Dowager Duchess of Clitheroe

Would you be surprised to learn that I am an avid fan of Granada TV’s Coronation Street? I have no TV license of course, so I seek my episodes online, from various archives and uploads. My mother and grandmother watched it when I was young, faithfully, but the modern stories are too vulgar- an apt reflection of modern Britain which it imitates. Yet I have a penchant for the older episodes from the sixties, seventies and eighties, some of which are mere clips. The acting is fabulous and the dialogue is skilfully crafted: working class harridans pitted against idle blokes, foolish hubbies and demanding employers. The greatest characters (beside Violet Carson’s Ena Sharples of course) is Doris Speed’s Annie Walker and Jean Alexander's Hilda Ogden. In the clip from 1977, below, Hilda has found a way to humble Mrs Walker, the snooty landlady of the Rovers Return Inn, for whom she cleans, with some information freshly discovered at Bingo. The bringing of bad news, a young Bet Lynch counsels the excited Hilda, is likely to cost her her job, and will surely outweigh the pleasure of humiliating the landlady, the 'Dowager Duchess of Clitheroe' (no wonder she thinks herself a cut above).

Psalm 112 says of the ‘man that feareth the Lord’ in verses 7-8:

He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.

His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see his desire upon his enemies.

I frequently fear bad news: the phone ringing; a knock at the door, an unsolicited email from someone unused to communicating. What new horrors or hassles will they bring forth? Yet we Christians know the end; we know that the pains of earth will be forgotten some day, and that any unwelcome tales we get can only ever be outweighed by the Good News of Jesus Christ. Satan, not unlike Mrs Ogden, might relish the transmission of evil tidings, but our hearts are fixed on something better:

As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. Proverbs 25:25