I am very sad to have lost Jan Walker MBE from my life and the life of the church. We will write more about her in the next edition of the magazine but I know that many of you will be sharing my sense of something big, leaving us. She, however, had no fear of death, delighting in the thought of heaven. She would want us to be glad for her and would be impatient of any mawkishness. Sitting at my computer, I can hear her saying – ‘it will be August, tell them something to make them smile’, and so I will. My best anecdote.

Someone (who lived in London) was giving me a lift through beautiful countryside in Northumberland. Luckily not someone I am likely to meet again. As we were driving I saw, high above us and ahead, a buzzard. I pointed it out. The kind lady said ‘How lovely, how do you know that’s what it is’. ‘Well’ I said, ‘It’s something about its stillness, the way it seems to hang in the air’.

‘I wish’ the lady said, ‘that I knew all about nature and country lore. I know so little.’ I remember distinctly her use of the word ‘Lore’. I sat back, delighted to be a source of ‘lore’. Doing my best to sound self-deprecating, I said, ‘Oh well, I grew up deep in the countryside and you pick up these things, almost without knowing it’. We talked about the wonder of the way the bird used the currents of air and so on.

Shortly afterwards she dropped me off and I saw her drive away, saying she wasn’t sure if she could get through this way and might pass me again in a little while. Still the buzzard flew overhead and slightly in front.

I hoisted my rucksack and trod forward firmly – at one with the countryside, about which I realised I was so wise. I glanced again towards the lovely buzzard that had moved away slightly, and saw it turn on the wind – no longer a great bird but actually a small old fashioned aeroplane - the sort with two wings either side connected by struts. I could here the sound of its engine on the wind. Still beautiful, but not a Buzzard. I dived through a gate and sat all thistly behind a hedge in case she came back. She would definitely have seen and must have laughed and laughed.

It was a good thing to have happened, though, to someone who would become a vicar. It still gives me a moment’s pause when I am tempted to describe, too definitively, the things of the heaven. We know not! Oh, we know not, the joys that wait us there’! But, praise God, Jan does now.