyes haven’t fully adjusted from the flash of lightning but, as I become accustomed to the shadows, I can see a face."
It belongs to a medieval slab with an effigy of a priest. Dotted around the flint wall are other remnants from previous times, bits of buildings - perhaps a door jamb and a hood mould.
As the storm roars outside I start to explore the wall. My enforced residency drops me into the moment. I read the lettering on two memorial stones that make up the bottom half of the wall. I explore the differences in style and weight - the earlier stone is in latin and has a formality that betrays a different age than the later one, which is looser and more lyrical. I think of the people they represent.
I touch the letters and follow the curve of the ‘r’ in March and notice rising damp beneath the lettering. On the damp and darkened stain is a living world of lichen set out like a galaxy.
My heart rate has slowed and my senses are awakening - the atmosphere is saturated, carrying the pungent aroma from the battered hawthorn in the field next to the churchyard. Time slows down. I have become 'of' the place rather than in it.
After nearly getting lost in the social media cosmos, I found, in a small patch of porch wall, a universe in the particular. From the stories of others writ large upon the walls, this has become a place that is woven into my story. In the wake of the tom-foolery of the selfie, this place is more than just a sanctuary, it is a respite and a re-set from my 21st-century self.
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Each week, this Digest offers a small pause – photographs, sketches, and reflections from historic places that still carry meaning. It’s a weekly practice of noticing, continuity, and learning to see more deeply.
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Andy Marshall
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