Babies, Baristas & Boogie Nights - Jessicah Kendrick & The Shrewsbury Coffeehouse

Jessicah doesn’t know the sex of her and Chris’s baby.  They’re waiting to find that out at the birth. It’s going to be part of the excitement of the occasion, seeing their little child for the first time and being told ‘here’s your son/daughter’.  It means they can’t get stocked up in advance with pink or blue, but they don’t particularly care about pink or blue and babies certainly don’t know the difference.  They’ve bought a cot, a rug, a bath tub and some plastic ducks. That’s enough for now. 

What about a name, I ask.  If it’s a boy, Jessicah says, Chris is keen on Django, but Django Unchained has rather put her off.  Besides, why should the baby be named after a musician admired by its father any more than a coffee-shop its mother once worked in? Starbucks Kendrick? Or Django Quinn.  Or Django Starbucks Kendrick-Quinn? Which one do you think has the right ring?

The Chris I’m talking about is Chris Quinn, whom I interviewed earlier this year.  The Jessicah is Jessicah Kendrick, the amazingly zippy founder-come-manager-at-large of the Shrewsbury Coffeehouse.  For once she’s not dashing about, but sitting on my sofa nursing her neat little bump.  She’s a petite, wiry woman with an elfin face and big smile, and she’s smiling now, telling me that Chris reckons a baby won’t change their lives. It’s going to be easy.  If it was that hard, people wouldn’t do it - that's what Chris says. 

I’m not saying anything, and I don’t need to.  Jessicah is the oldest of a family of five. She remembers her dad leaving the house and driving off into the night accompanied by crying babies.  She knows it won’t be quite as easy as Chris thinks, but reckons they’re ready for it, and that Chris’s lifestyle as a guitarist won’t get in the way.  His working nights and her working days could even end up being a bonus when it comes to childcare.  

All of this is conveyed in a soft American drawl.  The family arrived in Shrewsbury from the States when Jessicah was thirteen. She was a young-for-her-age, tree-climbing thirteen. When in her first few days at school she was told, ‘My friend thinks you’re cute, will you go out with him?’ she was shocked. Dating and Bacardi Breezers were a world away. But she adapted.  ‘It’s what you do in a situation like that.  What you have to do. I started wearing cooler clothes and hanging out with the popular girls.  It wasn’t until SCAT that I got to be myself again.’

After SCAT [Shrewsbury College of Art and Technology] came Middlesex University and a Fine Arts degree.  As well as art, Jessicah was interested in sociology.  Back in the 80s, everything had seemed silver-lined, but it wasn’t like that now and she wanted to know what had happened.  How had Sex in the City turned into Desperate Housewives? Why were so many women no longer willing to call themselves feminists? 

This interest developed into Jessicah’s dissertation.  In times of economic upheaval, she discovered, people looked backwards to what they knew and what made them feel safe. They also looked inward to what they could control. So folk music boomed, along with pursuits like knitting. Marriage came back in and so did an idealistic view of love and the two-point-two family. Against this backdrop, feminism came across to many as threatening.

After university, Jessicah returned to Shrewsbury and set about looking for a job. She woke up every morning with no lectures to go to, her student days a thing of the past. How to fill the rest of her life - especially for a live-wire girl who liked hard work and didn’t relish hanging about? Enter photographer and film-maker Richard Foot.    

Soon, along with Richard, Jessicah was involved with Platform Alteration, a monthly arts and music event held upstairs in the Old Post Office pub. People would bring along their artwork.  There’d be competitions and judgings. Bands would play.  The tall poet, Andi Fusek Peters, came for a reading.  Jessicah was on the committee.  It was a busy time.

Was that where Jessicah met Chris, I ask.   No, she says, she met him before that. Ten years before, and there had been a few dates. But they’d only really got together a few years ago. ‘There was a moment,’ Jessicah says, ‘when I thought, if I don’t go for this I just might lose it.’ And they’d been together ever since. 

‘We’re good together,’ Jessicah says. ‘We complement each other.  Both of us are work focused.  Both get on with people, both want the same things.  There are people who might find a musician’s lifestyle hard to live with.  But I’m an independent person.  I like time to myself.  If Chris is off to Germany for a gig, there’ll always be other things I want to do – either that or I’ll be off round to my mum’s.’    

Jessicah’s mum is Sheila Sager, artisan baker and co-chair of  Shrewsbury’s Town Centre Residents. She lives across town from Jessicah on one of Shrewsbury’s cobbled hills.  If her daughter’s busy and likes a bustling life, it’s because that’s always been the family way.  As a child, Jessicah, says, the house was always full. 

‘You’d come to the table, and fifteen other people would show up and some of them you’d know but others you’d never have seen before. Everyone was welcome. I have a distinct memory of bathrooms full of people dyeing their eyebrows blue, and rooms full of people with projects on the go.  Even when my parents weren’t in, kids would come round. In the UK, I learned, it wasn’t usual to go round to people’s houses unless you were invited.  But back in the States I could have knocked on any number of doors and  it would have been Hi Jessicah, does your mum know you’re here, do you want to stay to supper? There was a real sense of the community looking after its own children.  I guess we brought that with us when we moved to Shrewbury.’ 

