Category: Blog Entry

Great to have the feet back on the ground today. We were in Kinross and suddenly found ourselves in a church awash with children. It’s a bit of a shock but a very welcome one. Our Diocesan Strategy makes a big fuss about the need to address the age profile of our congregations – and some of our churches are already very successful at working with children and their parents. One of the teenagers arrived and said that she had always wanted to wear a mitre – so that was the last I saw of it for a while. It was so big that it covered her head completely. Bamm Bamm – who knows about these things – tells me that there is a benign form of encephalitis which gives one a particularly large head. Unfortunately this does not mean that the internal spaces are filled by anything in particular.

Meanwhile over at Blogstead Emeritus, the servants are preparing for the return of +Bruce and Elaine from America later this week. I took a peep over the hedge and, so far as I could see, they were rolling the croquet lawn. One senses the coming of a few of those endless sunlit afternoons, Pimms, the gentle murmur of good conversation and the ‘thwack’ of mallet on ball.

It feels a bit as mother bird must feel when she pushes the fledglings out of the nest to fly for themselves. So last night we launched Paul, my final curate in Seagoe, on his new ministry on the Donegall Road in Belfast. Here’s the Sermon if you want to read it. There’s a sort of worrying-parent dimension to all this. But then Paul isn’t worried so why should I be?

It was great to meet my old friends from the parish. One of the strange things about parish ministry is that when you go, you go .. don’t look back .. close the door quietly behind you. But these are people whose lives were intertwined with ours for many years in good times and bad. So it’s painful to do that. Anyway, they all told me I was looking great and I said they hadn’t changed a bit either. And they asked me if I was having a good time in Scotland and I said it was all wonderful. They asked if I had a Scottish accent yet.  I said that was unlikely because I hardly ever heard one.  And half of them had been reading this blog anyway so they know as much about it as I do. The danger is that they may believe it.

I did think for a micro-second that it would be great to be back in the middle of it all again. But then I thought about the sheer hard work of it – and the grass growing in two acres of Rectory garden. So I thought instead about what a wonderful job Terence is doing. And then I stopped thinking about it.

Meanwhile, Poppy has returned to Blogstead from the capucchino belt in Edinburgh and is not a happy cat. She retreated in a sulk deep into the field of head-high oil seed rape – talked to us at some length from about 20 yards in – and eventually was retrieved by Alison.

I went to Portadown yesterday and walked up the street.  It was a bit like having a cameo role in a soap opera – actually I could happily have spent all day there.  Old friends – and the characters are always good.  I also took time for a hair cut with Michael, my favourite hairdresser.  Our encounter was about 75% chat and 25% hair cut – and we skipped the light dusting of talc to give that matt finish.

Meantime you may be wondering what the local papers are saying at this moment when Northern Ireland is entering a new and exciting phase of its history.  New relationships .. restorative justice … post-sectarianism …  healing of memories?  Sorry.  None of that.  The Belfast Telegraph last night devoted it’s entire front page to the discovery of a new spray-on version of Viagra – to be called Spray ‘n Stay.  What a country!

I’ve ended up back in Belfast to preach at my former colleague Paul’s Institution tomorrow.  There’s a tinge of Ted and Dougal here. This may be why the sermon is proving a bit elusive – Paul’s new parishioners will definitely not want to know if he ‘gives good Mass’.  With the wonders of modern technology, it was simpler to do what I do from here rather than go back to Perth for a day.

So as we waited for the plane to leave Birmingham last night, the announcement said that we would leave as soon as the plane had taken on SEVEN TONS of fuel.  Later on I was sitting on the floor in a quiet corner of a staircase in Belfast Airport because it was the only place I could find a plug for my laptop.  A kindly managerial person arrived and welcomed me to their electricity supply, ‘Use away at it,’ he said in best Belfast idiom.  ‘We make all our own electricity anyway.’

Why was I unable to leave Belfast Airport?  Because Alison and I were once again arriving in the same airport from different places and she was two hours after me.  Poppy, by the way, remains in the cappuchino belt of Bruntsfield and will return to Blogstead on Saturday.  Reports are that she is a bit more settled but still noisy – either high maintenance or just a spoilt cat.

This kind of conference is always interesting – bishops are by nature an interesting lot.  In a world of fairly narrow specialisms, they tend to be people who are interested in many things and only some of them esoteric.  The lists and organisation refer to geography – and have that rather sonorous ring of the stations at which a cross-country train calls or the advert in which Peter Ustinov used to read from Yellow Pages.  So we have Argyll, Barking, Birkenhead, Bolton, Buckingham….

