Tag Archives: church

Emily Barker at St. Peter’s, Tandridge – flashback to 2018

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This is a remix…since nobody is going anywhere right now, I consider it legit to repost earlier blogs about travels and events, the better to cheer us up in these days. There follows an account of a pop concert at St Peter’s church, Tandridge, in October 2018.

Earlier this year we attended the first pop concert in 800 years, at St. Peter’s church, Tandridge village. It was an unseasonably cold night in March, and late snow lay on the ground. Tonight, we returned, in mid-October, on what was another unseasonable night. This time, however, the weather was very warm. To be able to walk around on a mid-October night in shirt-sleeves is most unusual.

This event, like it’s predecessor, was a benefit gig aimed at raising money for the fabric of this wonderful and ancient church.  In this case, money is sought to install a much-needed loo: prosaic, but a vital human need.  And this evening was both human and prosaic, warm and uplifting, but friendly and community-oriented.  The Rector, Andrew Rumsey, introduced the evening with a warm-up act of a brace of autumnal songs that might have even been written for the occasion.

The actual support act for Emily Barker were two gents called Roy Hill and Ty Watling. These gents looked and sounded like characters from Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans of Swing”

…Check out guitar George
He knows all the chords…

Mind, Ty Watling did indeed know how to make his guitar cry and sing, and that he went on to do.  Roy Hill was of indeterminate age, and was in good voice, and made banter with the audience about how much better this was than their usual pub gig.  They started dark, with a song about pain beginning, and finished with a deeply moving number about failing mental health, yet, they were always somehow encouraging, humane, and uplifting.

Emily Barker came on and immediately impressed everyone with her beautiful clear voice and her guitar playing.  This evening has seen a series of guitarists bringing great joy and beauty into the world through their playing, song-writing and singing, like Chet Atkins:

…Money don’t matter as long as I scatter a little bit of happiness around
If people keep a grinnin’ I figure I’m a winnin’…

In between the numbers she told us stories of her early life with a discernable Aussie twang.  It is always engaging when pop stars do that – you want to know that they do go to the shops, that they were once kids in the back of a car going on holiday, singing along to cassettes.  She performed an old Bruce Springsteen number – “Tunnel of love” – to illustrate this story.

Somehow, the fact that she is a supremely skilled professional guitarist and pianist, a powerful and gifted singer and a talented songwriter did not discourage or demotivate. After the concert I was speaking to a lady in the audience who has Downs Syndrome.  She wants to write songs – and she was saying, by no means demotivated, how high the bar has been set by Emily Barker.  The lesson is, everything is possible; anyone can do anything if they set themselves to it.  A lady you might pass in the street, wearing blue jeans and a cardigan, has a voice like Aretha Franklin, a solo voice so beautiful, so powerful, as to carry an entire church in stunned silence.

“To one, he gave five bags of gold, to another, two, to another, one bag, each according to his ability” – Matthew 25:15.  It’s what you do with what you’ve got that matters, not how much you’ve got.

There’s a pattern emerging here with these concerts: Not so much inspiring, as inspirational.  Do new things. Dare to create, dare to do something new with your bag of gold.

A sermon from the late Rt Revd Richard Hare

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Here is a sermon that was preached at St. Alkmund’s, Derby, sometime in 1994. It was towards the end of Paul Corrie’s time, and occurred on the eve of the congregation moving to two morning services, St Alkmund’s having grown massively in the previous ten years, and the hall was no longer large enough for just one service of 500 or more people.

Richard Hare was a suffragan bishop well-known for his Charismatic tendencies. Though at this point he had been the Bishop of Pontefract for 21 years, he was heavily supportive of the Charismatic movement. He speaks here after his retirement, at the invitation of the vicar Reverend Paul Corrie.

I vividly remember the sermon being preached. Richard Hare’s beautiful spoken English, his “cut-glass accent”, and his exquisite professional timing as a public speaker, have remained with me ever since. It is fair to say that such public speaking and preaching as I have done myself, has been influenced by this one sermon – most particularly his professional timing.

At one point he recounts a poem created by a nun, in which the nun says to the Virgin Mary, thinking of her saying “yes” to the angel, as a young girl, when she replied, “it will be as you say”:

“In nine long months, in thirty-three short years, in three eternally long hours, did you never wish that yes…………………….unsaid?”

His pause between “yes” and “unsaid” was theatrical – and just exactly right.

Listen and enjoy here.

Kathryn Williams at St. Peter’s Church, Tandridge

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In the evening, a short drive through light falling snow, to St. Peter’s church, in the village of Tandridge in East Surrey. Tandridge is tucked away on a slope of the North Downs that tilts away from the main road.

There’s a hidden, lost world up here, almost – a land that the 21st century forgot.

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Arriving at the churchyard, we’re greeted at the Lych Gate. It’s a winter wonderland. There is a dusting of late snow like icing sugar on a cake, and the ancient yew tree is decorated with fairy lights. Somewhere in the background, one of those little portable generators is grumbling away. Under a gazebo near the church door, some rather good curry is served, prepared by a local restaurant. Here, tonight, in this place, old England and modern 2lst Century England meet in agreement and in harmony.

Inside, there is beer available, and we are at liberty to sit eating our curry in these old wooden pews. Modern electronic concert lighting brings a magical atmosphere to this medieval building. The opening act is the Rector’s own band, The Effras. Encouraging, uplifting, human. Songs, as frontman Revd. Andrew Rumsey notes, about seaside towns, rural churchyards and… Sarf Landan. Here a song about couples canoodling “underneath the angel”, with a name-check for Pernod and black. Or, a song about “Some houses in Croydon”, or my personal favourite, “Penge in bloom”.

Kathryn Williams had the clearest, sweetest voice. She was engagingly nervous and human. At one point she left the stage to fetch some sweets to give to some of the children at the front. She seemed very vulnerable, revealing much of herself in her playing and her stories, such as her candid anecdote of emotional collapse in “Underground”. I was mightily blessed by her songs, her performance, her openness. She had some cool sampling and looping stuff that enabled her to double and triple her voice, and back herself on vocals, and her guitar playing was a delight.

All in all, as the Rector said the following morning, a “transformative” evening. No less than the truth.