Author Archives: Ian Poulton

Rector’s Letter – Summer 2017

The closing days of June were a difficult time in the North. Tensions within communities built up. Vulnerable people were intimidated by youths building bonfires. Policing, difficult at the best of times, became all but impossible. By the beginning of July, many people had left the Province, heading for Britain or the Continent, or crossing the border to Donegal or to go “down South.” The 1st July marked the beginning of the busiest days of the “marching season,” sectarian feelings would be heated, sometimes by the weather, more often by …

Heavy weather

It being the longest day seems unlikely; a deep, dark cloud hangs across the sky and brings a premature darkness. A clamminess fills the air, a stickiness, a stifling warmth.

“Heavy weather.” Wasn’t it the title of a P.G. Wodehouse book featuring Lord Emsworth and the Marquess of Blandings? The earl’s stately home is filled with an array of irascible, conspiratorial characters. The oppressive heat of an English August saps the energy of those gathered, becomes the mood of the story that unfolds. Imagining the discomfort entailed in dressing for …

Pink and pinker

It was a “one dram below par” moment, a time when the worldview of Dr McClaren seemed apt.

It was Dr McClaren who declared, “It is a well known medical fact that some men are born at least one dram below par,” speaking of the schoolmaster George Campbell in the 1949 comedy film “Whisky Galore!” The schoolmaster is a man who has lived his life in fear of a domineering mother, particularly in fear of her disapproval of intoxicating liquor. In the story, the shipwreck of a freighter carrying 50,000 …

Will power

A large buff envelope lay at the bottom of a drawer filled with life insurance and pension correspondence.  With neither print nor writing on the outside, there was no clue as to what it might contain.Pulling out two A4 sheets of paper, paper that was of good quality, the contents were immediately clear, “The Last Will and Testament of Ian Peter Poulton.” It was not hard to remember it being drafted.

September 2001 and a trip to the Philippines prompted the unlikely step of going to a solicitor before departing. …

Lazy faith

An evening of conversation with a friend of three decades and a bemoaning of the lazy faith that now besets the church. Hard thinking has now been replaced by a frothy package of experiences; middle aged men in blue shirts and chinos pretend their expanding waistlines and receding hairlines do not betray them as people who are closer to forty years of age than twenty. Whilst the classical music of the cathedrals is respected by afficionados who would profess no faith; the music of the evangelical gatherings finds no listenership …

Distant places

There were two distant points in childhood days, one on the north Devon coast, the other on the southern edge of Dartmoor. Now, they wouldn’t be considered distant at all, no further than one would drive from the Irish Midlands to attend a rugby match in Dublin or Limerick, they would be distances covered in an hour, or a little more. In those younger years, they were journeys to different worlds, places that seemed a far remove from our sleepy village in the heart of the Somerset Levels.

In North …