Urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way: Kirkham Grammar School Founders' Day

Kirkham Grammar School Founders’ Day

Today, Wednesday April 1st 2020, at 2:30pm Kirkham Grammar School would have been holding its annual Founders’ Day Commemoration Service at St Michael’s Parish Church.

Founders’ Day is an occasion on which the school community reflects on and gives thanks for its long and distinguished history, whilst remembering in particular those who over the years have been supporters and benefactors of the School.

Holding the service in St Michael’s Church gives an appropriate reminder of the School’s earliest origins and its continuing links with the church: KGS was founded in the Sixteenth Century as a chantry school in the church grounds, in all probability before the stated founding date of 1549. For the next four hundred years, the School was situated next to the Church and the lives and work of the two institutions were firmly intertwined. The School moved to its present buildings in 1910 but has retained close links with the St Michael’s.

The Founders’ Day Service is actually a relatively recent tradition: it was instituted after the Second World War as an end-of-term event perhaps comparable to a modern Open Day, in that it was an opportunity for the School to display to the public something of its life and work and to celebrate all that it stands for. The day used to feature an inspection of the Cadet Force followed by a public parade of cadets to the Church, and the service was followed in the afternoon by a School against Old Boys cricket match.

The first recorded occurrence was on Saturday 26th July 1947, when the then newly appointed Headmaster Mr Dennis Norwood instituted the event as an end-of-term celebration of the School’s heritage. This extract from the newly-formed General School Committee in May 1947 shows the new Headmaster’s plans for the day.

In modern times, Founders’ Day has become a service of thanksgiving, normally held on the last Wednesday of the Spring Term, at which the school community gathers for a short act of worship, with music led by its choir, an address by a guest preacher and an act of thanksgiving for the School’s benefactors read by the Headmaster:

The names of those benefactors whose names are read out are somehow evocative of the school’s long and distinguished history: Thomas Clifton, Isabel Birly, Cuthbert Clifton, Thomas Westby, John Parker, Thomas Langtree, Thomas Hesketh, Arthur Greenacres, Henry Colborne, James Barker and William Grimbaldeston.

These names all have a role in the history of the school which is recorded by history, most notably Henry Colborne, whose bequest left in trust with the Drapers’ Company of the City of London in the seventeenth century led to the longstanding and still flourishing connection with the Drapers. Perhaps the most colourful story relates to Isabell Birly, daughter of a Kirkham alehouse keeper who apparently saved the school from falling into disrepair in the year 1621 with a donation of £30 (then a substantial gift) which she brought to the school authorities in her apron. 

Like so much else in our lives, today's Founders’ Day has fallen victim to the Coronavirus pandemic, along with the whole routine and rhythm of school life: like all schools in the UK and across much of the world, KGS is closed for normal teaching and learning for the immediate future, with pupils and teachers adapting to distance learning, and the school campus deserted other than for a handful of children of key workers. Public examinations have been cancelled leaving the GCSE and A-Level cohorts uncertain of their fate, and deprived of the bittersweet rituals of the end of their school days, with celebrations such as the Fifth Year Party and the Sixth Form Ball postponed to an as yet unplanned future date.

Founders’ Day is a perfect opportunity for all in the present and past school community - pupils, parents, teaching and non-teaching staff - to pause, reflect and give thanks for being part of an ancient, loved and resilient community. In its 470+ year existence, the School has been through difficult times and always emerged in the long term even stronger and wiser, and will do so again.

Let’s all take a moment today to pray for our well-loved school, to give thanks for the leadership and energy being demonstrated by the Headmaster Dan Berry and his staff, as well as the guidance and support of the Governing Body.

I have also always thought that on Founders’ Day, every pupil past and present should perhaps take a moment to give thanks for the financial and other sacrifices made by their own families to give them such a special education. We too easily take our schooling for granted, and I think many Old Kirkhamians will echo the thought that we appreciate and love the School even more as the years go by.

Since 1999, the Founders' Day Service has concluded with the School’s adopted hymn, the much-loved Lord for the Years. We're not singing it today, but here it is on YouTube - watch, enjoy and reflect on those words.

And in case you haven't seen it before, here is a link to a blog post I wrote a few years ago about Lord for the Years.

