The Naked Truth

I stood on the front step of the Vicarage and rang the doorbell.

At the mention of the word Vicarage many will have a clear vision of a rambling almost Stately or Mansion House in leafy rural surroundings and but a stones throw from an historic and picturesque Parish Church. A genteel setting.

This is the traditional expectation, almost a given, for the residence of the clergy.

Certainly this will have been true for many centuries with a life in the Church being the destiny from birth of the second and third sons of the wealthy.

The vicar in an affluent area lorded it up over his flock in sumptuous splendour and plenty as though he had indeed been the first born and inherited the family title, home and landed estates. A church bursting at the seams with God Fearing Sunday worshippers funded this type of vocation and lifestyle but with the decline in numbers in the post war and more modern period something had to give.

A good proportion of the best examples of the Vicarage were subsequently sold off as private residences or ended up as care homes or in other forms of institutional use. "The Old Rectory" was to be found in every village and was often the most prestigious property to be found amongst artisan cottages, farmsteads and infill development.

The dispossessed clergy were relocated to new build houses often erected on retained Diocesan lands or even within the expansive grounds of the former residence.

I have had experience of a typical example of "The New Rectory. Usually an ugly red brick box, unimaginative, designed by a committee and soon proving to be impractical as a combined family dwelling and clergy office.

One such new build was impossible to live in with tiny, cramped rooms, small arrow slit windows and not a regular shaped room to be found. I had been instructed to measure up the house for an insurance assessment but found this to be a very difficult exercise without reverting to a set square, protractor and geometry tables, such was the irregularity and intentional out of true alignment of the main walls and partitions.

I later learned from a frustrated occupant that the design project, through a very well known Architectural Practice, had been seen as a loss leader in terms of fees and prestige and had been left in the hands of the new trainees at the firm.

Largely unsupervised a succession of inexperienced draughtspersons had contributed their own eccentricities and influences to the blueprint almost on a willy-nilly basis, perhaps as an afterthought late on a Friday afternoon or in a blur after a typically liquid lunch to mark the proximity of a weekend.

Other new build Vicarages have been a proving ground and test bed for the ideas of zealous and blinkered architects with the result being a confused fusion of traditional features of twisted chimney stacks, corbelled eaves and tumbling to gables with ecological innovations of solar panels, rainwater harvesting, ground source heat pumps and a reed bed sewerage system.

The particular vicarage attached to the doorbell that I had pushed was a plain and rather corporate looking place.

 It did not look out of sorts with its surroundings in an inner city area. The church next door had been rebuilt after its predecessor had been bombed in 1943 and was in the same mellow but otherwise unremarkable brick as the house.

I had parked my car with some trepidation, even in a well lit arc of light under a streetlamp because of the reputation of the district of being a bit rough and unruly. Opposite the vicarage was a low parade of neighbourhood shops including one each of chip shop, takeaway, newsagents, hairdressers and bakers of which at least one or more operated almost on a 24 hour basis and thereby guaranteeing the presence of loitering residents. The fear of crime was tangible to me but then I again I did live in quiet suburb and so every city noise and disturbance put me on edge. Generally the area was no worse or better than my own street for behavioural and social problems.

I was just looking out more for them in this case.

I was welcomed in to the house by my hosts, a husband and wife clergy team.

They had certainly put their rather unique ideas of décor and furnishing into action but somehow it seemed natural and homely.

I was one of two other visitors invited to share the meal. Inner city parishes do have to rely on all represented faiths in a spirit of ecumenical harmony to meet the ever present challenges. Regular shared worship and initiatives required a combined effort if only to make sure that enough stewards and organisers were assembled which could still be a struggle in a diminishing pool of members.

My fellow guests were the Senior Priest from the large almost cathedral status Catholic Church just off the city centre and his new protégé, a young Padre fresh from training in Rome. Affable and in good humour the tea party thrived and before long we were swopping stories about our lives and experiences as though we were long lost friends only recently reunited..

The young Priest, in fact a local lad, recounted how upon his arrival at his new position he had been pressed for information by, in particular, the older women parishioners of his upbringing and life before entering the faith.

They were obviously quite taken with the new, young and handsome priest and he was spoiled rotten with gifts of home baking and offers of help with his domestic chores.

The attitude of the ladies had however changed when it became common knowledge that he had been seen in the company of a woman.

This excited a mixture of intrigue and concern amongst the faithful in case the work of the devil was in play to turn the head and morality of their new man.

Veiled enquiries were directed at him to try to identify this woman and his every move in and out of the confines of the Church were carefully scrutinised.

At last the ringleader of the regular female worshippers was encouraged to confront the priest once and for all to quash the rumour mill and provide reassurance that his scared vows were intact.

He admitted that, yes, he had been with a woman.

Yes, they had spent quite a bit of time together.

Yes, they were on quite friendly, nay intimate terms.

Yes, he admitted, she had seen him naked.

This last revelation caused much understandable disquiet and dismay to his interrogator until the mischievous Priest revealed that the lady was his mother.

That fairly abysmal design of vicarage proved to have one saving grace, tremendous acoustics and this was no more ably demonstrated by the raucous laughter and merriment as we all fell about in unrestrained hysterics at the outcome of this tremendous story.