Yesterday started well. As you know, it’s the only day we priests work, so it can be busy.
I was starting with the 8.00am service in our coldest church – the one that strongly resembles an aircraft hangar at refrigeration temperatures – so struggled out of bed as late as possible. Well, you do, don’t you.
I staggered my sleepy way into the shower and switched on, only to discover that we had no hot water. By then I was committed and it was too late to stop. Not a good start. But at least I was in and out of the shower like greased lightning.
Ed went into denial mode.
“The water must be hot! The radiators are on.”
“I’m sure they are, but the water’s cold.” (Getting testy at this point.)
“The water must have been drained off then. It’s Al’s fault (Al is our son), he spent too long in the shower last night.”
“What?” (Testiness increasing.)
“Well, you have to put the hot water on before the radiators. And the radiators are on.”
“Yes! OK! Try it yourself!” (Gave up at this point and slammed out of the door.)
Anyway, eventually Ed accepted that there might possibly be a fault with the system and rang the engineering types this morning. A guy came out this afternoon and pronounced that some pipe or other was well and truly blocked and suggested we turn on the immersion heater.
Goodness knows when any repairs will happen, but as long as I get hot water I don’t really care.
On another tack entirely, hands up all those who have no idea what a bacon buttie is?
It’s a soft roll or bap, liberally buttered (the best ones) and with a couple of slices of crispy, fried bacon inside. Definitely yummy. At our Christmas Tree festival, we make sure bacon butties feature on the menu. The aroma of frying bacon gets everybody salivating beautifully (can you salivate beautifully? Not sure it’s a beautiful activity, to be honest) and shelling out their hard-earned cash on food. Which is definitely to be encouraged.
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Really enjoyed the cycle ride to St. Saviour’s this morning. It’s three and a half miles there (and the same back, amazingly. I merely add that in to let you know how athletic I am.)
The sky was blue, the sun attempting to to shine (somewhat weakly, it must be admitted) and the birds were singing. I was muffled up in hat, scarf, sheepskin mittens and boots, and felt toasty.
And assailing my nostrils was that gorgeous aroma from the local brewery, of roasting barley. Not that I’m a beer drinker, you understand. But it smells like roasting coffee beans and I am a coffee drinker.
The downside was that the main road is closed this weekend as they’re putting the finishing touches to our new roundabout. Not that I’m griping about that. It’s already much easier to turn right onto the main road, even before the roundabout is properly finished. But the traffic was all diverted along the back roads where I usually cycle in peaceful harmony with nature.
Since the back roads are the width of one car, today was hazardous. And although it was a lovely morning, all the collected mud and puddles of the past week or so ended up on me. That’s what it felt like anyway, as the cars splashed unconcernedly past. I looked like something out of Star Trek when I got home.
It was a good morning in the Parish Office. There’s a Valentine’s lunch tomorrow (now there’s excitement for you) so the church rooms were abuzz with people setting up tables and I got a coffee out of it.
Had a good chat with two of the staff who happened to be down there and are doing sterling work with the monthly Family Service. It starts with bacon butties and is much more informal than the regular worship, so is attracting younger people and their families.
Which has to be the future for St Saviour’s, since the congregation (all aged sixty-or-more plus) are beginning to drop off the end, sad to say. So in my view, building up a strong Family Service is a must if this village church is to survive.
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Took a Holy Communion at St Saviour’s today. We only have one mid-week Communion per month and even that struggles. Today there were four of us, including me. It was so cold despite the infra-red heaters which beam something approximating to luke-warmth onto the top of your head, that I cut the service as short as possible. Well, I didn’t want three stiffs on my hands (stiff with cold, you understand). Then we repaired to the church rooms for coffee which was more than welcome.
I invested in knee-length sheepskin boots some years ago, having spent a few winters standing on stone floors. Not the last word in elegance, but they do the trick. A damp cold seems to seep into these medieval buildings and take up residence in the walls so that it can insinuate intself into your marrow at every opportunity.
This afternoon was a funeral. Never let it be said that we don’t put the fun back into funerals. The family had ordered service sheets from the funeral directors, but unbeknown to me had only ordered fifty. Whe we reached the forty-ninth person, one of the granddaughters sauntered in and asked if there were any more service sheets. That was the first I knew about it. Fortunately all the hymns were in the hymnbook, so we dished out hymnbooks to the extras – there must have been around a hundred and twenty at the service.
Then at the last minute the son suddenly said, “I’m not doing the reading.”
“Oh. Who is?”
“You are.”
Hmm. Thank you very much.
Anyway, it all went well in the end and the family were pleased.
Ken Livingstone, ex-Mayor of London, is reported to have once said that the average Church of England funeral is about as moving as the check-out queue in the supermarket.
So I like to make sure that isn’t true!
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This morning I was invited into Class One in the village school. They are four, five and six year-olds, about twenty of them and this week are learning about bread via the story of The Little Red Hen. Yesterday they made bread themselves (well, not completely. When I asked if they got sticky they said the teacher did that bit! But they got to do the kneading themselves. “What did we do with the dough?” asked the teacher. “Weeding!” shouted Sam, aged five.)
I was there to tell them about Jesus and bread, so I told them the story of the Feeding of the Five Thousand and the Last Supper and linked them both with Communion. Then I gave them each a communion wafer. They were not overly impressed with the taste.
I love their enthusiam at that age. I talked about there not being much variety in food in the time of Jesus so bread was an important part of their diet. One little girl volunteered that her Mummy has a drink and chocolate every night!
The afternoon was entirely different. I had been invited to give a talk at the local Royal British Legion, Women’s Section. The British Legion is big in these villages and many of the ladies there (there were about twenty-two of them) were Land Girls in WW2.
They’d asked me to speak on ‘From physio to priest’ (yes, I used to be a physio in a previous incarnation) so I told my story, which they seemed to enjoy.
All makes a welcome change from funerals (one tomorrow) and PCCs (one last Monday which nearly left me without the will to live.)
This job is full of variety, which I guess is why I love it. On the whole.
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Another cold, wet and bleak day (weatherwise, that is). But I’m not complaining since I saw on the TV the horrific fires in Australia and thought how terrible it must be to see your home and all your possessions go up in smoke, and worse, to not know whether your family were safe. The fires seem to spread like – well, like wildfire- which must be unbelievably terrifying.
After Morning Prayers took my laptop and printer into the Hospital for Sick Computers, with a suitable prayer for their recovery. The computer speaks nicely to the printer which acknowledges the conversation (‘receiving data’) but then quietly dies without so much as a by-your-leave. The computer doctor was less than pleased to know I had Ubuntu rather than Windows as an operating system, but since I’d taken in all the downloaded info on how to make the printer work, he should be pleased.
I know what you’re asking.
If I’ve downloaded the info, why can’t I make it work myself? My problem is that I’m not a qualified computer surgeon and am unable to remove the original printer installation files. If only I could get them out, I could start again from scratch. But I can’t. Hence today’s trip into the nether-world of computer incomprehension, hoping that the nice man is better at removing and replacing internal organs than I am.
Have a PCC meeting tonight. Oh joy! Not the best thing to look forward to on a wet, cold, bleak day. If you see what I mean.
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