Little Saint Nick: how Christmas got its Santa

6^th December is the feast of St Nicholas - or Little Saint Nick as the Beach Boys referred to him in their 1973 festive offering. I wonder how many readers didn’t know that, or had forgotten. It's a festival that, like many, appeals to me as I love special days and seasons. Every month has its particular feel; I enjoy each of the four seasons for their own atmosphere, and above all for the contrast between them.

I take childlike pleasure in the big festivals - family birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Shrove Tuesday, Halloween - as well as many forgotten, neglected or less universally observed days like Epiphany and Candlemas. Follow the links from those words to read my previous posts about the latter two if you haven’t seen them. Moreover, in my long career as a schoolteacher, I enjoyed the traditional landmark events of the academic year like start of term, end of term, Sports Day, Speech Day, Leavers’ Day etc.

Much of our day-to-day home and working life is by necessity routine and repetitive, so days which feel a bit different help to punctuate the year and to give us something to anticipate with excitement then look back on with warmth and affection.

These days, the retail and hospitality industry tries hard to part us from our money by promoting special days like Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as occasions for buying cards, gifts and enjoying some special food and drink. Some decry the over-commercialisation of festivals, but I have no problem with it: good luck to hard-pressed retailers or pubs trying to get us to mark an occasion with a card, a gift or a drink.

I also find it interesting that as a society, we seem to crave collective events and enjoy celebrating them: the unexpected and refreshing success of the England football team in the World Cup in Russia palpably raised the spirits of a divided nation for a few heady weeks in summer 2018, and the day of the Semi-Final, an ordinary Wednesday, felt like a public holiday, with beer and burger sales booming as millions with only a passing interest in football used the occasion to go on a night out or invite friends round for a party. Likewise, the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May of the same year proved to be a collective celebration in the early summer sunshine, with the kill-joy republicans suddenly going rather quiet as the nation rejoiced in the happiness of a personable couple with a happy knack of seeming connected to ordinary folk yet retaining the dignity and mystique of monarchy. Sadly, two years on, that story appears to have had a less than happy ending.

Yet we in the UK are not very well off for festivals. Despite attempts by some, we English still seem embarrassed by St George’s Day, tainted as it is by the impression that it somehow the province of the Brexiteer generation. I remain very uneasy about it and therefore indifferent to it, not least because the real St George (ethnically Greek by most accounts) had so little connection with our country. The Scots, the Irish, the Welsh, the French, the Americans and many others have no such problem with their own national day.

And unlike our European neighbours, we don’t seem to have been very good at appropriating religious festivals, secularising them and enjoying them, even without any of the belief. The French enjoy public holidays on Catholic feast days like All Saints, Ascension and Pentecost, despite living in a country where religion is constitutionally excluded from public life. A case of not having your cake yet still eating it!

And what about Harvest Festival? Here, it’s marked in churches and primary schools, but nowhere else. But the Americans have combined the notion of giving thanks for food and drink with gratitude for the founding fathers of their nation to create Thanksgiving, a celebration of family life, and which helps keep Christmas where it belongs in December.

At the time of writing, we have reached the time of year when we are being told “it’s Christmas” by everyone from the BBC to Noddy Holder, in a manner which is quite fun but risks having us fed up with Christmas three weeks before the day. Which is where St Nicholas - aka Santa Claus - should be able to help! St Nicholas Day presents a golden opportunity, taken by people in many other countries, to enjoy a little celebration ahead of Christmas.

Having lived in Eastern France for a year in my early 20s, I have ever since celebrated St. Nicholas Day on December 6th. When our children were little, we told them to leave a pair of shoes by the chimney, and in the morning it was filled with a Lindt chocolate Santa or some such. Just a little treat, but a nice way of teaching them the origin of Santa, and a little landmark on the way to Christmas. This custom is widely observed in some cultures.

So who was St. Nicholas?  Many people just know him as Santa Claus. While the modern figure of Santa derives from St. Nick, the real man behind the fictitious Santa was St. Nicholas of Myra. Born in 280 A.D. in Asia Minor, he lost his parents at an early age, but leaving him great wealth when they died. He was known for giving anonymous gifts to help those in need and was eventually made a bishop. He died on December 6th; thus this day is now St. Nicholas Day. He was apparently a generous and kind man, so the association with gift-giving seems obvious. The history of leaving shoes or stockings out for St. Nicholas derives from the story of his leaving small bags of gold for a man and his three daughters. In those days, women had to bring a dowry to a marriage in order to find a good husband. St. Nick heard of a man who had three daughters but could not afford the dowry. Without it, the daughters would most likely enter a life of prostitution instead of being able to marry. According to legend, St. Nick threw three bags of gold through their window at night, saving them from a life at a brothel and creating his reputation as the patron of gift giving.

The feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated around the world in various cultures. In Greece (as well as Albania, Serbia, and Bulgaria), St. Nicholas is celebrated on the eve of his feast day, December 5th. This day is known as Shen’Kolli i Dimnit (Saint Nicholas of Winter). In these cultures, this day is one of fasting. Most people abstain from meat or fast completely or prepare a feast to eat just after midnight.

In Belgium, the Netherlands and parts of eastern France, children leave their shoes or boots in front of the fireplace for St. Nicholas on the evening of December 5^th. Often, they include a carrot or a treat for his horses, as legend has it that he arrived with his horses via sleigh or steamboat in these areas. (a tradition which has transferred into the “sherry and mince pie for Santa, carrot for Rudolph idea for Christmas Eve). 

St. Nicholas is said to arrive on December 6^th and give children small gifts and chocolates. In the weeks leading up to this day, parents and grandparents tell stories of the legend, including a disturbing but popular addition: the story goes that three children wandered away and got lost, and a butcher lured them into his shop where he killed them and salted them away in a large tub. According to legend, St. Nicholas revived the boys and brought them home to their families. This story earned him his reputation as protector of children in France. The butcher (known as “Père Fouettard,” meaning “Father Whipper”) is imagined to follow St. Nicholas in penance and leave lumps of coal or even whips misbehaving children. In France, statues and paintings often portray this event, showing the saint with children in a barrel.

In Germany and Austria (and some other countries in this region), children leave out a boot for St. Nicholas and receive small toys, coins, or sweets. In these areas, St. Nicholas is commonly depicted as a bishop and is often portrayed on a horse. Like in the French story, a sinister companion accompanies him, in this case the even more terrifying demon-like Krampus. This beast is thought to punish children who misbehave and to capture particularly naughty children in his sack and carry them away to his lair. The Krampus has roots in Germanic folklore and its influence has spread to Austria, southern Bavaria, South Tyrol, northern Friuli, Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, and Croatia.

So St Nicholas is a well-known legendary figure in many countries, and the connections to Santa Claus - gift giving, naughty or nice etc. – are clear, although the timing of his festival is coincidentally near Christmas, rather than because of the Santa connection.

However, the Christmas connections present us with a nice “extra” feast to help us get through the long, excited wait for Christmas. So put your shoes out and see what Little Saint Nick puts in them!

Let's Taste the Spice of Life

As I approach the landmark age of sixty, I very much hope that I am NOT becoming a grumpy old man. Old, yes, but not grumpy. I happen to believe that for those of us fortunate enough to live in a liberal Western democracy, the world is a better place than it was when I was born. Indeed I believe our society is, by and large, a more tolerant, fairer, kinder one than it was, say, 50 or 100 years ago. Music was great in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's, but there's still some great stuff being written and performed. The worlds of theatre, cinema, sport, culture and business are more vibrant and innovative than at any time in my life and well before. And mainstream television, whose demise is often predicted, seems to me to be in rude health, not least in the area of drama, in which we have been treated in recent years to a string of productions of the highest quality in both lightweight escapism such as Downton Abbey, hard-hitting hyper-reality like Happy Valley, or Call the Midwife, which manages to be both escapist and hard-hitting at the same time.

So I don't believe in the "good old days", nor do I think that we are in an inexorable slide towards a new dark age. Of course the world can still be a frighteningly nasty place, and mankind's capacity for evil remains depressingly apparent. But that should not blind us to what virtue there is, nor to the fact that the younger generation gives me every reason to believe that the future is in safe hands. I don't think young people are feckless, lazy and degenerate; I find them to be engaging, hard-working, good-humoured and respectful of their elders. Yes, I know I am lucky enough to teach in a very good independent school, but I also know many wonderful young people from all sorts of schools and backgrounds (it would be remiss of me not to mention here my many young friends from the online diabetic community) So you won't, I hope, find me ranting and raving about falling standards, bad manners, popular culture and whatever else some older people seem to almost delight in moaning about as they grow older.

