Sternfield Thoughts

Friday, 25 September 2026

The Edge Of The Circus

I came to the edge of the circus

When the sun was sinking low

And the kiosk man was nervous

When I walked into the show

The painted clown swirled round,

Cackled and stumbled to the floor

A snake crawling on the dirty ground

His eyes sly and impure

A rasping growl, the proud lion

The ringmaster’s whip held high

It snapped down, a staccato sign

And his eyes, fiercely, caught mine

Falling machine-like into a hard hand

The juggler’s balls queued in the air

His face circled mine, willing me to understand

The reason he was there

The lights blazed on, interval time

Innocent queues for ice-creams

But shadows sat, dark signs

Backstage, the shredding of dreams

Lights off again, and we all looked high

At the swim-suited girl swaying alone

She swept down and round and shook at my eye

To pull back to the black of the dome

The horses rushed in, sweat and speed on their skin

Men in red cloaks aloft on their backs

Thundering hooves, sawdust in the wind

A sudden stop, swords held high for the final act

Silence and unease, every heart cowed

Terrible thuds before the trumpet blare

Then the trunks crashed into the crowd

Descendants of Leviathan, stripping all bare

The chaos swept on with reptiles in the dust

Bats in the cracks, clicking, a swishing of wings

Pharaoh’s frogs croaking, covered in slime and puss

Bulldog ants, concocting venomous stings

Voluptuous earth, panic and pandemonium

The centre cannot hold

The hyenas laugh and the Joker waves his gun

His painted grin knows every life has been sold

Trembling hands, but with a flint face

I climbed over the aisles and into the ring

The red riders scuttled to the back-stage space

The thrashing trunks slowed to an angry swing

I walked to take the shaking pole

Lion tamers, horse riders, acrobats and clowns

Men on stilts, dwarfs, the nameless with no role

Whistled and jeered, as they pushed me down

The whips for the lions now fell on my back

The elephants tossed me side to side

The riders used their horses like a medieval rack

Till the Joker asked the priest what God would decide.

All was quiet, then a slow scratchy voice

‘Guilty of illegal entry and magic power’

Disco lights and drums for the old wooden hoist.

I was lifted up high for hour upon hour

The lights went on, the music blared, it was time to go

With candy floss for the children on their journey home

My eyes were dim, my breathing slow

Soon to be alone in that white dome

The tigers came at night to drag my body down

The man who bought the world, bundled into the boot of a car

Taken to the desert, food for the hungry hounds

But the centre pole of the circus, safe as the North Star

Tom Hawksley

January 2025

Wednesday, 19 August 2026

Old School (John Bailey looks back at his days at St Lawrence College)

John Bailey, an old friend from St Lawrence College, sent me this essay looking back at his school days. I asked him if I could post it on my blog, and he replied, 'Post away'. You will enjoy his writing. You can read my thoughts about the closure of the school here - https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-bankruptcy-of-st-lawrence-college.html

Tom Hawksley

OLD SCHOOL

Old school cinema was an early, and remains, an enduring personal passion, as much for it’s clunky delivery as for the product. The projectionist, scaling up from my father’s super-8, would hand engage the magic acetate to a background hum of subdued anticipation that stilled at the call of ‘lights’. We were plunged into darkness for a nanosecond, an expectant sensory-deprived birth canal, before the burst of bright white light on the big screen and the simultaneous whirring and clacking of the projector’s sprockets and reels. We grew up in a time when cinema was theatre.

Old schools are as much constructed from memories as from bricks and mortar, and which last the longer depends on the human lifespan (and any relevant intergenerational family legacies) and the durability of building materials. Or a sudden cataclysmic event can wipe the whole record, put a full stop to future histories, draw a line under the collective memory bank, and reduce bricks to dust.

My old school, tucked quietly away in a south coast backwater, suffered such a tsunami in the spring of ‘26. A little shy of its 150^th anniversary the majestic red brick buildings, with adjacent acres of green grounds , fell ignomiously into bankruptcy. A salient reminder that what seems solid can melt into air. My father’s name will soon be bulldozed off the house honours board.

For myself the intersection of personal story, schooling, and cinema has to be Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 award winning ‘If’, which claimed the Palme D’or at Cannes just two years prior to my entry, aged thirteen, to the Senior School after 5 years at the adjacent Prep (junior school). In many aspects a typical small scale, minor Public School, St Lawrence mirrored many of the satirised elements of Anderson’s film including religion, deference to authority, militarism, keeping a ‘stiff upper lip’, and outright absurdity. I suspect, however, that in one feature the school stood out from its contemporaries. Due to the passion and idiosyncrasy of one teacher we were gifted an eye-opening and mind broadening film club. We watched French New Wave (Lelouch’s ‘Un Homme et une Femme’), Third World Cinema in Satjt Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’, and Hollywood classics such as Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’, and Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove’.

We were not shown ‘If’. Despite which Anderson’s riff on Kipling-esque values still achieved mythic status in the common rooms, dormitories, and smoking dens. This elevation of the unseen to icon status was surprisingly common. Kubrick himself withdrew ‘Clockwork Orange’ from circulation but that didn’t stop us donning Doc Marten’s and headgear in imitation of Malcolm McDowell and his droogs. I listened to the soundtrack of ‘Cabaret’ years before I saw the actual film. Ditto, I sang along to Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’ for years before I caught ‘Easy Rider’. The Zeitgeist was so powerful it penetrated the school walls, ignited our imaginations and enthused our conversations.

We talked endlessly, discussing anything and everything ... as well as nothing of consequence, usually to an accompanying cigarette, or ten. More often than not we just shot the breeze, chilled, and talked nonsense (including a lot of nonsense about girls). But often books, films and music would hold the floor, with politics and ‘the meaning of life’ topping the agenda in later years. I’m aware that I’m probably overplaying the ‘bohemian intellectual chic’ a tad, after all we were not at the Sorbonne, nor on the Left Bank cadging Gitanes from Satre and De Beauvoir, but just silly kids sharing Players’ No.7 in the communal toilets.

