Rows!
There are many reasons to be happy to live here. For me, one of the unexpected joys is the old newspaper stories about Fletching supplied by Andrew Hudson in his regular Village Voice articles for the District News. My personal favourites are Peggy, the Land Army girl, who vaulted into a stall where a bull was goring the cowman, kicked the bull in the nose (then married the cowman); the man who shot his wife in the leg while they were ‘playing with a revolver’; and the long-simmering village fight over geraniums that ended in a magistrate’s court.
I’m also enjoying very much, from 130 years ago, episodes in the famous Fletching feud between Mr Pinker and Mr Martin, the parish surveyor. It all kicked off during a meeting held in church when Mr Pinker started making some charges against Mr Martin which led to ‘considerable uproar and commotion and sadly disturbed the previous unanimity of the meeting’. In the election called soon after Mr Martin won again by a large margin but Mr Pinker ‘did not consider it represented the true feeling of the people’. A few weeks and two adjourned meetings later, and still alleging fraud,
Mr Pinker shot himself in the foot somewhat when he challenged a local official, ‘Why, you told me after the vestry meeting that if you were the surveyor you would resign!’ To which the official, Mr Kenward, replied, ‘Yes, and so I would if I had such cantankerous people as you to deal with.’
Obviously, Fletching is generally a model of good humour and courtesy, but it’s interesting to note how every community has its moments! A very good way of dealing with conflict is to recognize that it is inevitable. I can’t think that there has ever been a family, community or nation which hasn’t regularly found itself rowing. If it’s inevitable, the only real question is not how to avoid it, but how to deal with it.
A really good way of dealing with conflict is by talking and, even more importantly, by listening. Rows tend to erupt because there is usually a difference between what we think someone has said, and what they were actually wanting to say. Even when we have correctly understood what someone has said, and don’t like it at all (!), there’s still more to be gained by talking further than by anger and shouting.
Abraham Lincoln put it beautifully when he said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better”. Something perhaps especially worth remembering around a General Election!
David Knight, Vicar of Fletching