Alexandra Park was given to the district of Edgeley by the Sykes family.  We can walk, fish (with a licence and so long as we throw them all back), go on the swings, picnic, play games.  It’s a nice park.

Every Tuesday afternoon, a bunch of old men gather on one side of the reservoir to sail boats and ignore passersby.

Why is that an interesting thing to do?  Same with remote control cars: why not drive the real thing?

I just don’t get it.

Dreams aside – its been an even better day, even fun.  Someone gave me their change in the greengrocers!  I’ve had people laughing, mainly when they realise that I’ve not undergone some surgery – turns out my HUGE t-shirt and big bright badge explaining what I’m up to is too subtle… people don’t want to stare at my chest!  Maybe I should write on the tape?

The downside is that without being able to talk I can’t really explain what Im up to.  So I can’t get into any conversations (which in my fantasy world would ideally end up ‘oh a donation, if you’d like to… well thank you that’d be great’).  So the actual silent bit of the process isn’t in itself conducive to fund raising.  Ah well… there’s a lesson there somewhere. 

More than half way through now – fingers crossed it keeps getting better.

Hub: I’ll have to pop up to Edgeley; I need some Aeros.

Me:    Aeros?

Hub: Yes, for the fish.

Me:    You can’t feed chocolate to the fish!

Hub: Not Aeros, you wally.  Air.  Hose.

Here are a few of our tree decorations. We buy at least one new one every year. That was Tory Boy’s first question when he arrived home on Christmas Eve: ‘Where’s the new decoration?’

The mirrored bell you see below is the first decoration TB ever bought me, from St Matthew’s Christmas Fair, here in Edgeley about ten years ago.

This is a decoration from the White House, from 1995. It comes in its own specially marked box. The White House issues new ones each year for the public to buy, though this one was a gift from the Hub via eBay. It is a solid piece.

The candy cane is also from America, one of a box of ten sent by one of the Hub’s chat room friends. They are about ten years old, those that are left. We never took them out of their plastic wrappers but they are getting a bit soft now. Don’t think we are mean to our children: we can buy them here in the pound shop. We just appreciated Brenda’s kindness and didn’t have the heart to eat them

The white stocking was made by Spud in reception (kindergarten); the Christmas sock is one of a mis-matched pair given to me by my Mother-in-law when we brought her and the Hub’s Dad out to South Africa one Christmas. I think the funny basket rat thing held mini Easter eggs once; I bought it on a boot sale because I liked it so much. The glass bauble to the right is part of an expensive set of ten that the Hub got for a knock-down price on eBay. Each ball contains a different Christmas figure. They have their own specially designed wooden crate with an acetate showing which bauble goes where.

My friend Elone often buys me Christmas decorations when she goes on her travels; this one of Sponge Bob came from Disneyland.  I also have one of Mickey Mouse and a blue glass teardrop from Kusadasi which is my favourite of all she has bought me, mostly because I love saying ‘Kusadasi’.  The dog is an old Christmas tag made of foam.  The Hub bought a set for my presents one year, and I like them so much I use them as decorations.

The red and gold box top right first held a ring that the Hub bought me and hid on the tree long ago.  The gold bell next to it was our first top-of-the-tree decoration when we married in 1985.  The cloth bell came from a little shop in Jo’burg on Louis Botha Avenue in the early years of our marriage.  The shop sold all homemade/hand-made things, including cakes and clothes and Christmas decorations. 

Homemade and hand-made decorations are my favourite, but I love them all.  I overload the tree because I am seriously sentimental at times and when I decorate the tree, I’m bringing out happy memories.  Who wouldn’t want a treeful of those?

Outrage in my house this morning – in a list of best Christmas movies, The Muppet Christmas Carol came only twenty-third.  I don’t know what muppet compiled the list, but Tory Boy, Spud and I are greviously insulted that the best version EVER of A Christmas Carol came so low on the list.  The Hubrooge thought it came too high, of course; but his opinion has never counted in our house and it’s not going to start now.

