This week I spent an infuriating hour attempting to download an app onto an ipad. The purchase of said 'app' entangled with me itunes. The whole wasted experience brought me near to tears of utter frustration and to the point of wanting to throw the computer and ipad out of the window. itunes do not... Continue Reading →
Sunrise with Smith and Hopkins
An 'ordinary' morning last week somewhere over Warwickshire: Immortal, Invisible God only wise, In light inaccesible hid from our eyes... Most Blessed, most glorious, Oh, help us to see Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee' (Walter Smith - hymn writer, well said Walter) Or as Gerald Manley Hopkins put it 'The world is... Continue Reading →
Mary and Joseph have gone AWOL
This morning, I came to tidy away the nativity figures from the top of our (now mostly eaten) Christmas cake. Mary and Joseph are missing. They were not edible . so I do hope no one nibbled them. I interrogated the most most likely suspect but under pressure he only yawned and looked at me... Continue Reading →
A story of ‘lost and found’ and coming home
I feel I ought to break my recent long blog silence with an explanation: we have moved house. It has been overwhelming. We moved out of the family home in which our children had grown from age 9 and 11 to beyond the point where they'd left home for uni and then into the big... Continue Reading →
A call to gardening? Surely not me Lord?
It's very, very rare that I feel an urgent need to do some gardening... over my lifetime I could probably count such occasions on the fingers of one hand. So why, last Friday morning pre-dawn, was I on my knees on a piece of cardboard in the Vicarage garden scraping away at the cold earth... Continue Reading →
How I’m feeling about arriving!
One month ago today was our final Sunday at St Matthew and St Oswald's. This evening in just a few hours I will put into my new post St Peter and St John. I'm trembling in my boots just thinking about it! So, by way of preparation, over the last few weeks I have been... Continue Reading →
How I’m feeling about Leaving
Today is our last Sunday at St Matthew's and St Oswald's church where I have been a curate for the last 4 years but a worshipping member for 18 years prior to that. This is how we looked just a few months before we arrived Here we are now (this time in front of a... Continue Reading →
My Stroke of Insight
'Incredibly helpful but ultimately hopeless' - would be how I would sum up this book in 5 words. It is fascinating and intriguing and thought-provoking. It's the story of a 37 year old brain scientist who had a massive stroke at the age of 37. A huge haemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain... Continue Reading →
Pondering the existence of God… from the bottom of a big black bag.
My mother is an enthusiastic charity shopper. One side-effect of this is that she has ALOT of clothes. Every now and again she has a good clear out and I am often the chosen recipient. Oh joy! Anyone whose mother has ever attempted to pass on clothes knows that this is not always a blessing.... Continue Reading →
Recycling – why do they make it so hard to be virtuous?
Paint is nasty stuff. It's okay on your walls but when you've done the decorating and there's still a third of the tin left what do you do? You shove it in the shed/back of the garage/under the stairs and forget about it? A few weeks ago David excavated a virtual paint pot mountain which... Continue Reading →
