Eye - 7 April 2023

From Flying the Friendly flag to Fond recollections

by Elinor Smallman 7th April 2023

Flying the Friendly flag

Eye was delighted to find a lyrical missive in the mailbag. Ol Rappaport, from Ealing Meeting, reached out to share: ‘I’m currently studying “multiple religious belonging” at Woodbrooke online. [Recently] I was prompted to recall a ditty I penned several decades ago… to be sung to the melody of “The Red Flag/O Tannenbaum”.’

The Quaker flag is rather grey,
We like to keep things vague that way.
There are no words upon it writ,
So we can all agree with it.

So raise the wooly standard high!
Our test’monies I’ll ne’er deny
Though theists scoff and credists sneer
We’ll keep the grey flag flying here!

Shining a light

Friends of Pardshaw Quaker Centre crafted an illuminated Meeting house in 2022.

Dawn Beck, Graham Howell and Anna Watson were at Towersey Folk Festival and took part in a lantern making workshop, fashioning Pardshaw Meeting House to display.

They were able to exercise a touch of artistic license: ‘As there are two almost blank sides to the building, we did add some extra windows and re-instate the original doorway. It actually provided the opportunity for quite a lot of outreach chat and we were very surprised that a couple of non Quakers immediately identified it as a Quaker Meeting House, although a couple of children did wonder if it was Katie Morag’s house [the main character in a series of children’s picture books by Mairi Hedderwick.’

Dawn reflected: ‘Several people also talked about their experiences with Quakers, one woman had done a workcamp many years ago which was led by a Quaker and she was still buzzing about how amazing it was.

‘One of the folk musicians knew an immense amount of history around the 1650s and from that was quite knowledgeable about the start of Quakerism. 

‘Fortunately I had photos of Pardshaw (near Cockermouth) on my phone, which was very useful, both as a building aid and also showing people it was a real place. And the green tissue paper was the exact match!’

Fond recollections

While reading Eye (24 February) during a recent Zoom Meeting for Worship, Christine (Chris) Knott, of Blue Idol Meeting, found their spirits raised.

‘“What gets young people out of the woodwork?” gave me the happiest Meeting I had had for a long time. Essentially it was the paragraph about having an Easter residential for ten- to sixteen-year-olds every year at Yealand Old School with a group of young people who had not met up since last year. Nearly forty years ago as an attender, then later member, of Wilmslow Meeting I was asked to be the cook at the Yealand residential. Harry Ireland was the leader of the residential.

‘We had such fun there. I was allowed to take my kids although they were strictly not old enough and we went for quite a while even after we had moved to Brighton Meeting. Harry also travelled up from Bude. I am so pleased that the Yealand residential still takes place and kids still love it. I sat in Meeting this morning recollecting the varied fun activities and walks in the lovely countryside around Yealand Conyers. Not sure my cooking would go down so well nowadays!’

Comments

Please login to add a comment