I do, however, have one overall regret about the world in which I must grow old: it's the way in which we seem to be losing variety and contrast from so many areas of life. So perhaps readers will permit me to be, well, just a little grumpy, about what can be termed the homogenisation of modern life.

"What on earth do you mean?", I hear you ask. "I thought homogenisation was a chemical process, most commonly applied to milk". Well yes, it is, but if homogenising means making everything more consistent, removing contrast, eliminating light and shade both literally and metaphorically, then our world is a lot more homogenous than it was even twenty or thirty years ago. And I feel it is somewhat diminished as a result.

I started thinking about this post earlier today - Sunday - when I was walking to church. I am lucky to live in a small market town with a flourishing Parish church, whose peel of bells can be heard throughout the town on a Sunday morning as it has been for generations. I posted a short clip of the peeling bells on Twitter which quickly attracted a few likes, some of which were from people whom I know to be atheists, which intrigued and heartened me. Perhaps I was on to something. At least until mid-morning here in Kirkham, it sounds and therefore feels like Sunday, and perhaps more people appreciate this than I had thought.

In many ways it is perhaps the seven days of our week which give the best example of what I mean by homogenisation. I am not a big fan of 24/7 and 7/7 living, in that I like day and night to feel different, Saturday to feel like Saturday and Sunday to feel like Sunday. Go into any town centre on a Sunday these days, and it looks and feels no different from any other day. I prefer my Sunday to feel like the proverbial day of rest. For me personally that means church, Sunday roast and a general chill-out. I know that not many people these days want to go to church, but even a secular Sunday should feel different - maybe a walk, some quality time with family or friends, catching up on reading or even TV. But not just another hectic day. Sunday needs church bells ringing out across an otherwise quiet town or it doesn't sound right. And for me it also needs the Songs of Praise or Antiques Roadshow theme music and the smell of a roast dinner. I dislike Sunday opening of shops, not for religious reasons, but because I belive we all deserve and indeed need a "day of rest", or in modern parlance, a chill-out day.

I feel the same about Saturdays. They too should feel like Saturday: leisure activities, hobbies, shopping, DIY, sports - watching or playing - with "Out of the Blue", the theme to Sports Report at the end of the afternoon and Match of the Day in the evening. I'd rather not have a hospital appointment on a Saturday, so I don't see why doctors should be bullied into doing non-emergency work at weekends in the name of a "Seven day NHS"

Days are like seasons. We appreciate them more if they feel different. We need the cold and darkness of winter to help us appreciate the warmth and light of summer. I would hate to live in a climate where there were no clearly defined seasons. I love contrast.

I suspect that many readers will agree with me so far, but I actually feel that homogenisation has pervaded all areas of how we live our lives in a rather more insidious way. I am saddened, for example, by the way we are forgetting that different activities and occasions require different styles of dressing, behaving and speaking. Taking dress as an example, I very much prefer to dress, and see others dressed, in a style which reflects who we are and what we are doing. I want politicians, doctors, solicitors, teachers and the like to be dressed formally so that they look professional and important, and I don't particularly want them to be informal, crack jokes and I certainly don't want them to feel the need to sound "down with the kids". It's perfectly possible to be approachable, sensitive and empathetic whilst smartly dressed and well spoken.

Likewise, I cringe when I go to a church that feels and sounds like a shopping centre and vicars feel compelled to be jokey and informal, beginning the service with "Good Morning Everyone" rather than "The Lord be with You", using dumbed down, modernised wording in hymns and prayers in an attempt to make them more relevant, and generally making the language and practice of religion indistinguishable from that of the secular world. For me, religion is a serious and solomn, but joyful, business which should feel different from the rest of our lives, albeit in a manner which makes us want to live it out in our everyday lives. That's why I love Choral Evensong. It's about contrast again: I want church to be different from day-to-day life, not just an extension of it.

Another example of homogenisation is in our use of language. As I said earlier, I don't agree with those who moan about "falling standards" of English, and who can't distinguish between change and decline, but I do think we are in danger of losing the ability to disntinguish between different registers of language. We write (or rather type) so much more than we used to, by texting, tweeting, facebooking, blogging and emailing, that we now write in the same way that we speak. I'm doing so right now in this blog post. Again, nothing wrong with that, but we still need to retain and cultivate a more formal, precise and correct form of spoken and written language in many situations. I worry when people think it's alright to start formal emails with "Hello" or even "Hi", where clearly a more formal "Dear...." is required. And again, I see nothing wrong with more sophisticated, even intimidating language in areas such as the law, medicine and business. Serious things need serious language.

