This morning, my wife Sybille set out from the front door of the Chaplaincy Flat, to begin her long distance pilgrimage, walking from Prague to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. I took this photograph just before giving her a long kiss and hug, as if all goes to plan, I will not see her again for about two months.
Sybille started out this morning at 05.30, wanting to take full advantage of the cooler hours of the day whilst we are experiencing a Central European heatwave with temperatures rising to well over 30 degrees Celsius in the afternoon. Her main aim today is to successfully walk out of Prague, hoping to reach a campsite between Zbraslav and Radotin, adjacent a short part of the route that we walked together last November.
If you want to know more about Sybille’s pilgrimage, her motivation, proposed route and much more, then do visit her Prague-Santiago website. There is also a link in the right-hand side bar of this blog. She is hoping to post an update roughly once a week, dependent on time and wifi access. There is provision on her website for you to sign up to receive an email each time she does post an update.
I’ve been promised a text message update each day, whilst Sybille is walking within the Czech Republic as the cost of a text between two Czech mobiles is minimal. Once she reaches Germany, more specifically Freistaat Bayern, then I’m informed that contact will be less frequent 🙁
In early August, I will be taking some of my annual leave and the plan is for me to walk with Sybille for a couple of weeks, provided I can get Šárek cared for and find a willing plant ‘waterer’. Where that will be we don’t yet know. It will depend on Sybille’s walking speed which will only become clearer once she has been on pilgrimage for some weeks. However, we think it will be somewhere in France. Readers can be sure of a blogpost about it here in due course.
I spent the weekend following my attendance at the ICS Chaplains and Families Conference, visiting my two adult children. Then, having met up with my nephew Tim in Leamington, I spent a couple of nights in South Wales, reconnecting with two friends from my time at University in Lampeter during the mid 1970s. I then drove from South Wales to the south coast of England, to spend my last two nights on British soil, staying with my sister June and brother-in-law Garry, at their home in Bournemouth.
On the last stage of my journey, I decided to make a short detour from the the A338 between Salisbury and Bournemouth, to visit the small village of Woodgreen on the edge of the New Forest. I wanted to once more see the unique murals painted on the walls of the village hall, in which my mother, aunt and uncle all appear.
Woodgreen Village Hall was built between 1930-31. Over a period of eighteen months in 1932-33, two students from the Royal College of Art in London, Robert Baker and Edward Payne, created a series of murals covering the interior walls of the hall, depicting village life at the time. One of the scenes depicts a group of country dancers and it is in this mural that my mother and her sister and brother are all depicted.
This photograph shows the left half of the country dancing mural. The young lady in the pink dress standing in the centre of the circle created by the other three dancers, is my mother Elsie Cutler. At the time this was painted she was either sixteen or seventeen years old. The young lady in the green dress on the left of the photograph, (on my mother’s right), is her older sister Edith Cutler, always known to me as my Auntie Edie.
Below is a photograph of the complete mural. The young man on the left of the dancing circle on the right side of the mural, is my Uncle Cecil John Cutler.
Strictly speaking, my mother and her sister and brother, did not live in Woodgreen. They lived at Godshill Wood Farm, located halfway between Woodgreen and the neighbouring village of Godshill to the south. However, as the country dancing team was based in the village of Woodgreen, they were included in the mural painting.
Last year, the Woodgreen Village Hall Management Committee organised a party to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of the murals to which those who are featured in them who are still alive, were invited, along with the descendants of those now deceased. There is a report here, which includes a link to photographs of the event.
Unfortunately, neither my sisters and I, nor my cousin David, son of my Auntie Edie, were invited to attend. My Uncle Cecil John never married and had no offspring. The reason we were not invited was due to none of us having the surname ‘Cutler’, because of our respective mothers marrying and taking the surname of their husbands. Another cousin who does have the surname ‘Cutler’, was asked if he was a direct descendant. He rightly said that he wasn’t but didn’t have the common sense to give the organisers our details, even though he knew them 🙁
However, when I called at the home of the village hall caretaker, to ask if I could see the murals as my mother appeared in them, she freely let me have the key to gain access, hence I was able to take these photographs. My sister June has since told me that they now do have our contact details. Therefore, if there is to be a ninetieth birthday party, hopefully we may be invited.
On Thursday 22nd May, my sister June and I travelled as foot passengers on the ferry from Lymington, to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, where we were met by our sister Jenny who lives on the island. We had a most enjoyable day together, during which I took this photograph of the two of them.
During my recent visit to the UK, I met up with my nephew Tim in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, so we could have lunch together. Before our lunch, Tim took me on a short walking tour through Jephson Gardens, an attractive park in the town centre, in order to show me this memorial fountain commemorating the seven Czechoslovak airmen responsible for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most senior figures in the Nazi Third Reich.
In January 1942, Heydrich chaired the infamous Wannsee Conference, which set out plans for the enslavement and murder of 8 million European Jews. The Slavs, according to Heydrich’s plans, would have been next. At the time of his assassination, Heydrich was the acting Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, the present-day Czech Republic.