Certainly Jessicah brought that with her when she opened up the Shrewsbury Coffeehouse.  What she wanted was a home from home. ‘A place to pitch ideas,’ she says, ‘to share stories, play games, chat and just hang out.’ Now here we are two years down the line, and I wonder how Jessicah feels it's worked in practice. 

‘I feel amazing about The Coffeehouse,’ she says.  ‘It’s exceeded all expectations. I remember somebody saying that the one thing Shrewsbury didn’t need was another coffee house, but they were wrong and I knew it even then.  I feel as if Shrewsbury was craving for something and the Coffeehouse filled the void. Do you know, over fifty per cent of our customers come in on an almost daily basis? Two years down the line, I really feel as thought the Coffeehouse belongs to its customers, and we owe it to them to keep it what it is.’

But in the first place, where did the idea come from? At one point, Jessicah says, she was going in five directions at the same time, working in Starbucks, in her mother’s bakery, training as an interior designer, helping make industrial-sized amounts of jam and doing up houses. She liked doing things with people, and she liked hard work. ‘If someone had said come and dig a giant hole with me, I’d have said yes,’ she says.  ‘I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought.’     

Eventually Jessicah had what one of her sisters called a  ‘quarter-life crisis’.  Creating a mind map was how she sorted herself out. What did she like doing?  She listed it all down.  What was she good at? That went down as well. What common ground was there, and was there any way of pulling it all together? Jessicah started looking for connections.  People. Building work. Good food and drink. Good chat.  Thinking. Music. Community. The arts.  Sleeves up.  Hard graft. A bit of demolition thrown in for good measure. Of course – a coffeehouse. 

A couple of weeks ago, I had a coffee with Sheila Sager.  She told me that when Jessicah first came to her with her grand idea, she as her mother had been full of what about this, and have you thought about that, and Jessicah, I’m not so sure, and Jessicah, you do know that...  But Jessicah kept telling her, ‘Mum, this will work.  I know it will.’ 

And of course it has.

Jessicah says she enjoyed it all from the construction onwards, doing all the demolition and decorating,  spending days scraping off carpet glue with friends.  Then there was the shopping stage on eBay and in Salvage Yards for furniture and fittings.  Then the coffee stage, investigating roasteries, and the food stage, investigating local produce and menus. What she envisaged was the sort of ramshackle college-run coffeehouse that crops up in university towns - ramshackle in a good way, she emphasizes.  What she didn’t envisage was how busy or successful the Shrewsbury Coffeehouse would be, or what a wide range of people would use it, and continue to come back.  

What next, I ask?  Jessica says she doesn’t know for sure if this is her for life.  She could end up as a plumber or a landscape gardener or something else.  At the moment, there’s a shepherd’s hut in her parents garden that’s most definitely a project waiting to happen. ‘I love it,’ she says, ‘that some people feel a calling towards just one profession.  Artists, musicians, writers, whatever. But I’m not like that. I could be a carpenter.  Why not? Or go into zoology.  I mean, I love animals.’

Jessicah’s love of rabbits is something I decide not to pursue. What about her managements skills, I ask instead. She’s a great believer in delegation, she says.  In fact, she’d rather be told what to do than do it herself - that’s why she’s surrounded herself at the Coffeehouse with people who are good at directing.

There’s Simon, who does ordering and accounting, and Richie who’s in charge of food and drink, then, as overall manager, Jessicah’s in charge of events.  What she wants – and what she’s worked to achieve - is a team mentality.  She remembers how soul destroying it used to be back in the days when she worked in a coffee shop elsewhere.  ‘The only chance of expressing individuality,’ she says, ‘was by the number of multi-coloured pens tucked in your apron, or the way you poured the drinks.  No way do I want the Shrewsbury Coffeehouse to be like that. I love it when people use their initiative.’ 

On the subject of events, I want to know more. The Shrewsbury Coffeehouse has taken off like a sky-rocket, and it’s not only because of its coffee - it’s because of its events. To begin with Jessicah used Chris’s contacts to book live acts, but slowly word got out that a Shrewsbury Coffeehouse gig was worth adding to the tour. The place would be packed.  The audience would be appreciative.  The venue allowed for the sort of intimate atmosphere that show-cased jazz, folk, swing and roots music at its best.

Jessicah’s been pulling in some big names too. Last year the Coffeehouse hosted Fapy Lafertin, the godfather of Gypsy Jazz.  Then they had Dick Gaughean – he of the legendary Boys of the Lough. Then John Etheridge, Stephane Grappelli’s long-term guitarist, performed - and that night was so popular that he’s coming back this week to a Shrewsbury Coffeehouse event at the Lion Hotel.*

To be able to bring to Shrewsbury musicians of this calibre  – especially to a new venue - is quite a feat.  But in the coming year, the Coffeehouse also has booked Tim Kliphaus, the Dutch virtuoso violinst who trained with Stephane Grappelli;  Clive Carroll; John Doyle, who played for Barack Obama at The White House on St Patrick’s Day; and Catfish Keith, American acoustic blues singer-songwriter/steel guitarist.    

