Category: Blog Entry

Welcome news for the Mission to Seafarers in Scotland as Rev Tom Allen’s appointment as Chaplain of the Scottish Ports is announced.  Tom is at present Vicar of Oakworth in the Diocese of Bradford.  Piskie bloggers and others will immediately recognise him as Big Bulky Anglican.  The post represents a significant development of the ministry of MTS in Scotland and builds on the tremendous work done by Rev Robin Underhill during the past few years.  Tom will be based near Grangemouth where he will work approximately two days each week – the rest of his time being spent developing a network of ship-visiting ministry across Scotland.  He has had a long interest in maritime affairs and chaplaincy and, not surprisingly, is deeply interested in the applications of new technology to ministry.

It’s all in the communicating.  I called into my favourite clothes shop – McMahons in Portadown.  To be honest, it’s not so much my favourite.  More like the only shop in which I can be persuaded to buy clothes.  The suits always fit.  So we called in on Friday.  John the boss was downstairs and Clifford upstairs surrounded by suits.  We extended the range of choice to about six.  They all fitted perfectly.  Except that I didn’t fit the trousers any more.  But of course there was no talk of weight or middle-aged spread or loss of muscle tone or the ‘f’ word .. Clifford just murmured something about ‘easing’.  As if somehow it was something to do with the trousers.  And it was done.  What a useful concept, I thought.  Anything inconvenient or uncongenial – sermons, inadequate stipend, tiresome people – I’ll just ‘ease’ them a little and that will be that.

Changes in other people’s arrangements left us with tickets to fly to Belfast – already paid for elsewhere. So we decided to do a hit and run visit to Blogstead na Mara in Donegal – since we probably won’t get there until after Easter – to make sure all is well. Just time also to buy the suit in McMahons of Portadown – of which more another day. Regular readers will know of my fascination with the Wayside Pulpit at Hillhall Presybterian Church, Belfast. ‘Use Sunblock – Don’t block out the Son’ having been replaced by ‘Seven days without prayer makes one weak.’ Meanwhile, across the border, rumours of the demise of the Irish Catholic Church are clearly premature. The local shop in Dunfanaghy this morning was advertising ‘Pre-signed Mass Cards’. This is clearly a church responding to the fast-moving secular society. Pre-baptised babies will surely follow, along with the pre-sung hymn and the pre-preached sermon. After all, across Ireland, Sunday Mass already takes place on Saturday night.

I carry from childhood a memory of an energetic conversation between my father and my grandfather about the number of gears his car had.  Grandfather said three – my father said four.  ‘But’ said my grandfather in his defence, ‘gear changing to me is as natural as breathing’.  Which is why it is good for me to do as I did this evening – enjoy the company of the members of our Ministry Reflection Group thinking together about communication, what is it and what it is for.  As I ponder Crieff’s 20th Anniversary Service on Sunday, a Thought for the Day on Tuesday, a Probus Group and the PACT Carols in the Concert Hall next week – all requiring words, words …  what is it that we are trying to do.  With unerring aim, they had it sorted – if I heard them correctly.  Can’t communicate in the name of Christ if you are not in communication with God.  Like:  Can’t live with others unless you can live with yourself.  Thanks

‘Tea towels and tantrums – and that’s only the staff’ – comment from a school principal friend on the pre-Christmas rush.  It reminds me of former life when one fitted in endless Nativity Plays and Senior Citizens’ Christmas Dinners around everything else.   Bishop-life [forgive the oxymoron] seems hardly to change as Christmas approaches.  They let me out on Christmas Eve.  But otherwise my life seems to be ‘more of the same’ while the clergy rush about being Christmassy – or should that be Adventy.

How I hate it – the annual struggle with the Tax Return as the January deadline looms.  In my pre-PAYE days, it was particularly terrifying.  But now it’s just the scattered fragments that remain after PAYE has done its worst.  I also think nostalgically of the distant past – a time when I could have a shiny car and depreciate it by 25% every year.   Now the sensible thing is to run a car which suffers no depreciation at all.   Roll forward, faithful Passat, whose value ebbs and flows by the phases of the moon, the state of world commodity prices and the time left until its next MOT.   Pretty much like myself, really.

Meanwhile back at Bogstead .. the arrival of the tanker is now delayed until Saturday morning.  So we are holding on grimly.  The inner chamber of the septic [or was that ‘sceptic’]tank has collapsed because it was emptied without the outer chamber having been emptied first.  It’s obvious and deserves a separate module at TISEC.

In this action-packed scenario, Poppy has been attempting to bring the field mice to the edge of extinction.  She was shouting in the middle of the night and was given the run of the house in the hope that she would quieten down.  She then advanced on the episcopal boudoir – still shouting – with a mouse clamped between her jaws.   What would St Francis have done?