Updating my CV - Week 8

Whatever the period between week 7 and week 8 is, that has passed, and so time for anther dispatch from the rear guard of lock-down culture. Who knew there were only eight weeks in three months?

My life has consisted of a series of very minor inconveniences since March but it has felt like a side order of water torture - several lost family birthday celebrations, no retreat (it's a clergy thing) in May, the difficulty of doing eye-contact on Zoom. But this week I would have woken up to the prospect first of the breakfast buffet at the Osborne Hotel, Valetta and then a converted farmhouse in Gozo and that is more than I can cope with just now. So, given that TCMT has been told she has to take her booked holidays during furlough, we are enjoying two weeks vacation to the guest room.

There are some advantages. No early alarms to catch flights. Money saved. We will see the purple clematis flower for the first time for ages. We can read hardbacks. No mosquito bites. The bed linen and towels are nice. (Gozo farmhouse bed-linen is beautifully laundered but a little old and, despite being nearer Egypt, hasn't taken any advantage of their cotton prowess. The towels don't dry you very well but in a hot, dry country drying is best accomplished by getting out of the shower/pool and standing still for a bit.)

The flip-side is the difficulty of switching off from work as the holder of one of the few offices where you live amongst your constituency. So the work computer is going off. The work email notifications will be disabled. The landline will not be answered. I will try not to wander into the study (although it is the through route to the washing machine and beer fridge).

We live in a nice part of the country. It is the sort of place we visited for holidays in the days when we lived further north. It has nice walks. We drove ten miles on Tuesday to walk where we might not bump into people we knew. We bumped into people we knew. We also met a charmingly eccentric young man powering an electric bike with a large stick. 'Hello sir' he said 'May I stay and talk to you?' We said that was fine and question two was about how long we had been together. On hearing the answer to that one, he asked if I had made sure '...she had a good meal every night.'

After a few minutes of chatter where minds never met and my own enquiries were not even vaguely dealt with he left with a (can you guess?) 'I'll bid you both good day.' Marvellous.

Yesterday we walked nearer home and did some of the walk called the Nailsea Round. We met no-one we knew because we met no-one.

Last night there was a torrential downpour and the garage flooded. I have tried to be strict about not doing things I wouldn't do on holiday. I'm leaving the washing to stack up. I'm putting envelopes of post unopened on my desk. But not to bail out? That would be silly.

Today it is very wet. Novels, jigsaws and blog posts. A bit like the last three months of eight weeks.

1971

TYA 1971 Tour Front Cover

I very much enjoyed last night's gig by guitarist/singer/song-writer Keith Christmas at Nailsea's Ring of Bells pub. The slightly weird bit of the whole experience was this:

I went to a number of 'variety show' gigs with my parents in the 1960s and also saw some bands in the days when they were guests on pantomimes. I can tick off Herman's Hermits, The Bachelors. The Searchers, Freddie and the Dreamers, The Barron Knights and Gerry and the Pacemakers. But these were two or three song gigs with comedians as headline.

Exploring my own taste in music from about 1969/70 onwards I got over-interested in Ten Years After and in autumn 1971 they were my first solo gig, at Birmingham Town Hall. These days I do not buy concert programmes (I worked out they were a rip-off quite quickly), but to begin with I would buy a programme and place it, for safe-keeping, in the sleeve of the album being promoted on that tour. Another use of a vinyl album. So I still have it.

The 1971 line up

The opening act I saw at that first gig was a young solo artist of whom I had not heard. Yeah, Keith Christmas. He was able to command the stage, as I recall, and his acoustic guitar playing was a bit good (although some of you will know I am not a guitarist). A lot of the audience remained in the bar.

I spent a large part of last night pondering on where our journeys had taken us since then. Keith had played with Bowie, opened up for many major bands and recorded much fine music. He describes his career as coming to an end but also seems to have become a prolific song-writer later in life. Some of his new material was outstanding. He has also had two sons and now lives in Torquay. I guess that if, in 1971, you would have told him he would eventually wind down his career playing to 25 people in Nailsea he would have been a bit disappointed, although he genuinely seemed to love the appreciative audience (I knew most of them from the local music scene). Did I ever tell you I had turned down an invitation to play keys in a Wurzels tribute band? Fact.

