Collateral Damage

The thing with leaving the church open most of the day is that you never know quite what you will find when you come to say Evensong and lock up. Usually it's nothing more problematic than the youngsters who hang around the building after school chucking-out time having left behind a can of revolting sugary drink or a pungent polystyrene carton from the kebab shop on the corner.

On Sunday, however, I noticed that the horrid little golden curtain that covers up the Aumbry where the reserved sacrament is stored was askew; it often is, so thinking no more of it I went to straighten it out. It was then I found that the entire wooden frame which supports the curtain and surrounds the door of the Aumbry itself had been wrenched off the wall, and then, curiously, put back again in place to make it look as though nothing had happened. It's not serious damage, as the Aumbry itself was unopened and all it required was an awful lot of polyfiller to repair. I'm not sure how old the frame is: the church first received permission to reserve the sacrament in 1924, but it's not clear that the decorative surround goes back to that time. There was a base of newspaper which you can just see in this photo, wedged along the bottom of the frame to level it out, but I didn't uncrinkle it to find a date.

I suppose that this exploit was also the responsibility of some of our more enterprising young visitors who thought that there would be something valuable stored in this cupboard and then surprised themselves by pulling the frame off the wall. Sally the churchwarden who I showed the damage to on Monday found it 'rather sweet' that it had been put back. I read it as trying to convince yourself psychologically that you haven't really done anything. It reminds me of the time I went to do a check over the Mound in the grounds of the Museum back in Wycombe, and finding a group of lads who'd very, very obviously just pulled up a sapling newly-planted by the Council in an attempt to stop this ancient monument eroding. One sheepish youngster tried to push the broken tree-let back into the ground. 'It'll grow back, won't it?' he said, so ludicrously it was pathetic.