Jessicah loves it that people of all ages come to these events.  She also loves it that other groups use the Coffeehouse too. There’s a book club and a thriving poetry group, and everybody from bus users’ groups to school PTAs are holding their meetings in the Coffeehouse.  ‘If it’s open, why not?’ Jessicah says.  ‘The space is there to be used.’ 

How does Jessicah see the Coffeehouse developing? More work needs to be done on the food front, she reckons, introducing interesting cheeses and meats, and breakfasts including fruit and yoghurt. And it would great to have lectures sometimes. Jessicah  would love to get people in to talk about their different fields – art history, philosophy, science or whatever.  And on the subject of science, she’d love a New Scientist magazine club where instead of sitting round talking about books, people could talk about latest articles.  If someone volunteered [hint] to set it up, she’d give it her full support.  However, with a baby just ten weeks away, even someone as active and busy as Jessicah can see that it isn’t the moment to be doing it herself.

When that baby comes, I’ll let you all know.  We’ll hang out the buntings and raise a glass.  For now, however, it’s time to say goodbye. Jessicah stands on the doorstep.  Today’s her ‘day off’, but already she’s been into the Coffeehouse once, then on here to talk to me, and now she’s heading back again to find the Coffeehouse diary and book an event. 

I say I hope that when she gets there, she won’t stay. What she should be doing is going home, putting up her feet and taking a rest.  If you see her doing anything else, tell her straight.  But will she listen?  Will she hell.

What's on at The Shrewsbury Coffeehouse


*STOP PRESS:  This Friday, April 19th

Working Magic - An Afternoon in Shrewsbury Library with author Peter Murphy

‘Thanks for having me, and thanks for turning up.  It’s an extraordinary library you have here. I’ve never been into such a beautiful library.’

Peter Murphy stood before us, book in hand. He was a slight man, dark-haired and pointy with a whiff-beard, silver rings in his ears and something steely about his eyes which belied his tousled appearance. Over the next hour, he promised, he’d endeavour, whether on books, libraries, rivers or mythologies, to speak coherently and with interest. 

The venue was Shrewsbury’s Castle Gates Library, the event organised by Shropshire Library Service, who are always working hard to bring books, authors and the pleasure of reading to as wide an audience as possible.  Shall We Gather At The River was the book we’d come to hear about this time - Peter Murphy’s second novel, which had garnered some stunning reviews. He kicked off by reading us its Prologue. If we hadn’t known before why his publishers had sent him to Shrewsbury, we quickly found out:

On the first day of November in the year of ’84, that enduring river turned on the town of Murn….  The current picked up speed and the river swelled to the lip of its banks…Local radio issued flood damage updates on the hour…. Everywhere was besieged and soaked as that bloated old river conquered the valley slopes and threatened the town’s worried heart…

This was a book of rivers, floods and death. And we in Shrewsbury understand rivers.  We get what they’re about.  We also understand about floods. In their dreams the townsfolk do not speak.  Because they do not wish to rouse the river, read Murphy.  And beyond Castle Gates, carving its path around our town was a force of nature that we, too, don’t wish to rouse.    

 In 2002, there had been a series of incidents in Enniscorthy, Peter Murphy’s home town, a succession of young men entering the swollen River Slaney over a period of days and drowning themselves.  Why, everyone had asked - and it was to answer that question [or at least find ways of asking it afresh] that Murphy set out to write Shall We Gather At The River. 

Enniscorthy is the second largest town in Ireland’s County Wexford. It has a long history, going back to 465 AD, and is one of the longest continuously-occupied sites in Ireland. Growing up in Enniscorthy, Peter Murphy remembered Marconi living up the road.  ‘You know, the man who invented the radio,’ he said.  ‘And our local church was a great, hulking Pugin cathedral.  The sort of place you’d expect to see the Hunchback of Notre Dame swinging from the belfry.’

Certainly Murphy had plenty to draw upon. At one point, he’d amassed so much material, about so many characters, that he wondered if he was writing two books. He read to us again, introducing the book’s central and most  commanding character, the schizophrenic radio evangelist and Elvis acolyte, Enoch O’Reilly, tuner-in to the airwaves of God. 

Enoch dons his tinted glasses and draws himself up to his full six foot one and breathes deeply and gives himself a bit of a wet-dog shake. Down the hall he goes, his heartbeat tolling every step. He mounts the stairs and prowls the wings like a caged animal until ‘O Fortuna [Carl Orff] has crested its climactic final movement, and then he strides on stage…

There was a moment’s stunned silence, as befit those who’d just witnessed  Enoch O’Reilly in full flood. A pause. Then applause.  ‘Thank you,’ Peter Murphy said. 'Any questions, comments anyone?' Then the comments started coming. Somebody wanted to talk about the sense of harrowing in the book, that drove men to the river. Someone else wanted to talk about vertigo - that drawing to the edge of things, with its destructive urge that they described as a vertical force. Murphy said he wished they’d been around five years ago. ‘I could have written what you just said.  You could have saved me a lot of time,’ he said.

People talked about the powerful sense in the book of shadow forces at work, that did not exist for anybody’s benefit.  Self-sabotage was what Murphy called it. The stuff of all great gothic novels.  ‘Give me an audience,’ he said with a puckish flash of a grin, ‘and I want to have fun.  But what do I do instead? I bang on about suicides, death and things like that.’

