St Andrew, Jevington

Jevington is where my mother used to stable her racehorses. We passed through on the way back from Beachy Head.

St Andrew's church has a Saxon tower.  Halfway up you can see where they reused Roman tiles to frame a window that is no longer there.



The woman with her back to the camera was cycling through the Downs with her dog running along beside her. The dog was carrying a large stone in its mouth and wouldn't be parted from it.

Inside there's this. It may be Saxon, it may be a bit later. No-one really knows. It represents the Risen Christ triumphing over evil beasties. A Victorian rector found it buried under the floor- where- presumably it had been placed to protect it from iconoclasts.



And then there's this. The 1750s monument to Charles and Leonora Rochester. I've never seen anything quite like it. She predeceased him and is shown peering in faint, ghostly fashion from behind his more corporeal shoulder. It's an odd, proto-romantic conceit- and not something you'd expect anyone to have come up with in the mid 18th century.



The parishioners are serving free tea and cakes in the church on selected dates through the summer- and I said I'd publicise this for them. The remaining dates are...

Saturday, August 6
Saturday, August 27
Saturday, September 17

Karmic

I dreamed my mother was out in the garden wielding secateurs or whatever and I went out to join her and she gave me the most awful, contemptuous look as if to say "Where have you been skulking while I've been working hard?" And I got furious and said, "I've been cooking your dinner...."

And when I woke up I related this to the times in my boyhood when she'd put a guilt trip on me for sitting up in my room with a book when I might have been out helping my father in the garden. It was something that turned me off gardening for life- and I still fume about it.

Well, perhaps not any more. I think I see now what she was was doing. She had these two sulky, antisocial lumps of masculinity on her hands- her husband and her son- and she was trying to get them to spend time with one another. Her method lacked finesse- because she's not that well socialised herself- but she meant well.

I've been thinking about karma- trying to understand it and- as happens- my unconscious presented my dreaming self with an example from my own life- with a strong hint that it was time to be rid of it. Quite right too. Nothing glamorous or amusing or grown up about holding onto karma. Let go, let go, let go.