‘Tommy has lived out a simpler life than most people I know, and is also one of the most content people that I have ever met.’ Photo: James Priestman in Brigflatts
Poetry in motion again: the final leg of James Priestman’s itinerant witness
‘I have never known my poetry to be so divisive.’
Last year, I resolved to spend four weeks hitchhiking around the United Kingdom as a way of talking to people about the Quaker testimonies. In June I spent a week hitchhiking to Quaker sites of interest in Leicestershire and Lancashire (1 July, 2022). In August I spent two weeks hitchhiking and engaging with audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (7 October, 2022). The fourth and final week of my itinerant witness was a visit to Quaker sites in the Lake District. Here is what happened.
Day 1 (Saturday, 1 October)
I had arranged this day’s first lift on the previous Sunday, with an attender of Ealing Meeting (where I worship). He happened to be travelling up to Derbyshire. He dropped me at Warwick Services on the M40, and I only had to wait twenty minutes before I was picked up by Phil. Phil is thirty years old and a manager within one of the companies that deliver the Laser Quest infra-red tag-game franchise. I explained that I was heading up to Sedbergh in Cumbria, where George Fox, founder of the Quakers, first preached. Phil started working for Laser Quest when he was fifteen years old, handing out promotional leaflets. He is still enthusiastic, although he has had to stop playing the game himself due to arthritis. He dropped me at services just south of Stoke.
I got another lift within ten minutes of starting to hitch. One thing I have noticed from hitchhiking is that people who have served in the military make up a disproportionate number of those who will pick you up. David is thirty years old and left the Royal Marines a year ago. He joined in 2013 and did not have to deploy to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He did participate in some humanitarian work in the Caribbean after a hurricane, and in some anti-piracy patrols. David was intrigued by my hitchhiking plans and was interested to hear about the Quakers. He went five miles out of his way to drop me in Sedbergh, and I arrived before 6pm.
I had had a remarkably easy journey. Fortunately, all the B&Bs in the town were full so I had the perfect excuse to book into the thousand-star hotel. I chose the top of a hill on what appeared to be common land, overlooking the town. There was some rain in the early part of the night but some trees and my bivvy bag kept me dry enough. I got up just before 5am and looked up at a clear night sky: Mars, Jupiter, shooting stars and satellites.
Day 2 (Sunday, 2 October)
In the morning I joined the Meeting for Worship at Brigflatts Meeting House, which is a short walk outside Sedbergh. It is on the site where, in 1652, George Fox met the Westmorland Seekers, a group that had become disillusioned with the established church. It was after this that Fox began his own preaching.
After Meeting, I went on a walk with two other Quakers in the spectacular countryside, and then at 4.15pm I started hitchhiking to Kendal. Within ten minutes I had a lift with Tommy. He is eighty-three years old and has lived his whole life in Sedbergh, working on farms and then as a lorry driver. He could not read or write when he left school, but when he started to keep bees in his forties, he decided to gain some literacy to learn more about them.
He has only been abroad once: with his wife to Bruges in Belgium. He didn’t like it, and has never left the country again, although he has been happy for his wife to take their three daughters on trips abroad. I tried to find out why he didn’t like Bruges, but the only explanation he could give was, ‘It just wasn’t me’. He was the most cheerful and warm-hearted octogenarian I have ever met. He is not a Quaker himself, but when he heard I was visiting Quaker sites he drove me up a hill to see ‘Fox’s Pulpit’, a stone from which George Fox preached his famous sermon in 1652. He drove me into Kendal even though that wasn’t where he was actually heading.
I tried to get him to accept some payment from me, but he refused: ‘I may be needing some help from you some day.’ One of the Quaker testimonies is simplicity. Tommy has lived out a simpler life than most people I know, and is also one of the most content people that I have ever met. In Kendal I booked into a B&B.
Day 3-4 (Monday 3 to Tuesday 4 October)
My reason for visiting Kendal was to see the Quaker Tapestry, which was produced between 1981 and 1996. Its panels present important scenes from Quaker history, and it is impressive as a work of art. A new stitch was invented for the tapestry, and so, despite having been stitched by 4,000 people from fifteen countries, every panel has a consistent and distinctive look.
On Tuesday I walked to the edge of Kendal and began hitchhiking to the Glenthorne Quaker Centre in Grasmere. I was soon picked up by Lauren, who works in adult social care, helping people who are elderly, physically disabled or with learning difficulties, to live as independently as possible. She dropped me near Windermere, where I was picked up by Tony, who runs a small expedition company. Tony, like Tommy who I met two days ago, has not lost his appreciation of the beautiful environment in which he has lived and worked for decades. Tony dropped me off three miles outside Grasmere, where I waited thirty-five minutes (the longest I had had to wait so far in this itinerary).