I say that TB and Spud were outraged, but I haven’t actually had a chance to tell them yet.  But I will, and they’ll be furious.  We watched it just this weekend, when TB was home.  It’s one of our family traditions in the run up to Christmas.  We confine the Hub to his room while we singalong to One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas, Scrooge and the rest.  How can he not love a song that boasts the line ‘No cheeses for us meeces’?

I was at a carol concert the other night at St Matthew’s in Edgeley.  Stockport Silver Band played.   I don’t know why they are called that because their instruments were all brass.

The band leader’s granddaughter was in the pews: no more than two, I would say, but she boogied like a professional party people person.  Her bouncing backside to Joy To The World was a joy to behold.  She was the only child there, sadly, but she didn’t let that stop her having fun.  When she got bored she took all the pew prayer stools, laid them in a neat row down the main aisle, and modelled on her own miniature catwalk.  The band leader advised us to be grateful: at his last concert he had called her to him and she burst into tears and cried for two solid hours.  She was the cutest little thing.

I don’t think any of the adults were bored: when we weren’t singing along to the band or adoring the band’s mascot, we set up our own Mexican wave.  The vicar had said we would stand for the first and last carols but someone in the front pew misunderstood and rose for the second; the pew behind rose because the first had, then the third followed the second, the fourth followed the third, and so on.  Then we did it in reverse because someone at the back hissed that we were not supposed to be standing for that carol. 

It’s all very English, you know: no-one wants to be the one person not to conform so we all do what the person in front does – imagine the embarrassment if you were the only person sitting, no matter what the vicar said.  You’d have to leave the church so no-one would know you made a very English faux pas.

I had a scary couple of hours yesterday, thinking I’d misplaced my youngest child. 

Picture the scene: a dark and icy night.  Greedy Christmas shoppers intent on ignoring the married mother of two in her lonely pound shop/post office corner vigil.  A grumpy husband.  A lost teenager.

Spud finishes school at ten-to-four and gets home at five, having taken two buses.  One bus stops in Stockport town centre.  We were in the town centre around that time, so I sent a text to ask if he wanted a lift home.  Ever polite, the answer was no thanks (he’s polite but he might as well have stabbed me through the heart with that capital N he didn’t use).

We were in the pound shop at  four-twenty when my phone went and it was Spud, who did want a lift after all.  The line was terrible but I told him we were at the pound shop near the post office and I thought he had heard me.  He hadn’t.  We waited forty minutes outside the shop and he was a no-show.  I made the Hub wait in the car because he’d already used up that day’s good hour, plus, he could see all the way up the road to the bus station on the horizon, and would see him coming.  The Hub had come out without his phone so we had a little code going: he would put on the car lights when Spud appeared, like something out of a gangster movie; especially with me keeping watch on the corner above him.

Once I had become a human icicle and the Hub had been in and out of the car several times to fume at me (he was mad at Spud but I was closer), we decided Spud must have misread ‘stkprt’ for ‘edgly’ (no capitals for me either but that’s because I can’t use my phone properly: a lack of ability rather than a lack of will) and drove up to our next-most-used shopping centre.  Stockport is not so big that you can’t walk around it in twenty minutes and he had been missing for twice that.

I’d better explain at this point that mobile phones are absolutely bloody useless in a crisis, particularly if Spud’s is faulty, mine has no credit and the Hub’s was lying at home soaking up the central heating and sipping a tequila.  I sent increasingly panicky texts to Spud, as well as repeated calls.  He couldn’t answer because his phone switched off every time he tried.  He managed to ring me at one point and my first question was ‘Where are you?’  If he had only said where he was instead of ‘Looking for you,’ he wouldn’t have been cut off at ‘I’m near – ‘.  That was around four-forty and he kept radio silence from then on.

