Bored to Death

A reflection on sermons from Mike Handley

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Buckenham Rook Roost

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Beneath a winter sky the sun sinks slowly in the west . Wrapped against the cold -  and rapt by the beauty - I pondered on the generations before me who had stood and watched as day turned to night. Millions of sunsets and millions upon millions of the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve .  I found myself signing with the Psalmist: You appointed the moon to mark the seasons and the sun knows the time of its setting, You make darkness that it may be night in which the beasts of the forest creep forth (Psalm 104) Across the darkening marsh the whistles and murmuring of widgeon quietened, a thin mist rose and deer emerge from the woodland  to graze beneath a reddening sky.  All this was but the overture to the evening’s main event. I had come to see a wild life spectacular which is repeated every night during the winter period and the station platform was the grandstand from which to view it. From far and wide streamed “ in a countless host” each as black a clergyma...
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St.James, Bawsey

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Streams of cars speed down Kings Lynn’s Queen Elizabeth Way everyday. High above the traffic a ruined church has paid witness for a thousand years and more. For decades it has been drawing me like a magnet. So on a sunny Spring day I finally found my way up the hill. Church Farm, Bawsey is managed under a Higher Level Stewardship scheme and provides parking and permissive footpaths.  You can approach the farm from the Gayton Road turning left into Church Lane just beyond the crematorium. Maps showing the paths and parking are available online on the Natural England website ( cwr.naturalengland.org.uk ). They are also displayed at strategic places around the farm .  I had intended to walk from Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Roydon Common, via the Grimston Warren reserve but that was closed as the work there continues. They are converting it from commercial forestry back to its original lowland heath. I followed a path to the edge of the warren through recently restored pasture...
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Haddiscoe

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There was a settlement at Haddiscoe  long before fishermen began to dry their nets on the sandbanks at the mouth of the estuary -   sandbanks that were to become Great Yarmouth! Parking my car beneath the church, with its 11 th century Anglo-Norman round tower, I walked in the Beccles direction, on a footpath that crossed a bridge over the Landspring Beck . The first right turn took me, via quiet lanes, past Haddiscoe Hall and, at a junction a mile on, another right turn took me to the bottom of the valley.  A final right turn put me on an indistinct path along a ditch and field edge leading back to the St. Mary’s church.  The path was rich with flowers.   Butterflies flitted from flower to flower and dragonflies darted about my head as I made my way through waist high grass and masses of Lady’s Bedstraw! As I got near the church a Buzzard flew out of the trees and the path plunged into a wooded glade known Devil’s Hole.   This is where the ...
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