Youthful Considerations.
Or
An Englishman Abroad.
Or Even,
What is Chinese for Yorkshire Pudding?
Today, the last day of my week off, I went into York with my wife. It was a lovely sunny day and York was teeming with people. I largely go to look at the people and the architecture, I’m not that interested in shopping, although I do appreciate a good café. Anyway, what I noticed, and what has caused me to write this little consideration, is that I reckon I saw more young people today than I will see in a whole year in my parishes. There are about two and a half thousand people in the four parishes I serve, they tend to be older people as it is quite an expensive place to buy or rent a house and the people who attend church tend to be the older end of this older population. There are some young people in my churches, and I guess by young I mean younger than my 48 years. I do also see some younger people through the life of the church mainly about weddings and Christenings, and I go into the two schools in my parishes most weeks, even so I think the number of young people I saw out in York today enjoying the sunshine vastly outweighs the number I will see in my parishes this year.
Most weeks I just go about my clerical business in the quiet villages of my parishes and do not visit any major centres of population so I guess the University City of York on a summer’s day full of thousands of people proved a noticeable contrast.
I point this out neither as a positive nor a negative, just as an observation of how my life is. I don’t see many young people. I was particularly taken by a young Chinese woman in Marks and Spencer’s. I say ‘Chinese’, that is of course a guess, she could have been from any number of the oriental nations, she could even have been English, but I don’t think she was as she was slowly examining items and then entering their details on her phone. It looked like she was using a translation App to work out what things were. I wanted to speak to her, to ask if she needed any help, especially as she was looking doubtfully at a pack of Yorkshire Puddings having clearly found no satisfactory explanation for them on her phone. However, I was slightly worried that my curiosity may be misinterpreted and that perhaps she would hurriedly ask her phone, “What is English for ‘go away creepy man’?”
As York is both a University and a tourist city I have probably seen more foreign people today than I will see in my parishes in any number of years. It is harder to guess at sight if someone is foreign than if they are younger than oneself, although listening carefully can help. What also helps is that foreigners dress well in hot weather whereas British people, especially British men, do not. A true Englishman looks obviously uncomfortable and ill-styled on a hot day, which is curious as we are historically a cosmopolitan breed.
I would add that I also point this out about foreigners as neither a positive nor a negative but to be quite honest I enjoy their company and although I have not long lived in these parts a Yorkshire man hardly qualifies as ‘exotic’, even if his puddings perplex Chinese people in Marks and Spencer’s.
Anyway, back to Parish life tomorrow.
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