‘Aaah,’ growled an old man in the audience.  ‘I always says when sumoon falls in the Severn there’s a lot a reeds in there.  There’s not much hope for ‘em.’

‘Robert Mitchum,’ Peter Murphy quipped.  ‘Night of the Hunter. One of my favourite films.   There’s a scene where he’s murdered the mother and she’s lying in the bottom of the river, her hair entwined amongst the weeds.’

So, who is this Peter Murphy, writer of books, recipient of rave reviews, creator of Enoch O’Reilly and answerer of questions on the subject of floods? What makes him tick?  And, more importantly, how did he come to be a writer?  Later, when the talk was over and the room had emptied, I had the chance to interview him. Here he was, I said, everybody calling him the latest this and best that, and an Irish writer of substance, and the most exciting new talent to watch.  But what were his beginnings?  How had he got to where he was today? 

Peter Murphy lives again today in Enniscorthy.  His dad was a post office clerk, his mother a some-time model and a telephonist in between raising five children.   Peter was the youngest of the five.  ‘The one who got ignored,’ he said,  adding, ‘in a good way, though.  I’m not complaining. I was fond of my own company. I liked reading. I liked playing on my own.’

Educated by the Christian Brothers, young Peter Murphy made it through primary school and two years into secondary education before being thrown out for refusing to wear a uniform.  Back in those days, it was music and comics that grabbed his attention.  And books, he said - his family were readers; it was a constant in their lives. 

‘Going to the library was a ritual,’ he said.  ‘It was something we as a family always did.  It was just a bare room too – not a library like this. It had a strip light and shelves full of books.  I used to pick out the action adventures.  Alistair McLean. Stephen King. James Herbert.  Typical boys’ stuff.  Horror and fantasy. Then I came across John Steinbeck – my first truly literary writer, I suppose, and that lead to the Beats, and Hunter S. Thompson, Raymond Carver and James Kelman.’

There are moments in Shall We Go To the River that seem to me pure Raymond Carver, the story literally hanging between the lines of words.  Some writers are just storytellers, but Peter Murphy is a craftsman.  Where did he learn to write, I wanted to know. 

At the age of 17, entered by his school, Murphy won a national essay-writing competition and was sent off round Europe sponsored by the European Union.  This was the first time he ever went abroad or saw the world outside his small-town Irish life.  Interestingly, the subject of that winning essay hadn’t particularly engaged him.  It had simply been a job of work.  More engaging was drumming, and rock ‘n roll.

‘For nine years I was a drummer in a rock band,’ Murphy said.  ‘I learned to be a performer. It was a full-time commitment. I enjoyed playing - but it didn’t provide a living and I had two small children to support.’ 

Murphy remembers working as a kitchen porter and deciding enough was enough. That’s when he turned to writing. Submitting to magazines features about Stephen King or Motorhead certainly beat kitchen portering. And it paid more than drumming.

It didn’t take long for Murphy to discover that one magazine in particular, Hot Press, would take all the work he sent its way.  It didn’t pay much but if he worked hard he was able to keep his head above water. It was a self-betterment exercise, too. ‘One thing led to another,’ Murphy said.  Soon he was doing major interviews and working on radio and TV, a regular guest on RTE’s arts review show, The Works. For six or seven years he worked this way, and he might have carried on.  However, both on the same week, two things happened that changed his life.

‘In 2001 my father died,’ Murphy said.  ‘Then, within a few days, my youngest daughter, Grace, was born. A month after that, I started writing fiction. Within a year I’d started my first novel.’  

John the Revelator was the novel in question.  In 2003, Peter Murphy was signed up by the agent  Marianne Gunn O’Connor.  She had a six-year wait for his first book [in this modern publishing world of deals and dates and deadlines, good to see a writer taking his time] but when it came out, John the Revelator was published to great acclaim.  

‘There was an emphasis on collaboration in writing John the Revelator,’ Murphy said.  ‘I worked together with a group of writer friends work-shopping each other’s stuff.  We’d email work to each other by a certain date, then meet up and spend three or four hours at a time going through it.’

Again, in Shall We Gather At The River, Murphy said that openness and collaboration was important, sharing work with authors he felt close to, in particular the writer Sean McNulty.  ‘I trusted him,’ he said.

Shall We Gather At The River is a far more complicated novel than John the Revelator.  As well as drawing on local Wexford life and times, it draws on legends about suicide cycles, flood mythology from Christian and pre-Christian eras, the strange nature of obsession and the Gaia theory of nature as a living entity that, as well as giving life, can devour. It inhabits familiar territory to anyone who’s seen Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter, or who’s read the novels of Flannery O’Conner, that most uncompromising of authors, writing about Bible belt evangelists and holy roller prophets in the Deep South of the US. 

Indeed, it was from O’Conner’s Wise Blood that Murphy took the name Enoch [along with a bit of Enoch Powell and his ‘rivers of blood’ speech, and Enoch in the Gnostic gospels - the only mortal taken without dying to heaven]. It was a form of homage, he said.