The school’s establishment values and ethos were battling strong headwinds in the modernising western society outside its walls. The anti-Vietnam war protests and Civil Rights movement in America, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the student protests of 1968 were all harbingers of discord and potential change – as a rule the establishment, by definition, does not like change. But the young, and admittedly sometimes naive, often do. The ‘counter-culture’ that sprung up in parallel to the challenging times found willing ears and minds among our generation. Our study-rooms were festooned with anti-war and Jimi Hendrix posters, reeked of joss sticks and patchouli, rocked to the sounds of The Who’s ‘My Generation’, to The Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’, to Bob Dylan and David Bowie.

The school clung on to ancient rites of passage like ‘tick off’ – an institutionalised humiliation and initiation process conducted by house prefects. After two weeks’ grace in which new boys had to learn school lore, slang, nomenclature and geography, they were then tested individually by a group of prefects. The ‘fag’, as first years were known, entered a darkened study, was groped on his way to the centre of the room, made to stand in a waste bin while a desklamp was shone in his face. In the course of the test he was shouted at, insulted, sworn at and generally humiliated. Following graduation from tick-off, the fag performed basic chores for a year, such as delivering milk to senior boys’ studies in the early morning.

On promotion to the prefecture in my fourth year at Senior School, my first act was to ban ‘tick-off’.

Daily chapel services, weekly full church service, weekly square-bashing in the Combined Cadet Force, weekly speeches by the House Master, periodic sermons at Assembly from the Head Master failed to make the institution remotely relevant to the rapidly changing world outside. Many pupils, maybe most, had no issue with this, but for me personally I found the place absurd.

I can recall very few ‘life lessons’ learned in the classroom or via the more general educational environment. I did derive benefit from some of the extra-curricular activities such as contributing to debates, but nothing to compare with the tidal wave of multi-sensory influences washing over us via TV, contemporary music, books, world events, counter cultural responses, theatre and, of course, films.

I was an autodidact when it came to literature; I had read most of Steinbeck by the age of 14, a lot of Orwell and Graham Greene, a smattering of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, some Austen, some Lawrence soon followed. Complete autodidact is not strictly true in that I enjoyed reading what others read including Tolkein and one-offs like ‘Zen and the Art of Motor-Cycle Maintenance ‘. These literary forays were extracurricular, I had no direction in reading material from the school whatsoever, apart from O Level set texts (two books?). My own curiosity and my peers were my guides and my teachers.

I found the books I read to be entertaining and informative but it was the films that I consumed during those school years that grabbed me emotionally and left me feeling enlightened. It was ‘The Graduate’ that taught the younger generation to take our own path, ‘Cabaret’ taught me not only history, politics and empathy but also a lesson in how art can reflect life, even with distorted mirrors. ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ brought home the insanity of WW1, the brutal crassness of the British class system, with a closing shot that still haunts me. ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ taught the importance of being free in your mind as well as physically free.

So we arrive at the final reel. I believe my personal views and values of egalitarianism, the importance of being free and thinking freely, and empathy for fellow humans were forged during my St Lawrence years, not from the curriculum but from the books and films consumed and the countless conversations about them with my school friends. My peers were my teachers.

I feel saddened that my school, and long term home, has closed, that the theatre has gone dark, that our conversations will no longer have physical walls to echo around. But the show must go on. We keep calm and carry on. Keep a stiff upper lip. Because, after all ... we are, inescapably, old school.

John Bailey. August 2026.

Wednesday, 12 August 2026

The bankruptcy of St Lawrence College, so much more than a school closing down

In April 2026 St Lawrence College in Ramsgate, Kent, went bankrupt. It is a cause for sadness.

In September 1968 my mother and father left me at Cameron House, a junior house for St Lawrence College. I was ten. Fifty-eight years later I can still remember waving good bye to them as they drove away, passed the head-master’s house on the left, and the tennis courts on the right.

I walked back into Cameron, where a bevy of boys, all suited, and wearing ties, were jostling around the snooker table. And so my days at St Lawrence began. I was there till I was eighteen.

The days were dominated by bells. Bells to get you up, bells to send you to meals, bells for chapel, bells for lessons, bells for prep (home-work).

And rules. There were the usual ones - about the uniform, hair length, bed times, smoking - but there were others, about character. In Cameron, there was a sheet pinned up in both the two main class-rooms. This was the report sheet where a prefect or a school master could write your name, and next to it the misdemeanour. There were two words that always risked a caning from the house-master, Mr Lilley: cheek and disobedience.

There was a lot of physical exercise. In Cameron, the first thing Mr Lilley made us do when we got up was to go on a ten minute run. On three days of the week there were organised games in the afternoon for at least two hours: rugby in the Michaelmas Term; hockey in the Lent Term, cricket in the Summer Term. There were PE classes two or three times a week.

And prefects. You immediately knew who they were. These older boys sat at the end of the meal table, they presided over prep, they were there to put the lights out at bed-time. They had some power and needed to be handled carefully. It was the prefects who checked the ‘fagging’, a strange word only used in public schools. In your first year in the senior school, after two weeks of grace, you were then a fag, and had to do menial tasks like taking round the milk, or sweeping the common room floor.

And there was the CCF (Combined Cadet Force). Every Wednesday afternoon we all changed out of our school suits and put on military uniforms – army, navy, or RAF. Then classes about military matters, or marching around the quad being shouted at. And once a year there was a full parade with a band. We were inspected by some senior military figure, watched by our parents.

And Christianity¹. There was a shortish chapel service every week-day before the morning classes, a longer one on Sunday. Attendance was compulsory. Mid-week there were house prayers. We all gathered with our particular house, (after Cameron, mine was Grange) and there would be a reading and prayers, led by the house-master. There were confirmation classes, RE classes, and Christian Union meetings. The school motto, was ‘In Bono Vince’, overcome evil with good, which comes directly from the Bible. And many of the teachers were committed Christians. At least five, when I was there, were ordained: Rev Canon-Perfect, Rev Peter Goodwin-Hudson, Rev Martin Harvey, Rev Bridges, and Rev David Blackwell. And my old Grange house-master, Robin Garden, was later ordained.

This was St Lawrence College – a school. But the bells, rules, sport, prefects, the fagging system, the CCF and the chapel, they had nothing directly to do with what a school is actually for – learning things in a classroom. This of course happened, but only as a part of a this much larger context.

