February 2021

8 Buckden Roundabout February 2021 St Hugh ’ s and Methodist Church Catholic Church of St Hugh of Lincoln, High Street, Buckden Telephone: 01480 810344 Website: http://stjosephsthugh.org/ Please visit the website to get the latest information on church opening times and times of services. In the pastoral care of the Claretian Missionaries: Fr Krzysztof Stawicki CMF Fr Philip Blandford CMF Fr Jim Kennedy CMF Fr Paul Peter Alphonse CMF Weekdays Masses at St Hugh's Tuesday to Friday at 9:15 am Sunday Masses at St Hugh's: Saturday (vigil) at 6:30 pm and Sunday at 9:45 am. Confession available each Saturday 9:45 am - 10:15 am Would any newcomers to the village who are Catholics please let Fr Kryzstzof know their contact details . Buckden Methodist Church Minister: Rev. Sue Baker - Maher (01480 473444) Stewards: Angie Barnes (810102) Bob Baxter (810092) Carol Swepstone (810053) Sadly, due to the current lock - down, there will be no ‘ in presence ’ services at the Methodist Chapel until further notice. For information about our on - line and telephone re- sources please ring the stewards or visit the circuit web - site at www.snahmc.org.uk. Revd. Sue and the Methodist folk continue to hold the village in our prayers. Love ’ s Cold Returning: John Clare ’ s 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire By Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh (ISBN 978 - 0 - 9926073 - 1 - 9) On 20 July 1841, John Clare (1793 - 1864) – ecologist and outsid- er poet - fled a lunatic asylum in Epping Forest and embarked on a four - day journey across five counties to find his adored wife and muse, Mary Joyce. But Mary had died three years earlier, a spinster. Without money or provisions, and lamed by a broken shoe, Clare endured extreme hardship to be reunited with Mary. Clare was toiling home to a truth he would struggle to acknowledge – that his memory of their marriage was a de- lusion. Using Clare ’ s brief account of his 85 - mile trek, ‘ The Journey out of Essex ’, as a guide, authors Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh, admirers of the poet since their schooldays, shed new light on his journey and the world in which it took place. As they were unable to tread the vanished 19th - century roads, they were prompted to devise an alternative strategy of vis- iting the villages and towns along the route Clare followed, and then use historical records to join them up. That way they built up a picture of the world through which he walked, and recap- tured some of the essence of his adventure, and of the man himself, for the 21st century reader. Researching and writing Love ’ s Cold Returning was itself a five - year odyssey for Bridget and Ellis, and is partly an account of the adventures and mishaps that also befell them along the way. They also reveal previously unknown aspects of Clare ’ s suggestively loving relationship with his closest female friend Eliza Emmerson, who helped to bring his work to the attention of London Society. “ Love ’ s Cold Returning works on two levels: Bridget Somekh ’ s poems shadow Clare in his lonely obsession while she and Ellis Hall retrace his ‘ Journey out of Essex ’ in such detail that it be- comes a social history of England. It moves from canals and aqueducts to gridlocked road, from common land and open heath to land banks and intensive agriculture. Along the way we encounter many forgotten trades, from the lightermen on the canals to the women in the crape factory. Clare comes to seem more and more representative, not so much a hopeless romantic as ‘ the muse of the broken land ’.” Roger Garfitt The Journey Day 1 Epping Forest, the River Lea, Bell Bar to Stevenage (Essex, Middlesex, Herts) Day 2 Graveley, Baldock, Potton, Wyboston (Herts, Beds) Day 3 Eaton Socon, Crosshall (Cambs) Days 3 - 4 Buckden, Yaxley (Cambs) Day 4 Peterborough, Northborough (Northants)