Creeting St Peter - goodbye, Alice, and thanks for everything...

Small villages like Creeting St Peter tend to rely heavily on a small number of people who are willing to take on key, often unsung roles. That's especially true if the population is younger and thus busier with work, children and all of the other aspects of modern life that reduce the time available to do other things.

In our case, there are two organisations which tend to dominate civic life - the Parish Council and the Parochial Church Council. For the latter, there is the perpetual struggle to maintain the fabric of a historic building, i.e. the church itself. If your church serves a population of 275, many of whom are not particularly religious, that struggle becomes more acute.

Accordingly, the Parochial Church Council fundraises, and part of that fundraising is through village coffee mornings and pub nights, which are the backbone, indeed almost the totality, of the village's social activity. And residents turn up in sizeable numbers, buying cups of tea, homemade baked goods, catching up with each other and discussing the burning issues of the day.

Someone has to organise that though, chivvying people along, creating rotas, being "bossy". And, for some years now, that "someone" has been Alice. Alice describes herself as bossy but, in her role as Church Warden, she has worked incredibly hard to keep the show on the road. Unfortunately, that is about to come to an end, as she, her husband Mark and her family are moving away... a long way away.

And so we gathered in the churchyard yesterday evening to pay tribute to her. Jenny, the Treasurer of the Parochial Church Council, made a lovely speech to mark her contribution to the Church, the village and its residents, and our Vicar, Philip, offered a few remarks to remind us of her efforts.

It was a good crowd too, despite the rather dank, gloomy weather that had replaced the warm sunshine of previous days, which rather demonstrated how much we appreciate, and will miss, Alice.

As Chair of the Parish Council, I've been lucky enough to have a good relationship with Alice - indeed, I can't really see how I could have a bad one with her. She works hard, is incredibly effective and gives of herself freely. Every village should have an Alice, and I suspect that there are many that do.

Hillary Clinton wrote that "it takes a village". That's probably true, but villages need an Alice too, because without leadership, nothing that gets done is ever quite as effective as it might be.

So, thank you, Alice, and the best of luck in your new life. It won't be quite the same without you..

A village gathers in anticipation of pie

Last year, our Parochial Church Council varied their usual village pub night, introducing homemade pie. Real ale, rabbit and pigeon pie, what could be better?

And so it was with some pleasure that I spotted, on the carpet at the bottom of the stairs a few weeks ago, a slip of paper announcing that there would be another one. I admit to having anticipated the event for some time and, this time, Ros would be able to attend too.

We were so enthusiastic indeed that we invited Ros's sister to join us, and at 7.30 p.m. sharp last night, we set off down The Lane, with plates and cutlery (as requested) in expectation of some very fine homemade pie indeed.

Unfortunately, there was no rabbit and pigeon this time, but the substitute venison pie, with a rich gravy, lived up to my fondest hopes, and the shepherd's pie was almost as excellent. Beer, supplied by Bartrams Brewery in Rougham, accompanied the pies well, and a good evening was had by all.

I'm not a baker of pies, more a consumer of them, but it was an excellent evening, with five pies to choose from - fish, chicken and vegetable, vegetable, shepherd's and venison - and if you ever happen to be in the neighbourhood for a future event, I highly recommend it.

Editorial: thank heavens for the Parochial Church Council!

This is a cross-posting from the Creeting St Peter Journal...

What makes a village community is the people who work to make it a better place. Parish councillors, community activists, church volunteers, all of them take an interest in their village and, hopefully, help to create a lively, more inclusive, atmosphere.

St Peter's, Creeting St Peter

As a relative newcomer to the village, I have been particularly impressed by the work of the Parochial Church Council, currently led by Alice Matthewson, whose attempts to maintain the fabric of our parish church, the only community building in the village, have led them to branch out into being the commnuity social organisers. Monthly coffee mornings, frequent pub nights, concerts - there is no end to their efforts to entice the rest of us to abandon our armchairs and socialise with our neighbours.

And yes, the funds raised do go to maintain the fabric of a building which, I must confess, I don't enter often - I'm a Roman Catholic, no matter how tenuously. But even a rationalist like myself accepts and appreciates the value of maintaining one of the cornerstones of our village life - Creeting St Peter would be by far a worse place without a church to call its own.

However, what might have started out of necessity has blossomed into something which makes me proud to be a resident of our village, as the enthusiasm with which the myriad volunteers organise the events, and welcome us to share them, acts as an example to us all.

So, thank you to Alice and the team, and may there be many more opportunities to say so...

Don't you know, we're talking about an evolution...

Life changes, even here in my little Suffolk village, and quite often, it only needs a push from one or two people to make it happen.

One thing that I had noticed in Creeting St Peter when I first moved here was the apparent lack of social activity. Yes, it is a small place, with only a church room as a social space, and given my backstory in the big city, I wasn't hugely concerned, especially as I was still working in London.

There was, I was told, some activity in the past, organised by the Community Council, summer fetes, barbecues and the like, but with the loss of key members, this had ceased.

But it does pay to make an effort sometimes. Alice, the Chair of our Parochial Church Council, and her colleagues initiated a monthly coffee morning on the second Saturday of each month and suddenly discovered a hitherto untapped desire to meet fellow villagers. So much so that they rapidly became standing room only.

I've done a small amount to support them - by advertising the event on my village blog, by suggesting that the scheduled visit by the mobile police station be sited outside the church room at the same time - but by simply getting things started, more volunteers to help have come forward, making them more self-supporting. It is, if you like, a perfect example of the 'Big Society' in action.

And I learned a lot too. I learnt about the delicate web of personal relationships that sustains or, occasionally, harms a small community, of the history of the village, of the ups and downs of community. As a rookie Parish councillor, that kind of knowledge is invaluable if you want to do the job well.

Of course, I then ran as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the ward which includes Creeting St Peter. Running a classic campaign of the kind I approve of, heavily local in focus, a lot of canvassing, I met a lot of my fellow villagers, some for the first time. It was another immersion in the often small things that exercise people. And people were really friendly (with a few exceptions...).

Meanwhile, the Parochial Church Council had become more ambitious, with plans for a village pub night (we don't have a village pub). Unfortunately, Ros and I couldn't be there - ELDR Council in Dresden intervened - but it was an event that I wanted to succeed.

There was a brief local difficulty when a sign on the village green advertising the event was removed by the Parish Council, for perfectly justifiable reasons, but even that had its benefits. I had wanted to publicise the news of a local road closure, and it provided the perfect excuse to deliver another leaflet - this time as a local resident and not as a politician. So, six days before the event, Ros and I leafleted the entire Parish with news of the event. After all, we want our village to be a better place...

The event went well, with fifty people turning up to drink local ale, raise money for charity and meet, and I hope that Alice, Russell and all of those who made it happen feel that it was worth the effort. I'm certainly looking forward to the next one!

And the consequential effects ripple outwards. There is more interest in the long-standing Community Council project to refurbish the playing field, talk of improving communication, of engaging village residents. All because a few people have shown some willing to contribute...