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I rang my mum this morning because I am great son. Last week my parents had been on one of their many holidays to Christchurch. The one in the UK, unluckily. But my mum had wanted to go because when she was a girl her grandmother had told her a story about the minster there. Let’s see how I get on at remembering the story. Please do get in touch if I mess it up mum, I wasn’t really listening as I was looking after my daughter at the same time. Maybe I am not such a great son. Or indeed that great a dad. But I do my best to do a half-arsed job.
My great-grandmother on my mum’s dad’s side was apparently quite a well to do lady called Louise Maud (mum doesn’t recall her maiden name), who lived on the south coast. She fell in love with my Irish builder great-grandfather, when he came down from Middlesbrough to do some work. She made the mistake of travelling back with him when he went North. Lucky for me that she did, but Middlesbrough must have come as an unpleasant surprise.
Anyway as a girl in about the 1890s Louise had visited Christchurch Minster. She was keen to climb the tower, but was told it was not open to visitors. She was disappointed, but looked round the church. But when she passed the door to the tower later she saw it was open and unguarded and being an adventurous type (maybe where my daughter gets her bravery and her love of steps) she snuck in and climbed up the tower. Go great grandma! Don’t let the man tell you what to do. Anyway once she got down from her adventure she found the door she’d come from was locked. She went back up the tower and shouted and waved to passersby but thinking she was just being friendly (it was the 1890s) they just waved back. It seemed that Louise was going to be trapped overnight in an almost certainly haunted and probably quite cold staircase. But she prayed to God to help her and when she went back down the steps again she found that the door was open. God had saved the trespasser on His property. Which was nice of Him in the circumstances. Or maybe someone had heard her shouting and unlocked it, or it had never been locked and the door was stiff. No, more likely that a magic man in the sky had heard her prayer, ignored all the ones about stopping the Boer Wars and sorting out the Corn Laws and prevent the Peterloo Massacre (OK my memory of 19th Century History may not be spot on) and unlocked the door for her. It was a fucking miracle. You can’t take that away from our family.
My mum, Barbara had always wanted to visit the scene of this nineteenth century miracle and this week she finally made it. She was on a tour of the minster and tried to tell the guide her amazing story, but he wasn’t interested in this mad Bobby Robson faced old lady and didn’t really listen. My mum asked if they were able to go up the tower, but was told there were no tours up the tower that day. Just like her great grandmother 120 years before she had been denied. Was God going to intervene again or was he getting fed up of the tower based demands of the Hannan family?
Later, my parents were passing the tower door and saw people queuing to go up and asked if they were going on a tour. They were. The other man had lied. In God’s house. So mum and dad got tickets and went on up. My mum noted that the key to the door was big and old and on some kind of chain (I think) and almost certainly the same one that God used in the 1890s. And the tour guide who took them up was interested in their story and commented that my mum didn’t resemble Bobby Robson at all and looked 25 years younger than her actual age. My mum got to go in her grandma’s footsteps and see the place where the story had taken place and even have the exact same disappointment of not being able to go up in the first place. It’s a pretty cool story. The grandmother told the young girl of the time she was a young girl and when that young girl was a grandmother herself she’d get to complete the circle. Phoebe, if you’re reading this, put a note in your diary to go visit in 2096 and see the place where your grandmother and great-great grandmother were denied access to a tower and then got access to a tower via miracles. And check out the key. Cool huh?
