by Paul Kerensa
It’s appropriate then that we decided to attend this service, since we are by some way the youngest here, apart from two ten-year-olds. We, and I’m sure the ten-year-olds, are hoping the stone-bumping is in the past. There’s every chance that some of the eighty-year-olds remember what it was like.
We’re on board with it, despite my uncertainties that this may yet end up somewhere between Children of the Corn and The Wicker Man. Zoë has thankfully seen neither film, otherwise she’d be clambering back over that handbrake before you could say ‘Wellies in Devon’. Instead we arrive at our first field.
The vicar slowly opens the gate, shouting, ‘We’re coming in!’ as if he’s a hostage negotiator. We all know he’s just fearful of a farmer with a big shotgun. Nothing puts a dampener on a Rogation Sunday more than a shot vicar.
The farmer appears from across the field and joins us for this stint. He doesn’t strike me as a churchgoing man - his arms are firmly folded and he looks a little baffled by thirty Christians occupying his land when they should be in church. But he’s also one to hedge his bets, while we bet on his hedges. If we can encourage God’s blessing on his crops, he’ll take it.
Prayers are said for his crops, and those of other farmers in the parish. He’s grateful we’ve stopped by, although is perhaps a little unsettled when one parishioner starts strumming a guitar, and we all stay for a hymn.We’re all given a hymn sheet.[42] This service is truly retro, showing life pre- projectors, pre-maps, and for some chilly congregants, pre-coats.
The worship leader starts up with ‘All Creatures of our God and King’, which makes me scour the landscape for signs of animals. If he’s an arable farmer, he’ll be a bit less bothered about the ‘creatures’ of the title than if it’s a pastoral farm. In fact if he just grows crops, the ‘creatures’ we’re singing about will probably do more damage than good. I spy a sheep, and carry on singing.
***
In the chalet kitchenette, I was finishing my morning’s magic practice; I was pretty smooth with it, I thought as I picked up the rogue cards that had rudely fallen to the floor mid-flourish. Later that day, I’d be performing this trick for real for the first - and probably last - time.
‘What are you doing with the cards?’ Zoë said, somehow before she was even in the room.
‘Just practising a trick,’ I replied nervously. ‘I’ll show it to you ... in a bit.’
‘Yeah, you want to get it right. I remember when you tried to produce that coin from my ear. Could have done with more practice there.’
‘Sorry again about that earring. Does it still hurt?’
‘It’s healing.’
I bottled my nerves about the later event, and tried to focus on enjoying our break. It was like the background image of my brain had a nice holiday vista, but the foreground had the word ‘Panic!’ flashing in big letters. I tried to distract myself with our spoils from Tourist Information.
‘Sooooo, a Saturday in Devon. What do you fancy?’ I asked, flicking through the leaflets. ‘We’ve got National Trust, English Heritage and a What’s On In Suffolk pamphlet that must have been put in the wrong stand.’
‘Let’s find somewhere picturesque,’ she suggested. ‘What about Dartmoor?’
It’s a barren landscape with a prison in the middle, but it sounded good to me. Besides it was nearer than Suffolk. I grabbed my deck of cards and other essentials for later, and we headed north. North Devon, but that’s still north.
As we drove, anxiety stole my speech. I was just beginning to worry that if I didn’t speak soon, then Zoë would start talking about something serious, when she broke the silence:
‘I wonder, can I just ask, have you thought about, you know, where we’re going?’
Oh no. I’d missed the small talk window.We could have been having a meaningless conversation about which Devon village name sounds most like a Victorian sleuth,[43] or a completely different conversation about which Devon village name sounds most like a clothing shop for monarchs.[44] Instead we’d ended up talking about Big Stuff. Inevitably on or after trips away with other halves, relationships shift and this topic comes up, but not here, not now.
‘Because we could always pull over and get the map out of the boot,’ Zoë continued.
