I have either met the sacked vicar, the Rev Tom Ambrose, or spoken to him on the phone during my days as a Cambridge reporter, but I’m afraid I can’t remember anything about him. I just know we made contact at some time.
The vicar of Trumpington has been sacked after a tribunal heard he had spat at a parishoner. Perhaps this should come as no surprise if you read an extract from this verse, one of my favourite by Rupert Brooke, called The Old Vicarage, where he describes the local people:
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
I don’t think the poet had spitting in mind when he penned those immortal words…
What an extraordinary story!
Do we know if there was any provocation or was the Rev driven by a higher force?
Ha, I do like this. The Slough one is great too.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.
It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
I’ve also made a blog on missing children, something I know you’re a great promoter of.
http://therightstudent.com/2008/04/missing-children.html
if you’re interested.
Take care.
That’s a good one Ellee! Salivation seem to be popular in the blogosphere at the moment 😉
I read about him. He incurred the wrath of many by wanting to introduce new things that the villagers did not want. He was very unpopular. The spitting was the last straw.
Sacked? Good.
Brooke obviouly foresaw something!
Happy Birthday Chrisopher Hitchens – he made a good comment recently (he makes lots of good comments IMHO) to the effect that the clergy get away with all sorts simply because of their job. I agree, completely. All you have to do is put ‘Rev.’ in front of your name and you can get away with all kinds of reprehensible behaviour. Same as if you put ‘Headmaster’ or ‘GP’ as your job title.
What a very appropriate poem!
The Slough poem reminds me of the clergy who try to hasten armageddon to ‘cleanse’ the earth of sinners and their dreadful sinful behaviour, for only the chosen ones will be saved. The ‘chosen ones’ being the people who bahave as they do. A dangerous distinction.
Hmmm. Ellee posts a poem about the people and commenters start insulting the Vicar.
As I understand it, he wanted to do intolerabley dictatorial things like move the Harvest Festival Meal from a Friday evening to the Saturday Afternoon so that families with children could go, and install toilets in the church.
I HAVE met Rev Ambrose, and my sympathies are with him; I think he is better off out of it.
Time to end the debate, move on and look back in 10 years to see who reaped the whirlwind.
And .. of course .. to reflect that £500,000 (the cost of the whole imbroglio, without the opportunity cost) could come close to endowing a position for a full time Youth Worker in perpetuity, even in 2008.
I have met the Rev and some of his flock. I think there are two sides to the story however, Rev Ambrose belongs in a different. I think he would fair well if he became the Dean at an Oxbridge College – where he could spend his days passing the port and theorising about theology