Wrexham County Borough 129 - Bangor on Dee /We plough the fields and scatter /Harvest festival in the church /Harvest suppers/Happiness is not something ready made

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There was not much going on to be honest. The weather has turned distinctly rainy nearly every single day. And Autumnal too. We wake up and hope for a dry day but it seems that it never comes . We all feel happier when the sun shines. With Autumn rumbling along we are all looking forward to Spring and better weather . We should really be grateful for what we have but we are always feeling extremely ungrateful when we look up to the overcast grey sky. Happiness is not something ready made . It comes from your own actions . The Dalai Lama uttered those words and as I walked I sent that thought through my head in an attempt to agree. Being happy is not a given. You have to work towards it. Sometimes it happens . You smile when the sun shines . Occasionally it just does not happen however hard you try . But I guess the idea is that try you must . Covid I guess taught us that . At a time when we could not travel and our world revolved around five miles from home it was sometimes hard to feel any form of happiness . Some of that feeling still lingers on I believe. I wonder if we will ever feel the way we did Pre- Covid.

I do more homes than aways and that seems slow to change . As I walked this morning through the village the air felt damp . As if there were a veil of rain thinly hidden amongst the air I breathed . I felt damp. Joints ache in this dank , mizzly Autumn weather . 321 days of the year have gone . There are just 44 left . Two weeks of November and then the run up to Christmas. Christmas postage stamps are for sale . This year they feature Christmas carols with the head of Charles III emblazing the right hand corner . That feels odd . . I have not seen the non religious version but I am sure there is one. The TV advertisements are all about Christmas presents, Santa Claus , drinks and food . The shops are decorated far too early for my liking . We are in Autumn I told myself not Christmas . We have Harvest festivals and Remembrance Services before Advent and Christmas . Year on year Christmas gets forced on us earlier and earlier . I tried to block it out of my mind . Hard to do that when I find articles on Lantern Parades, the Christmas Light Turn on, Christmas concerts and street decorations appearing . Not an easy task . Christmas Bingo in aid of the Village Hall advertised on the boards . Christmas fayres at school. . I felt not happiness but a bah humbug moment coming on . I tried to push Christmas from my mind and walked the village walk .

I was heading round the village to the local church which I hoped would be decorated for Harvest Festival . Something to remind me of the past and not Christmas . Time enough for the Scarecrow Christmas competition, the decoration of the church with holly and a Christmas tree . Today was Harvest . I was taken back to memories of Harvest Festivals in the 1950's and 1960's when they were an integral part of the year . Much like Easter, miners fortnight, Bonfire Night and Christmas they were an indication of where the year was up to. Without the need of a calendar it was easy to work out from Easter it must be March or April . Miners Fortnight - the last week of July and the first week of August . Bonfire night the first week of November and Christmas . Christmas was a few days of shops shut in the depths of Winter . I recalled Harvest Festivals in church as the congregation made up baskets of fruit, vegetables and tinned food and carried them to decorate the church . Schools did much the same as pupils were encouraged to make up more food parcels to lay on the floor of the hall before being taken somewhere to be distributed . Lessons in church were around food, harvests and giving as were lessons in school . We learned by rote We plough the fields and scatter , the good seen on the land . We sang it with gusto. In the country Harvest Suppers were arranged . The end of the harvest celebrated with in style .

I wondered how far those traditions had gone over the years . Did the children still take along food parcels to harvest festival services ? The farm year had changed so much since I was a child . The fields were filled with crops then . Cabbages, field after field of potatoes. Summer celeries. Corn, barley and oats . The grass left long for silage. Hay for the cattle . Cows in the fields, pigs in the pigstyes in farms. Chickens walking the farm yards . I grew up around them year on year and watched the farm year progressing . All gone . The farms have gone. Too small to make a living . No longer farming but housing . The cattle no longer are in the fields , the pigstyes pulled down. The barns converted to bed and breakfasts , holiday accomodation or barn conversions. Life had certainly moved on . Fields turned into graveyards due to lack of space around the local churches . Housing estates everywhere . And no Harvest Suppers .

The church was empty and dark . The lights turned off to save costs . The porch to the graveyard I thought could have benefitted from some decoration as could the church porch. I imagined bullrushes , apples and pears on the small benches either side and a string of hops celebrating the brewing industry of Wrexham . I don't know who decorates the church but it always gives the feeling of one hand. I missed Harvest last year and the year before but felt that the church would have looked the same then as it did now. The font the start of church life was decorated around its base with bowls of dahlias . Creams, lemon, and pale orange . They looked lovely and seemed the theme which was repeated on the small altar halfway up the church , on the main altar and on the large flower stand placed at the rood crossing . The base of the font and the hearse cart were decorated with small trugs filled with squashes . Yellow, green and yellow striped and larger orange pumpkins . Again the theme continued along the window ledges and on the top of the altars . I just felt it was too much of the same thing . It looked tasteful and I had heard parishioners in the village like tasteful displays. Not for them anything gaudy . I longed to see chrysanthemums in their Autumn colours . Fruits and vegetables . Even the monk placed in the corner had squashes on his desk . He was an automaton set up to tell the story of the old monastery of Bangor . He holds a quill and no doubt produced manuscripts . I smiled to think he would never have known a squash .

As I left I looked back and yes the church looked pretty . The Harvest Sheaf was not in place yet but that would arrive for the Sunday service . Perhaps next year I might look for another church just to see how they interpret Harvest Festival .

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