That larger context was our own world for our teenage years. It was our home. And if our actual family-life was messy, which it was for some, then St Lawrence with its bells and rules, gave us stability. And credit should go to the teachers, who were always simply there, most of them engaging and kind-hearted. Of course we all had difficult days, there was sometimes some roughness, but at St Lawrence we made life-long friends, turned from being children into young adults, and often had our first experiences of the good and not so good things of life.

Till April 2026 this old home had always been there to visit. There is nothing logical about this pull to go back and see somewhere you used to live, but it’s real. I remember when one of my best friends from school, John Vernon*, was diagnosed with the disease that would kill him, John was determined to go back to visit St Lawrence. He wanted to see his old home again. So we went together for one of those OL. Dinners. And of course, the memories flowed. Now there is no St Lawrence to visit, no St Lawrence to show our children or grand-children. That is sad.

*You can read more about John here - https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-friend-john-vernon.html

And then when we were there, St Lawrence was so vibrant and strong. The dining room loud, the chapel full, the corridors heaving between lessons, sport everywhere. And those big events – the school play, speech day, the summer concert, the carol service. The thought never crossed anyone’s mind that such a place could ever close. But it has. This is what an old friend, John Bailey, wrote to me: ‘What seemed rock solid and permanent, if flawed, has proven to be sand, escaping from a broken hourglass.’**

** You can read John's own musings about St Lawrence here - https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2026/08/old-school-john-baillie-looks-back-at.html

And that sand was money, millions of pounds of debt. That makes the pain worse. Of course St Lawrence was always a sort of business, but when there the school was somehow beyond mere money.

The college stood for something greater and grander, literally. The solid North Gate, the imposing main building, the chapel – they did not speak of elitist luxury (OL s will remember the very basic changing alleys), but of an invitation to a particular way of life. That is also what the bells, the rules, the prefects, the CCF, the Christianity were all about. Enter North Gate, and wherever you turned there was this regimented world saying that young lives could be shaped to make the world a better place. That was the vision. And whatever you think about this vision, it is painful that now, in Ramsgate, it is buried under a tacky tombstone with the one word epithet, ‘Bankrupt.’

This vision is closely connected to what happened at Rugby School in the early part of the 19^th C. The school was reformed by the pioneering head-master Thomas Arnold. He came there in 1828, when the school was full of drunkenness, bullying and appalling teaching. By the time he left in 1841, the school was a beacon of orderliness and the public school ethos had been born.

This ethos put great emphasis on the spiritual and moral development of students, indeed, in Arnold’s mind this was much more important than intellectual ability. So, the centrality of Christianity. Pupils at Rugby were to be future leaders. So, Arnold brought in the prefect system, where the older boys took on some of the responsibility for running the school. Later there was a strong emphasis on team sports, which was not just about a game, but about building character, and playing fairly. Soon too there was a strong connection to the armed forces. So in1869, Rugby had the Volunteer Rifle Corps, a forerunner to the CCF.

St Lawrence, founded in 1879, was one of scores of public schools in the 19^th C which followed the example set by Arnold at Rugby. And with Britain’s ever-growing economy in the 19th C. and vast overseas empire there were plenty of families who could afford the fees of these schools, and plenty of demand for the sort of leaders these schools were moulding.

You would think that by 1968 when I went to St Lawrence that ethos should have withered away, like the empire and Britain’s economy. But that world of bells and rules and sport and the CCF and the prefects and the Christianity, the pillars of the public school ethos had not withered away at all. Moreover, I think that most of the teachers there in 1968 believed in the Arnold vision of what a public school was for. No doubt Britain’s victory in the war had bolstered their belief in the vision, because the majority of officers had come from the public schools. Some, like Mr Wheeler, then came to teach us. The ethos had been severely tested, and held firm. And while Suez had shown how limited Britain’s actual power was, nevertheless it was surely difficult for that generation of teachers to shake off the idea that Britain had a special role in the world that needed the public school ethos.

Belief in the ethos was weakening even while I was there in the 1970s, attacked by films like ‘If’, and all the other anti establishment fervour of that decade. No doubt it weakened further. Now, in Ramsgate it has gone. As a university friend wrote, ‘With this closure this conception of life has disappeared, not just the buildings.’

Some might say good riddance to this public school ethos. It was always bankrupt. Just a respectable veneer over a system that manipulated young lives to fit in to the establishment. And worse: it gave pupils a poisonous sense of entitlement, and strengthened class divisions. That might be true for some public schools, but not St Lawrence. With no heating in some of our dormitories, things were too spartan at St Lawrence to give us any sense of entitlement: an ability to survive is what it gave us. And there is no way St Lawrence was snobby. On helping pupils get ahead though, the figures have been stubborn for many years: 7% go to public schools, but that 7% take 40% of the best jobs. There’s an argument that a robust government which believed in the equality of opportunity should have nationalised these schools decades ago.

There can be discussion over the impact of the private school system on our wider society; but there should be none over the public school ethos. In essence it is good and honourable.The bells for punctuality, the rules for orderliness, the sport for physical fitness, the prefect system to learn responsibility, the CCF for military discipline, and the daily reminder of God's existence and Christ’s salvation and moral code, none of this is bankrupt.

So, the closing of St Lawrence is much more than the closing down of a school. It is the end of place that was our home, a place that was full of vibrancy, and it is the ending – in Ramsgate – of this grander cause of preparing young lives to make a difference in the world, of asking them to fight for - ‘In Bono Vince’.

Tom Hawksley, OL 1968 - 1976

1 People often call Christianity, ‘religion’. Christianity is a religion, but to say Christianity is religion puts it out of focus. At St Lawrence College we were not taught religion; we were taught Christianity.

Friday, 26 June 2026

Brother Edward Hovsepian-Mehr, 'A great oak has fallen'

Brother Edward 1950 – 2026

‘A great oak has fallen’

Perhaps the first impression most people had when they met Brother Edward was his warmth, humour and a voice that always asked how you were with genuine interest.

And then in conversation, there was a quality that marked him out: gentleness. This was not a gentleness that swayed in whatever direction the wind was blowing, this was a strong, purposeful gentleness, anchored in the convictions that Jesus Christ was the Lord and Saviour, the Bible was inspired Scripture, and people should be loved.