Was Murphy a religious man, I wanted to know. It was the spiritual, Murphy said, that interested him, not the overtly religious, especially the how, when and why of spiritual manifestation in philosophy and ideas.  We talked about the power of religious language, words used as a means of locating members of one’s own tribe.  ‘Certain words have incredible power,’ Murphy said.  ‘They speak a sort of code.’  Writing was all about weeding out the mamby pamby words, and getting to the juicy, high protein stuff.  ‘Like the pots of stuff my dad used to cook up for our dog,’ Murphy said.   ‘Writing’s a bit like getting a gumbo going, reducing it down to a pure stock.’ 

Within a couple of weeks of handing in the final manuscript of John the Revelator, Murphy began work on the Prologue to Shall We Gather At The River.  At this stage he'd no idea where he was heading.  All he had was a few pages of words. The spark that set him off, however, came from a Hot Press interview he did with the Manic Street Preachers, published in May 2007. In it Murphy mentioned the winter of 2002 in Enniscorthy and the two-week period when more than half a dozen young men walked into the River Slaney.  'Fucking hell,' said Nicky Wire.  'That's a novel waiting to get written.  Jesus Christ.'

He was right as well.  It was. But it was a long hard process before that novel saw the light of day. 'Four years of divorce, moving house, bereavement and turning forty’ is the way Peter Murphy described it. But encouragement came from his writer friends, and from the Manics, especially James Dean Bradfield.  ‘He’s been a powerful ally ever since. There’s something between the Irish and the Welsh.  A connection or something,’ Murphy said.

Currently Peter Murphy's not writing but travelling instead, doing book readings or performing with the Revelator Orchestra. This is an experience worth getting up on YouTube.  ‘Imagine, if you can, music that sounds like Tom Waits on drums and 
Lightnin’ Hopkins on a battered hollowbody thumping away down in the 
cellar while Murphy reads. The Sounds of John the Revelator is a neat
 piece of work that somehow combines the weirdness of Poe with the 
coolness of the Beats over a soundtrack that might’ve been created by
 the Velvet Underground.' That’s what one reviewer said. 

What about the next book? There had to be one, surely. Murphy didn’t know, he said. He’d have to write it to find out. I loved that for answer.  I never know, myself, what I’m up to when I start a new book.  This was my sort of writer.

It was getting late.  There was a girlfriend at the door, and a dog, and a car outside, and a ferry waiting at Holyhead to take them home. I packed away my notebook, thinking we were done, glasses in pocket, pen in bag.  ‘Thank you,’ I said.  ‘You put stories together, characters, words on a page, and magic happens,’ Peter Murphy said. 

Peter Murphy website

Watch The Revelator Orchestra

BUY Shall We Gather At The River

BUY: John the Revelator

Beggars Can't Be Choosers - 'Why Not?'

Those are the words that Tim Compton greeted me with when I went to see him recently at the Shrewsbury Ark. ‘Beggars can't be choosers - I hate that phrase,’ he said. ‘Why can’t people have choices just because they’ve hit hard times?’

The Shrewsbury Ark has had a lot of publicity over the last few days.  On Saturday the Big Busk took place on the birthday of Ben Bebbington, a Shrewsbury busker who was killed last year.  Ben spent a great deal of time in the Ark. It was a place where he could write poetry, be helped in getting it published, paint, hang out and feel at home. Everybody at the Ark was devastated to hear of his death, and the money raised by the Big Busk will be well used in Ben’s memory.

But then, at the Shrewsbury Ark every donation gets well used. When I went to see Tim, every available space was piled high with bags of clothes. Once they’d been sorted, some would go directly to the Ark’s clients and others would be sold or recycled,  bringing in an income.  There were no donations like these that couldn’t be used.  

Have you been past the Shrewsbury Ark? Do you know the place I’m talking about?  Down at the station, it’s on the left hand side of the road just before the railway bridge - a curtained shop-front type window with a painted rainbow over the front door. Its name’s suggests it’s a place of shelter, but probably like me you’ll have little idea what goes on behind that front door.  That’s why I went to see Tim Compton – to find out. 

For many in our town, the Shrewsbury Ark is a lifeline. For some it’s nothing less than an adoptive family.  For others it’s somewhere to turn to when the wheels of life start coming off. ‘In many respects,’ said Tim Compton, ‘the Ark is like a local without the alcohol. Some people pass through and that’s fine; you’re pleased to have met them and been able to help. But others hang out. The Ark has its regulars – and Ben Bebbington was one of those. He always had a smile and a friendly word.’

 Happy Days was Ben’s catchphrase, and Happy Days in Shrewsbury was the byline for last Saturday’s Big Busk. ‘It was an amazing day,’ said Ben’s sister, Karen Higgins. ‘People walked around smiling and greeting each other, and Ben’s mum was able to take comfort from the warmth and compassion overflowing through the streets.   There can never be words to explain how grateful we are to everyone who gave their time, whether to perform or volunteer. The hope had been to fill the town with music, bring people in, support local businesses and raise awareness – and funds – for the Shrewsbury Ark.  All of that was achieved, and so much more.’ 

So, what’s the history of this remarkable little Ark down by the railway station?  When I asked Tim, he said that work with the town’s homeless began in the 1970s with the Christian Centre, which was initially based in Old St Chad's. This was not a good venue as there was no power, light, heat or running water. Accommodation in the Old School House down at the Welsh Bridge became available later, and the work moved to 70 Castle Foregate in around 1997. However, in 2006 government funding dried up and this night shelter had to be closed.