So there it is. My fit of grumpiness, or as I prefer to call it, regret. I'd actually prefer to conclude on a more positive note. Rather than moaning about homogenisation, let's say that I appreciate contrast and variety. It's central to my view of life, my personality and tastes. I love punk rock as much as gregorian chant. I love rain lashing on my window as much as warm summer sunshine. I love serious conversation as well as slapstick comedy. I love baked beans on toast as well as fine cuisine. I am as much uplifted and exhilarated by being in a gothic cathedral as I am by being in a football crowd. I love being in crowded city streets as much as country lanes. You can't appreciate light without darkness, peace without noise, summer without winter. Let's cherish and celebrate difference and variety. Variety is the spice of life, so as Manhatten Transfer once said, Let's Taste the Spice of Life

Lord for the Years

If you've has ever wondered where my Twitter profile description of what I do comes from, you're about to find out.

"Teaches and trains, rebukes and inspires" seems to me like a pretty good summary of what a teacher should do, and it is lifted from the second verse of one of my favourite hymns, Lord for the Years.

I am an unapologetic hymn geek. I believe that the (largely) British tradition of hymn singing is one of our finest contributions to world culture, and is often overlooked and even derided because of its association with organised religion, a practice seen by many as stuffy, outdated and irrelevant to the real world. Yet in my view, English hymns have given us some of the finest melodic and lyrical works ever written. It doesn't get much better than Charles Wesley, Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Hubert Parry, to name but three.

It is easy to think of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as some kind of golden age of hymn writing, and indeed many of our finest hymns date from that time. However, some very fine hymns have been written in more recent years, and no, I'm not talking about some of the embarrassing happy-clappy pseudo-rock stuff that some strands of the Christian Church have embraced in a desperate attempt to appeal to a younger generation. That's a big mistake in my view. The Devil, they say, has all the best tunes and when it comes to rock and roll, he sure does - quite rightly and triumphantly so. Let's leave religion out of rock music, and just enjoy the music for what it is. Attempts to sing about God, Jesus, Heaven and all that stuff using the rock idiom are doomed to failure in my view. There are one or two honourable exceptions, but they just prove the rule.

English hymns in the traditional style, with their sturdy, dignified melodies and their often archaic, at times wonderfully incomprehensible words, are I believe  the perfect medium for taking our thoughts to a higher plane. Try hearing, say, Love Divine, all loves excelling sung by a large congregation to the tune Blaenwern and I defy anyone not to be moved. Try quietly listening to the "still small voice of God" as a good choir sings Dear Lord and Father of Mankind and you'll feel that voice talking to you. Or try singing Jerusalem in a crowd if you're English and you'll almost certainly feel good about yourself and your country.

Lord for the Years belongs in the same league: a dignified melody, memorable and singable yet containing some interesting chord progressions, combined with unapologetically orthodox Christian theology expressed in a concise and eloquent manner. It was only written 40 years ago, but sounds like it's been around for a hundred years or more.

It's a hymn I believe I would love anyway, but for me it has a particular appeal because it is the adopted school hymn of the wonderful Kirkham Grammar School, to which I have devoted an entire teaching career.

More than that, I can claim personal responsibility for the fact that it is the School Hymn. I have achieved a lot in my 35 years at the school, but as I approach the end of my career there, I can honestly say that my proudest, and I hope most lasting, legacy to the School is that we have Lord for the Years as our school hymn.

This is how it happened: Back in 1998, I was part of a committee making plans to celebrate the School's 450th anniversary in 1999. Among the ideas being kicked about, the then Headmaster,  very much a traditionalist, suggested that as there was no school hymn, we should perhaps have one. It was suggested that perhaps someone could write one, but for whatever reason, nothing ever came of the idea, and so we were spared the sort of embarrassing doggerel that some schools have been landed with. Now at around the same time, the Director of Music had started using Lord for the Years at our Founders' Day service, having heard it used at a diocesan education service. I was immediately attracted to this hymn, and suggested to the Headmaster and Director of Music that it would fit the bill perfectly as "the school hymn". Nobody had come up with a better idea, and so it came to pass, with no official announcement, that Lord for the Years became the the KGS hymn. Our school year starts and ends with it. It is sung at Speech Day and Founders' Day and other formal events, and has been used at weddings of former pupils. Every year in May, our Sixth Form leavers at their leavers' assembly sing it with gusto in a manner that brings a lump to the throat of even the most hardened, non-believing cynic.