The seven Czechoslovak airmen were based just outside Leamington Spa and were parachuted into their homeland by the RAF, in a covert action called ‘Operation Anthropoid’. Seventy-two years ago on 27th May 1942, two of the seven carried out the assassination, though not everything went to plan as is explained in this BBC News report marking the seventieth anniversary of the event in 2012. As the report also explains, sadly all seven also lost their lives.
The memorial fountain is in the shape of a parachute around the edge of which the names of the seven are inscribed. The water dripping of the edges of the structure is meant to illustrate the strings of a parachute. Behind the fountain is this commemorative plaque.
On the base of the fountain is a double tailed rampant lion, the Czech national symbol, and superimposed on it is a shield with a double cross, the Slovak national symbol. I am most grateful to Tim for showing me this fascinating link between Warwickshire, the county of my birth, and the Czech Republic, the country where it has been my privilege to live for the past nearly six years.
As I explained in my post about the 2013 Conference, ICS is an international Church of England mission agency seeking to make known the good news of the Christian Gospel to people who speak English, who find themselves living, studying, working or holidaying away from home in countries where English is not the main language. ICS mainly works in continental Europe and other countries that surround the Mediterranean, and has financially and prayerfully supported the Prague Anglican Chaplaincy since August 2000.
The conference struck a nice balance between prayer, worship and teaching with some free time each afternoon, to explore the delightful surrounding countryside. As so often with conferences of this nature, some of the most valuable time was spent talking informally with colleagues over coffee or on occasions, something a little stronger 🙂 All of us work in somewhat isolated situations with rarely any opportunity to meet with each other except at this annual gathering.
The area around Hothorpe Hall was somewhere I had previously explored by foot or on my bicycle during my teenage years when living in Coventry. On the Wednesday afternoon, I made a circular walk of around 13 km to see the staircase flight of ten locks at Foxton on the Leicester section of the Grand Union Canal, a place I last visited about forty years ago
As well as the locks, a remarkable feat of engineering in their own right, I was fascinated to see the remains of the neighbouring inclined plane, built at the beginning of the twentieth century but abandoned in 1928 because of being too costly to maintain. The whole site, which used to be totally overgrown, has in recent years, been completely cleared and landscaped.
I took a different and slightly longer route to return to Hothorpe Hall, one that avoided a section of busy main road and which took me through a field of flowering oil seed rape.
On the final evening of the conference, a celebration dinner was held. We were encouraged to dress up a little and several of the ladies wore dresses or skirts, rather than the usual jeans and I wore my suit, together with my favourite tie which features a series of white sheep with just one black sheep in the middle.
During the dinner, a tradition started at the 2013 conference was continued with a fun ‘awards ceremony’, known as the ICS Carrot Awards. Last year, little mementos were presented which were made of carrots – this year there were printed certificates featuring a smiling carrot logo. Clearly my suit and tie were impressive as was given the prestigious ICS Carrot Award in recognition of being the best dressed man during the conference 🙂
Whilst the weekend following the conference, was meant to be the first part of my holiday, on the morning of Sunday 18th May, I undertook a deputation visit on behalf of ICS and was the preacher at two supporting parishes, St. Mary the Virgin, Wilby and St. Mary Magdalene, Ecton, two villages near Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. As well as preaching, I was also interviewed at both services by the Rector, Rev’d Chris Pearson, asking me to explain about my ministry in the Czech Republic and how ICS supports that work by finance and prayer. It was a most worthwhile morning, tinged by a little bit of déjà vu as I drove between services through the Northamptonshire countryside, echoes of my fifteen and a half years of rural multi-parish benefice ministry in the Oxfordshire countryside 🙂
I have every intention of writing further posts about the ICS Chaplains and Families Conference and my recent visit to family and friends in the UK. But first I have to write a rather sad post regarding our Senior Cat Oscar.
On the morning of Friday 23rd May, just as I was waking up at the home of my sister June and brother-in-law Garry in Bournemouth, I received a text message from Sybille in Prague, asking me to call her ASAP. I knew it must be serious as I believe it is only the second time when I have been away from Prague, that Sybille has contacted me and asked me to get in touch.
When I called, Sybille explained the situation. Oscar had been trying to pass urine but was unable to do so. He was also wincing in pain and had then proceeded to be sick several times over. She wanted my agreement to call the Pet Medic and to ask for Oscar to be put to sleep. Knowing Oscar’s age and how frail he had become, we both knew there was no way he would survive any further operation. It is almost certain that his kidneys had failed so no intervention would have helped. An hour later, I got a another text message to say that ‘Oscar was now with Sam‘.
At seventeen years and two months, Oscar has lived far longer than most cats. He has been a wonderful companion to us since we adopted him from our friends Mike and Nikki Geelan, in April 2007. We are both so thankful that we did hold a little party just a couple of months ago, to mark his seventeenth birthday. The two photographs accompanying this post, were taken by Sybille during the last two weeks of Oscar’s life and help us both to remember his companionship for the past seven years.