The Hub and I drove to Edgeley at about five and he drove around the outside while I ran around the inside, but there was no sign of our kidnapped baby.  We drove home, just in case Spud had the good sense to get the bus back.  He wasn’t there, so I stayed while the Hub went back to Stockport.  He traipsed around the town in a kitchen triangle manoeuvre (sink-stove-fridge/pound shop-pound shop-pound shop) but no joy.  He came home again; I forget why because by this time I had my boy lying in a dark Stockport corner, stabbed for his mobile phone (ha!  muggers!  see what you get for your pains!  a phone that doesn’t work).  By this time Spud had been missing for ninety minutes and could have caught at least two buses home; I was wondering if I ought to tidy up for the police; the Hub came in; we discussed our next move; he left; the door went minutes later, and there they both were.  The Hub had seen him coming from the bus stop.  Turns out one bus hadn’t come at all and the next was late; but of course, he couldn’t tell us.

After a choking hug from me, the inevitable humdinger of an argument broke out, with me yelling at the Hub yelling at Spud yelling at both of us.  One plate of egg & chips and a stiff mug of tea later, and harmony was restored.

Something I have never done is lose one of my children.  I stick to the adage, keep your enemies close and your children closer.  That’s it, I’m afraid: until Spud gets a new phone he’s going to be home schooled.  No more anxiety, and I’ll save on the bus fare.

shoreham_briefing

There is to be another meeting for the campaign against the proposed EGP power station today, Thursday 4 November, 7.30 at the Friends Meeting Centre, Ship Street, Brighton, BN1 1AF.

Please attend if you can.

Neither of these will be the case, according to the team. The biofuel will be made up of previously used crude and refined vegetable salvage oils which are unfit for human or animal consumption, as well as tall oil, produced during the wood pulping of mainly fast growing coniferous trees in Scandinavia and Canada.

Also, they anticipate that there will only be about 2 road tankers per month. All the oil will come in by sea.

The whole project appeared to be well-designed and environmentally sound.

The team said that, as from today there would be a dedicated link about the power plant on their website, but as far as I can see, this isn’t the case. However, The Argus have an interesting article, with more details -

New Power Station Plans for Shoreham

One thing that was clear was that they need more younger people to visit the exhibition. According to their visual feedback chart, most of today’s visitors have been over 40. The team said that they would really like to hear the views of younger people.

The exhibition is there for one more day. Tomorrow it is open from 10.30 am  to 8.30 pm. Please try and visit it, and post your comments below.

The exhibition about the proposed power generating plant at Shoreham Port is being held tomorrow (Wednesday) and Thursday. This is a chance to find out what it is all about.

The exhibition is being held in the George Porter Room (on the corner of Southwick Street and Glebe Close) at Southwick Community Centre, 24 Southwick Street, Southwick BN42 4TE (opposite the library) on Wednesday 8 September any time between 12 and 8.30pm and Thursday 9 September any time from 10am to 8.30pm to view the proposals and give feedback.

Further details are to be found at edgeleygreenpower.com/latestnews.

The exhibition will be on show in the George Porter Room (on the corner of Southwick Street and Glebe Close) at Southwick Community Centre, 24 Southwick Street, Southwick BN42 4TE (opposite the library) on the following dates:

Wednesday 8 September, between 12 and 8.30pm.

Thursday 9 September, between 10am to 8.30pm.

It is essential that as many people as possible are able to go and have a look at what is being proposed, and to be able  to discuss this with their team.

One of my friends narrowly missed being part of an armed robbery yesterday (as a victim, I hasten to add; not a perpetrator).  She had just left Home Bargains in Edgeley when it happened.  She was loading her car at the time and fled the scene as soon as she realised what was happening.  I wonder if she remembered to collect her £1 from the shopping trolley?

