I decided to drive into Chesterfield at lunchtime because I’ve never visited before, and also it would delay the drive home. It’s amazing what seems appealing when you’re doin it to avoid doing something less appealing, and besides, I find it interesting to go to new towns.
The one thing I knew about Chesterfield is that it has a church with a crooked spire, and driving into town you see it immediately. It really is a very crooked spire indeed. I parked up and went for a closer look, as well as a brief tour inside, and then found myself looking at the spire, wondering how it still manages to stand. The church itself is officially called St Mary’s And All Saints but everyone refers to it as the Crooked Church. Indeed, do a Google search for Chesterfield and one result just reads ‘Chesterfield – Town Of The Crooked Spire’. It’s strange that an imperfection, or mistake, should define a town, and I wonder how much it bothers local people that the most famous thing about where they live is a faulty church?
There are myths about the crooked spire. One is that a local shoemaker was forced to make a pair of shoes for the Devil, but he was so frightened he accidentally hammered a nail into the Devil’s foot and he jumped away in agony and bent the spire as he did so. How the Hell do stories like this start? For one thing, the Devil has hoofs which are probably immune to nails and seeing as he had hoofs he wouldn’t need shoes in the first place. Unless he wanted to disguise himself but then he can take many forms anyway, everyone knows that, so there would be no need for a rubbish disguise like shoes.
Really, how do these stories start? People were just very, very gullible five hundred years ago. They had none of the cynicism we rely on today. Which is why the following story about the crooked spire came about. Apparently a virgin was getting married in the church, and the spire had never seen a virgin before and so it bent over for a closer look. What sort of a crappy myth is that? The myth goes on to state that if a second virgin gets married in the church, it will straighten up again. Which does mean that a virgin getting married in Chesterfield was so rare, even hundreds of years ago, that the spire took on living attributes and pervily bent over to have a look, and also that a virgin has never been married in the church up to this day. Verily, Chesterfield is a town of harlots. They should force Ann Widdecombe to get married there as a scientific experiment to see if the spire corrects itself.
The most popular myth about the spire is that the Devil simply bent it, to annoy God. Frankly, he’s a mug if he’s done that because now people flock from far and wide to see the spire, meaning many more enter God’s ‘house’, and perhaps some of them decide to worship him. Also, it shows the Devil up to be not so much evil, but more of a prankster. After he bent the spire he probably gave God a wedgie.
Hell probably isn’t that bad if all you have to put up with is a few practical jokes. When you arrive and face the Devil he probably points at a corner of the room and says “What’s that?� so you glance over, there’s nothing there and the Devil says “Made you look!�
And you’d say “Oh flippin’ heck, I’m going to have to be on my toes with you about, aren’t I!�
And the Devil would say “Yeah! I’m mad, me. Hey! Are you an idiot tied to a tree?�
“No.�
“Idiot on the loose!�
Actually that would be Hell.
I had a walk around Chesterfield for about an hour, getting some lunch at the market and browsing around the shops, but there’s no fun in looking at shops in strange towns these days, they’re the same shops as anywhere else. I hate indenti-kit high streets. I went into HMV and bought a CD to listen to on the drive home (the excellent Lil’ Beethoven by Sparks) and then returned to the car park. I put my ticket into the machine to see how much I had to pay and the large colour screen told me I had to insert 70 pence but then, underneath, proclaimed in large letters ‘CHANGE IS POSSIBLE!’ With an explanation mark, too.
It’s nice that even a humble car park machine is capable of quite Lennon-esqe comments in these troubling times, what with the Lebanon situation, the continuing problems in Africa, the Korean and Iran nuclear worries. This was the most profound machine I’ve ever witnessed. I wanted to take it for a coffee and discuss the world in greater depth.
Look a Lennon. All he did was sit in a bed with Yoko, at least this machine is giving out a humanitarian message whilst making itself useful in a car park.
‘CHANGE IS POSSIBLE!’…. It’s rare that a machine will make you think but maybe it feels it has a duty to send motorists on their way with something to consider on the journey home. Good on it. It didn’t work in my case though because I just played Sparks really loudly and forgot all about the humbling and positive philosophies of the ticket machine.
I took the motorway route home, not wanting to get stuck behind (probably the same) truck as I did yesterday on the shorter cross country route. So yesterday was 88 miles in just over four hours, today was 110 miles in less than two. I’ve learnt my lesson. My question is though, if I had one of those Sat Nav things, which way would it have recommended I go? I really don’t want to get one, as I’ve discussed before, because it says ‘I can’t read a map’, but if it could save me the trouble I had yesterday… Maybe I’ll ask for one this Christmas, which means I can get loads of benefit from it but not actually have to admit to buying one. It is the arrogant and effective option.
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