Time to Smell the Roses

by the Reverend Andrew Spurr

Some years ago, I read one of the magazines which is part of the Daily Express (it must have been while waiting for a takeaway, or in the hairdressers).  One of their regular features was called Rites of Passage, where a birth, a marriage and a death were all described in brief paragraphs with colour photographs.  At the time, I thought it would work better in a smaller community, and would be a good way of seeing how things change through the passing of time.  The child born today would know a very different Stansted from the child who had grown up here in the years before the war.

Although I have always wanted to pinch the idea, I've never quite organised myself to do it in The Link.

Not all stories want to be put on view, of course, but there are one or two which have a significance which goes beyond the individual.  Around here, Nancy Tennant and Mieneke Clifford are two examples of lives whose influence reached far beyond where they lived and worked.

I came across another one a couple of months ago when I was asked to conduct Doug Hudgell's funeral. 

Doug was a quiet man who spent a large chunk of his life working at the railway station. 

These were in gentler times, when the pace was more leisurely and people had a sense of pride and of belonging to their community.

Stansted Station

Doug's great gift was as a gardener and, every spring and summer, the station embankments would be a riot of colour, proclaiming Mountfitchet to its residents and to travellers passing through.  He was devoted to the garden, and was lucky enough to be paid to do what he loved.  I would imagine that employing someone to celebrate the station could not be justified in today's payroll budgets and often for good reason.

But somehow, as I went through his photo album, I couldn't help feeling wistful that, with his passing, a whole way of seeing the world, and taking time to delight in it, had been lost as well.  I suppose I could make some religious remark about the point of resting one day in seven is to take time to laugh, dance, and celebrate; but it doesn't need to be made among those of us who are run ragged just to keep in life's game.
 

                                                                                                                                         Rev. A.S.

With the kind permission of

Reverend Andrew Spurr

Rector
The Parishes of Stansted Mountfitchet

 with Birchanger and Farnham