Up on a hill, overlooking the Nar valley to the north, in the next-to-non-existent hamlet of Houghton St Mary, there is a small, now-restored-once-abandoned church in what is now a lost village equidistant to the Pickenhams (both north and south) . It was a good mile-ish hoof up a hill in the heat. With the pack. And no more water until I got to the pub three miles on.

So the story goes, that when its roof had collapsed in the 19th century and the water got in, the Old Testament inspired alterations of the Reformation, like scales from one’s eyes, gradually went with it. The lime render used (which has a lot to answer for as far as British church architecture goes) to conceal the idolatrous Papist images, once wet from the intrusive weather, had fallen away to reveal medieval wall paintings with Gabriel and his trumpet calling fort the faithful on the last Day of Judgement. The later hammer blows in the plaster to give the render purchase give the effect of an unfortunate bullet marked wall in a recently fallen dictatorship, which, I suppose, it was. The hammer blows of fate? The souls surrounding Gabriel are in Rapture… if only all gigs were like that.

Naturally, any sax player could to relate to what should perhaps be our patron saint; well, although not strictly speaking a saint. Gabriel has his own feast day, though. St Cecilia is fine, but she doesn’t have a horn to hand at crucial moments. Instead, she sang non-stop to prevent her marriage to Valerian being consummated; perhaps not an ideal life partner/soul mate for a lonely guy, and it might also say something about her singing. And then she was martyred. Perhaps a small comfort for Valerian was that he also martyred as well. Maybe. And that it all took place under the everyone’s favorite Stoic, Marcus Aurelius.