What is it about Lord for the Years? Well, most unusually, both the the melody and the lyrics were written by Bishops, so its Church of England pedigree is impeccable. The melody, composed by former Bishop of Chester Michael Baughen, is quite literally uplifting, ending an octave above where it started, and reaching that conclusion in an interesting and original, yet reassuringly traditional-sounding manner. And the words, by former Bishop of Thetford Timothy Dudley-Smith, says all there is to say about compassionate, caring and grateful Christianity in five four-line verses. Lines like "Spirits oppressed by pleasure wealth and care" and "Loveless in strength and comfortless in pain" speak of the spiritual poverty which afflicts the rich and blinds us to the sufferings of those less fortunate than ourselves, yet in the first verse we are reminded of  the enduring and unconditional power of God's love for us: "Sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided". 

And the last verse contains as good a summary of Christianity as it is possible to give in just nine words: "Self on the cross and Christ upon the Throne".

So there it is. A wonderful piece of writing which has the power to "teach and train, rebuke and inspire" It's what I have tried to do over my teaching career, and what I hope and believe our unpretentious, almost 500-year-old school has done exceptionally well throughout all those years, and will continue to do. We do indeed "bring our thanks today"

Here are the words in full, and if you click on the title, you can hear is sung:-

Lord for the Years.

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord for the years, we bring our thanks today.

Lord, for that word, the word of life which fires us,
speaks to our hearts and sets our souls ablaze,
teaches and trains, rebukes us and inspires us:
Lord of the word, receive your people's praise.

Lord, for our land in this our generation,
spirits oppressed by pleasure, wealth and care:
for young and old, for commonwealth and nation,
Lord of our land, be pleased to hear our prayer.

Lord, for our world where we disown and doubt him,
loveless in strength, and comfortless in pain,
hungry and helpless, lost indeed without him:
Lord of the world, we pray that Christ may reign.

 Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us-
self on the cross, and Christ upon the throne,
past put behind us, for the future take us:
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone

Club Day: what on earth is that?

Twenty nine years ago, on June 12th 1986, I moved to my present home, on the edge of the small market town of Kirkham, in the Fylde District of Lancashire. I had been working at the town's historic grammar school for five years, so I knew a bit about the town but only as a workplace and the end of a long daily commute from Southport.

Having decided I liked the school and secured a promotion to Head of Department, we had decided that it was a good moment to move closer to my work, with my wife having chosen to be a full-time mother to our one-year old daughter and new additions to the family planned.

We moved in on a scorching summer Thursday (the day after Gary Lineker's life-changing hat-trick in England's 3-0 win over Poland in the Mexico World Cup), and I had to return to work the next day, leaving my poor wife to start sorting out the chaos of our possessions dumped in a new house. 

Mid morning, she went to the shops to get a few essentials, accompanied by her Aunt, who had driven over from her home near Wigan to see our new house and lend a hand with settling in. With baby Felicity in her buggy, it was a chance for a bit of fresh air and a change of scenery.

On the short walk into town, they met an old gentleman in a flat cap leaning on his garden gate. "Ready for tomorrow are thee?", he enquired of the harassed young mother, curious Aunt and fretful child. My wife politely smiled and said yes, she was indeed ready for tomorrow, wondering why a complete stranger wanted to know of her readiness for the morrow. Was he mistaking her for someone else? Was he a fundamentalist zealot believing the next day, June 14th 1986 to be the dreadful day of judgement? She smiled politely, confirmed that she was indeed ready, and went on her way, wondering what manner of salutation this could have been.

The next day was Saturday, and we had arranged to return to our old house in Southport to pick up some plants in pots from the garden and to collect our cats, Buster and Bandit, from the boarding kennels where they had stayed during the move. So with baby Felicity dressed, ready and strapped into the child seat, we set off to Southport, but were startled to find our route blocked by an officious-looking policeman, who informed us that the road would be closed until midday at least - "for th'parade". The parade? What parade? We turned tail and went to Southport by another route.