Such relief. She was only doubting my geographical skills. Partly to reassert my directional ability, and partly to ensure the conversation stayed meaningless, I told her we didn’t need the map and suggested we spot place names that sound like Victorian sleuths.
We passed a sign to Chudleigh Knighton, and chuckled.
***
I feel like a Christian Hare Krishna. We’re getting looks as we stride down the main street of Stoke Fleming, singing ‘We Are Marching’ and looking in the hedgerow for the elusive gap to a farmer’s footpath. A caravanning couple chortle as they see us. Some early Sunday lunchers look up from their pints at a pub picnic table. I want to explain that we’re beating the bounds, and that if it weren’t for us doing this, they wouldn’t know where they could be buried.
The Rogation service has lost its practical necessity today of course - we’ve got maps, whether in the boot or elsewhere. Walking around, we haven’t even got a birch bough to do any beating, and so far none of the younger generation have been bounced on a boundary stone by any of the older folks. In fact I’d wager that our bottoms are less sore than at most pew-based Sunday services.
We come to rest in a woodland, and Psalm 104 is read - a favourite at such services, our welcomer tells us.
‘Only one more stop,’ says Shirley as the reading finishes.‘Bet you’re wishing you brought wellies.’ Her eyes are drawn down to my muddy trainers, and Zoë’s smug, snug boots.
I frown and Shirley continues, ‘These walks used to take days when they did the whole border. Mostly because they had to find all the boundary stones and people kept moving them.You know, landowners trying to cheat it.’
Shirley points to a tall moustachioed man with an air of Downton Abbey to him. ‘We’re off to his garden next.Well it’s more of an estate.’ I make a mental note to not be left with him and one space in a lifeboat. We’ve all seen Titanic.
Apparently they used to beat the bounds through properties without permission if need be. If your house had the misfortune to straddle the parish line, you’d need to expect the vicar and his twig- bearing parishioners at any time, not to mention local urchins holding a few pence and their behinds.
The thirty of us have now become twenty or so - a few infirm folks have dropped out and a couple of others have gone back to open the church and brew the tea.The rest of us walk to our last stop, and Shirley uses the chance to ask about us.
‘So you’re down for a holiday?’
‘Yes,’ Zoë replies. ‘It’s been, er ... eventful.’
‘Oh?’ Shirley enquires. She’s evidently the parish gossip. So we tell her about Dartmoor.
***
Brown signs were everywhere, offering pubs, museums and stone circles. None were hitting the mark for us, although Castle Drogo sounded nicely archaic. It was clearly full of cauldrons and goblins, not to mention evil Count Drogo who spent his days on the turret walls maniacally laughing.
It was a bit far though, so we opted for ‘Canonteign Falls: England’s highest waterfall’. Zoë liked a waterfall and I liked anything record- breaking, so in we popped.The views at the top were apparently breathtaking, although that could be a result of the steep climb.
We parked, and I strode up at a surprisingly quick pace, given my general suspicion of exercise.
‘Is there a rush?’ Zoë panted.‘I’ve never seen you walk so fast.We’re here all day. Unless you wanted to try and also make ... Castle Drogo!’ She gave a maniacal laugh. Scared, I strode on twice as fast.
‘It’s your wellies - they’re slowing you down!’ I shouted back to her, as I march
ed straight into a puddle.
We reached the top, to find a stunning view of edge-of-Dartmoor farmland, and a collection of annoying tourists.
After a minute, Zoë headed for the clamber down. ‘Well, that was nice.’
‘Hold on,’ I said.‘The others are going in a second. Imagine the view without them in front of it.’
They continued to take each other’s photos standing in front of every inch of the landscape while playing the hilarious game of ‘back a bit, back a bit more’.
‘No they’re not,’ Zoë said.
‘Well, they will in a minute.’
Ten minutes later they left, and the view was finally ours. It was nice.
‘Do you want to see that magic trick?’ I asked from nowhere. I equally tried producing the pack of cards from nowhere, but nearly lost them down the waterfall.
