Applying For Membership

 This is how it works,

You decide you want to be a full member of the Society of Friends.

So you write a letter to the Clerk of your Meeting.

And the Clerk forwards it to the local Area Meeting.

And the Area appoints two people to come and pay you a "Visit".

I know, I know, it sounds scary. Shades of the Spanish Inquisition or the Men in Black. My Visitation was yesterday.

One of my visitors was someone I know quite well- and like, the other was lovely too (Quakers are lovely- most of them) but still it was intense. I'm a secretive sort of a person, not comfortable blowing my own trumpet- but that's what I had to do. I suppose it was very like a job interview- only I haven't done of those for decades....

Next thing is the visitors write a report, I get to see it and make additions and alterations if I feel the need, and then it goes to Area. And they either nod the application through, or....

Actually I think you'd have to be a Nazi or an Incel or something along those lines not to get approved.....

Epitaphia

 A few posts back I quoted- in full- a verse epitaph from a gravestone at Worth in West Sussex.

Did I note it down at the time?

No.

Did I take a photograph?

No.

I had faith in our wonderful Internet and told myself I'd Google it when I got home....

And the Internet didn't let me down. I found the text in an old book that has been made available to read in an online archive.

The book is Epitaphia by Ernest R Suffling, published in 1909.

It's a fabulous book. It contains 1,300 epitaphs, collected from all over the place. I suspect it remains the fullest and most authoritative book on the subject ever published.

And who was Ernest R Suffling?

Well, I'd never heard of him so I looked him up on our wonderful Internet.

He was a glass painter; his trade took him all round Britain- particularly, of course, to churches- and on his travels he collected epitaphs. Epitaphia contains the fruits of his digging around (and sometimes you literally have to dig to uncover an epitaph in an overgrown churchyard- I know because I've done it myself) with others collected from other people's books.

He wrote other things. His guide to the Norfolk Broads is still in print. There are also a couple of collections of supernatural tales; I may well have to hunt those down.

Anyway, I had to have a personal copy of Epitaphia so I asked our wonderful Internet and it found me one- not a handsome first edition for rather a lot of money (though I could have had one of those if I'd been feeling flush) but a battered ex-library copy- still a first edition but rebound (rather handsomely)- for just under £12. I love it all the more for its scars. It has character.

And here it is....





Fancy it coming from Ashton! I know Ashton well. In fact I used to live in Reddish- which is on the outskirts. They have a great open air market in Ashton. Also a covered one....