These convictions were easily sensed when he preached. There was authority, rooted in Brother Edward’s exceptional knowledge of the Scriptures. He knew the verses, he knew where the verses were, and he knew how to use them to speak to people’s hearts. From the pulpit he seemed very natural, almost as if he were talking spontaneously, but his sermons were in fact very well prepared. He always had written notes with him to develop a well thought through proposition from the Scriptures.

Brother Edward was certainly one of Iran’s church’s greatest preachers; but he was also one of her greatest pastors. He loved people. He gave them time. He gave clear advice. He had a special concern for marriage, mentoring couples through the engagement, the wedding and beyond. Such was his concern for married couples that he wrote one of the first books in Persian on the subject. It is still selling. He also wrote a book about pastoral work. It too is still selling. Brother Edward did not just write out of his own experience. He was an avid reader, probably one of the best read pastors in Iran’s church.

As well as his preaching and pastoral work there was a keen understanding of the church, and church administration. For Brother Edward was a church man to his finger-tips. At the centre of the growth of the Assemblies of God Churches in Iran, Brother Edward learnt all about the role of committees and church meetings. Before he came to the UK it was perhaps Brother Edward, more than any other, who saw that the future of Christianity in Iran lay in the house churches. He saw the day was coming when the government would not allow ‘building’ churches to flourish, and so he shifted the whole focus to the homes. He offered supervision, first in Iran, and then from the UK. The movement has flourished.

When he later came to the UK this same commitment to sound protocol in the church was soon felt, and so it was he who was the main inspiration behind Ham Gaam, a grouping of Diaspora Churches. And later he was a great supporter of Iran’s first world-wide alliance of Christians.

If one had to choose one word to describe Brother Edward’s character, gentleness is a good one. For his ministry, the word should be courage. This was consistent.

He showed courage during his first pastorate in the north of Iran when the church was threatened; he showed courage when his brother was brutally murdered in 1994 and he took over the leadership of the church; he showed courage when his first wife, Anahita, was tragically taken from him by cancer – he kept on serving.

In Iran Brother Edward was constantly threatened by the authorities, but he refused to bow to their pressure to exclude Muslim background believers or to stop evangelism. His preparation for questioning was to pray and fast and enter the interrogation room filled with the Holy Spirit. On one occasion the officer showed that he had a gun. Brother Edward was not fazed. He had the Holy Spirit.

Ministry was busy, very; but Brother Edward was always the family man. Today our hearts grieve with Sister Nasi and all his children and grand-children.

In Africa when a revered and much loved leader dies, people say, ‘A great oak has fallen’

Truly, for all Iran’s church, ‘A great oak has fallen’.

Tuesday, 26 May 2026

The start of a concert - St Ulrich Church, Vienna on Sunday 10th May, 2026

The student musicians came from the back of the church to just in front of the pews. They came in groups. The strings, the wind, the brass, and, once in position, they started tuning their instruments.

It’s hard not to love the atmosphere created by that mix of seemingly unconnected sounds. Here the lack of melody is pleasing, because it signals the certainty of the music to come. And that was J. S. Bach: the Orchestral Suite No 3, a Brandenburg concerto, the Easter Oratorio.

The tuning had finished, and there was an uneasy quiet. One of the percussionists was not in position. Eyes flitted towards the back. The professor in the pew shrugged. Then he came, hardly a young man, probably still a teenager, awkward in his concert clothes, but no apology on his face. He went to the large concert bass drums, tested them quickly and looked up.

The Bach began.

Down the central aisle of the church there were upright wooden chairs at the end of each pew. Extra seats. On the right hand side, in the second chair from the front was a smartly dressed older lady, sitting upright; behind her, an older gentleman in a suit.

As the first bars of the Orchestral Suite were played, the gentleman gave the lady a gentle, but definite, push on her back. It was celebratory, a raising of a glass.

And it was unexpected. That’s why I noticed it. The Bach flowed and I wondered about that little push on the back.

Were these grand-parents who had come to see a grand-child? Was their grand-son the percussionist who had held everyone up? Was he a difficult character and had it been a family battle getting him to study, and now play in the orchestra? Or the grand-child was another player, and the road to the concert had been hard. So, the little push was a family pat on the back.

Or perhaps they had no grand-children in the orchestra. Perhaps the Bach took them back to one of their own playing days, perhaps this Orchestral Suite was the music that had launched the lady’s career, and the man was giving her a ‘Well done’.

Or maybe their romance had begun at a Bach concert, with this Suite, and and as the music began, so the husband had to touch the one he had loved for so many years. This was their music. It had brought them together. And it had kept them together, and so here they were in the church, listening and remembering.

I will never know¹, but that is what happened at the start of the concert.

1What I do know, if you have read this far, that there is a feast of free music in Vienna in May. For this is when students of Vienna University’s Department of Early Music perform, presumably as a part of their course. The standard is incredibly high. Each venue with its own beauty.

Tuesday, 28 April 2026

Pilgrimage from the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit to the Basilica of the Holy Family (third leg)

When I first saw the Sagrada Familia I stopped in my tracks; but our children were young. It was not the season for seeing cathedrals. I knew the day would come for savouring this extraordinary building. Back home in Surrey, an idea began to form. Bike to Barcelona – from the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Guildford to the Basilica of the Holy Family. A pilgrimage to celebrate how the Holy Spirit leads to Holy Family.

I shared this with a good friend, Donald Hirsch, who said the thousand miles plus was too much to do in one go. He suggested three rides over three years – and he would come with me. Perfect.

In 2024 we cycled from the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Guildford to Poitiers, the account of our journey is here.

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2024/07/a-pilgrimage-from-cathedral-of-holy.html

In 2025 we cycled from Poitiers to Toulouse, the account of our journey is here.

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/05/pilgrimage-from-cathedral-of-holy.html

And in 2026, we cycled from Toulouse to the Cathedral of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia) in Barcelona, the end of our journey.

You can see a map of the entire route here, many thanks to Donald for this...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yjfThnCka4mnjsjIk9vf4KrmDOVR2vFO/view?usp=sharing

This is the account of that final stage.