Aware of the need to make for provision for rough sleepers and others, Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council bought the building that now houses the Ark for the use of the Christian Centre Association, which runs the Ark and pays the Council rent.  The Ark opened in March 2008.  Eighteen months later its Manager, Phil Griffiths, moved on and Tim Compton took his place. With a background working in supported housing for the homeless and those with mental health issues, he was the right man for the job.    

‘Funnily enough, I wasn’t looking for a job,’ said Tim. ‘But this one came along and it was perfect for me.  It ticked all the boxes. Not you understand that I’m a box-ticking type.’

Tim definitely didn’t come across as the box-ticking type.  More the passionate and lively type, I’d have said, hard-headed about human nature one minute, jumping to his feet the next to showcase something he felt that I should see.  In the corner, we found one of Ben’s paintings, and he dug it out.  As we talked, he left his desk and started showing me around.  For a small building, I discovered  the Ark to be packed full of amenities. Showers, a laundry, a couple of sitting rooms, a clothes bank, a food bank, a kitchen, computers, a designated phone line for clients’ medical/social/benefits/housing etc use, a smokers’ area outside with tables and chairs, a lift for wheel-chair users [which had only been used so far for moving heavy goods] – like the Biblical Ark with its animals, it was amazing how much Shrewsbury’s little Ark had packed in.

In the kitchen, Deputy Manager, Amy Parkes was cooking lunch and a volunteer was collecting a client’s medication, which the Ark had responsibility for administering.   With only three full-time staff, the Ark was largely dependent on volunteers. Some of them came in five days a week.  Some only came for half a day, but all of them made a difference.

‘Primarily their job is to talk to clients and make them welcome,’ said Tim.  ‘When I first came here, I could see that we needed to raise the level of engagement with individuals.  There’s now a strong emphasis on welcoming. We act as hosts. This is a very important role. People aren’t just left to their own devices when they come through the door.  We aim to establish a dialogue in order to try to meet their needs.’

The Ark isn’t just a place for boiling up a kettle for a brew or jumping in the shower.  It’s a place for human interaction, where staff and volunteers care about what happens to the people who come through the door, and will take time to show that care. They’re not naïve about human nature – they’re aware that the picture people present may need exploring, and that offering help won’t always be straightforward. But they’ll do what they can.

What was the worst thing about working at the Ark, I asked Tim. The frustration at not always being able to change things, he replied.  Sometimes you wanted to be able to wave a magic wand and make everything all right. Bureaucracy was frustrating.  He understood the processes that local government, say, or the Department of Works & Pensions insisted on going through. But it was frustrating to keep crashing into barriers and in the face of them to feel so powerless.

And the good things, I asked.  When an individual you’d worked hard with achieved what they’d been striving for, that was pretty good, Tim replied.  ‘We’ve had a number of cases where people have looked back and said I can’t believe I am where I am today. It’s great to see a former rough sleeper with only a car for a roof over his head coming back from his first day in a proper job. Great to visit a client in their first home, and them being the one to offer the cup of coffee.’

The Ark will provide a postal address to enable a homeless person to become eligible for a job.  They’ll provide clothes for an interview and shower facilities for sprucing up.  They’ll visit people in hospital.  They’ve even been known to find a home for the occasional dog.   

On one memorable occasion, Tim was asked to be an ex-client’s best man.  He agreed on conditions.  ‘No Amsterdam stag do,’ he said. ‘No stripping anybody and tying them to lamp posts. But, yes, apart from that.’  In fact he ended up being chauffeur, photographer and master of ceremonies - and since then has become godfather to the man’s daughter. ‘It was a privilege,’ he said.

Did the Ark attract trouble, I wanted to know.  Not often, Tim replied.  There was the odd bit of attitude if people didn’t get what they wanted. However it was rare for anyone to really kick off.  ‘Generally speaking, the Ark is a respectful environment,’ he said.  

In 2010 Rowan Williams, then the Archbishop of Canterbury, visited the Shrewsbury Ark.  Some regulars couldn’t believe that a man like him [‘I mean, he’s friends with the Queen’] was really going to visit them.  The occasion was memorable, not least because the Archbishop wasn’t to be rushed. Plainly he had a busy schedule but he refused to allow himself to be moved on, took his time and made sure he talked to everybody.  When he left, he went round saying goodbye, and remembered everybody’s name. People were important - and important as individuals - and he made that plain.      

Tim picked on that again when I asked about volunteers.  What qualities did they need to have, I wanted to know.  ‘They need to be people,’ was his reply. ‘Plain and simple.’ No more than that.

And, looking to the future, how would Tim like to see the work of the Shrewsbury Ark developing?  I asked the question and immediately he answered with the need in Shrewsbury for a night shelter. Working with the Statutory Authorities’ task force to keep rough sleepers to the minimum, Tim’s aware that identifying individuals in need and providing appropriate intervention can be more complicated than it sounds.    

‘I’d like to do more,’ he said. ‘Homeless people shouldn’t have to go all the way to Telford for a bed for the night.’  But he’d also like to take the work of the Ark out of its building and extend it county-wide. ‘There’s a real need right across Shropshire,’ he said.  ‘And I’d also like it if the Ark could provide support outside its current hours of 9.00am-4.30pm, five days a week. But in order to do that, we’d need more staff and volunteers.’