‘What? Here? Why on earth have you brought those with you?’
‘Yeah, well we’ve seen the view now. So do you want to see my card trick?’
I’m guessing it was the first and only magic trick to be attempted atop England’s highest waterfall, at least until David Blaine scrapes the barrel of ideas with his TV spectacular ‘CanonBlaine Falls’, which coincidentally would feature him literally scraping a barrel.
‘Well... all right then,’ she sighed. ‘Since you’ve brought the cards all the way to the top of a waterfall. Ever the performer, even on holiday ...’.
She was a bit confused, which was the general idea. I asked her to pick a card, any card, then pick another card, any other card.
‘Right, now you’ve got two cards memorised, and I haven’t seen either, yes?’
‘Yes, apparently.’
‘Okay, now for each card, just think of it as a number and a suit, so Three of Clubs is “Three Clubs”, okay? And Ace is One, Jack is Eleven, Queen’s Twelve, King’s Thirteen.’
‘O ... kay,’ she said hesitantly.
‘Right. Close your eyes.’
‘Don’t push me off.’
I promised not to, and she closed her eyes. I knelt, and took out the other item in my pocket.
‘Now tell me what cards you’ve got.’
‘Out loud?’
‘Yes, out loud.’
‘Umm ...’
Please say you’ve remembered them.
‘Two of Hearts, Ace of ...’
‘As a number, and without the ‘of ’.’ My knee was on stone, and my balance was going.
‘Oh,Two Hearts and ... Ace is Eleven?’
‘One, Ace is One.’
‘Two Diamonds ...’
‘Hearts. You said it was Hearts.’
‘It was a while ago, I’ve forgotten. No wait, it’s ... Two Hearts, One
Diamond.’
‘Open your eyes.’
She opened her eyes, looked ahead for a split-second and didn’t see me, then to the ground, where I was nearly toppling over the edge of the waterfall, with a diamond ring in its open case.
I used her full name - something only ever done when telling someone off or proposing - and asked her to marry me.
***
‘What did she say?!’ Shirley exclaims.
I’m surprised she has to ask, since Zoë’s right here. Either it was a yes or a very gentle turn-down.
It’s clear we have Shirley’s full attention - she’s ignored several house extensions that others are peering at. Some have sidled over to us though to listen. One woman speaks up.
‘Well?’
***
After a good minute of delight, cheer and general amazement at my card-forcing skills, we realised that Zoë hadn’t given me an answer.
‘Oh, and yes, by the way!’ she added with a grin.
I replaced the cards in my pocket - their purpose was done and wouldn’t be needed again, unless we were going to draw a high card to see who gets first choice of honeymoon.There were no gigs this holiday thankfully, which was a good job as I couldn’t handle any more nerves.
Another group of tourists timed it perfectly and arrived just as we left the crest of the waterfall. Any earlier and they’d have witnessed the lot. The last thing I wanted during the proposal was a holidaying family pointing and yelling, ‘That’s not a free choice! He’s moved the Ace from the front of the pack!’
And we climbed down Canonteign: the English couple who went up a hill, and came down engaged.
***
‘Oh, how lovely!’ Shirley shakes both our hands, and her and other listeners smile at us throughout the short sermon that follows in the garden.
One of the eavesdroppers, a gaunt elderly lady with a glint in her eye, sidles up to me and mimes a fanned pack of cards.‘Lucky she didn’t pick the Joker,’ she says with a nudge.
In many ways she did.
After a short walk back into church, we take our original seats and the vicar makes his way to the front.
‘A lovely walk. A lovely Rogation. And a lovely hymn now to close. Before we sing though, I’ve just been told by Shirley that she’s been talking to our young friends who’ve joined us, Paul and Zoë ...’
I gulp.We’re about to be told off for chatting en route.
‘... who both got engaged yesterday. Isn’t that nice?!’
Phew.
