Back to The Future! Launch of Voices of Barnsley CD

Hello everybody! Well, it's been a while, but I am surfacing at last. You could say I took a short sabbatical. But I'm here now, and hope all my readers have not forgotten me.

So, onwards and upwards. I am going straight into future events, because there are exciting times ahead. First of all this weekend sees the launch of the Voices of Barnsley CD. Here is the poster. I have a 7 minute slot, which I am really looking forward to.

I doubt many of you will be able to get to this event so watch out for photos next week.

I have not submitted anything for publication for months but have been writing, and not only that, I have been painting. This is my most recent effort. I am learning all the time.

My lovely Daddy. It's not perfect, but it does look like him.

Next week I will be busy putting a programme together for an afternoon of fun on the 24th November, in Penge. Poet, Christine Pope and I are going to entertain again, and hopefully making people laugh at our Prosecco and Poetry afternoon at Holy Trinity Church.

A BREEZE ABOVE OUR HEaDS

Christine Pope has lived in the South East for most of her life and has been writing poetry for about the last 15 years. She is a member of the Shortlands Poetry Circle and a speaker/entertainer for the WI and other organisations. In 2017 she was winner of the Walter de la Mare Poetry Prize.
Contact: 020 8464 9810 or christinepope@talktalk.net
Jane Sharp was born in Yorkshire and now shares her time between Yorkshire and Penge. She has won awards both in England and Crete, where she lived for 18 years. Her work has been broadcast on BBC radio and is included in a Yorkshire Anthology. As a member of the Poetry Society’s South East Stanza, she has performed at Covent Garden and other local venues.

PoETRY TO
TICKLE YOUR

FUNNY BOne

on
Saturday 24 November
2.00–3.30 pm
at
Holy Trinity Church 66 Leonard Avenue, Penge SE20 7LX
Tickets £10 (including wine and light refreshments)
From Christine Pope 020 8464 9810 

So you see, I am thrusting forward into the future. It has been a strange year, but I have survived, and consider myself very lucky and very grateful for all I have, that includes, health and friendship. 

Here are a few pictures of the summer months just to show you that I didn't spend the whole time in bed.

The Fountain, Long Preston

Morris Men in Newark on Trent

Celebration Dinner

Family Celebration and Cake

A Glorious day for our Golden Wedding Celebration

The National Mining Museum, Wakefield

Afternoon Tea in London

The Best Scones I've Ever Tasted

Playing the Organ for Church Service

A Weekend in Buxton

Down the Blue John Cave

I am so looking forward to more adventures. Bring it on!
Again, sorry for the absence, but everyone needs a break now and then. I'm off to learn my lines now, for Sunday's reading. Talk to you all soon. Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Love and hugs, Jane xx

Reunion

I had a little train trip off yesterday to meet up with three school friends, two of whom I had not seen in over 40 years. Would I recognise them? Would they recognise me? The meeting was warm, and sociable, and though all that time had passed, and our lives had gone in so many different directions, we fell back into our school days' friendship as though there had never been an interruption. It was a very special day, and I came home feeling emotionally charged, knowing something I was part of all those years ago, was still inside me.

The whole experience of our reunion, made me focus on my early childhood, and how I, it now seems, was brought up by a community, not just a family. That community was the population of Long Preston, in the Yorkshire Dales, where I was born. Now older, and with time to reflect, I realise that I owe that community so much. The people who supported the church and its annual parties with egg sandwiches, jelly, and blancmange, and buns and biscuits. The people who organised bus trips. The people who ran a beetle drive every week in the winter at the old scout hut. The people who ran the village sports day. The people who made coffee and cake, and held bazaars, and sales of work. And especially those organisers of the Boxing Night Dance, held at the Mechanics Institute, where I first met my lovely David. Then there was the library, and such things as the parade on Remembrance Sunday, and summer cricket on the green. And nobody complained when we kids went out on Mischief Night, knocking on doors, and tying up gates. And everybody put coppers in our tin when we did the rounds, carol singing before Christmas. 

Yes, I had wonderful parents, who provided for me, and nurtured me, but the total person I have become is certainly in some part a product of being brought up by the whole community of Long Preston, and, of course Hellifield, where David and I brought up our own children (with the help of that equally warm group of people).

So this is the poem that emerged from my day trip into the dales, if you were brought up in Long Preston you may feel the same way as I do.

Reunion

Put me on a train and send me back

To that frame of fields, that buttercup world,

Where days were unnumbered, and ideas unfurled

In petals of time, that mattered the most.                                 