The autograph

But not half as surprised as 16 year old me would have been to be told that he would end up here as a vicar. Our journeys have been different but it was great to say hello to part of my past.  He has signed my tour programme. Look what he wrote.

Guitarists might like to know that Keith uses a rare B tuning of his own making from time to time. Some of the guitarists in the room seemed to be weeping at the sheer variety of picking techniques Keith used. Lost on me but I pass it on.

I try to go to as many local music events as possible and get to know the people. I have even dared perform at the Folk Club from time to time. There aren't many opportunities for the vicar to walk into a room full of men outside church circles. I love it.

One guy (hi Rob) told me he always enjoyed hearing me on the radio and when I told him I had been on that morning he said he would go home and listen to it on iplayer. 'I'm that sad' he added, with a wink.

Keith Christmas April 2018 

From time to time I have an experience that screams at me. Look where I brought you from. Look where I put you. What you going to do about it?

Thanks Keith, for the memory jog, the great performance and the reminder of the journey.

Health warning. UKIP members probably wouldn't enjoy his politics. 'I'm a bit of a leftie even for a folk singer'.

He once had to break it to the members of Chicken Shack that Stan Webb had gone home from a tour of Germany during the night after a telephone row with his wife. He told the story as his encore.

Bread

I have written before about the difference between bread with presevatives in and a more natural product. Find my piece about Gozitan bread here. It's only short.

Recently I have noticed that we are not eating so much bread in the house again and our home-made stuff tends to deteriorate before we have finished a loaf. We solve this by making a new loaf and freezing half of it each time.

But another first world problem has appeared. We are the destination of choice when Lakeland bread-making packs approach their best-before date. And as the yeast has a few problems of ageing the packs often require a double knead and prove. Even this is not quite enough and some very solid products have appeared recently. Toasting a slice can take longer than a normal adult male has in the morning. So imagine the trouble I have. We play scissors, paper, bread in my gaff now.

I feel I need to crawl back to the lovely Colin at Nailsea's Tuesday Market and buy some of his soudough and rye creations. He calls them campaouille or something like that. Pronounced in broad Somerset the French would have no idea it is their language he is mangling.

Nailsea Mountain Rescue Team

As delivered on Friday night to an expectant room most of whom stayed for the after-dinner speeches. Those unfamiliar with our work need to know that there is a long-standing and bitter rivalry between ourselves and the Backwell Lifeboat Association:

Mr Secretary, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to address the fourth annual dinner of the Nailsea Mountain Rescue Team.

In a year in which the world seems to have embraced the ideas of alternative facts and post-truth it may be that we are way ahead of the world, our very existence being a living and breathing example of alternative facts and post-truth and having been so for some years.

The world may think one needs mountains for a mountain rescue team but that is a very old-truth way of looking at things. Allow me to present you with some alternative facts for a few minutes:

There are two fewer attendees at this year's Annual Dinner. Neither of them were mislaid on mountains. However, due to the inadequacy of our sister organisation, we cannot guarantee that they were not drowned.

Five energetic and robust training sessions have been undertaken this year; sessions 14-18 in the history of our organisation:

Session 14 - Mar - the Jubilee, Flax Bourton

Session 15 - May - the Black Horse, Clapton in Gordano

Session 16 - Jul - George, Backwell

Session 17 - Failand Inn

Session 18 - Rising Sun, Backwell

Our secretary was apparently unable to recall the dates of these final two due to intense postprandial warm-down procedures.

It was a successful year with no rescues needed. As this is the second year in which emergency activity has been unnecessary we appear to have achieved remarkable consistency.

It may not be a coincidence that, thanks to our support by visiting once a year, the Rising Sun has been refurbished.

But we are always looking for new volunteers. He is not here this evening but we are told the Rev'd Trevor Dean will be joining the team this year. However since he is alarmingly fit, blessed with chaplaincy skills and medically proficient he may turn out to be over-qualified. I spoke to him at the gym today and he said, and I quote:

(Gasp, puff, pant, heavy bathing, Spin Class)

I think we should turn him down.