Day One, Friday April 10^th

Toulouse to Alzonne (55 miles)

The evening before we had arrived at Paul Seabright’s home in Toulouse where we had ended our second leg. We were welcomed by Paul and his partner Charlotte, and there was plenty of conversation over a very fine dinner – Paul’s latest book, The Divine Economy¹, his next project, about when politicians should retire. And there was plenty of conversation over breakfast in Paul’s courtyard garden, but it had to come to an end. We had over fifty miles before us. We set off at about 8.30 and soon found the path by the Canal du Midi, which we had used in 2025. After negotiating the Toulouse cycling rush hour, we were speeding along on the flat excellent surface in near perfect weather. An easy start.

And it remained easy. By the afternoon we had left the canal path and were on fairly quiet French roads, or reasonable farm tracks. In the late afternoon we stopped to rest in a park in Bram. Here there was an art centre, with an exhibition all about rugby balls. I was the only visitor, and I learned how the balls are shaped. First a wooden model is made, then the leather is stretched over it. That’s the randomness of a long bike ride.

At our campsite we could see the snow capped Pyrenees in the far distance. We thought they would be our challenge. They weren’t. It would be something else. We were able to eat a good meal at the campsite restaurant, and then, as is usual, Donald beat me at chess.

Day Two, Saturday April 11^t^h.

Our wedding anniversary. Thirty nine years. I was in France, Mojdeh in the north of Turkey, speaking at a Christian women’s seminar. She was the first to text, and then I managed to call. She was walking on the beach with another lady. We talked briefly, I then sent her a text.

We had got up at six and were ready to set off by seven-thirty. We had breakfast in Carcassonne with its medieval castle perched above the River Aude, and then things were not so easy. There were long hills, and the wind was often in our faces, . By lunchtime I felt drained.

We stopped in the quiet town of Lezignan-Corbieres and settled into a boulangerie for sandwiches and a rest. We were revived and enjoyed our afternoon ride through the expansive space between the Massif Central to the north, and the Pyrenees, in the south. Our campsite was a few kilometres outside Narbonne, so while I put up the tent, Donald kindly took off again to get our supper. We heated this up in the site microwave; ate; crouched into our tent, and so to sleep. I was exhausted.

Day Three, Sunday April 12^th

Up again at six, and out of the campsite by seven thirty. We then had two hours of magnificent cycling along another canal path. After about half an hour, there was a large lagoon on our left signalling that the Mediterranean wasn’t far away, and beyond the canal on our right, another one. And in the far distance, the Pyrenees. We didn’t see a soul, but in one of the lagoons there was a group of birds standing in the shallows, either egrets or flamingoes. All was at peace.

Our path led to a port, and then a road heading towards the sea; but I needed re-fuelling. So we swung into the town of La Palme and found a small boulangerie that was open. With our bikes parked outside, the camping gear easily visible, and my Brexit Union Jack helmet², both the staff and the few customers were curious.

One old lady stopped by our table and told us she was ninety-one. I asked her if she had had a good life. She paused. Then said that her first husband had been no good; the second, ‘Okay’. I found it interesting that she defined her life by her husbands. It makes sense. And it made sense of this long journey to the Cathedral of the Holy Family. What makes a good life? Our family, or extend that, our close relationships. I talked with Donald about this. He had another angle. His father, the economist Fred Hirsch³, had loved his family, but if had been asked about what makes a ‘good life’, he would have started with his intellectual work. Family though would still have been in the mix.

After this breakfast, we were soon by the Mediterranean; but it wasn’t a smooth blue under a sunny sky. All was grey and windy. The forecast was rain in the evening, and winds of up to fifty miles, starting in the night, and continuing the next day. Donald, being a great planner, already knew about these forecasts and we had decided not to camp in the rain. He also had ideas about dealing with tomorrow’s wind when we were meant to cross the Pyrenees.

When we arrived in St Cyprien Donald headed off to try and book a room in a hotel. I was meant to follow, but fell into conversation with an Irish couple who were having a drink outside a bar. This was an important encounter. Almost randomly they told me that cycling the coastal route round the Pyrenees, known as the ‘Corniche’, would be fine. They sometimes went to Spain and back in a day. I knew that Donald had ruled this route out for the sensible reasons that being scenic there would be a lot of traffic, there was no promise of a safe cycle lane, and there were a lot of hills to climb.

When I got to the hotel, it was fully booked, but the receptionist allowed us to sit in the lobby and Donald expertly negotiated with booking.com. We soon had an apartment and as we arrived, the rain started. I mentioned my conversation with the Irish couple, but Donald was not overly impressed. All his research – and he had spent a lot of time on this – showed that this coastal route would not just be harder physically, but possibly dangerous. His route was to go about ten miles inland and climb over one of the first foothills. The problem was the wind. Coming down a steep hill with fifty mile winds coming in any direction would not be wise. Donald did not want to abandon this route; his preference was to ride just five or six miles the next day, and book into a hotel, wait for the wind to subside, and so get going on Tuesday. We would have to put in a some extra miles in Spain, but it should be fine.

Day Four, Monday April 13^th

We woke up to the news that there was no guarantee that the fifty mile winds were going to ease off tomorrow. That would mean two days of hanging around this side of the Pyrenees. The conversation about the coastal route with the Irish couple came more into focus. I decided to broach the subject again over our coffee and croissant after our five mile ride to Argeles. Thankfully as I began, the wind was not particularly ferocious. So I suggested we try this coastal route and if the traffic and the wind was horrific we would turn back and wait to do Donald’s original route. If our experiment worked, then that would save us having to wait in France and then having to have two days of seventy mile rides in Spain.

Donald listened carefully, but needed to check things out on the internet which was patchy where we were. We found a better cafe and the map was spread out on the table. Donald’s hesitation was that if we started, then we would be adding a lot to our ride if we then had to come back for his route. And now the wind was beginning to pick up a bit. My hunch was to give it a go, and then came the clincher. There was a train line all the way along this coastal route. Donald had it confirmed from both the waiter and the internet that the trains were running. Here was the safety back up. If the coastal route was a nightmare, we could catch a train back.

So, much later than usual, our cycling began. And my appreciation for Donald’s graciousness increased. He had put a lot of work into planning the Pyrenees route, and now it had been discarded.

