Sober reflections

THE One Eyed Rat in Allhallowgate, Ripon, said by the Good Beer Guide to be “everything a good cask ale house should be”, is coal-fired and convivial. Not one-eyed ratted at all.

“Everyone who enters this place makes us happy,” says a notice by the door. “Some when they arrive and some when they leave.”

A few are in fancy dress, one or two done up as tarts. So far as reasonably may be ascertained, none is a vicar.

Though it’s New Year’s Eve, it’s an occasion for but a single pint. The need for sober reflection is ahead.

A little further up Allhallowgate, the Workhouse Museum rests on its quarrels, though a notice advises that the winter vegetable garden is again (as old Scrooge might himself have put it) in full vigour.

At 10.30pm the Market Place seems quiet, save for the occasional clangour from the taxi telephone fixed to a post, on top of which a green light flashes simultaneously.

The square has also been home to an Edwardian cabmen’s shelter, now a Grade II-listed building, though it’s on its travels being restored. The cabbies now take it in turn to open the box, and thus resemble Officer Dibble – or, more likely, TC.

The Matrix night club, on the bank down from the market to the wonderful cathedral, offers £7 admission all night and with free Jager Bombs (whatever one of those may be).

The cathedral, admission-free, is holding a Watch Night service to be followed by a candle-lit procession back to the market square for the bells.

The lady of this house professes herself a bit wary of candles. “If I’m ever held captive in some strange foreign country, tell them not to hold a candle-lit vigil,” she says.

WATCH Night services are thought to have originated in eastern Europe in the early 18th Century, John Wesley credited with their introduction and former popularity over here.

Originally they were monthly, and as close as possible to the full moon – “that we might have light thither,”

Wesley helpfully explained.

The Christmas issue of Church Times talks, however, about “pockets of revival” of Watch Night services in the Church of England, Ripon’s said to be the north’s biggest.

“It’s rooted in prayer and really brings the city and cathedral together,”

the Dean, the Very Reverend Keith Jukes, had said.

We’d last attended one at Richmond Methodists at the dawn of 1996, a perishing December evening on which Richmond proved altogether more boisterous than Ripon.

“Cold it may be, stone cold it isn’t,”

the column frigidly observed.

At Richmond there were fewer than 20, at Ripon there are more than 1,000 for the 11.15pm start, all wholly reverential (though the lady does learn quite a lot about lemon curd-making from a conversation in the pew behind).

There are leaflets about legacies, about the 100 Club, about the £300,000 appeal to restore the cathedral organ and its 3,000 pipes.

The great building, dating back 1,350 years, remains splendidly decorated for Christmas, the service preceded by a church and civic procession that includes the city horn blower, clearly doing a bit of overtime.

Though he sounds off nightly, it’s usually at 9pm.

The Right Reverend John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, may be moonlighting, too. “I have to be blunt with you,” says the Dean, “the bishop is on twice last year’s rate.”

Not everyone may know – not even in Yorkshire, not even on New Year’s Eve – that twice nowt remains awfully close to nowt.

The bishop responds festively. “I thought you were going to announce that we’d be on triple pay and a day off in lieu,” he says.

WE sing Hark the Herald Angels, listen to Psalm 85 – “Yea the Lord shall shew loving kindness, and our land shall give her increase” – listen to a short episcopal address that embraces threatened cuts, jobs uncertainty and loss of confidence in society.

Thereafter, tapers are passed along the pews and candles lit from one another. Clearly the vergers are practised at such potentially incendiary activity. The Ecclesiastical Insurance Office has enough on its plate just now, what with all these lead thefts, without Ripon Cathedral burning down, an’ all.

Then, of course, there are Jager Bombs to consider.

The great Welsh hymn Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer, rousing, ends the service after 22 minutes, the candle-lit congregation heading quietly back to the Market Place where the bishop is to bless the city – it’s very much a city occasion – from the town hall balcony.

Ripon receives us warmly, embraces us physically and metaphorically, clearly relishes the opportunity so to do. Those who don’t have lanterns sport flashing rabbit ears; some have both. There’s not a ha’- porth of bother.

There’s a Scottish piper, Chinese lanterns, a Caribbean steel band playing Auld Lang Syne. The bishop, on the balcony, gives his blessing shortly before midnight, prudent because a quite splendid firework display follows the chimes.

It’s an occasion that’s really worked, a seamless fusion of cathedral and community, a happy and a memorable New Year. It’s purely by way of concelebration that we head for a first-and-last one in the Rat.