From the Royal Navy David Kay will also be joining, bringing many years of valuable naval experience to the team. We hope he will be able to share some of his knowledge with the Coxswain of the Backwell Lifeboat Association who is proficient only in excuses for missing training sessions and dinners. One of these excuses, that he is washing his hair, is wearing a bit thin now, as indeed...

The other, that he is out scouting for a new lifeboat, is one with which we can deal.

The Mountain Rescue Team often walks near to the lake after several pints of training. The new route taken by the Christmas Walk led by Mountain Rescue Team member Dave Boddy also goes via the lake to the Rising Sun, less spiritual members preferring to walk around it. A water-related accident would ruin the final stage of the walk to the Ring O Bells for debriefing purposes.

It is therefore vitally important that we support the valuable community contribution that the lifeboat service continues to provide.

Due to your generous support - we have had a whip-round - and some incredibly creative accounting, Dale (absent this evening) acquired a lifeboat with the money that the Mountain Rescue Team has raised.

I invite the secretary to make the presentation.

And I invite you to drink to his health.

Garden Birds 2013

Far fewer garden birds around last year than previously. Here's the list. If it's the most, or equal most, I've ever seen at any one time (been doing this for four years now) then the date of the observation is recorded. Species missing include chaffinch, fieldfare, redwing, swallow, greenfinch and pied wagtail. The end of 2013 was very mild and many birds stayed in the fields longer.



Blackbird 3



Blackcap 2 (26/12)



Black-headed Gull 5



Blue Tit 3



Buzzard 1



Coal Tit 1



Collared Dove 4



Crow 1 (17/10)



Dunnock 2



Goldfinch 15 (17/10)



Great Tit 2



House Martin 17 (23/8)



House Sparrow 15



Jackdaw 1



Jay 1



Long-tailed Tit 2



Magpie 3 (19/3)



Robin 2



Sparrowhawk 1 (several)



Starling 8



Swift 2



Wood Pigeon 4 (20/4)



Wren 1 (29/11)

What I Could Have Said

Last Monday, linking to my Outside Broadcast from Nailsea Thought for the Day, presenter Steve asked me to paint a picture of what I could see. I explained I was in a shop selling local art and ceramics, looking across at the queue for the Post Office and a not yet open bank. It was true and the best I could do at the time.

I could have said:

Morning Steve,

I am here in a shop window in Nailsea looking across at a shrine to brutalism, a concrete 1970s shopping centre which nobody much likes. The queue for the Post Office, average age deceased, began at 8.20 and has now grown to six ladies with shopping trolleys. I expect one of them is called Ivy. Tumbleweed doesn't grow here anymore.

I love my town but it has a face only a mother could love.

Thought for the Day

Today Radio Bristol are doing some live coverage from Nailsea and so I did my thought slot live from The Blue Room, a shop in the town centre. To understand the final line you need to know, if you are not local, that presenter Steve le Fevre does not come from these parts either:

I am in my home town of Nailsea. I moved here in 2006. Most people are incomers.

Allowed to grow from village to small town by the North Somerset Development Plan in the 1960s, more people moved here than come from here.

I am a Brummie. Proudly so. But Nailsea is my home. I don't come from these parts but I share with others, who have settled here, a growing love of town and a responsibility to look after the place and people.

I live on an estate that used to be fields. Lots of Nailsea used to be fields. This 1960s concrete town centre used to be the village green.

It was six months before I met anyone who had been born in Nailsea apart from the younger generation.

Location is interesting. There has been a community on this site since the days that a small island in a large bay became first tidal, then mainland.

It farmed, it became Roman, found coal, used coal to make glass and now has light industries and is a dormitory town. People sleep here and work elsewhere.

The Jewish and Christian stories start with God calling Abram to leave his home and go somewhere else.

Once, hearing that Jesus came from Nazareth, people said 'Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'

Later St Paul wrote, in effect, that we were all just passing through and our citizenship should be in heaven.

Where do you come from? Where are your roots? Where is your home? Are you a settler or a nomad?

