The Song of the Iron

Back in the Good Old Days nuns used to do the church linens. At Swanvale Halt we had the next best thing to a nun, a former one whose entire life was devoted to the Church, or to cake making. She was our Sacristan and the church linen chest was a constituent kingdom of her empire; and those who attempted to assist her in the great work never quite came up to scratch. Preparing an eight-foot altarcloth, as she told me, was no joke: it had to be boil-washed, starched, spun (which was easier than wringing it by hand), ironed when wet, ironed again on the other side, left to dry, ironed again, and finally painstakingly rolled onto a cardboard tube to prevent creases. Only then was it good enough to grace the Lord’s Board.

Well, our ex-Sister died last year and for a year before that doing anything with the linens was beyond her. Because I’ve been doing the cloths myself I was very relieved when one of the churchwardens, who runs a guest house, said she could put them through her lovely big industrial linen-press and save me the bother. The results are OK, but I know in my heart of hearts that they’re not quite there. I would look out across the altar on a Sunday morning and see a field of tiny creases heightened by the straking light. I will carry on doing them myself, until I find somebody else who sees the need and has the time.

You might complain, perhaps, that modern generations don’t care enough about what happens in church, about the signs and marks of their salvation. However, it might be just as true to reflect that it isn’t an entirely bad thing that people have something else in their lives. The early Anglo-Catholics had such great appeal at least partly because the colour and drama of Anglo-Catholic religion formed such a stark contrast with the drab dullness, and sometimes horror, of the lives most of their parishioners lived. If church is no longer completely the focus of ordinary people’s hopes, dreams and aspirations; if it is no longer provides the most sublime experience they can imagine; if their senses (and perhaps souls) can no longer thrill quite so much to creaseless linen and perfect folds in a corporal or a lavabo towel; that may not be a development without a positive aspect.