High Ham and Somerset – Page 8 – For the fainthearted . . .

Past recklessness

To drive from the home village of High Ham to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton would once have been a journey made without thinking about the route. Always, we would have driven to the main road at Langport and followed the main road. Now, in times of traffic jams that can double the journey time, Google Maps is used to decide upon the direction. On almost every occasion it suggests the narrow lanes that lead to the precipitous drop that is Turn Hill.

It is almost five decades since rode …

Being reminded of our place in society

The previous day, the long-suffering Richard had agreed to give my car a look over at eleven o’clock the next morning. With the garage closed over the Christmas and New Year period, he had found himself inundated with calls and suggested I return in an hour. It was a perfect length of time for which to wait – not long enough to go anywhere else, but sufficient time to enjoy its passing.

Walking through Langport, there was time to get a haircut before climbing the hill, passing by the Hanging …

God bless the Prince of Wales

The Prince of Wales is seventy-one tomorrow, which means it is fifty years since he became Prince of Wales.

We watched the investiture ceremony on the television at our primary school. The television could have been a prop from one of those 1960s science fiction series. At the base of the stand, there a rectangle of tubular metal with a wheel at each of its four corners. From each of the corners there rose metal legs which disappeared into a box at the top that was the colour of light …

Morning light

There is a moment soon after dawn on a clear autumn morning when to be able to stop time would mean to capture light of a magical quality. The greyness of wispy mist and the watery blueness of the sky combine to paint impressionistic landscapes across the Gloucestershire countryside. Such mornings seemed special in childhood years, the times when the world was occupied only by the early risers and when the sights and sounds of workaday life were yet to appear.

Perhaps growing up in a rural village distant from …

Equal in name

The Year 8 lesson focussed on Guru Gobind Singh, the last of the human gurus in the Sikh tradition. As well as the formation of the khalsa, “the pure ones,” the committed core of Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh was responsible for the introduction of all Sikh men taking the name “Singh” meaning “lion” and all Sikh women taking the name “Kaur” meaning “princess.”

The names created a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging to an extended family, a feeling that all who shared the names were equal.

“Does having …

A people who neither “dreaded God nor lived by Holy Church”

Independent thought in Fifteenth Century England was a dangerous activity, to express doubt, or, worse, to question the teachings of the church could lead to a trial for heresy, and, for those who refused to deny their own conscience, could lead to being burned at the stake. Reading through a history of Langport brought a discovery of a tradition of independent thought that was never mentioned in lessons learned at school.

The bishop of Bath and Wells from 1407 until his death in 1424 was the powerful and ruthless Nicholas …