john davies |
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notes from a small vicar
from a parish in Liverpool, UK
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1 - On rogation beside the River Alt 2 - Bounded by green avenues 3 - Following mislaid tracks 4 - Bringing in the Bacon 5 - Tropical storms over Scarisbrick 6 - Leisure pursuits 7 - The shopping trolley trail 8 - Everyday English 9 - Dog & Gun rogation 10 - Boundary slippage
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Talks and articles:
Walking with the Psychogeographers
(Greenbelt 2008 talk) Walking with the Psychogeographers (Greenbelt 08 talk: cd/mp3) Heaven in Ordinary (Greenbelt 2007 talk) Heaven in Ordinary (Greenbelt 07 talk: cd/mp3) Heart of Cheltenham pilgrimage: notes Heaven in Ordinary (Greenbelt Leeds event talk) Reading the Everyday (Greenbelt 06 talk: cd/mp3) Reading the Everyday (Third Way article: pdf) Reading the Everyday (Greenbelt on Iona 2006) Stars of Norris Green (radio talks) Making of the Croxteth Landscape Healing Places retreat programme Towards an Urban Theology of Land Mapping an Urban Parish Donations towards
the cost of my MPhil/PhD theology/psychogeography research project gratefully received via Order online from
THE FIRE
THIS TIME: Deconstructing the Gulf War A permanent record
of the fate of Iraq 
Co-travellers: Pip Wilson Jonny Baker Joe Moran's Blog The Reluctant Ordained ASBO Jesus Dave Walker's Cartoon Blog Paul Cookson Maggi Dawn Dot Gosling: Wildgoose Ellen Loudon Rachel Andrew Walking Home to 50 The Manchester Zedders A Mis-Guided Blog Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives Islingtongue / Leytonstongue Remapping High Wycombe National Psychogeographic Diamond Geezer Danger: Void Behind Door Common Ground Strange Attractor: Further Kristin Hersh Unofficial Fall website Bill Drummond: Penkiln Burn Julian Cope: Head Heritage Billy Bragg Rough Trade Second Layer Records Freak Emporium Probe Records Piccadilly News From Nowhere Abebooks The Wire Smoke: A London Peculiar London Review of Books Demos Greenhouse This Week... In my ears: 
The Advisory Circle: Other Channels Reading matter: 
John Pridmore: The Inner City of God, The Diary of an East End Parson On screen: 
David Moyes interview on BBC Inside Sport A Page a Day currently from: 
John Minnion: Pool of Life: The Story of Liverpool in Caricatures Archives July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 |
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The sheet of toilet roll folded down quarter-sized
Weary, climbing the grandstand stairs on an afternoon late in Greenbelt, legs tired with endless walking through heavy festival fields, head sore through having been battered by wind, assaulted by rain, scorched by sudden sunbursts each hour of the long weekend. Exhausted and talked-out, looking for a space of quiet in a sea of people. But every corner of every stairwell in this plushly-carpeted cathedral to National Hunt racing had been colonised by groups of youngsters seated next to electric sockets as they recharged their mobiles, gaggles of girls giggling to a background hiss of phone-speaker pop. Dismayed that the event organisers have outlawed the free-ranging skateboarders of previous Cheltenham years and corralled them into a dull programmed area, I wanted to be onside with these young people doing their own thing - let them be, let them live - but feeling my age I also wanted some space and silence for a while and these chattering grandstand ringtone virtuosos were in my miserable way. In a spirit which even in my moroseness I took to be playfully generous, one girl emerged from a cluster at a turn of the stairs, to offer me something from her hand. Sensate enough to recognise this as a daft but friendly-enough gesture I took her gift. "It's a souvenir of the occasion," she told me as her little friends looked on, hiding their smiles behind their hands. They were high on Greenbelt, high on each other, high on pure life. The girl's gift to me was, in fact, a single sheet of toilet roll folded down quarter-sized. I accepted it with mock-excessive but genuine enough thanks, made them laugh, then put it in my pocket and moved on, my mood just slightly melted.  I wanted the space partly to prepare myself for the next session on the festival programme that afternoon, which was the only 'essential' all weekend for me. But denied any space for silence anywhere on site, soon I was joining many other forty-to-sixty-somethings creaking and clicking and groaning to the floor of Centaur for the weekend's pivotal event, a musical tribute to Larry Norman, the pioneer of Jesus Rock who had been for me and so many of my peers the catalyst for our emerging faith way back in the 1970s, and who died last February. I knew that this would be an emotional hour for me because when I heard of his death I realised how much Larry meant to me, a musician who in his prime performed and wrote as well as Jagger and Richards and Leon Russell, a visionary wordsmith in the company of Dylan, a complex populist as forceful as Lennon. Larry's songs fed me in my youth: half-provocation and half-proclamation and one hundred percent rock, they educated me into a faith formed in Larry's image, one which must speak from and to the streets, one most alive at the edge, critical of institutions, ardently peripheral. Now I feel tired even thinking about the enthusiasm of those days, but that buoyant faith is one I wish I had again having as an adult been well and truly institutionalised, corralled into a dull programmed area. So the Larry tribute event proved to be emotional as various artists of quality and integrity sang the man's songs and witnessed to his uniqueness and complexity. The songs reconnected me to the youth I once was, and all that meant. And so tears came as I heard them and sang along: sad at the loss of Larry, moved by the intensity of what the occasion meant to me. When the tears began I reached into my pocket for something to wipe them from my eyes. The only thing I found there to help me with this was a single sheet of toilet roll folded down quarter-sized, which that girl had given me on the stairs. ABOVE RIGHT: still from Larry Norman - Song for a Small Circle of Friends on YouTube, which was played at the Greenbelt tribute event
ABOVE LEFT: Larry performing Watch What You're Doing, live with Frank Black |
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