My hairdresser in Portadown -who came from Dundee – told me that Perth is the place where people who live in Dundee hope to retire.  So Perth sounds like one of those places which has no social problems…. which is where CATH [Churches’ Action for the Homeless] comes in.  They have been running a Day Centre for the Homeless for about 15 years now – and have been developing all sorts of workshop/rehab projects to try and give young homeless people a new start.  They say that the number of regular ‘rough sleepers’ around Perth has fallen significantly – but, if the number of economic migrants increases, I suspect that they will become much busier.

Anyway, we gave CATH a cheque today from our Lent Appeal – a great relief to be thinking about something other than our own problems!  And they greeted us with a barbeque prepared by some of their young ‘service users’  You try to do things for people and …

Busy day on Saturday. My suggestion that the hawthorn hedge at the bottom of that garden might be left au naturel to provide a habitat for local wildlife fell on deaf ears. So it was ladder and snappers – and enough thorn to provide for our Good Friday Blogstead to Gallowhill Procession.

Then it was off to Glasgow where my neice Roisin and sister Helen were taking part in an unlikely exchange between the choir of Great St Mary’s, Cambridge, and the Backchat Youth Project from the Faslane Naval Base and the community at Helensborough. As always in Glasgow, we spent a while totally lost but did eventually arrive at Cathcart Old Church for the concert. No doubt about who won the prize in the ‘shake ma booty’ section – Backchat by a mile. The GSM choir sang with beauty and discipline – slightly muffled because the younger members were trying to read the new Harry Potter as they sang.

I did a little quiet research among the friendly members of the congregation afterwards … didn’t get around to Stewardship before it was time to go.

It’s always interesting down in Dollar – David was baptised and confirmed; Jan was confirmed and Ramsay was admitted to Holy Communion.  And, over the champagne which followed, I continued my mild professional researches from the previous evening in Glasgow.  The question is how [or why] this congregation sort of seems to gather people up almost accidently and certainly without making a fuss about it.  To be honest, the Diocesan Review does talk about creating ‘attractive congregations’ – but it doesn’t say how to do it.  And I doubt if it is accidental.  People here certainly feel a real sense of being a welcoming, caring, interested-in-people congregation – but it’s not just friendly, there is deep spirituality there too.  And there is leadership which is sure-footed and authoritative but which guides with a light touch.  And they enjoy themselves .. and the music is good.  Sounds like a fortunate series of accidents – which must mean that the Spirit found a way in somewhere.

Continuing sadness among junior members of the family at the collapse of the much-loved Magic Mic karaoke machine which Mark brought back from Thailand at Christmas. It’s clearly going to be replaced by either Mark or Simon – both of whom will be passing through Thailand shortly. Good news for the Blogstead OT’s – and, indeed, for the Diocesan Clergy Conference – because we have discovered that there is a christian add-on which would give us access to all-time greats like ‘Wide, wide is the ocean ….’

Thought you might like to see this happy group of residents from the close here at Blogstead Episcopi. We’re just back from one of our visits organised by the OT Department. They feel we should get out more. Spice is third from left. Poppy doesn’t do photos with Spice.

Meanwhile I spent an interesting morning with the Royal School of Church Music at their Summer Course in Dunblane – all singing their hearts out in that beautiful building. The RSCM is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.  I realised with some concern that it almost 50 years since I attended my first RSCM course as a choir boy.  I had another look at the Dunblane memorial – never go there with visiting it and being moved by it.

Another Thought for the Day this morning – frustratingly, as sometimes happens, the item before fitted exactly but I couldn’t invent a link on the spur of the moment.  It should have been about Imelda Marcos and the shoes.

Meanwhile, I note with some concern that I am becoming mainstream.  I watched Gordon Brown in Belfast yesterday getting in and out of an armoured Range Rover – so ‘last year’, don’t you think.   But the humble bike has been rehabilitated from the political oblivion to which it was consigned by Norman ‘on your bike’ Tebbitt.  Today’s aspiring politician – like Boris and David Cameron – is always interviewed with his bicycle.  It’s the new sandals – like Rowan Williams always wearing a black shirt.  I think I may get my Chaplain to wheel my Brompton behind me in procession.

You may also have noticed that today marks the 90th anniversary of the Royal Family’s change of surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor or Mountbatten-Windsor.  I’m always interested in how things change or don’t change.  Isn’t it extraordinary that an institution as firmly ‘woven in’ as monarchy could just quietly make such a fundamental change?  They may of course have simply been following the lead of the family of my paternal grandmother who changed their name in the same year from Bruichmann to Brookman.  If you wonder where my ‘clip board’ tendencies come from, look no further.  It does lead me to ponder whether a slight ecossification of my own might be in order – the still-debated sign at the end of the road might point to McBlogstead?

It will be interesting to see how the Velib experiment in Paris works out. 20000 bicycles will be available all over Paris for people to ride – mainly on short journeys. That gets over some of the issues which prevent people from cycling – but not the scary matter of dealing with Paris traffic. Apparently only 150000 people in Paris actually own a bicycle – yet France is bike-mad and when you cycle in France you join a sort of club of signs, nods and gutteral and incomprehensible cyclists’ greetings.

I was reminded of the velosophique stuff by Fr Oliver Crilly’s Lent Book, ‘Is it about a Bicycle?’ He suggested that the spiritual magic of cycling is the combination of solitariness and locomotion. Further report from the saddle of Bamm Bamm’s mountain bike follows shortly.

In the course of an unstressed Saturday in which I polished the faithful Passat [now at 147000 miles], I found myself reading the surprising information that it is Librarians who experience the highest levels of work-related stress – stress being related to the amount of control one has over one’s work and various other factors. Clergy, of course, are privileged in that way – having considerable freedom to shape their own working lives. But stress is a sort of preoccupation among clergy – maybe we feel that we shouldn’t experience it because we should be ‘taking it to the Lord in prayer’. I still believe in the Rectory system – but in my personal experience the greatest source of personal and family stress in ministry is rooted in the fact that you live in a house which you don’t own or control. There’s no magic in owning a house – but living in a tied house makes you very vulnerable. And while I am at it, other sources of stress are dealing with multiple, conflicting [and undeclared] expectations – and the lack of clear boundaries between work and not-work.

And finally, in the course of my idle researches, I was reminded of the issue of bullying
People can say what they want and you can’t respond in kind. But if you can’t deal with it, it grows and grows.

Fascinating cousins that Alison has.  John came over from Dublin yesterday to check out a horse.  I learnt all sorts of wonderful things about how to measure equine potential – horse assessment seemed to me about as difficult as the task of vocational discernment.  So maybe we could set up a multi-disciplinary session with our DDO’s.  And I’ve just been watching David singing in the Philharmonia Chorus in Beethoven’s 9th at the Proms – 4th row down and 19 across in the tenors in case you were asking.  Became fascinated by that too – wonderful people singing their hearts out in the Ode to Joy – all dressed simply in black which somehow made you more aware of characterful and lived-in faces.  And no music in their hands.  It makes a huge difference.  I’m a great believer in preaching without the script.  I write it and I bring it with me and sometimes I even preach it.

After watching the Sea Eagle remain obstinately in its tree … it was back to the Diocesan Review meetings this evening.  In a way, it’s the same question – about whether or how the bird will fly.  Every time I have been involved in these processes, it has come down to the same tension.  Too organised, managerial, controlled and controlling.  Or too spiritual, wistful, relational.  The answer lies, of course, in a Goldilocks ‘just right’ which isn’t just the mid point between the two positions but which is in some measure a synthesis.