The second bit of news means the couple who live just up the road from me will be able to spend their £11.2million lottery win in the sort of shops that don’t have armed robberies.   I know now that we will definitely never win it: with them probably buying their ticket in Morrisons like us, and my good friend Elone who won as part of a syndicate some years back (and very kindly sharing her good fortune by buying me the new oven I desperately needed and giving me the dining suite I desperately wanted), we have no chance.  I also know a friend of a friend from not far from here who won.  It’s kind of like being splashed by the oil from your neighbour’s well: you wish them well but, well, you wish the oil had been under your land.  But silver linings and all that: think of the pestering letters they’re going to get from people begging for help in paying off their credit card debts…where’s my pen?

The revival of Catholicism and the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in Britain by the Pope in September 1850 caused some Protestants to fear that the old enemy was plotting to reclaim their country for Rome. These fears were stoked higher by a badly worded pastoral letter issued by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman in which he told his fellow Englishman that “Your beloved country has received a place among the fair churches, which, normally constituted, form the splendid aggregate of Catholic communion; Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished”.

There was a popular belief that the Pope was still making a claim to some authority in Britain (Queen Victoria is alleged to have asked “Am I Queen of England or am I not?”), which led to a wave of anti-Catholic meetings and protests against “Papal aggression”, including one in Manchester in the Free Trade Hall on 21st November 1850. Local anti-Catholic cleric Reverend Hugh Stowell delivered a lecture on papal aggression at the Free Trade Hall on 16th January 1851. Stowell was the first priest at the new church of Christ Church, Acton Square, Salford, opened in 1831. From the beginning he preached a fervent brand of fundamentalist Protestantism, denouncing Dissenters, Tractarians and “Popery” from the pulpit and from public platforms (there was little distinction). In 1839 he also founded the Salford Operative Protestant Association, which distributed pamphlets by the thousand for many years.

Anti-Catholicism reached deep into the roots of English society in this period. For many it defined who they were as Englishmen and women and explained and revealed English history as a journey from superstition and darkness into liberty and light. The popular writer Charles Kingsley, for instance, attacked Catholicism in many of his novels and writings. In an article published in 1848 entitled “Why Should We Fear the Romish Priests?” he wrote:

The real history of England, from Ethelbert to the Reformation, is the history of a struggle, issuing in the complete victory of the laity, the anti-national and hierarchic spirit being gradually absorbed by the national lay spirit, which asserts the rights of the citizen, the husband, the individual conscience. This battle has to be fought in every Christian country, the married layman and the celibate priest may make truce for a time, but they are foes in grain.

Jumping onto the populist bandwagon the government passed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act in 1851, which banned Catholic bishops from holding the same titles as Anglican bishops (which is why there is a Catholic Bishop of Salford and an Anglican Bishop of Manchester.) No prosecutions were ever brought and the Act was repealed in 1871 when common sense on these issues returned. Suspicions about Catholic intentions were also kept simmering by a number of high profile conversions to “Rome”, including those Anglicans associated with the Tractarian or Oxford movement. On 15th June 1852 (three weeks before the general election) in an obvious play to simmering anti-Catholicism amongst the public, Lord Derby’s Tory government issued a proclamation which forbade Catholics to walk in procession through the streets with the symbols of their religion.

However, the nineteenth annual procession by Stockport’s Roman Catholics went ahead on Sunday 27th June 1852, headed by local priests Reverend Randolph Frith of St Philip and St James, Edgeley and Reverend Robert Foster of St Michael’s, who were followed by local schoolchildren and Irish labourers walking six abreast. No banners or Catholic emblems were carried and even the priests wore ordinary dress, not canonical vestments. There was no trouble on the procession itself, apart from a small number of Protestants who hissed and groaned, and no trouble in the Irish public houses in the evening.

The following afternoon, however, an effigy of a priest was paraded by members of the local Protestant Association and later on Monday evening fighting between Irish and English began in the Bishop Blaize public house on Hillgate. The Irish ran into John Street and Edward Street – which were largely Irish streets – and gathered reinforcements, whilst the English did likewise. There was a short street brawl which had died down by the time the police constables, led by Mr Sadler, arrived and there were no further disturbances for the rest of the evening.

