Season in Strathglass Read Online Free Page A
Author: John; Fowler
weight.â
In such ecstatic freefall, feet can be fun. âI always think humour comes out in the feet. You can imagine little dialogues going on between them.â
Class takes place in a small bare hall adjoining the church where work progresses at tables strewn with papers and pencils, tracings and sketches. Sister moves round each student, nodding approval or giving advice:
Never start without thinking of the form . . . Work out from the energy lines . . . Get the proportions right and you find where the energies are, then you can fire away . . . Iconography is like Gregorian chant â there are things you don't grasp until you've practised it again and again.
Four students, all male, three of them priests and none of them young, are seated at the tables. Brian, an Anglican priest in his 60s from Loughborough, attends every year. He says he can't draw and traces every line, which Sister rather disapproves of. David is clearly more accomplished â he's meticulously outlining a Christ figure on squared paper. He says he has drawn and painted for more than 40 years, is a deacon in the Birmingham diocese and would have trained for the priesthood if he hadn't been married. Doctoring was his profession until he retired after a heart attack. Aonghas, small and dark, is a priest in Dublin. Michael, too, is a priest, formerly in the Glasgow housing estate of Drumchapel but now living and working in the north of Scotland. He wears a small silver cross on his jumper.
At midday pencils are laid aside and we cross to the church and climb to the gallery, ducking heads on the twisting stair, where the five of us make a crowd. In the gallery, candles illuminate several small icons each the size of a postcard.
Sister gives a short reading, touches a finger on the keyboard in front of her to find a note and waveringly chants the first phrase, followed by Michael's ringing baritone and rather feebly by the others. The text seems to be a dialogue with God, a series of alternating couplets seeking protection from, and vengeance on, the enemy. Ding them doon! We shuffle to our feet and sit again at intervals between psalms, with periods of silence for contemplation and prayer.
A short break outdoors in the sunshine follows, terminated by Sister vigorously ringing a large handbell as a summons to lunch.
Lunch at Marydale is a silent feast. We do not talk. Under a big cross on the dining-room wall, the table is set with thick crockery plates and bowls decorated with a gilt cross, upturned glasses and cutlery laid on napkins. There's a jug of water and cartons of apple and orange juice. After a short reading and a prayer, Sister leads us in line into the kitchen, where she ladles herself lentil soup from the pot, thick and brown, and we follow. We cut hunks of brown bread from a loaf on the sideboard, take a lump of cheese, a spoonful of pâté and an apple, banana or peach from the fruit bowl.
Once all are seated, Sister switches on an old tape machine on the windowsill and out booms an ecclesiastical voice reverberating in some church or perhaps cathedral, delivering a homily on the meaning (or, rather, the five meanings) of Lent â a journey, an offering, a fasting, a forgiving . . . and the fifth? I forget the fifth. But I recall the joke â you can eat steak every day including Friday, says the bishop on tape, and still be more forgiving than if you fast on lentils. A recorded titter ripples round the congregation and we chuckle too as we spoon our lentil soup.
From my seat at the end of the table, I look out through the window at a tree-covered hillside, a sky puffy with white clouds and, closer at hand, a woman cultivating the monastic garden, an appropriately life-enhancing (and biblical) activity.
11
Class is coming to its end. David has finished his icon, a grave greybeard St Nicholas with a pattern of crosses on his dress. Michael adds the last touches to the picture on his easel. Brian pores over a
In such ecstatic freefall, feet can be fun. âI always think humour comes out in the feet. You can imagine little dialogues going on between them.â
Class takes place in a small bare hall adjoining the church where work progresses at tables strewn with papers and pencils, tracings and sketches. Sister moves round each student, nodding approval or giving advice:
Never start without thinking of the form . . . Work out from the energy lines . . . Get the proportions right and you find where the energies are, then you can fire away . . . Iconography is like Gregorian chant â there are things you don't grasp until you've practised it again and again.
Four students, all male, three of them priests and none of them young, are seated at the tables. Brian, an Anglican priest in his 60s from Loughborough, attends every year. He says he can't draw and traces every line, which Sister rather disapproves of. David is clearly more accomplished â he's meticulously outlining a Christ figure on squared paper. He says he has drawn and painted for more than 40 years, is a deacon in the Birmingham diocese and would have trained for the priesthood if he hadn't been married. Doctoring was his profession until he retired after a heart attack. Aonghas, small and dark, is a priest in Dublin. Michael, too, is a priest, formerly in the Glasgow housing estate of Drumchapel but now living and working in the north of Scotland. He wears a small silver cross on his jumper.
At midday pencils are laid aside and we cross to the church and climb to the gallery, ducking heads on the twisting stair, where the five of us make a crowd. In the gallery, candles illuminate several small icons each the size of a postcard.
Sister gives a short reading, touches a finger on the keyboard in front of her to find a note and waveringly chants the first phrase, followed by Michael's ringing baritone and rather feebly by the others. The text seems to be a dialogue with God, a series of alternating couplets seeking protection from, and vengeance on, the enemy. Ding them doon! We shuffle to our feet and sit again at intervals between psalms, with periods of silence for contemplation and prayer.
A short break outdoors in the sunshine follows, terminated by Sister vigorously ringing a large handbell as a summons to lunch.
Lunch at Marydale is a silent feast. We do not talk. Under a big cross on the dining-room wall, the table is set with thick crockery plates and bowls decorated with a gilt cross, upturned glasses and cutlery laid on napkins. There's a jug of water and cartons of apple and orange juice. After a short reading and a prayer, Sister leads us in line into the kitchen, where she ladles herself lentil soup from the pot, thick and brown, and we follow. We cut hunks of brown bread from a loaf on the sideboard, take a lump of cheese, a spoonful of pâté and an apple, banana or peach from the fruit bowl.
Once all are seated, Sister switches on an old tape machine on the windowsill and out booms an ecclesiastical voice reverberating in some church or perhaps cathedral, delivering a homily on the meaning (or, rather, the five meanings) of Lent â a journey, an offering, a fasting, a forgiving . . . and the fifth? I forget the fifth. But I recall the joke â you can eat steak every day including Friday, says the bishop on tape, and still be more forgiving than if you fast on lentils. A recorded titter ripples round the congregation and we chuckle too as we spoon our lentil soup.
From my seat at the end of the table, I look out through the window at a tree-covered hillside, a sky puffy with white clouds and, closer at hand, a woman cultivating the monastic garden, an appropriately life-enhancing (and biblical) activity.
11
Class is coming to its end. David has finished his icon, a grave greybeard St Nicholas with a pattern of crosses on his dress. Michael adds the last touches to the picture on his easel. Brian pores over a
Readers choose
Fay Weldon
Willie Nelson
Paul Adan
Ben Elton
Amor Towles
R. L. Griffin
Cheyenne McCray
Kristin Frasier, Bella Bentley
Annie Evans
Camilla Stevens