8 AUGUST, 2021

Dear Harry,

Before we leave Aspley Guise, let’s take a moment to revisit The Bell. This was the pub at one corner of the (actually triangular) village “square”, with the Post Office on one side of the triangle, Aspley House on opposite side, and the butcher’s, the grocer’s and the greengrocer’s on the third. Somewhere too—I think sandwiched in between the butcher’s and the grocer’s—was a tiny newsagent where you bought the shredded Golden Virginia tobacco for your home-rolled cigarettes and, once in a while, on a splurge, a pack of Players or Senior Service. Oh, and in the middle of the square, let’s not forget, was the bus shelter and the horse trough.

But The Bell. You often used to stop there for a drink or two, mostly before lunch. In a way, I think you did your business there, or some of it, because as in every English village worth its name the pub was the center of all social life. All the local news was readily available here, so any news you wanted to put out into the community could be spread rapidly from this point out. It was here, too, that you could expect to meet many of your parishioners, particularly the male ones, and particularly those who might need a timely reminder that it was time to show their faces back in church on Sunday morning.

And the pub was an important place for you to maintain your credentials as a man of the people, one who could be trusted to understand their problems, a man with his feet on the ground with everyone else, a man you could share a beer with, or a game of darts. Not some hoity-toity snob who thought himself a cut above because he wore the cloth. Here everyone could call you Harry and know you’d have a laugh if they shared a joke at your expense.

So that was The Bell, in Aspley Guise. In Braughing there was The Brown Bear, where you were given the goose eggs that turned into Susan and Sarah. In Sharnbrook, The Swan with Two Nicks; in Aberporth, where you retired, The Ship. These were your haunts—mostly, as I say, in the middle of the day but sometimes also before supper in the evening. Your usual was Guinness.

I don’t think I ever saw you visibly intoxicated but you were actually, fess up, a bit of a boozer, no? Aside from your lunchtime Guinness, there would likely be another one before dinner, carefully poured to produce exactly the right layer of foam at the head. Then the ritual glass of sherry and, with dinner, a glass or two of “plonk”—your wine of choice, the cheapest you could find, though you did enjoy a glass of the finer stuff if someone else was treating. And even after all that alcohol consumption, you would usually find it necessary to complete the evening with a snifter of brandy or one of those tiny glasses of liqueur—Grand Marnier, Cointreau, Benedictine… Your absolute favorite was Chartreuse, with a preference for the more expensive, finer-tasting green over the yellow.

Anyway, yes, The Bell. Even when we were little children you would take us there when you finished your morning rounds, stopping by at the homes of those of your parishioners who required for any reason—sickness, social, or psychological distress—a visit from the clergy. Children were not allowed in pubs under any circumstance in those days, so you would leave us in the car by the back door and come out with a glass of lemonade and a package of Smith’s Potato Crisps for each of us. Inside the package with the crisps was a twist of azure blue paper containing just a pinch of salt, enough to season those delicious crisps to taste.

See? These are the things I recall most clearly, those shining moments that seem to me now as intimate as any that we shared. These little things are the ones that stick in the mind, and these are the memories that I treasure most.

Nostalgically, then, your son, Peter