The Collar and the Cab

In an act of pure opportunist self-promotion and in the hope of selling some I am publishing some extracts from my new book The Collar and the Cab on this blog. We are now nearly at the end!

33
East Park – Sundays

 At some point in the middle of my minicab driving days I
changed my mind about Sundays, less through any kind of force
of reasonable argument and more by encountering the reality
of what happens in an urban conurbation like West Yorkshire
on what the Christian Church (mistakenly, really) calls the
Sabbath. I remembered the campaign to Keep Sunday Special,
of writing to my MP, praying earnestly that members of the
House of Commons would see the importance of keeping a day
a week free of commercial activity, all in the name of preserving
something that was different about Sunday.
Of course the simple truth was that the churches up and
down the land were frightened; dwindling, if not disintegrating
attendances, could reach a state of meltdown if there were even
more things to do on a Sunday than there had been previously.
I recall the approbation I registered when the vicar of the parish
church next to Villa Park (the nearest thing I have to a shrine
outside of consecrated premises) decided to ring the church bells
all the way through the football match that had been scheduled
for a Sunday in protest at a yet further violation of the Sabbath.
Now I thought “What a prat!”

 I realised within a couple of weeks of climbing into a
minicab that Church was already such a cultural sideshow that
it scarcely featured on the remotest fringes of the fairground.
At an optimistic estimate 7-8% of the population attend church
with some regularity, and this figure was somewhat lower in
areas such as West Yorkshire. For most of the week – indeed for
most of Sunday – the doors were shut and the buildings appeared
lifeless. When most of the churches and chapels across the region
did open their doors for a couple of hours on Sunday mornings
(fewer and fewer held evening services) they exuded a general air
that was about as welcoming as Stalag XIII on a rainy day. They
were, put simply, an irrelevance to the cultural activity of the
region even on the one day of the week they operated, and here
they were asking for preferential treatment in order that people
wouldn’t go off and do other things they might actually enjoy.
The penny dropped at around 5.30 one Sunday morning
about a year into my new career when I received a job to take
someone from West Leeds to an industrialised area on the
opposite side of the city. I thought how odd it was that anyone
would be going to an area full of factories and waste land so
early on Sunday, and was curious as to why. The customer
was a pleasant, portly lady of maybe fifty years of age, whose
appearance was quite similar to many of those who would later
that morning be attending church.
Unable to restrain my curiosity I couldn’t help but enquire
about the purpose of her trip – perhaps there was a church of
some sort there that held a very early mass. ‘I’m going to the
Car Boot of course, love’ – delivered with the tone of one who
could not understand why anyone would even vaguely consider
an alternative pursuit.
‘What – at this time of the morning?’
‘I’m running a stall, love, and we have to be there by six to set
up.’
Driving through the tunnel system that facilitated rapid
transit from one side of the city centre to the other I felt a certain
level of anxiety for the rather vulnerable looking lady in the rear
of the car. As far as I was concerned I was dropping her off in the
middle of an unpopulated urban desert fringed by some rather
dodgy communities, and would she be safe?
The question was answered about half a mile from the point
on the industrial estate for which I was heading when I almost
collided with the tailback of vehicles waiting to enter the site;
there were hundreds upon hundreds of pedestrians all heading
the same way to a piece of waste land on which it would have been
possible to fit several full-sized football pitches. The spectacle
was jaw-dropping; that this many people would drag themselves
out of bed at this hour on a Sunday to take part in such a weekly
ritual when I was used to starting a service of worship at almost
lunchtime and still having to wait for the latecomers to take their
seats told me, once I had processed the information, all I needed
to know about the place of the institutional Church in our
society. And this was only the advance guard of the operation
– once it opened properly and really got going there would be
thousands of people converging on the area throughout the day,
all excited about picking over other people’s junk and maybe
buying a couple of second-hand toys to take home.
For the first time since I had left my previous calling, and
possibly the first time ever, I came face to face with the rather
uncomfortable question as to whether the institution of Church
has any useful place in our society, and was forced to attempt
something like an honest evaluation of its significance.