Large crowds gathered the following evening in Hillgate, armed with sticks and stones, and renewed the fighting. The Irish retreated to their home territory of Rock Row pursued by the English, who broke the windows of the houses in the street with volleys of stones, kicked in the doors and dragged the furniture into the street where they smashed it to pieces. Michael Moran, who had previously been knocked down and severely wounded in the head by the mob in Lord Street, was taking shelter on a bed in an upper room when the mob rushed in, smashed the furniture and wrecked the room. Other houses received similar treatment and the inhabitants – men, women and children- only narrowly escaped serious injury. Moran left the house, supposedly under police protection, but as he came out a man hit him on the head with a large piece of wood saying “Come, let us look at his head and see if he is an Irishman”. Moran died within a short time of his injuries. He was a single man and labourer, aged 23, who had been staying with his sister and brother-in law, James Hannigan.

The Irish replied with an attack on the house of Alderman Graham, a well-known Protestant, which was situated on Lord Street, very near Rock Row. They then turned their attention to the Protestant church of St. Peter’s and its schools. One eyewitness, a Mr Cheetham, later described the scene in the Illustrated London News:

All this time there was a continued screaming and yelling screaming, and about seven o’clock the blood of the Irish being tolerably warmed, they had armed themselves with the weapons they could lay hold upon readiest – pokers, soldering irons, sticks, pieces of chair, sickles, scythes, and other barbarous instruments, and were ready for conflict with any power that might present themselves. The scythes and sickles seem to corroborate the account given by some of the men subsequently apprehended, that they had only just come England, that being so, they were over here for the harvest, and these were their implements of labour.

The English then marched in force armed with pick-axes, hatchets, crow-bars and hammers to the Catholic church of St. Philip and James in Chapel Street, Edgeley, which had been opened in 1803. They smashed the windows of the priest’s house and then broke into the church, breaking the altar rails and smashing the altar and tabernacle. Women were described as being as “as eager and active in the work of destruction as males”. All church furniture, fittings, candlesticks, pictures, even the organ was destroyed. The priest and his friends, who had been hiding from the fury of the mob in the bell-turret, were forced to flee across the roof to a nearby house as attempts were made to fire the church. The rioters wreaked similar destruction upon St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church Chapel in Park Street (which had only opened the year previously), leaving little more than four bare walls standing.

Police finally arrested some rioters in the chapel and in total arrested 113 people, of whom 111 were Irish. The Manchester Guardian described the scene in the courthouse when the prisoners appeared on Wednesday morning:

Within a rail separating the lower end of the court from that where justice is administered were penned together some sixty or seventy youths and men, nearly all Irish, most of whom had bandages and plasters on their heads, faces, hands, and arms and legs…..others were moaning and bleeding and the whole formed a scene not unlike that of a hospital after a battle.

A number of other Englishmen were arrested and eventually ten English and ten Irish were sent for trial at Chester, where all the Irish – but only three of the English – were found guilty and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment with hard labour.

Local politics and the influence of the media appear to have played a significant part in stoking up anti-Catholicism and anti-Irish feeling in Stockport. A Protestant Association had been formed in December 1850, part of a national organisation set up in 1835 to campaign for the repeal of Catholic Emancipation and against Catholicism, which placed anti-Catholic placards around the town. Local Tory politicians such as Alderman Claye were members of the Association as were a number of Anglican clergymen, including most prominently the Reverend Meridyth of St. Peter’s church. Meridyth was an Irish Protestant who spoke at anti-Catholic meetings ( sometimes in the company of Stowell) which probably explains why his church was singled out by the Irish during the riot.

The simmering pot of anti-Catholicism and anti-Irishness was stirred by the Stockport Advertiser, which was strongly pro-Tory and published five anti-Catholic editorials in the summer, often linking the names of the Liberal candidates to support for “papal aggression”. There were explicit attacks on the Irish. “What is it that so often disturbs the peace of our borough, increases our rates and saps the very foundation of all our charitable institutions, but popery embodied in Irish mobs, paupers and fever patients?”.