So, as they used to say in my home and don't say here, Tarrarabit and back to the lovely local accent of Steve in the studio.

Trendlewood Community Festival - Vicar's Reflections

For those clergy who find their church building at the heart of a community around a village green this will come as no shock, but churches have a great tradition of getting people together. The church fete, the village fete, the Christmas fayre and the like all gather people.

So what do you do to develop community when you have no building?

This was the question two members of our church were playing around with as they sat at a swimming pool watching a children's lesson. And the idea of our festival was born.

It is a real privilege to be the minister of a church where ideas are generated and acted upon.

The idea was brought to the leadership (Trendlewood Committee) who embraced it but took the sensible decision to cancel something else we usually did (our church weekend) in order to concentrate on it.

It is great to work with a group of leaders who ask 'How can we make this work?' rather than saying it won't.

Then the work started. Co-led by an intern and a volunteer who dropped one day a week's paid work in order to serve, the different aspects of the festival were allocated to four or five people and eight months of planning, blogging, promoting and recruiting started. I have no idea how many people hours were involved but last weekend I reckon a key 15 people did about 600 hours.

Using the grounds of the school where we meet on a Sunday we ran a local festival for local people - not quite as Royston Vasey as it sounds. People from the estate shared their produce, their gifts, their collections and their time.

We may have lost a little money. We may have slightly over-catered. But between 400 and 600 people turned up for a day in the sun.

The police said it was one of the best-organised festivals they have ever attended and want to come back. The food hygiene inspectors were impressed with the care.

On Sunday the 55 people in church were the bitter-enders (Venture folk will know what this means) knackered, but glowing with the satisfaction of a job well done. Instead of coffee after church they took down yet another marquee. Respect. And thanks.

It is great to be the minister of a church where permission-giving ministry allows this sort of thing to happen. What's next?

Nailsea Uganda Water Project

.Since I spent quite a long time on the home page of the Woodspring Conservative Association web-site in 2010, apparently showing warmth and enthusiasm to the Conservative candidate, and having had to live with the large amount of abuse that this engendered from my friends who felt my political impartiality was shot, I gladly reproduce a picture I have been sent of said candidate, now my MP, embracing the Nailsea Uganda Water Project. Why didn't we order red sweat-shirts? Or even funnier, yellow? This, by the way, is our former Defence Secretary, the Eurosceptic, Atlanticist, Unionist, Thatcherite Dr Liam Fox MP. We have so much in common, both being carbon-based humanoid life-forms on the third planet from the Sun.

 

 

Easter Tuesday

We take a break from getting back to work - I say take a break; I mean avoid - to bring you some news. The three causes of choice at Waitrose, into one of which I deposit my little green plastic token to select a charity, are renewed monthly. This adds a frisson of small-town excitement to food shopping at the start of each month.

Popping into town just now to get mother-in-law's Daily Tel****ph and some of the lovely Colin's fresh bread ('Haven't seen you for a few weeks sir, how are you? Can't train that can you?), I had a green token to deposit.

Now I give my vote in this general order:

1. People/poverty needs
2. People/entertainment needs
3. Animals

So the Parkinson's Disease support group got the vote today.

But I was distracted by this one first:

The Alchemy Trampoline and DMT Club

I now find it is a genuine local gymnastic association. You can find out about it here if you want.

But for a while I wondered if bouncing had been discovered to be the key to the creation of gold or whether, given the renowned properties of tryptamines, it was just that someone had entertained the idea whilst high. A little general knowledge, a slightly misspent youth and a lively imagination is a dangerous thing.

Good morning.

Torching Nailsea

And so it came to pass that out of the side streets and cul-de-sacs of Nailsea, out of the mist, came a hoard of zombie-like creatures all converging, glazed-eyed on a central spot.

For sure many of these had no idea there were two 6.30s in a day.

It was strange. The only other time everyone in Nailsea gets up and does community stuff is when it snows.

Still, the church gave away 150 free teas and coffees as we watched the cavalcade from our own grassy knoll. A procession of police outriders passed, all waving (they got the bug), and then some big-screen adverts for fizzy drinks sponsors and finally, clad in a white tracksuit, came our torch bearer.