That evening, on our return, we were again held up by the police while a parade went past, this time with a now tired and screaming baby and two howling cats who had pooed in their basket. We waited for almost an hour, and cursed this wretched thing called "Club Day", for it was indeed Kirkham Club Day which had caused all these mysterious and inconvenient goings-on. We were far from impressed, to say the least.

So why is it that, 29 years later, I think that Club Day is one of the best things about Kirkham? Well, I suppose it's because after 29 years (or actually after only a couple of years), I have realised that this quaint and apparently anachronistic event is in fact a unique and precious feature of this unpretentious little town. 

The year after we moved in, friends who had lived in the town for many years invited us to watch the morning "Procession of Witness" from outside their home which lies on the route of the procession. We were by then members of the congregation of St Michael's Parish Church, but we had been wary of invitations to join the procession, fearing that it was perhaps some sort of evangelistic attempt to draw more people into the church. But we watched, intrigued, as a huge and impressive parade of people of all ages and classes, some dressed in their finery, others not, took over an hour to walk past, accompanied by several marching brass bands, with splendid banners held aloft by burly men, the strings held by girls and women in matching dress. It was the scene so lovingly described in Blue Mink's 1971 hit Bannerman, and it reminded me of similar events that I had experienced as a child in Bolton, but which had long since died out.

What we did not yet fully understand was that the Club Day Procession of Witness  is in fact nothing more than a chance for the men, women and children of the five Christian Churches of the towns of Kirkham and Wesham to dress up and walk round the town, led by their clergy, watched by literally thousands of others who line the streets in warm-hearted support. The rest of the day is spent eating, drinking and being merry in the invariably fine June sunshine, with the town's park hosting a traditional travelling funfair, the pubs doing a roaring trade and the suburbs pervaded by the aroma of barbecues as families and friends come together in a manner repeated only at Christmas.

As our children grew, they were involved in the Procession in a variety of roles and guises: as brownies, guides, beaver scouts, cubs, flower-girls, Rose Queen attendants, Rose Queens and choristers. For my part, I have carried banners, supervised children, marshalled the route and now act as marshal for the St Michael's Church part of the procession, responsible for ensuring that everyone finds their right place in the order, that nobody gets hurt or left behind, and that we take our allotted place in the overall order amongst the other churches.

Walking the 3 mile route is a truly uplifting and life-affirming experience. Just consider this: over in Northern Ireland, now thankfully largely free of the sectarian violence which scarred that community, it is still the case that when different denominations of the Christian Church parade, they must do so out of sight of others and with due sensitivity to the religious affiliation of the neighbourhood, for fear of sparking violence. Here in Kirkham, as the Anglicans pass the Catholics, we greet each other with friendly banter about dresses, sore feet, and secret stashes of alcohol (the Catholics allegedly secrete suitable liquid refreshment amidst the flowers at the feet of their portable statue of the blessed virgin Mary), whilst the rival bands attempt to out-blast each other as the sound of hymn tunes echos off the walls of the Lancashire terraced houses that line the streets. To watch this procession is truly to see the church as a unifying force for good in a diverse and friendly community, many of whom are proud working-class folk whose families have lived in the town for generations.

 "Club Day" has a long and interesting history, unique to the Fylde district of Lancashire. It is rooted in the 18th century "friendly societies", or "clubs", which were set up to support the needy in these poor communities in the days before the state could do so. Once a year, the societies would parade through the towns in celebration of their existence and work, and the day evolved into a community carnival, with the churches becoming involved, it is believed, to moderate a tendency towards excessive drinking.

The friendly societies have long gone, but far from dwindling or even dying out, as religious processions such as the Whit Walks in other Northern towns have done, Kirkham's Club Day has prospered and if anything grown in size and scope over recent years. The day used to feature a secular evening Carnival procession (the one which held us up on our return home that evening in 1986), but this died out some years ago through lack of support for the groups who organised it. Meanwhile, the religious "Procession of Witness" continues to attract hundreds to walk the streets in unashamed support for their churches, and thousands more to stand, watch and support their friends and neighbours. It is Christian witness worn easily, unselfconsciously and joyfully in a manner that reminds the towns that the church is still a strong cohesive presence in the busy life of the communities it serves. More importantly, it reminds those who walk under the banners of different shades of the Christian faith that what unites them is far more important than the minor differences of emphasis which divide them.

Long may it continue!