The Irish couple were correct. The road was safe, indeed there were good cycle paths all the time. And, not surprisingly given the weather, it wasn’t very busy. But the howling wind was something. I don’t think I have ever cycled in such conditions. Sometimes it was so strong that it almost lifted you up a hill; and then you turned a sharp corner and it attacked you. The only option was to get off the bike and walk; and sometimes just to stand still till that particular gust eased. However we were never in danger. The route worked. And on more than one occasion Donald told me how he appreciated my pushing for this coastal route, rather than waiting one or two days in France.

The scenery was very dramatic. Sheer cliffs, the sea, the winding road down to a small town in a bay, and then up again. All these towns were very much ‘out of season’. Hardly anyone was in the street. At one where we had a brief rest there was a young Swedish couple and their two small children playing nearby. The husband was a teacher, so he and Donald has an animated conversation about education. I decided to talk to the wife who was looking after the toddlers. I explained about the pilgrimage, and then asked if she was a Christian. She said she was, and that she had been confirmed. However she admitted her faith was faint. She had not read the Gospel of John, so I gave her a copy, and encouraged her to enjoy her faith. I hope this random encounter helped her.

Entering Spain was a little depressing. The old checkpoint offices at the top of a hill had been vandalised and were covered in graffiti. But the views of the sea on the descent down were truly magnificent. We had only cycled twenty five miles today, but it had been hard going and we were ready to rest. So we stopped at the first seaside town, Portbou, and had a beer in a dingy bar with a fruit machine and an unfriendly barman. Here Donald presented me with a ‘Certificate of Pedalling Achievement’ for cycling through France. He is well acquainted with my thinking on some subjects. There was a line of exclamation marks, all crossed out. I loathe exclamation marks. The noisy, vulgar, and intrusive louts of the punctuation family. Donald also knows of my disdain for the French Revolution and its vacuous slogan of ‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity’. So he complimented me with : ‘Liberality, Equanimity, and Felicity’. This was kind, thoughtful and humorous.

Again because of the wind, we blanked camping and again got accommodation through booking.com. It all happened very easily.

Day Five, Tuesday April 14^th

We planned to leave around eight thirty, so I was able to have some time for prayer and reading the Bible. My Old Testament reading for the day was Psalm 104. Not surprisingly I was very struck by the mention of wind in verses 3 and 4:

He rides on the wings of the wind

he makes his messengers winds...

Was God riding on the wind that sometimes pushed us, sometimes forced us off our bikes? And what was the message of these winds? These questions were in my mind for most of the day.

It was a long hill out of Portbou. We climbed and climbed. But then it was time to leave this more difficult road and we disappeared down a small country road. It felt like the time of stress and effort and dealing with the wind and the hills all suddenly finished. There we were on an empty lane, on the flat, with a blue sky above us, hardly a breath of wind, and in the distance, beyond a green wheat field, the snow capped Pyrenees. The view of the mountains from the Spanish side, the south side, is more magnificent. They appear clearer, more in focus.

In the afternoon we started to use a special bike route for the Pyrenees area. It was called the Pryanexus. It was fine when it was sign-posted; but more than once the signs petered out and we were left to work things out from Google or Koomoot. It was a stop and start sort of ride – but no hills, no wind. We were on the plains.

Our campsite was a little eerie. It was a vast out of season holiday park. There were hundreds of static caravans, a huge pool, restaurants, bars, an entertainment stage – and hardly a soul around. Just one watchman who let us in, and one other camper.

By now the wind in Psalm 104 was coming into focus. Wind, of course, is the Holy Spirit. We know that from Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, we know it from the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. God absolutely rides on the wind of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is His constant messenger. Our journey started at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, it is due to end at the Cathedral (actually Basilica) of the Holy Family. The Holy Spirit brings about Holy Family. But why the ferocious speed, the howling, the gusts that pushed us of our bikes? And why on hills? Why was the wind sometimes with us, sometimes against us. Unpredictable, even wild.

That’s family.

There are times of free-wheeling down hills with the wind on your back; but there are plenty of hills. On this bike ride, most of the time the wind was helping us up those hills. That is a picture that stays with me. Our family, like all families, have climbed some hills: but we were helped. And at times that same wind has stopped me in my tracks. Thank you.

The drama of the wind and the hills as we neared the Sagrada Familia made perfect sense. God is family, God is for family. The good life is nearly always a life of good relationships, often in an actual family, or with a close set of friends. And so the Holy Spirit is there to help us as we faithfully climb the hill of staying together, and sometimes there has to be frightening strength. And then, as happened today, there are no more hills, the wind is gentle and the road is kind. That is also family.

Day Six, Wednesday April 15^th

Apart from a minor drama with Donald’s phone, which was dealt with by a kind work colleague, the morning’s ride was easy going. Some of it was along the coast, some on quiet country lanes or tracks, and a few busy roads. We felt we deserved a proper cooked meal – we had not had one for perhaps two days – so we headed for the plaza in a town called Llagostora in search of a decent looking restaurant. We found ‘The Casino’ which with its vast interior and exceptionally high ceilings was very atmospheric.

The afternoon ride to Sills was also easy, and mainly car free. Our campsite was in the middle of nowhere, and, again was virtually deserted. Reception was shut, but outside sat a young Swedish lady. She had just started a biking expedition in the opposite direction to ours. She was cycling the Euro Velo Route 8 from Barcelona to Montenegro. Well north of two thousand miles. On her own. We talked quite a bit, but still no receptionist, so I went and found a spot and put up our tent. A friendly lady came round later and I went up to give our passport details and pay. She hadn’t been on time because her father had just had an operation in the hospital.

Knowing we would be miles from any shops we had bought some food earlier which we now ate in a deserted restaurant area which overlooked the campsite. We talked about the journey of faith, and the lost sons in Jesus’ parable. Both were lost to the father. One for the pleasures of life, the other for thinking their moral life meant they were owed something. Which were we?

