Nigel the Curate shows up

A gorgeous Spring morning yesterday, so I trundled out the bike and cycled the three and a half miles to St Mary’s for Morning Prayers. The birds are very active now and hopefully the bees too, as long as global warming doesn’t scotch their ardour.

It was a lovely cycle ride until just after the Box Factory. This is the only factory for miles around and employs around a hundred and fifty people, making boxes. It means that our tiny, single-track country lanes often have huge lorries trying to negotiate their way along. We generally manage by politely waiting for each other in the occasional convenient passing place, or reversing to find one when necessary (I don’t do that. I’m not a reverser. I just sit there flashing my dog collar and with a beatific smile and wait for the other guy to move, then I wave and nod and smile some more. It usually works and is infinitely better than my reversing, which really would constitute a danger).

What the lorries also do is damage the road surface. Just beyond the box factory the surface is so damaged that after any degree of rain there’s a lake.

Yesterday morning no thoughts of lakes enter my head, since it hasn’t rained for some time. Or not that I can remember, anyway. But there I was on my bike, and there the road disappeared under a huge puddle. There was no means of getting off and walking round it, so I had no option but to cycle through, which I achieved by means of a good push off, then sticking my feet on the frame as close to the handlebars as I could manage. No, not THAT close. I’m not a contortionist.

Anyway, made it through (and back after Morning Prayers, but arrived home covered in muck where the water sprayed up from the puddle all over my bike and anorak). Sat on the seat in the churchyard enjoying the sunshine. Last time I sat there, which was probably last October, there were a couple of horses in the field adjoining the churchyard. Now there are sheep, about ready for lambing, by the look of them.

And lo and behold! Nigel the Curate suddenly appeared, much to my astonishment, so after prayers we made our separate ways back to the Rectory (he was in the car so I gave him the key and told him to make coffee) for a Norfolk mardle and to sort out the week.

So I’m left wondering. As I say my prayers, is ‘baa-a-a’ more affirming than ‘neigh’? Did that influence Nigel’s appearing?

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