Back to that again. You can’t talk about the Ark without the subject of volunteers cropping up.  Tim is deeply grateful for the Ark’s many volunteers, but says that they could do with more. ‘All people have to do is get in touch,’ Tim said. ‘It’s as easy as going on the website or picking up the phone.’ Holding fund raising events, donating clothes [‘though we do ask people to ring first’], sorting out clothes [the bags tucked away in every available spare corner attest to how badly volunteers are needed for this], even providing food, including cooked lunches – all of this is helpful.

The Ark provides a cooked lunch every day. Several times a week these are brought in by people who’ve volunteered to cook. Whatever food comes in is shared amongst whoever’s there.  And it’s not just lunches that make a difference, but cakes and biscuits too, providing warmth, a welcome and a bit of comfort in often chaotic lives. 

It was time to leave.  ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell people?’ I asked Tim. ‘Anything we haven’t covered that you want them to know?’  ‘I want people to know how very much they’ve got in life,’ Tim said. ‘And I’d like them to think before judging, and to not make assumptions based on appearance and manner.  A person in need is as human as anybody else, and requires respect.  I remember once somebody saying why do so many homeless people have dogs? Well, why does anybody have a dog?  For company, security, friendship. Homeless people are no different to anybody else.’

    

Interested in becoming a Shrewsbury Ark volunteer? Here's the link:

http://www.shrewsburyark.co.uk/volunteering/

The Big Busk: Happy Days in Shrewsbury

Sadly I'm going to be out of the county this Saturday, so will miss The Big Busk. However I've been in touch with Ann-Marie Bebbington and Karen Higgins, the driving forces behind The Big Busk, asking them to tell me all about it.  This is what they have to say:  

'The event originated as we were trying to think of a fitting tribute to Ben Bebbington who was a friendly face and much loved busker (and mine & Karen's big brother), local to Shrewsbury, who was murdered in the town last September. We realised the most important thing to him was his music and his poetry, but the place which he gained most support and comfort from in recent years was the Shrewsbury Ark. 

'Putting these two together, we came up with the Charity Big Busk in aid of Shrewsbury Ark. Ben always said he felt lonely, but when he busked he felt less so. This Saturday, 6th April, is his birthday - so we intend to fill the town with music all day for him. 

'The event has the full support of Shrewsbury Town Council as well as the businesses in the town centre. During the day (which kicks off at 10am) we've got Pride Hill, both shopping centres, The Square, Milk Street, the Library, Butcher Row, The Old Market Hall and more. Acts will include folk, opera, instrumental, acoustic, storytelling, magic, dance and Colin Young with his triangle, it seems. There will also be a few surprises throughout the day!!!

'From 5pm – 7pm Jim Hawkins shall be doing a set at The Coffeehouse. ‘The Happy Days Social': https://www.facebook.com/events/512489798786339/

'Other evening sets shall be starting at 7pm and continuing until late at the following locations, and shall comprise of extremely talented local bands and artists:  Frank Bar and Diner; Morgans; Ashleys; The Wheatsheaf; and The Hole in the Wall

'Raffle tickets shall also be sold throughout the day and evening, with fantastic prizes offered by local business. The prize draw with be taking place next week live on the Adam and Vicky show on Radio Shropshire.
All proceeds received as a result of the 'busking' will be given to the Shrewsbury Ark. www.shrewsburyark.co.uk

'The last acts shall be going on about 21.00- 21.30. Thank you everybody for your support.  We do hope you'll all be there.'  

[Ben Bebbington with Jim Hawkins] 

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Bells and Fire: An Easter Vigil at St Alkmund's Church

I promised you bells and fire and here you are - the last post in my Easter Extravaganza. After this I’ll be taking a few days'  break. My mind’s a blur of hot cross buns and chocolate eggs. Then there was goodbye to Janet and Peter in Shrewsbury Market. Finally on Easter Saturday evening, there was St Alkmund’s Easter Vigil.

I’m glad I went.  It had been a busy few days and the St Alkmund’s Vigil was the perfect antidote. I only had to walk through the big doors at the back of the church and stand there smelling the scent of lilies, and there - in the heart of Shrewsbury, with the pubs firing up and people shouting to each other down Butcher Row - all the busyness stopped.

St Alkmund’s is a great church for quietness and reflection.  There are signs up all over the place inviting people to use it to take time out. A handful of people stood inside the doorway waiting for the vigil to start.  It felt like just the right number, intimate rather than intimidating.   

A fire was lit outside by Resident Priest, Richard Hayes [the white knight of the Princess House Public Inquiry, if you remember].  We huddled round it.  This part of the Vigil apparently was known as the Service of Light. As officiating priest, Richard Hayes produced the Paschal candle [sometimes called the Easter or the Christ candle, or even the Passover Candle, relating to the connection between Easter and the Jewish Passover] and traced the cross on it and the Alpha and Omega [signifying Christ as the fulfillment of all things]. Then he lifted the candle aloft to signify Christ as Light of the World. Our own little candles were lit from it and we made our way back into St Alkmund’s church and up the aisle to the chancel.