Day Seven, Thursday April 16^th

It was a cold night. I took the tent down wearing gloves. On the next pitch was the young Swedish lady. I asked her what the poetry was behind her trip, the motivation. She said she wanted to test her mental health, to be alone with nature. I didn’t take this to mean that she had mental issues. She was wanting to test her character. On nature I told her about Psalm 19:1 - The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands’. She said she wasn’t religious, but she listened. I told her my own story of being encouraged to seek God with all my heart, and how her life was precious. When we wheeled our bikes away she wasn’t in her tent, but I left a Gospel of John on her bike. I hope God speaks to her.

Today’s ride was fairly easy, just a few hills, and by mid afternoon we were at our last campsite. Our sixteenth over the three years. It was called ‘Barcelona’, and we were just twenty three miles from the city. We had a long and leisurely dinner in the site restaurant, and then played chess. A pleasant change. I won. Over dinner we reflected that this would probably be the last time we would do such a long ride (this leg was over 300 miles). But we were so grateful that we were able to do this in our late sixties.

From this campsite I had written to the clergy of the Sagrada Familia explaining the pilgrimage to them, and that we had been sent off from Guildford Cathedral with prayer from the Acting Dean. It would be wonderful if we could be met by prayer. I wasn’t expecting a reply, but one came swiftly. A priest would not be able to meet us tomorrow. Given this is one of the busiest Christian sites in the world, that is not so surprising.

The Final Day, Friday April 17^th

We were on our way by seven thirty. Our ride started on a busy coastal road, but thankfully we were only on it for a couple of kilometres. Then the magic of Google swerved us away from the coast and onto tracks which went between allotments. These tracks then took us round the back of Mataro. The bike paths were good. Going along one there was a young boy, no more than ten, pedalling along, and holding on to his back was a younger girl, probably his sister, on roller skates. A good way to get to school. They will probably talk about this to their grand-children.

After Mataro, Premia de Mar, where my son, Bahram, who lives in Spain, was due to meet us. There had been a bit of a mix up over the name of the cafe, so our rendezvous was a little delayed. It was great to see him. I felt very chuffed that he had taken a day off work to do this. But there was no time to savour the moment. We needed to push on.

The ride into Barcelona was perfect. We were on the flat, right by the sea which was now its proper Mediterranean blue, the sun shining, but not scorching, with the city skyline getting nearer and nearer. And then the Sagrada Famila began to stand out from the other buildings. Over 900 miles of cycling, and now we could see our destination. We entered Barcelona, first through an industrial area, and then the dramatic buildings of the 1992 Olympics. After these, we came to the Diagonal, a wide tree lined avenue that would lead us to the Basilica.

Neither Donald nor Bahram are signed up Christians. They have their own spiritual journeys. But I had told them that when we got there I would like to say a prayer. They were relaxed. When we did get there it was heaving. People everywhere. It was going to be impossible to get to an entrance. No wonder a priest could not meet us. So squeezed by a fence virtually opposite the front entrance I announced we had arrived and said a prayer of thanks, and asked for God’s blessing on our families.

The pilgrimage was over.

The next couple of hours were intense – getting our camping kit packed up and posted to the UK, finding the accommodation I had booked for the family, taking our bikes apart and getting them into their bags for the flight home. And then suddenly Donald was in a taxi heading for the train station to travel to Valencia where his family were coming.

Yes, the original idea was mine; but in a hundred small details, Donald had made it happen. He had chivvied me to do proper practice rides each year before we set off, booked the ferries, the trains with bike spaces, the camp-sites, arranged for us to stay with Paul in Toulouse – and planned and navigated the whole route, from Guildford to Barcelona. A mammoth task. Beyond all these logistics he was an excellent cycling companion and spirited conversationalist. So much to be grateful for.

Epilogue

What is a good life?

For many of us it is a life with a family.

My wife, Mojdeh, and Yasna, my daughter, flew out from England to be with me at the end of my pilgrimage, Bahram had come from Madrid. And so on Saturday we experienced the wonder of the Sagrada Famila as a family. For me it was very emotional. No words can convey how precious family is, or properly describe those times when its beauty is framed for our hearts. And those two hours in the Sagrada Familia, in fact the whole week-end with my family in Barcelona, was such a time.

I had always hoped that I would be able to cycle those 950 miles, I had always hoped that I would enjoy the Sagrada Familia, and I had always hoped that my family would be with me. But I never knew how wonderful it was actually going to be.

Yasna and I spent nearly an hour inching round the outside of the cathedral before our entrance time. The depiction of the Passion on the West side is stark and intense. There is so much pain there. The sleeping disciples in Gethsemane; the traitor’s kiss, Pilate’s cowardice, and in the centre Christ tied to a post for the whipping. Above this, Christ is on the cross – with his mother, family, at its foot. Here is the atonement. God’s love in Christ for every sinner. But above all this pain, there is another cross. It’s empty. And sitting on a beam, almost casually, is the ascended Christ. And behind the empty cross, a descending dove: The Holy Spirit. At the end the story, all is well.

It is not that we left the Holy Spirit to arrive at Holy Family. The Holy Spirit was with us all the way. I remember the storm on our first leg, the black sky, but the white dove flying along side us, the wind on this ride. And here at our destination, behind the cross, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in Guildford, the Holy Spirit in Barcelona.

Physically this was a journey from the cathedral of the Holy Spirit to the cathedral of the Holy Family. Poetically that underlines that being filled with the Holy Spirit must result in family, good relationships. But spiritually there is no such journey. The Holy Spirit and the Holy Family are always together.

1For a review of the book in The Church Times see here -https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/30-august/books-arts/book-reviews/book-review-the-divine-economy-how-religions-compete-for-wealth-power-and-people-by-paul-seabright

2This was a birthday present from my brother, so whatever my own feelings about the flag, loyalty asks me to wear it.

3 For more on Fred Hirsch see, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hirsch_(economist)

Saturday, 10 January 2026

‘The Great Awokening': Cultural Progressivism and the church in Britain. Excellent analysis by Martin Charlesworth

Like most Christians, indeed most ordinary people, I have been shocked and saddened by the rise of LGBTism in the UK within official circles. This movement has persuaded politicians, who appear educated and intelligent, to send male rapists to female prisons, give puberty blockers to teenagers, and urge female nurses to get undressed in front of biological men. It has destroyed traditional marriage, forced children to have two men or two women as parents, hijacked the impartiality of the BBC, and split the Church of England. And more.