I can’t remember anything about the woman who took me the short journey into Grasmere, but we had a good-humoured chat. The Glenthorne Quaker Centre is in a dark-green, sheep-filled valley. In the evening I spotted a red squirrel hopping around the garden.
Day 5–6 (Wednesday 5 to Thursday 6 October)
On these days I visited and enjoyed the William Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere. It has been built around the cottage in which Wordsworth lived, with his sister and then also his wife and five children (two of whom died in infancy). On Thursday, the woman who ran the museum café reminded me that it was National Poetry Day, and it occurred to me that on this trip I had not recited poems to anyone. Now I had an excuse.
There were just two other customers in the café: a man and a woman, between five and ten years older than me. I explained to them that I was a travelling poet and that this was National Poetry Day. They agreed to hear a poem and were very appreciative of ‘Newspaper left on a train’ (about a cow killed by a meteorite). I then got on a bus heading to Windermere and recited the same poem to the eight passengers. They asked for another and another, so I did ‘Vladimir Putin listens to ABBA’ and then ‘Could it have all been different?’ (an alternative version of the Adam and Eve story). I walked into Windermere and asked three different couples outside cafes if they wanted a poem. One couple did and they enjoyed ‘Andy Murray’.
I then got on a double-decker to Keswick. When I asked the people on the lower deck if they wanted a poem, the woman at the front was very enthusiastic. But the remaining faces remained expressionless as I recited ‘Could it have all been different?’ The driver shouted at me to sit down (which I did), and then to be quiet (to which I replied that I would not). I have never known my poetry to be so divisive. I took the stairs to the upper deck, thinking I should try my luck there, but as soon as I reached the top a woman glared at me and said, forcefully, ‘We don’t want a poem!’.
At Keswick I got on the double-decker to Penrith, where I planned to get onto the M6 and start heading back home. I approached groups of two to four people and spoke the poems (rather than announcing them to the whole bus), and had positive responses to ‘Some Financial Advice’ as well as the aforementioned poems. I got off the bus on an A road that ran between Penrith and the M6. I remained stuck, in the rain, for three hours, and then walked to a B&B that had a room available in the attic.
Days 7–9 (Friday 7 to Sunday 9 October)
It had been raining in the Lake District since day four, and on day seven it became torrential. I began hitchhiking at 7am and waited two hours for a lift, but when it came it was a good one. I was picked up by Lesley and Steve. They rear chickens and sell them to free range farms. If you’ve eaten Sainsbury’s free-range eggs then they may have come from hens raised by Steve and Lesley. We talked about the difficulties of keeping farming environmentally sustainable and commercially profitable. Some proposed environmental solutions are not as sound as first appears: Lesley and Steve were generating power by burning wood pellets, which they later discovered had come from China.
They got me all the way to the Wetherby services on the A1, north of Doncaster. By this time, I had been made aware that my father’s health had seriously deteriorated. He was living in a care home near Peterborough, and so, with a combination of another lift, a train and a minicab, I was with him by Saturday morning. On Sunday morning we attended Ealing Meeting for Worship online. My father ministered to say that this was the first time he had been to a Quaker meeting since 1955, when he was eighteen years old (he had been at a Quaker school). My father passed away one week to the day after his final ministry.
James is is grateful to the Francis Camfield Trust for support. His poems, including those mentioned in this piece, can be found at www.whatthebiblecouldhavesaid.com.
Newspaper left on a train
I doubt that many cows understand the manner of their death.
You might have heard the sonic boom and then you may,
If you did not die instantly, have been conscious of
Your smashed neck and shoulder and actually stared at the boulder
and known it was connected to your closing.
Like you, I didn’t know it happened on the fifteenth of October
Because in nineteen-seventy-two I was only four years old –
I hadn’t learnt about time and dates. Like you,
I couldn’t pronounce ‘Trujillo’ and ‘Venezuela’ and a sort of farmer
Was pulling me by the nose through sums and stories –
my first term at school, my first fences and gates.
Now, I read in a newspaper left on a train that you are
distinguished
As being the only sentient life documented
As ever having been killed by a meteorite.
And when I lie dying, I should expect to know more than you.
But what will I see? What does it add up to:
A farmer come to lead me through an open gate with
his hand on my shoulder;
Will I grasp some cosmic order, or will I have no idea what’s hit me
like a boulder? Will people laugh a bit as they remember me?
This train hurtles fast, through so much scenery.
