A breath of fresh air

(picture from homepages.nildram.co.uk/.../ picsurroundbidd.htm)
So how are you all? I've been away from my Mac for a couple of days, and mighty liberating it is too. Unfortunately, I've been away from the pool and too close to chocolate.

Alongside my good chum Hannah, I visited Mow Cop, a weird, wonderful gritstone peak with views as far as Wales, Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope, Liverpool and, er, Stoke. Not only is it a natural wonder, it's significant in Methodist history as the centre of the Primitive Methodist connexion - Hugh Bourne and somebody else held open-air pray-a-thons by the folly at the top. They were also called Ranters, presumably by those who remembered the Civil War Ranters sect a hundred and fifty years earlier. The village still has a Wicker Man air, perched precariously on the slopes, a different chapel on every street and fewer genes than families.

But before you dismiss the Primitives (and other Methodists) as just another branch of an odd Eastern religion which got taken up by an empire as a method of holding itself together, remember this: these chapels instilled democracy into the working classes. They elected their own leaders, or rejected leaders altogether. Men, and in the case of the Primitives, women, honed their speaking skills in the Big Seat, learned the power of concerted action, and in many cases went on to found trades unions and lead the Chartist movement. Michael Foot claimed that his brand of socialism owed 'more to Methodism than to Marx'. I think that's a shame, but one can't deny the central role of these churches in forming an independent, democratic, working-class.

Gentler pursuits today - Trentham Gardens, a former mansion house abandoned by the Duke of Sutherland in prewar days when Stoke declined as a fashionable resort, and now revived. Saw monkey, but not otters.