The issue of the riot was raised in the House of Commons:

Mr Chisholm Anstey seeing the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department in his place, he wished to put a question to him with reference to the unfortunate affray which had taken place at Stockport. He begged to ask, in the first place, whether the right hon. Gentleman had any further information as to the causes that led to the riot than was mentioned in the morning papers; secondly, whether it was true that a religious procession of Roman Catholics was the original cause of the riot; and, thirdly, whether it was the intention of Her Majesty’s Government from this time forth to take effectual measures to prevent religious processions of that kind taking place in this country, where their recurrence was eminently calculated to excite breaches of the public peace?

Mr Walpole: Sir, with reference to the three questions put to me by the hon. and learned Gentleman, I have to state, in the first place, that I have received no further information than that which the daily organs of communication have put the House in possession of with reference to the unfortunate disturbances which have taken place in Stockport. In answer to the second question put by the hon. and learned Gentleman, perhaps I had better read to the House a passage from a letter which I have received from the Mayor of Stockport with reference to the origin of the disturbances: — As far as is at present ascertained, the disturbance appears to have arisen out of a quarrel between the English and Irish, in which, I fear religious animosity has been brought into play; but the whole matter was so sudden and unexpected, and the attention of myself and brother magistrates has been so entirely required by the necessary measures for preserving the public peace, that the facts have not yet been accurately ascertained. In that state of things the House, I think, will agree with me in the propriety of forbearing from the expression of an opinion one way or the other with reference to the origin of these disturbances. As to the third question put by the hon. and learned Gentleman, whether it is the intention of the Government to prevent all religious processions which lead to these unhappy disturbances, I can only state that, both in England and in Ireland the Government have taken every possible precaution to discourage processions of such a character, or which can in any way lead to disturbances arising out of religious differences existing between different members of the community. We have done so in Ireland with reference to the processions which usually take place at this time of the year, by communications between the Lord Lieutenant and the magistrates, expressive of the desire of the Government to repress and check to the utmost extent processions which may lead to these disturbances. We have done so, also, in England; and all I can assure the House is this—that the present Government are anxious, above all things, that any of those ostentatious parades which may lead to religious disputes shall be discouraged and discountenanced by the Government, and I hope the country will support us in doing so.

Article by Michael Herbert

We seem to get hung up on names. Names identify us, they something about who were are. In some cases they define us allow others to understand what we are all about.

With all this in mind I expected a long and difficult conversation about our new church name. Yet it wasn’t, we decided to go for a name that does what it says on the tin: Edgeley Community Church

a sentient, spirited place
now masked and enraptured
in the urban rope-trick

This saddens me a little but doesn’t really suprise me. I don’t say that out of some conceited notion that it was ‘all about us’ but I do think that we did Inaspace really well and for one very simple reason. We got it.

If it goes under then so be it. Everything has its time and maybe time is up for this particular activity/group. I understand that in their attempts to breathe new life into things they are going to start doing it bi-weekly and in the evening instead of the morning. Both good initiatives, however, in order to inject some new ideas they are going to troop over to a cafe church in Timperley for inspiration. Quite apart from my general disdain for the whole ‘cafe-church’ phenomenon, how are they going to pick up what will work in Edgeley, ostensibly a poor working class area, from people in Timperley, an altogether more middle class and affluent place?

Moving the time etc. is a good move because it will work better for the people that attend and that is the key to the whole thing. BCLC and latterly Inaspace worked because of the place, the time and the people that attended. Once one of those changed (the place) something got lost along with it that has necessitated changing one or both of the other elements. But it did not and has never, to my recollection, been so bad in terms of content that it needed to replicate stuff that other churches were doing.

And so I fear for its future, but then if it doesn’t die then nothing can grow in its place so maybe it’s for the best.