Category: Blog Entry

Home at last – getting too old for 10 pm at Cairnryan and 1.30 am at Blogstead – after spending New Year partly in the back of my mother’s cupboards and partly in a little light socialising. Now fighting off a cold and – disaster of disasters – loss of voice. Great shape for conducting a wedding in Lymington on Saturday.

Meanwhile the random, diminutive, couch-surfing Mexican-with-the-enormous-suitcase, Luis, was introduced to the New Year delights of Portadown – particularly Knocknamuckley and Ballymacrandle – by Mark and his friends – including a major Karaoke Magic Mike session on a giant plasma screen. I must remember to get the religious music disk and borrow it for the Clergy Conference …

Happy New Year to all our readers. New Year’s Eve was spent visiting various Civic Amenity and Recycling Centres in the Belfast area in weather of unsurpassed dreadfulness. I also managed a Radio Scotland Thought for the Day.

Meanwhile, congratulations to the priests from Halifax who are using a calendar to promote vocations to the priesthood. At least they aren’t taking the Calendar Girls ‘bare-it-all’ route – at which the mind begins to play with the various images which might emerge in the SEC version – modesty concealed by various strategically-placed stoles, scarves and .. ahem .. mitres.  Our own dear PDO would, of course, have to lead off as January’s child.

But the intention is serious enough – because it pays proper attention to the importance of providing good role models if younger people are to be attracted to the idea of priesthood.  Yes indeed.  I can see all sorts of bright young people who might look at my life and say, ‘Yes I’d like to be just like that.’  There is a ‘chicken and egg’ about all this. Unfortunately if too many of our clergy begin ordained ministry in middle age, our church will tend to be middle-aged as well – since we apparently work best with people ten years either side of our own age.

We’re on another rapid trip to Belfast to do our bit in the preparations for my mother’s move to Cambridge.  Yes of course we could make room in the faithful Passat for a random Mexican called Luis whom Mark’s friends Johnny and Danny stayed with when they visited .. the secret is Couch Surfing which means that the resourceful traveller can stay anywhere in the world at any time.  So Luis – who turned out to be a lecturer in Psychology and a very nice guy – came along with a suitcase rather larger than himself and took the Stena with Poppy and the rest.   No doubt he is writing the experience up in his blog even now.  So if the Anglican Communion should crumble over the next while, I won’t be short of a couch in any part of the world .. 

Well, yes indeed, since you ask – we had a lovely Christmas – two of the children with us and my uncle too.  Simon was spending Christmas on a beach somewhere south of the other Perth.  Poppy particularly enjoys the constant presence of attentive friends and a real fire.  Blogstead, as you would expect, is a place where the ‘wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat .. ‘ – so the presence of a Christmas Eve shooting party just across the fence resplendent in their House of Bruar tweeds was a bit of a shock.  We tried to do justice to the hallowed Blogstead traditions – the carols round the brazier in the courtyard, the Chaplains’ Boxing Day Croquet Match – but the weather was a little sharp.  People keep saying that more and more people come to church at Christmas and so it proved to be both at Midnight Eucharist in the Cathedral and at St Andrew’s, St Andrews on Christmas morning.  I wish I knew why but it’s almost certainly a good thing that I don’t.  The sermon [at midnight] was like this.

So it’s down to the struggle with the Christmas sermon.  At first glance it looks fairly easy but I think its fairly difficult.  Christmas sort of defines its own agenda and there is so much stuff going on that it’s hard to add anything significant from the pulpit.  And there are always lots of people who come to church at Christmas and not at other times .. which creates its own pressures.  I’ll see how I get on tomorrow – I’ve only had a year to work on it.

Well – it was -6.5C here at Blogstead when we brought Bam Bam back from the airport this evening.  About the same this morning as I cycled on the Brompton across Perth towards the 7.14 am train to Edinburgh.  Just imagine that there is no train to Edinburgh between 7.14 am and 8.48 am.

Meanwhile the Blogstead Christmas Programme moves into overdrive tomorrow.  I am also concerned that the decorations show a certain Anglican modesty on the flashing light and illuminated Santa front.  But tomorrow is another day.