Tradition Resumed

In March 2020, I went doorknocking - visiting houses which had recently changed hands - for what would turn out to be the last time in seventeen months. Even when theoretically it became possible (and houses have been bought and sold throughout the pandemic) I decided new residents might not welcome an unknown person on their doorstep. Only today have I dared to resumed what is, I'm afraid, my chiefest expression of outreach in the community. I have no reason to believe that ten years of this, even done as diligently as I can, has resulted in a mass of conversions. What it does it to keep me in touch with what is happening in a way I would not be otherwise - inreach, you might call it. Once upon a time I would try and spot the estate agents' boards when they went up and came down, until Dr Abacus pointed out all the data about property sales were on Rightmove and that was where the Government itself gets its information!

I only had five properties to visit today. First, a house in a small close at the top of the hill (Hannah the churchwarden happens to live opposite); that was owned by a young family who'd come from London. Second, a modern terraced house in a yard just off the main street, and adjoining another congregation member's: nobody in. Third, a little Victorian cottage set back from one of the village streets in a row which I didn't know existed even after nearly twelve years here. That was being refurbished, but a neighbour helpfully told me the young woman who's bought it will be moving in from Brighton later in the year. Fourth, a 1930s bungalow: nobody in. Fifth, a new house right on the edge of the village (the last on its road, in fact), where I met a grandmother who moved initially into another house in the village to be closer to her grandchildren just as the lockdown started, but before that was living about five miles away.

She pointed out to me a group of people, children and grown-ups, in the paddock opposite, saying they were setting up a garden. And so it proved: they were part of the community action group which works on the private rental estate in that part of the parish (about 150 houses and flats), planting raised beds in old tyres, making bug hotels and bird feeders. Now there you are, you see, without my somewhat fond evangelistic efforts I would never have found out about that. And I wouldn't have made the transition, which I rather needed to do that morning, from feeling completely useless and superfluous to the life of the world in general to seeing myself as quite blessed.