Phone coop, Chicken coop, beetroot soup ......

D Day minus six

The Church Christmas fair.

My licensing date has not yet been confirmed but most people now think that it will be in early December. But we are moving into the Vicarage next Friday confirmed or not.

It is interesting how the only requirement made of me so far is safeguarding and Disclosure and Barring. My memory of my last few moves, in fact all my moves that I had to produce my letters of orders, Deaconing and Priesting and no-one has asked to see a Marriage Certificate.

Far more important than such formalities however was the Church Christmas Fair.

It was important not only that I put in an appearance but that I spent a little money.

Which I did. When I bought my Raffle Tickets I commented that I never win Raffles so this should be viewed as a donation.

My purchase of a Biscuit Barrel on the China stall attracted much interest. Would there be Chocolate Biscuits and Builders Tea for visitors to the Vicarage?

Reassured on all fronts I was allowed to buy my lunch before setting out on another tour of the stalls where I found a beautiful hand embroidered waistcoat for sale, irresistible I thought as I counted out my pennies.

D Day minus five we embarked on an epic tour of the Northern Fells through Cumbria towards the Howgills. We had bought an electric cooker on eBay, a cooker had been left in the Vicarage and it would have been removed, but we thought, who knows maybe we should wait?

But an irresistible bargain tempted us, so off we set, pausing briefly before Penrith for Beetroot and Horseradish soup in Melmerby.

Heading back home we paused to see our friends Jinski playing a twilight gig in Great Asby, although their first song raised pressing, if not urgent issues and an existential challenge. We had been out a long time and home beckoned but which home and to where and when should we hurry.

D Day minus four. Maybe that should read moving day minus four.

The eBay cooker in the back of the car turned out to be the least of our problems. Amazon delivered my book without any trouble which is good because a) The post code lottery worked in our favour and b) The bookcases arrive soon.

Yesterday travelling across country to collect the eBay cooker we received a phone call to say that we had won the raffle I don't ever win.

So a housewarming present will be delivered.

So today was various minor works, the minor worker graciously helped us lift the cooker out of the car and into the house.

The the telephone engineer arrived to install the telephone. The line works. That is the good news. There are lots of faults. Less good news. But it will be fixed tomorrow. So the news gets better.

So meanwhile I got on with the job of building the hen coop, so together with safeguarding under my belt, a DBS certificate in my Wallet now I can add a further qualification, a National Vocational Qualification in hen coop construction, it's a little like Lego using wooden blocks or Meccano using wooden parts.

As was reported in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

The assembly of a wooden hen coop requires great peace of mind.

(Although in the book it was a Japanese folding bicycle).

Tomorrow D Day minus three, whilst yet unlicensed, I have been invited to attend the PCC Meeting ...... 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are you sitting comfortably then I will begin ........

  Do you remember  Listen with Mother  the programme always opened with the phrase "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin".   My memory of it brings back strong emotions as I recall as a young child how the ritual involved a sense of snuggling down on my mother’s knee to hear the story being read.   In our psalm today, psalm 34 we are invited to say with the psalmist at verse 8, Happy are those who take refuge in him.   The idea of taking refuge involves quite literally hiding yourself in God or in your parents love.   Which is why I found myself transported back in time to the memory of hiding myself in my Mother’s protection as I was asked ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’   This image of a small child wrapped in it’s Mother’s arms, protected, warm, loved, the sense of being happy, as the psalmist invites us to imagine the possibility of taking refuge in God.   Of being protected, warm and loved which brings with it a deep sense of cont...
Read more

To Theophilus friend of God ......

  People who like quizzes might prefer me to begin with a question such as: Who wrote a quarter of the New Testament? The answer is of course St Luke. Luke the Evangelist wrote both the Gospel that bears his name but also the Acts of the Apostles. As an evangelist Luke was writing from the perspective of a historian about events that he had not witnessed personally. However his writing in the Acts of the Apostles suggests that he was describing activities in which he was involved. Luke indicates that he was not an eyewitness to the events described in his Gospel he does 'repeatedly' use the word 'we' in describing the missionary journeys that he presumably undertook with Paul and which he describes in the Acts of the Apostles. In Colossians Paul writes: Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings.  A near contemporary historian, Epiphanious, suggests that Luke could have been one of the seventy we read about in the Gospel set for the Feast of St Luke. As ...
Read more

Conviviality and a personal history .........

  There are many synonyms:  friendliness, geniality, affability, amiability, congeniality, good humour, cordiality, warmth, warm-heartedness, good nature, sociability, gregariousness, clubbability, companionability, cheerfulness, cheeriness, good cheer, joviality, jollity, gaiety, liveliness, festivity, bonhomie. And one rather sad antonym: unfriendliness.   In interdiac the definition of conviviality has three elements drawn from an understanding of the social and community aspects of life in the Iberian Peninsula where Moslems were able to live freely and openly with their Jewish and Christian neighbours.   The conviviality of life in 19 th  Century Paris with its free and unconstrained conversation.   The work and writings of Ivan Illich in which he described the transformation of relationships between people and their environment and technology.   In Manchester in the early 1970’s I worked in an inner-city environment which was scheduled ...
Read more