When I’d arrived, there’d been a hint of light still in the sky.  By now, however, all that had gone and the church stood in darkness, the only light coming from its tall, clear-glass windows, which glinted like diamonds. ‘By his holy and glorious wounds,’ pronounced Richard Hayes, as our officiating priest, ‘may the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness from our hearts and minds.’

We could have been a choir of monks processing up that aisle, especially with a sung liturgy, courtesy of our priest’s pitch-perfect voice. Holding up our tiny lights, everything felt, well - medieval, I suppose.  All over the world people would be meeting to celebrate like we did now, proclaiming the same form of words, remembering the empty tomb, using this liturgy to trace Easter’s story back to its roots. 

The Service of Light concluded with us seated in the chancel around the Paschal candle, which had been given prominence of place amongst the lilies.  Then began the second part of the Vigil, the Liturgy of the Word.  In turn each of us stood illuminated by the Paschal candle and read out a story from the Bible.  Mine was the Genesis story of Creation, starting with those famous words, In the beginning… It was followed by the deliverance of the Israelites through the walled-up waters of the Red Sea [‘the enemies you see before you today, said the Lord God, you will see no more’], and that in turn was followed by Isaiah’s call to the thirsty to ‘come to the waters to drink’, and Ezekiel’s ‘removing from you your heart of stone and giving you a heart of flesh.’   

Slowly, passage by passage, we wound our way towards the culmination of the Liturgy of the Word -  the Gloria, beginning with the words, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.’  This was the bit I remembered from once, many years before, when I’d been to an Easter Vigil. And it was the bit I was looking forward to. As soon as those first few words were pronounced, the organ burst to life, like a firework going off in the sky, and the congregation picked up hand bells and rang them loudly and continually until the organ signaled a stop. 

This provided us with a moment of glorious chaos and cheerful disharmony.  I loved it that an ordered service, centuries old, had a place in it for chaos and diversity. Everybody’s bell with its particular tone, and every ringer’s own unique style of ringing was welcome.  This was a Gloria in the truest sense of the word.

After the bells had silenced came the third part of the Vigil - the blessing of water and renewal of baptismal vows.  This took place around the baptismal font into which water was poured from a great brass jug. ‘At the dawn of creation your Spirit breathed on the waters…’ announced our officiating priest. ‘In the waters of the Jordan, your Son was baptized… As he hung upon the cross, he willed that blood and water should flow from his side… Unseal for your church the fountain of baptism...’    

Ancient words, part of the ancient festivity of Easter-tide, celebrated for longer than there’d been a settlement at Shrewsbury and certainly longer than there’d been a St Alkmund’s Church. ‘Cleanse us from sin in a new birth of innocence by water and the spirit,’ announced the priest, and the Paschal candle was lowered into the water as a symbol of death.  ‘Have mercy on us,’ he said.  ‘Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lamb of God, receive our prayer.’ 

If you’re familiar with church, you’ll know the great questions traditionally associated with Christian baptism.  If not, here they are.  They’re what happened next. Do you reject the devil and all his works?[Yes, says the congregation.] Do you repent of the sins that separate you from God? [Yes, they say.] Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth, the life? [Yes, they say again - only on this occasion water was sprinkled over not just some baptized baby’s, but everybody’s, head.] Then the Peace took place, where everybody shook everybody else’s hand, looked them in the eye and wished them ‘Peace be with you’.   And suddenly we were at the final liturgy, the heart of the Vigil.  Everything else has been stripped away. Only the final and most solemn Liturgy of the Eucharist remained. 

 ‘The Lord is risen,’ announced Richard Hayes. ‘He is risen indeed,’ we all replied, and from thereon the liturgy unfolded - the Eucharistic Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, the Agnus Dei, the wafer and the cup, the body and the blood.  Have mercy… have mercy… grant us peace.  Lamb of God… bearer of sins…  redeemer of the world.  

Afterwards, I found Shrewsbury town centre busy, lights on, pubs and restaurants doing good business, people on the streets, everybody having a good time.  I walked home, dug out some chocolates and a bit of cake and settled in front of the telly. What did I fancy watching? Sometimes there was nothing, but tonight I had a choice.  Either I could watch Labyrinth  [the much-advertised Kate Mosse Grail mystery], or a documentary on the life of Bach.

A single voice rising out of the St Matthew Passion like a bird on the wing made the choice for me.  It was hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck stuff.  Yet according to the documentary’s narrator, even after composing masterpieces like this Bach still saw his life as full of ‘hideous vexations’.  ‘I see no future for myself,’ he wrote to a friend.

If Bach felt that way, what hope was there for the rest of us? How could the composer of music so uplifting ever feel so bleak? Didn’t Bach realize what he had achieved?  An extract was played from the B Minor Mass. For a man who found reality baffling, its sense of consolation was nothing short of a miracle.  

‘Bach helps us hear the voice of God in human form, ironing out the imperfections of humanity in the perfection of the music,’ intoned the narrator.  I liked the way he put that.  I got it, too. Here, at the end of a busy few days, I was glad we’d chose Bach over Kate Mosse and the Grail and all that stuff.  Glad I’d made it to the Vigil too. For me, its ancient liturgies were mystery enough.