I have never been a gardener; I love seeing the fruits of other people’s labours and admire gardens while out and about. I would love to have the kind of skills to plant and grow and appreciate the fruits of my labours, but I was not blessed in that way. A few weeks ago we…
I had to attend a meeting in London on Tuesday, I haven’t been to London for several years and on the last occasion I had been with two colleagues who knew their way around train travel and negotiating the London Underground and I just chugged along following them. This time was different, I was travelling…
From the outset, I will apologise for starting what I hope is a bright and sunny Sunday morning with morbid thoughts, but just recently I have seen a string of adverts on the television for simple cremations and if I’m being honest they irritate me. When I first started working in the full time ministry,…
Today’s thought for the day is brought to us by Peter Horrobin www.ellel.uk “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty”. 2 Peter 1:8, NIV False religions depend on people being deceived into thinking that…
Way back in the early 1980’s we organised a trip from our Church to Blackpool for the young people and we learned in the process of preparation that when you take young people to Blackpool an important feature of the day had to include a visit to the pleasure beach. All these years on, I…
When I was young we had several very happy holidays in the North East. We stayed with some friends of my parents in Felling near Gateshead and ventured around the beautiful Durham and Northumberland countryside. I can remember seeing Dunstanburgh Castle in the distance as we travelled along the coast road, all I could see…
I always find this time of year particularly challenging because of the shorter hours of daylight, poorer weather conditions and the colder temperatures. Being paid to travel around the beautiful lanes of Norfolk is an absoute delight during the warmer months, but at this time of year road are prone to flooding and potholes lurk…
Sometimes I wonder where the time has gone, I took my first driving test in March 1976 which means that it is almost fifty years since that momentous day, I had longed to learn to drive from being young and had my first lesson in my dad’s three wheeler van on my seventeenth birthday. I…
The Grimshaw family took delivery of our first ever television in 1972, it was a rental set from the DER shop in Pudsey and even though the signal left a lot to be desired we were connected to the delights of BBC1 & 2 and ITV and our lifes changed forever with this wonderful new…
When the glorious day came when my wife was due to come home after being in hospital for just over nine and a half weeks, we were told that a care package would be put in place and we would have carers visiting our house four times a day. My heart sank, my last experience…