MY WRITING LIFE

FEBRUARY 2025

  Me in the Central Middlesex

WRITING

Nicaea. I finished  writing my blog ‘Was Nicaea a Mistake’ and as you know sent it out mid-month.  My brain really hurt after all that thinking!

Parish history.   I decided my next project is to complete my history of All Saints Hackbridge, ‘The Church by the Sewage Farm’.  I had completed it  from 1800 to 1980, so I went to the church to borrow the (unbound) parish magazines for 1980 to 1993.  Unfortunately they had all disappeared.  At least I could not find them, nor the bound volumes from 1952 to 1970.  Sad.  It means that the next fifteen years will be rather lighter on facts than the previous thirty years.

The Church has a Past – has it got a Future?   I wrote to Rob Gillion, bishop for the Arts,  to ask if he would write a foreword.  He had supported some of my previous books.  He has retired and is now chaplain to Hatfield House, a magnificent Jacobean mansion in Hertfordshire.  I had lunch with him and he provided a lovely foreword.  In it he uses the phrase  ‘a fascinating pilgrimage’ which will be on the front cover of the book.

All that is left is to source a dozen black and white images, copyright free, to accompany Part 1 about the last 2,000 years, and to make sure they are 300 dpi.  Chris will help.  And then it is done!

Rob in Hatfield House chapel

MARKETING

Nothing this month. But I have definite hopes and plans, possibly with the help of buffer.com (as recommended by Chat GPT)

CHURCH

I preached twice.  The first was at Choral Matins at Holy Trinity South Kensington, opposite Imperial College.  I had prepared a rather fine sermon on Luke 15.1-11, the Good Shepherd.  However, as I read the Gospel in the service I realised the actual lesson was Luke 5.1-11!  As it was Matins not communion, I had ten minutes to think of another one – and I did!  I thought back to the fishermen I had seen by the Sea of Galilee in 1963, big burly men with a very physical occupation, and commented on the authority of Jesus which made Simon Peter say “Leave, me, I’m a sinner.”

The following week I took the service at St Olave’s where the reading was the blessings and woes in Luke 6.  My text was just six words:  ‘Woe to you who are rich.’  I quoted one of the speakers at Greenbelt to whom I asked about Jesus’ attitude to money.  She replied, “Money is dangerous.”  I think that is exactly right.  Our struggle is to ensure that money takes its proper place in our lives.

PERSONAL

There were two social occasions on consecutive days.  Linda and I went to the funeral of the husband of a lady who worked for us for many years in Hackbridge.  I stayed on for the reception in the pub afterwards and sat at the table with all the people I knew from All Saints – quite special for me.  Then on Saturday Linda and I went to celebrate the 70th birthday of her cousin Jane in Maidenhead.  It was an extremely good occasion with multiple generations.

Of course the big event for me was going under the knife (or saw?) on Monday 17th to have a half knee replacement.  The operation was very successful and I left the hospital  the following day.  At Christmas Linda had given us tickets to see the National Theatre’s performance of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ on Thursday 20th, but then thought she would have to go on her own.  But by Thursday I reckoned I could do it, so we went to Piccadilly Circus by taxi and really enjoyed it.  Lady Bracknell as a fearsome Jamaican mama was superb, and I went to church on Sunday, again by Uber.  However on Monday my physiotherapist told me to spend much more time with my leg up, so that is what I am doing.  My office is now the sofa in the lounge.

In hospital I finally discovered the joy of music through headphones via iPhone, which is great so I can watch/hear great stuff while Linda is asleep, like Hoffnung’s ‘The Builder’s Lament’, a 1950 film ‘The Mudlark’ which I saw at prep school, and Haydn’s Farewell Symphony No. 45.  I am using the headphones as I write now.

FILM & TV

We did go to the cinema to see the live screening of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ and a French romantic drama ‘The Tasting’, all about wine.  But the best things we saw were on TV.

‘Patience’ was a 6-part series about an autistic young woman working in a police records department.   You really got to empathise with her, as well as being fascinated as she solved apparently impossible cases. 

New Tricks is a series about a team of three retired police officers who solve some very cold cases.  It ran from 2003 to 2015, so we have scores of entertaining police procedurals if there is nothing else on.

And of course we are now back in Apprentice season.

The most impressive, however, was a film I recorded, ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’, about husband and wife tele-evangelists Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye.  It was not as good as the original documentary, but very moving in showing how Tammy reached out to the LGBTQ community during the AIDS epidemic simply out of love.

WEDNESDAY SAINTS

The weekly reflection and prayer on a saint of the week continues every Wednesday at 10.00 a.m.  It lasts half an hour, followed by half an hour coffee and chat – on Zoom.  Last  month we remembered: 

• The martyrs of Japan, 27 young Christians who were crucified in 1597 and the thousands who were subsequently killed.  An underground church remained faithful for the next three hundred years- mostly in Nagasaki…
• Cyril and Methodius, two brothers who devised a script to express the Slavic languages and helped found the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.  Patron saints of Europe.
• Jawani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, murdered by Idi Amin.
• George Herbert, 1593-1633, a courtier turned priest and Christian poet.

If you would like to join us one Wednesday, drop me an email and I will send you the link.

A FINAL THOUGHT

On 27th the candidates in ‘The Apprentice’ were tasked with designing a new Easter egg.  But they ran into a problem:

“Obviously we have Santa Claus for Christmas.  We don’t have a main character for Easter.”