What went wrong?

My answer was rather vague; it was society turning from God. But the government in China has been atheist for years, but they have never torn up traditional marriage and the reality of sex. But there was a time when our prime minister thought that people who were born male were in fact women, and so he said it wasn’t only women who have a cervix. Starmer has changed his position, but his previous statement shows that some sort of intellectual contagion had entered the public psyche.

Martin Charlesworth’s excellent book has explained for me what this contagion is, though he would never use such a strong word. It is Critical Theory (CT). I confess had no idea what CT was all about, and certainly no idea that it was fuelling LGBTism and other identity campaigns.

It is primarily for this reason Charlesworth’s book should be highly recommended reading for all Christians in the West – actually for everyone who wants normality – and compulsory reading for church leaders. For it brings into focus the fact that behind seemingly moral causes about race, gender, and sexuality is this quasi-Marxist creed of Critical Theory. It points to a very different story to the Christian one.

Charlesworth’s book explains not just what Critical Theory is, a simplistic paradigm that divides people up into two power groups, but also how it has adopted three identity causes, race, gender, and sexuality. These have each been given almost a sacred status because of ‘moral panics’ such as the murder of George Floyd, the sexual aggression of Harvey Weinstein, and the transitioning of the US sporting hero Bruce Jenner to become a woman.

Before reading the book, I thought that the Black Lives Matter movement was just that, a morally just campaign to ensure coloured people were treated fairly. As Charlesworth explains, much more is going on. Because of Critical Race Theory it is not just about getting equal rights, it is about making sure that the oppressed group – the blacks – are able to completely push back against the whites. Charlesworth also shows how the same paradigm is at work with the pro-Palestinian marches. The Jews are the allies to the white oppressors, so they much be pushed back (to the sea). Likewise I thought that the Me-Too movement was a moral protest about the grim abuse of women by powerful men. It was, and is. Rightly so. But again, because of Critical Theory, much more is going on. The answer to life's many complicated problems is to get rid of the 'patriarchy'. It’s the same with gender ideology. It is not just about gay or trans rights, it is about an oppressed identity pushing back against the oppressive identity. I remember reading about a school chaplain who had been sacked for preaching a sermon supporting traditional marriage. Bernard Randall then had to go on an ‘education’ course about diversity, where the instructor forced all the poor attendees to chant, ‘Smash heteronormality’ This zeal just seemed obnoxious to me; Charlesworth has helped me understand how this sort of chant fits perfectly into what Critical Theory is all about.

Charlesworth outlines other dangers tied up in Critical Theory. One is that there is no tolerance for free speech in the movements they fuel. The oppressor must be pushed aside, their voice not even heard. Even reasoned argument must be silenced, because in the creed of Critical Theory the only voice that has validity is the voice of those who have experienced oppression. The foundation of all these dangers is that Critical Theory is a simplistic deceit, detached from reality. Salvation in the Critical Theory paradise is the demolition of a dominant power - the whites and their allies; the partiarchy, heteronormaity. But, as Charlesworth points out, all societies have to have some sort of hierarchy. The most casual student of history knows this. And literature. 'Animal Farm' is a classic, because it underlined this truth. Get rid of the humans, and the pigs will come.

There is a lot more to like about this book. Throughout the tone is respectful. Charlesworth does not use the derogatory word ‘woke’ except in the title. He uses the phrase ‘Cultural Progressivism’. There is no machine gun polemic here, intent on humiliating an enemy. Instead there is a lot of listening. And there are a lot of personal stories that tell us about this listening. We learn about how Charlesworth’s own sister gave up her traditional marriage, and joined a feminist commune in the 1970s; how he invited himself to the home of a homosexual who demanded that a church seminar listen to the gays. They are still friends. He also invited himself for a coffee with a bishop who said the Greek in the New Testament did not condemn stable homosexual relations. Charlesworth and the Bishop sat down to look at the Greek, and the bishop agreed that he had not been faithful to the text. Charlesworth is not only well read on this subject; he has spent time with the people who are engaged in these campaigns.

Charlesworth is a passionate believer in the local church. This is where, he says, the rubber hits the road. He himself has been the leader of a thriving local church for many years. He knows all about the complications of congregational life. So he has an entire section for church leaders on how to deal with Critical Theory. It is very helpful.

There is an urgent plea for the church speak up much more. As most of us know, while LGBTism has been trying to establish itself as an alternative religion in the UK, most pulpits have been silent. This has allowed confusion to flourish. If you are a church leader reading this review, may I urge you to buy a copy and start planning a fight back against this false Critical Theory gospel. The real Gospel is much richer and kinder.

You can buy it here on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Awokening-Cultural-Progressivism-Britain/dp/1836884125

Tuesday, 16 December 2025

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN: A short and easy to read commentary

There are hundreds of superb commentaries and books about the Gospel of John. And many exceptional scholars. Some have given much of their academic lives to studying these extraordinary 21 chapters - Raymond Brown, Richard Baukham, Don Carson, Richard Culpepper, Craig Keener, John Robinson, Ben Witherington and many more. Anyone who has studied or taught the Fourth Gospel, as I have, is indebted to them.

This is not a work of scholarship. There are hardly any footnotes. Rather, I hope, it will be an easy and enjoyable read, either for the whole journey, or just a particular chapter that interests you. All the links are posted below.

For some who have never engaged with the Gospel of John, this might whet your appetite. For others, perhaps there will be an insight you have not seen before. For everyone, I hope, this is a decent overview of what must surely be one of the finest pieces of writing this world has ever seen.

Tom Hawksley, December 2025

1. Introduction

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-gospel-of-john-introduction.html

2. The Prologue 1: 1 - 18

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-gospel-of-john-prologue-john-11-18.html

3. John The Baptist 1:19 - 34; 3: 22 - 36; 10: 41 - 42

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-gospel-of-john-john-baptist-119-34.html

4. The First Disciples 1: 37 - 51

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-gospel-of-john-first-disciples-1-37.html

5. The Wedding at Cana 2:1 – 12

https://sternfieldthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-gospel-of-john-wedding-at-cana-21-12.html

6. The Temple 2:13 - 25