Once upon a time in Cononley
I was only seven weeks old when I was baptised at the Back Lane Methodist Church in Cononley.
It was 1942 and my father was working on the submarines at Vicker’s Shipyard at Barrow in Furness.
My mother wished to join him there but the rest of the family insisted that they saw me baptised first.
Had they thought that I may not survive the war and that my baptism would give me the key to heaven?
Either way, I never really quizzed my parents about the ceremony, nor asked them about who my godparents had been that day.
Instead I found out their identity quite by accident some thirty years later in a restaurant in Haworth.
I had given my name when I had booked the table earlier in the day. When the waitress served the coffee she asked if I was ‘the Priestly Brook from Cononley and was my father Kenneth Brook’.
I’m not sure there would have been many other Priestly Brooks to confuse me with but never the less she continued, “Well I’m Dorothy Todd and I’m your godmother”.
She brought three glasses and we celebrated the occasion three decades later. Dorothy had been a close friend of my parents when younger, but as often happens, she and my parents had gone their separate ways.
I also learnt that day that I had two further godparents, a couple who continued to be friends of my parents – Ronnie and Gladys Whittaker.
Incredibly my Dad had only met Mr. Whittaker a few months prior to the baptism, when they had travelled together to sign on for their first day in the shipyard.