The congregation give a little applause, and the vicar leads a kind prayer for us. We’re very humbled by their warm welcome and good wishes.
The closing song finishes and we stay for coffee. Many of the congregants come to wish us well, and one of them, a kind-faced octoge- narian, gives us a little tour of the church’s architectural features. He shows us with pride the eighteenth-century font, the stained glass windows and the solid wood pulpit, designed and created by a local schoolgirl a century ago. She was fourteen when she carved it. Perhaps it even excused her from being bumped on the stones that May.
For my fiancée and I, the whole experience has been the perfect start to our journey towards marriage.The worshippers came to ask a divine blessing on the crops: that they grow, that the seasons are kind to them, that they will weather storms and sustain life. And we’ve done likewise.
38 I should probably have been packing or buying wellies, but I could always get them in Devon.
39 Upper case means a panel of bureaucrats think so; lower case means I think so.
40 The Brill Plaice. What a name.
41 Forget the pain, not the new boundary knowledge.
42 Remember hymn sheets? They were before we had projected words on screens.
43 Surely Berry Pomeroy or Aveton Gifford.
44 It’s Kingswear.
8
Doubled Up
Believing with Baptists
‘This is a big roundabout,’ said Rob, designated driver for our trip from London to the North West.
‘What, you mean Birmingham?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Is that why you’ve been indicating for three miles?’
‘Oh.’
Rob stopped signalling, a good ten miles before turning off for the M6.
I’d cut short the day’s wedding planning - now on month three and still umming and ahhing about menu options - for the long trip to a Baptist church in the North West. Rob and I were to put on a couple of hours of comedy at an event we were told was aiming for 5% church folks/95% local community. We were pretty convinced it would be almost the exact opposite.
Rob offered me a Starburst on the condition that I called it an Opal Fruit, and asked: ‘Are you doing your Adam and Eve jokes? Cos if you are, I won’t do mine.’
He was not a churchgoer, but had written a few Bible jokes in readiness for the gig, ever since I booked him for it a
few months back.
‘It’s fine,’ I said, chewing a Starburst. ‘If you do them, I’ll drop mine. Or I’ll just do them anyway and say it’s a callback.’
The over-repetition of jokes was on my mind. What happens if you hear a joke too many times? And more importantly, what happens if you hear a joke too many times?
As well as being a stand-up comic I’m also a sit-down writer, mainly suggesting additional material on various sitcom scripts. As a stand-up, you can repeat gags each night to different audiences, for a while, till the idea of repeating the same old rubbish fills you with dread and you’re forced to write something new. As a script writer, every line must be fresh.TV consumes gags faster than Rob consumes Starbursts.[45]
‘So you busy as a writer then?’ Rob asked, as we faced off against three lanes of brake lights.
I had been, and a little too busy if honest.A few months back I’d been working across two shows at once, punching up Show A at home or on the commute to Show B, which had a writer’s room. Half a dozen of us would sit around a desk of coffee and doughnuts from nine till five.Then I’d be back on the train working on Show A again. I’d work on one show alone, and the other with others - a perfect mix.
You can ‘double up’ as a stand-up quite easily - opening at one venue and closing at another. However there can be stand-up double-up hiccups. You can tell a joke at Venue B that you thought you’d only done at Venue A, but you might have also done at Venue B just five minutes earlier. Although rarer, something similar can happen as a writer.
Weeks after working on Shows A and B, a draft of an episode of Show A arrived for me to punch up. My eyes were drawn to a gag that I recognised, not from this show but from the other. A knot formed in my stomach. It was here in this show, yet I was convinced that I’d submitted it for the other. Either my mind was playing tricks on me, or I was in trouble.
I chased back through my emails in a panic, muttering ‘No, no, no, no ...’, and sure enough there it was. Alt-tabbing on the computer, I could see the same line, written by me, in scripts for two completely different sitcoms: Show A, a post-watershed flatshare sitcom, and Show B, a pre- watershed family sitcom.