The city of Salisbury, Wiltshire is not a stage for drama. It’s been a focus of national attention for a poising. It was alleged Putin did it and it brought some fame. It’s not a good sort, though.
There’s always another side to a story, as well as a city. The truth in Salisbury is it has its own “local” stories that trend in streets and on a few corners. The time I spent there was no exception.
In a small part of it – set about a church, as it happens – there was a hoo-ha over a publication. The Catholic Herald isn’t a point of huge controversy but unbeknownst it had been one for a long time.
In a small way a few locals had begun to converse over it but long ago – a few decades, it was said. Fast forward, and a small cohort has picked up on this single conversation.
Maybe it was brought up as a memory, but it soon turned into no small controversy. These locals decided to “serve” the outlet in whatever way they could, which meant becoming Catholic first.
It was a period of hysteria, a type that pops up and disappears often in England. A moment of enthusiasm, however, can be misunderstood and in a short while the group had grown larger.
It turned into a quasi journalist’s ‘cult’, holding meetings and organising rotational prayer rotas. It was also a butt of local jokes. It was discussed in pubs and written off over tea and coffee.
The partners in this humorous crime didn’t get their work in the end, and they didn’t end up observant either. It’s just a quirk of nature in the English countryside, but a morality tale also, somehow.
