Struggling to settle, a skateboarding sister and First Communions.
Why are you here? The question I am asked so frequently is posed not with hostility but with curiosity, astonishment, even. No one but no one, I have learned, moves to Norfolk on a romantic whim about wildness and freedom, a reaction to being locked down in London. They follow a husband – or wife – or come home to take over the estate or farm. As our second anniversary of leaving London loomed in the dog days of August, I stumbled onto social media to try to articulate how I have struggled to settle here. (Caveat: husband and children are thriving – hashtag “living their best lives” etc etc.)
“It is hard,” a kind Pony Club mother commented. “There are those of us who have lived in the same villages for generations and have connections with other families both locally and distantly, so it can all be very intertwined and insular.” Some have been wonderfully welcoming; others, less so. “Afraid we’re busy most of this term,” replied one woman, when I tried to arrange a playdate for our sons. “Afraid I don’t have my diary with me,” she said when I tried again. I got the message. I’ve never experienced this sort of behaviour before and it’s hard not to ruminate. What’s wrong with us? Is it because we’re “blow-ins” from London? Or because my husband doesn’t shoot? If you don’t shoot, do you even exist in Norfolk?
For some, it’s perfectly obvious why we landed in Norfolk. Before we withdrew our sons from their Catholic primary school in Brixton, I emailed a priest here about First Holy Communion classes. “Ours is a small rural parish with a far-flung and elderly congregation,” came the rather sad reply, which directed me to the sisters of the Community of Our Lady of Walsingham, who have taken care of “the few children we have so far as preparation for the sacraments is concerned”. Back came the joyful reply from Sister Camilla Oberding – whom I had met during a previous life when working on a report for the Today programme on BBC Radio 4: “Our Lady is calling you to Walsingham.”
When our daughter, Romola, lay languishing under a tangle of wires and tubes in the neo-natal intensive care unit of King’s College Hospital, my much-missed friend Robin Angus arranged for a lamp to be lit for her at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Thanks to the pandemic, this remarkable man – a staunch Episcopalian who enjoyed the singular honour of being made a papal knight of the Order of Saint Sylvester – never got to see the little girl he called “My Romy”. Romy has long shrugged off the doctors’ dire prognoses and now runs wild here, gorging on blackberries and scrambling on and off her miniature Shetland pony. She is about to turn four and most days on waking asks me, “So who is coming to ME party?” How curious that I can now wander into the shrine to pray whenever I like. Or perhaps it isn’t remotely curious at all…
Our two-year anniversary was marked by a sad event: Welly, our elderly basset hound, was put to sleep in the orchard, his white teddy bear’s head upon my lap. The move to the country gave him a new lease of life for which I’ll always be grateful. He was a dog of remarkable character who’d sing lustily to Radio 3 – though his tastes were more Classic FM; the duet from The Pearl Fishers was guaranteed to rouse a splendid bass-baritone accompaniment. When I left BBC News to work for Horse & Hound magazine (an unusual, though not unprecedented career handbrake turn), Welly proved an entrée into hunting circles. Hunting people are, by and large, a friendly, welcoming bunch – but if you aren’t born to it, to outsiders it can seem like the most exclusive private members’ club in the world. Second only, I think, to Norfolk.
Don’t tell the vicar, but this Indian summer means we are – shamefully – sacking off the Norfolk Churches Trust 40th annual sponsored bike ride in favour of a trip to Holkham. The opportunity to scramble over the sand dunes for a mid-September swim is just too glorious to pass up. Our village church will do far better out of it, as the hefty guilt donation I’ll be making will far exceed what I was planning to wring out of the godparents…
Reconnecting with Sister Camilla and her life-enhancing band of Carmelite nuns has been one of the unexpected blessings of moving here. And something rather wonderful has been happening since our elder son began his solo First Holy Communion classes with their resident novice. Sister Catherine Williams has an extraordinary gift of communicating the joy of her faith to her young charges. (If there’s a better form of evangelism than skateboarding along the Friday Market in Walsingham in one’s habit, then I’d like to see it.) Slowly, children from neighbouring parishes began coming for- ward. And on Corpus Christi last year, six children received the sacrament at St Anthony of Padua in Fakenham. The last time a First Holy Communion Mass was celebrated there was in 2015. And this year, my younger son was one of nine children making their First Holy Communion in that same church.
As Sister Camilla has so often counselled me, whilst I’ve been weeping on her shoulder about whether we made the right move: “Our Lady has a way of working things out.”
Flora Watkins used to work at the BBC and now lives in Norfolk with her family, a brace of basset hounds and six chickens named after the Mitford sisters. To donate to the Norfolk Churches Trust bike ride, visit justgiving.com/campaign/nctbikeride
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