Send me back to the cricket pitch green,

To the ginnels, the gates, the graveyard ghosts,

To the butcher’s shop with its Sunday roasts,

And cleavers, and steals, and barrels of bones;

Let me hear once more a slop of churn,

And a clop of hooves on the cobblestones;

And the clink of milk outside curtained homes,

While the cockerel crowed in the morning light:

Place me on a wall and let me see

Beyond the moor, beyond the curlew’s flight,

The winding stream, the oxbow lakes, the sight

Of white steam on the valley’s iron tracks,

Sit me inside the Sunday school room

With its scrolls and rolls and lavender wax,

And its suffer the little children plaques,

And parties, plays, and magic lantern shows.

And outside gardens with high stonewalls,

Where lupins, and roses and tall trees grow,

And everywhere chimney pots, rooks and crows,

In a leafy landscape of long ago.

Stand me beside the old stone fountain,

With eyes on the concrete and cottage rows,

Let me breathe its scent, inhale head to toe,

Every connection that gave me such joy:

Open the door of the Institute,

The bands, the bazars, and the hoi palloi;

Coffee and biscuits for all to enjoy,

And medal-clad elders to show us the way:

Let me meet again your familiar face,

In that space we shared in communal play,

Let me recover the bliss of those days,

To keep in my heart for always, always.

Jane Sharp 2018

Well, there you have it. Thank you people of Long Preston 1951-1966. And thank you, Elsie, Kathleen and Elizabeth for such a wonderful reunion. 

And what other news do I have? Well, I have embarked on a fitness programme and have been doing a three mile walk every other day, plus a few press ups (not from floor level yet), and I am feeling well off it. I have almost finished another art masterpiece, and I actually think my cooking has improved (slightly). I'm looking forward to the Royal Wedding on Saturday, I'll be glued to the TV. and I may even indulge myself in a glass of bubbly to toast the handsome couple.

Talk to you again soon, dear reader, bye for now,

Love and hugs,

Jane x

Does this make me a Professional!

Allow Yourself to Be Led Now and Then

The story of how I returned to my Methodist routes, is quite funny. It was all by chance really, if there is such a thing. I like to think that God had a hand in pointing me in the direction of Clock House.

It all started when David and I went to the St Barnabas Church, in Beckenham, on Christmas Morning. St Barnabas, being Church of England, and being the Church that we live right next door to, was our obvious choice. We had just moved to Beckenham, and thought that we would get off to a good start, and try to integrate into the community. We also wanted to thank God for our good fortune in life. The Christmas service was lovely, and we did have a little chat with the vicar afterwards.

When the next Sunday came round, we thought we would start the New Year as we meant to go on, and returned to the Church for Morning Prayer, at 10 a.m. Oh dear, although we could hear the music inside, the door appeared to be locked. No matter how much we pushed and pulled at the handle, we could not get in, and short of banging on the door, which we were not inclined to do, there was nothing for it but to leg it out of the churchyard. We decided to take a walk anyway, thinking the whole thing most unusual.

And that is when we saw a host of people entering the Methodist Chapel, on Bromley Road. 'Let's go to the Methodist service,' I said to David. So that's what we did. And we were made very welcome, in fact, we stayed for tea and biscuits, and a chat. Everyone thought it very amusing that we had gone to the Methodist service by default, as it were. But in my heart, I knew that we had been directed there. It was as though God had had his foot behind the door at St Barnabas Church, I could hear this little voice saying, this is where you are meant to be.

A week later I met Mary Sawyer, the organist from the sister church at Clock House. And the rest is history, as they say. When Mary found out that I played the piano, she asked if I would be her assistant, and play the organ for the Clock House service. Her regular assistant was having a baby, and that left a vacancy. Of course I said, yes. Fate, or whatever was sweeping me along. I had to go with the flow.

As a child I was christened in the small Methodist Chapel, at Long Preston, in the Yorkshire Dales. I went to Sunday school, I attended the Wesleyan Guild meetings, I went to fellowship gatherings. All that was a very long time ago. At the age of twelve or so, for some reason, a transferred my allegiance to the Church of England. It probably had a better (or so I thought) Sunday school. Anyway, I stuck with the Church of England. But now, I am very comfortably back in the Methodist fold, and if truth be known, I don't really mind which church I worship in.

There are several churches in Beckenham, I haven't been into them all, yet. But I have been into the big church on the high street, The Church of St George, and it is splendid inside. I haven't been back to St Barnabas, though I expect I will pop in from time to time.

So, that is the story of how David and I became connected, or reconnected with the Methodist Church. And today I received a lovely little cheque of £90 as payment for playing the organ at Clock House. Does this make me a professional? It is a bonus, (£15 every time I play) that I am going to put to very good use. I haven't quite decided what yet.

It's funny how things work out, isn't it. A little phrase that has cropped up more than once this week, is 'giving to get.' How true it is, when you give wholeheartedly, as they say, you receive ten fold.

Have a wonderful weekend dear reader,
Love Jane x

This is a picture of the lovely little Methodist Chapel in Clock House Road, between Beckenham and Penge