After doing that very 21st century thing of twirling for photographs the procession er, processed on into the gloom.

Another community has been Olympic-hyped.

It was good to see my old friend Jim, working on the vision mixing but managing to pop out on to the back of his bus to spot us at just the right time. I believe he is very bored, and it's only week one.

The Glassmaker

Wetherspoons have opened a new pub, The Glassmaker, in Nailsea. Picking up on the available metaphor they have made it very glassy and shiny. One light fitting made out of old bottles is very nice.

The rest is full of tiles and a big glass skylight which I hope gets cleaned regularly. Wetherspoons don't so much modernise a pub as post-modernise it. All the chairs and tables are old and don't match each other. Last night there were too few chairs and people were constantly borrowing and moving them. A central display is made of old books.

The Glassmakers, like most Wetherspoons pubs has no TV or live music. Last night it was noisy with conversation and ramming with people, especially the young. Three bouncers and many 'Are you 21?' badges didn't seem to have worked that well.

They are also cheap. I doubt if the £2.99 breakfast contains any well-treated animals but it is a bargain for the hungry. I gather they buy up large quantities of beer near its sell-by date which they can shift by having so many outlets. I've never had a magic pint in Wetherspoons but rarely had a bad one. Again the beer is cheap. Bath Ales Barnsey was fine but Mrs T's glass of pinot grigio, from a dispenser not a bottle, was horrid.

A good acquisition for Nailsea town centre. I hope it brings life and employment. It may get some tenants into the empty shops nearby. Will pop in again during the day this week and see how it changes. Had a nice chat to a guy waiting for a friend to turn up. Conversations with strangers in pubs is not very common in Nailsea. Hope it continues.

More members of our church communities should be in there. It is the place to be.

Beer, Bible and Big Pizza

Yesterday I was a bit depressed. The men's event I had been planning and looking forward to for some time had not produced much interest. I offered a prayer that, in order to give us reasonable numbers and atmosphere, one man might book in every two hours for the next thirty hours.

We are on target for this. So far we have 23 plus a panel of 4 making 27 coming tonight. It will feel good with this number. Thanks be to God.

I'm off to buy beer and order pizza. Tough job this.

FAQs
Did you put the word 'big' in front of pizza merely to improve the alliteration?

Yes.

Will the pizzas actually be big?

Yes

Do I have to drink beer if I don't like it?

No. I will get some juice and wine.

Is it too late to say I am coming?

No.

Will I have to talk about the Bible?

No, a panel of three men will be my guests to do this? Audience comments will be welcome but not compulsory.

Describing a Circle

The Nailsea Round is a good name for a walk which goes right round the outside of Nailsea. Since it was once a tidal island you get down to sea-level and describe a circle. Mike (@mikepeat in town for two days ministry review mentoring) and I went clockwise yesterday (as viewed from above in case a pedant is reading).

It is a fascinating journey to find where the North Somerset Development Plan in the 1960s stuck all the new on top of, and amongst, the old. Took about two hours of walking so probably about five miles. It's the first time I've done it.

I also enjoyed the view of the early flood defences along the Tickenham Wall. Doing the walk with Mike's iphone4 meant when we couldn't see the landscape clearly we switched on google earth. Brilliant.

Ended with a pint at The Sawyers which has hit sad times. Beer still excellent but the place smelled of dog, chips and Pledge and the decor is really manky but not in a Barn sort of way where it is famously ironic.

Mike has gone back to the frozen north-west now to put into operation all the difficult things he worked out he needed to do by having another person to bounce off. Now I'm off to Exeter for a few hours to catch up with my Arrow mentee.

Next year's BRF (Bible Reading Fellowship) book deadline is tomorrow so that's what I will do when I get back. All day wedding on Saturday and then, whoohoo for a bit of (whisper it) normal life.

Street Party

A couple of weeks ago I decided to stick a note through the doors of local houses seeing if anyone wanted a sort of bring and share lunch for the royal wedding bank holiday. We live at a junction so chose to leaflet two roads and a total of 46 houses. I gave five different ways of replying (email, text, tweet, phone or call round). With one day to go 13 households have actually replied and 7 of these have said they will join in. There are enough people coming for us to have a good time together but I wonder if this is normal or should I be disappointed to have been completely ignored by two thirds of the people?