I am sure that I was not the only one to smile this morning as the servants of the servants of God sang this verse of Isaac Watts:

High is the rank we now possess; And higher we shall rise; But what we later shall become; Is hid from mortal eyes.

Meanwhile I have been reading about the Cutty Sark.  I’ve always been interested in the great days of sail – reading the books of Alan Villiers and, of course, Hornblower.  One of the stories not reported today is that of the Captain/Master who would demand that yet more sail should be set as the clippers raced back from Australia.  It reached the point where he stood with a loaded revolver by the sheets/ropes – threatening to shoot the first person who slackened canvas.  Ah, the Pentecost wind filling the sails of the church?

An interesting Sunday – first in St Serf’s in Burntisland for the dedication of a new organ – well, new to them.  Burntisland is one of those places which is moving steadily up in the world.  It’s directly across the Firth of Forth from Leith.  It’s got a seafront and golf links and it’s becoming a commuter town for Edinburgh.  So there should be a new future for our congregations there and in Inverkeithing and Aberdour.  Then it was on to a Confirmation in St Leonard’s Chapel in St Andrews – four students with friends and family in support.

Now I am at [I almost said ‘incarcerated’] at a meeting of the bishops of the churches of the British Isles at Market Bosworth near Nuneaton.  Bishops in bulk are, of course, fascinating characters.  This afternoon’s speaker, Fr Timothy Radcliffe banged a few nails on the head.  This was just one of them: ‘Rush and pressure are part of the innate violence of the world – they destroy the inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.’

All a bit of a performance getting home.  Mr O’Leary says 15 kg and no more these days.  But, of course, I had slipped a bottle of Fr Jack’s comfort into my case.  It was 16 kg on the way over.  But then there was all the toothpaste, shower gel, etc which had been used.  Not to mention the fact that books get lighter as they are read and clothes as they are worn.  So Bamm Bamm – a sensible girl who always operates within the limits – took it back with her to Dublin and on to Belfast.

Like everybody else, I expect, we found the world of holiday and travel simply full of four year old little girls just like Madeleine.  Which was, I suppose, because of heightened awareness.  And yet one wondered whether one could really go up to a complete stranger and say, ‘Forgive me for asking what may seem a difficult question …’   Her parents are utterly impressive.  They remain positive.  But they don’t give the impression that they are unrealistic with it – I am sure that they have stared long and hard into the abyss.

So it’s back to Blogstead Ecosse this evening – provided Mr O’Leary is as good as his word. If not, there will be a problem with the dedication of the new organ in Burntisland tomorrow morning and Confirmation in the Chaplaincy at St Andrews in the evening.

It’s been lovely here – Gilbert asked where. I was being coy about that but it’s in Begur in the really nice bit of the Costa Brava. Meanwhile, as Laurene points out, the Spanish phrase book continues to fascinate. Extraordinary proverbs.

We sat outside at a restaurant by the sea last night and watched the boats in the dusk. In the days when I studied Coastal Navigation for my Yachtmaster Certificate, I used to know the meaning of the sequences of lights which ships display at night. Some are as obscure as the offerings of the phrase book – and sound faintly ecclesiastical – as in: ‘I am a large vessel with limited room for maneouvre in a narrow channel’ or ‘I am a dredger travelling backwards’ or ‘I am under way but not under control.’

I’m not so good at the multilingual stuff. In the camping days on those long treks through France, I would telephone ahead to book a camp site. The problem was not the framing of the question – more understanding the answer. So I would formulate a lengthy question in French such that it could only be answered with ‘Oui’ or ‘Non’. For example: ‘Can I book an emplacement for tomorrow night on a sunny emplacement with a bit of shade convenient to the toilet block but not too close.’

The Lonely Planet Spanish Phrase Book has the opposite problem. It gives the answers but is irritatingly coy about the questions. As in: ‘I’m sorry; it’s against my beliefs’ or ‘I don’t mind watching but I’d rather not join in.’ It also explores the Spanish delight in lengthy and incomprehensible proverbs – as in: ‘to be like the market gardener’s dog who doesn’t eat the cabbages but won’t let his master eat them either.’

We’ve been coming here off and on for a long time – several trips when the children were small bringing the tent and a mountain of gear. We think the last of those camping trips here was in 1991.

We drove here – travelling overnight. No low cost airlines so the autoroutes were full of long distance coaches from England. No internet. No mobile phones. No money out of the ATM – had to take eurocheques to a bank. No Euros – so we couldn’t use the same currency in Spain and Donegal.

Stone Age indeed.