I spent several remarkable weeks binging on the excellent Netflix Drama “The Crown” earlier this year. I would hardly claim to be a Royalist, but I have always respected our monarchy and admired our Queen. Perhaps my motivation at the time was the platinum jubilee, when, not for the first time in my life, I…
Without any shame whatsoever I am taking the opportunity to advertise a brilliant book, North to Alaska by Trevor Lund. Over the years I have loved reading about people who have set out to do the impossible. Just over twenty years ago, Trevor set out from Ushuaia at the southernmost tip of Argentina with all…
Dear Friends, I always look forward to September with a mix of emotions, on the one hand, it is one of the busiest months of the year for me, with a string of meetings, several of them quite heavyweight. I also find it quite depressing as the evenings start to draw in. On the other…
If you have ever considered the idea of taking up either surfing, or wind surfing, I thought that you might appreciate a bit of advice before investing in a board, wet suit and all the gear you will need. Not that I have even touched a surfboard in my entire life, nor am ever likely…
One of my criticisms about the twenty-first century is that we seem to believe that it is honourable to fill every minute of every day with work. I keep hearing people bragging about how hard they work, and I guess that I am guilty of doing the same myself. If I am being honest, I…
Dear friends, I have questioned for a long time the value of Church notices and newsletters and have heard people say over and over again “nobody ever reads them” and I have wondered what the point was in writing them if that were the case. In the beginning, when I first started preaching, you were…
Just on the off chance that you think that the above picture is of Karen and I on our recent holiday in Cornwall, relaxing in the sunshine, I’m sorry to disappoint you, although the sea was that lovely turquoise colour and the sun shone most of the time, and we spent a lot of time…
I have decided over the years that I must have a warped sense of humour. We came to East Anglia in 2004 for a family holiday and stayed in Great Yarmouth and while we were out and about in the countryside, I spotted a sign like the one above at the side of the road,…
Dear friends, It’s good to be back among you following our fortnight’s break in Cornwall and Devon. We last spent a holiday in the West Country in 2013 just before moving to Ipswich and it is twenty-six years since we spent a holiday in the Bude area and I had forgotten just how beautiful this…
We travelled down Woodhall Road in the Village of Calverley West Yorkshire a few years ago, passing my childhood family home, I asked my eldest daughter if she remembered my mum who died in the summer of 1992 when my daughter was just two years old. I was really surprised to by her reply, she…