Bored

Not especially bored. And not so bored as to write a post about whether it's bored with or bored of. Who, frankly, cares?

No I'm bored with one very specific bit of my life.

And my Dad used to tell me that if I was bored I must be a cabbage. He was kind like that.

Once upon a back in the time was I used to have a long drive to work. 45 minutes across the Birmingham rush hour and over four years I avoided most of the other cars most of the time and enjoyed the Radio 1 breakfast show to boot. If I felt complacency coming on I would vary my route a little. I was in my early twenties. More likely to be bored then than today but avoided it.

These days I live a one and a half mile walk or 1.8 mile drive from Holy Trinity Church where I go up to three times a day four or five times a week. There is no possibility of varying the route. I have migrated to Radio 4 and only catch snippets of a programme on the way.

The drive takes 6 or 7 minutes. I do need to concentrate a bit because once I get off the estate I come to a junction and occasionally there is another car there.

How can I use the time better? Don't say 'walk' or 'cycle.' Or 'work at the church.' I'll explain why not if you really want to know. Just help me to make the most of those six minutes. Ta.

Black-headed Gulls

There are quite a lot of black-headed gulls in the photo above. They don't have a black head in the winter, just a smudgy neck marking. When I took the picture they were transitional.

Between the lake and the car park is a crash barrier and the gulls like to perch on it. If scared they all, obviously, fly around a bit and then slowly come back in to land.

The metal bar at the top of the barrier is wider than their talons can grip easily and slippery when wet. They have to employ a fair bit of balancing and flapping to come to rest on it.

What I noticed is that, once a few have perched and got a grip, there is an easier way to land. You simply aim for the middle of the back of an already-perched bird, knock it to the floor and take its place. Hilarious, especially the dethroned who then peck around the grass a bit with an 'I meant that, you know' attitude. Who likes to own up to being bullied?

Beer Off

As you travel the country you find that there are strange local names for the:

• Off Licence
• Offie
• Outdoor
• Beer Off

Well a new one (to me) has opened in Backwell, almost opposite the Spar. It seems to have a good selection of wines and some fine local beers and ciders. I've just purchased some interesting bottles of Gorge Best Cheddar Ale and some equally wonderful Spring Loaded Glastonbury Ale.

The very good news - 2% discount for cash.

The very bad news, and talking of puns for names - it's called Aimee's Wine House.

I shall drink in memory of my friend John Rankin who died on Monday. Obituary to follow.

Youth Worker Needed

The following advert is going out this week in various publications. Anyone appointed would not report to me but to my colleague the Rector of Holy Trinity. However I'd be a colleague. I would be delighted to have informal conversations with anyone interested.

Holy Trinity and Trendlewood Church, Nailsea, North Somerset
Youth Worker

We are a lively evangelical church in the thriving community of Nailsea. We aim to be a biblical, prayerful and Jesus-centred community with a vision to:
Reach others with the love of Christ
Serve the local community
Resource the wider church

We are looking for an enthusiastic, committed and experienced youth worker to join our leadership team. You will give fresh direction to our youth work and committed team of volunteers building on relationships with local schools and reaching out to young people outside the church. We have a vision for enabling our young people to play a full part in the life and mission of the whole church.

You will be a committed Christian and confident in an evangelical faith and life style. A passion for young people, leadership experience or potential and ability to relate to a wide range of people will be essential.

Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations Section 7.2 and/or Section 7.3 applies.

Salary in the range of JNC scale 7-14 (£17,471 - £23,148 a year) according to experience and/or qualifications.

Closing date: Tuesday 8th June at 12 noon

Interview date: Tuesday 22nd June

For an application form and further information please go to www.htnailsea.org.uk/information.htm

Faithfulness

There's a new post on the Nailsea People site about the south-west allegedly being the kingdom of marital infidelity. I managed to get a quote into the story to paint a slightly more optimistic picture. Read it here.