Old salt

BRITAIN’S oldest man, 108 turned November, is said to be Reg Dean, a retired United Reformed Church minister. Further proof of the imbalance of the sexes, 58 women are reckoned yet older than Reg is.

Whether they’re all URC members is not recorded, but you wouldn’t want to bet against it.

Take the Darlington church, where Helen Hall is coming up 101, Alicha Wilson will be 99 next week and a good congregation gathered last Sunday morning to applaud Miss Rae Scott’s century.

The chap giving out pew leaflets holds a “100” balloon. “You don’t look it,” I tell him, the remark wholly ignored. He’s probably heard it a hundred times before.

Miss Scott was brought up on Tyneside, graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1932 – a time when women weren’t even allowed to collect their degrees – rowed for the university women’s team against London on the Thames.

Oxford didn’t have a team. “I don’t think they thought it ladylike,” she says.

She became a teacher, retired 40 years ago as deputy head of Hummersknott School in Darlington, still lives alone and has a cottage in Swaledale. Until two or three years ago she drove herself between one and t’other.

Still she does sudoko and crossword puzzles – “that’s the Daily Telegraph, not the Northern Echo,”

someone says – still reads avidly, still delighted loudly and lucidly to be able to read the 100th Psalm at her celebration service.

Wholly appropriate, it’s the one that talks about making a joyful noise to the Lord, about entering courts with praise, about being thankful.

The church itself also seems to have a remarkable record for longevity. “I know,” says the Reverend Tjarda Murray, the minister, “that’s why I want to stay here.”

THE URC was formed nationally in 1972 by the union of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches. In Darlington they meet in the former St George’s Presbyterian church in High Northgate, five minutes from the town centre.

The old Congregational church, back of Boots, is a carpet warehouse.

There’s still a slight Scottish accent, too. Someone talks of the foyer floor being “cockly” – I think it was cockly – which presumably means uneven.

For 120 years the Salvation Army citadel was just a couple of doors down before, in 2009, the Army marched off to Springfield, on the outskirts of town.

Fraternally, the two churches seem closer than ever. Now, it’s whispered, the URC may be on the move, too.

Tjarda, who’s Dutch – and like so many Dutch people speaks perfect English – writes in the February church magazine of the need for “major changes” if they are to continue in the town.

Income and giving continue to fall, the membership to age, the church roll not to reflect the number of active members, parking to be problematical and the building to be unfit for a wider community purpose. All that may be supposed the old, old story, too.

“Those who were at the January church meeting will realise that Northgate will need to cross threshholds of change we had not anticipated,”

she writes. “We must be open to new frontiers and we need the courage to shape new landscapes.”

They are major concerns, but not for last Sunday morning. Last Sunday was Rae Scott’s.

HER birthday had been the day previously, marked by a big family lunch in Reeth. She was born in Hebburn, proclaims herself a Geordie, attended Newcastle Church High School and returned to teach there.

Church elder Meg Thompson – “Margaret on Sundays” – recalls being a Hummersknott pupil at Miss Scott’s retirement assembly. “She walked away with a wheelbarrow full of gardening equipment,” she says.

Though she no longer gardens, she remains firmly, assiduously independent.

The church magazine also contains tributes – “a wonderful alert lady, interested in everything going on around her” – and one of Daphne Clarke’s inimitable, indeed prizewinning, poems:

Great Scott: You’re 100,
now how can that be?
You were driving that Austin
’til at least ninety-three.
Shooting up Swaledale…
road users beware,
To your cottage in Healaugh
for a breath of fresh air.

Led by Margaret Thompson – it’s Sunday – the all-age worship group has a clever card display to promote 100 up; Tjarda preaches from Matthew:5, the bit about being the salt of the earth.

Though there’s no direct reference to Miss Scott, that could hardly be more appropriate, either.

There’s also a bit about Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt because she turned back – “because she wanted to hold onto the past,”

says Tjarda. What does the congregation make of that?

The minister has encountered the photographer before, too. “Last time I saw you, you were lying in the road,” she tells him. For purely professional reasons, of course.

Afterwards, Miss Scott talks of how important the church has been in her life, of how much she loves being in the building, of how she doesn’t want much in the paper – “Just because I’m 100.”

In the hall out the back, another celebration lunch is ready to be served. Clearly the URC does these things very well. Clearly they’ve had plenty of practice.