EVENSONG

by Hattie Ellis (Salisbury)

Chris the Head Verger, former mechanic and chorister, attends to the nuts and bolts of a year's 1,200 events: processions; wet tea towels to put out flaming choirboys; taking up the vestments when the 6 ft 7 Dean was succeeded by a woman, Canon June.

The vestry is the engine room to keep the spirit oiled and clad. Wide drawers store robes of symbolic colours, blue for Mary, red for Sarum rites. Nearby is lost property: toys, handlebars, a bag of y-fronts. Sometimes people leave urns of ashes.

There is a fine line between the sacred and the secular. Tourists roil around the aisles en route to an overnight in York. Later at Evensong a young man is struggling within, his upper body slumped between prayer and collapse.

The window behind the cross has the blank blue-black of a night with stars erased; then patterns of colour and light emerge mysteriously. Voices in sweet, ethereal harmony rise to wherever they go.

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What Hattie Ellis says about EVENSONG:

Salisbury Cathedral is a working place as well as a spiritual one. Chris Simpson took me behind the scenes, describing the efforts of the team of volunteer Holy Dusters, Wolfie the cathedral cat and various other parts of day-to-day and liturgical life. As we spoke in the Vestry, various clergy passed to and fro, between shifts, as it were.