Amidst all the pomp and ceremony of the Jubilee weekend celebrations, the BBC managed to hit us with two and half minutes of pure genius and we saw maybe the best bit of television our nation saw in a long time, as the queen invited Paddington Bear to Buckingham Palace for high tea and in…
Weather permitting, the people of Great Britain and around the British Commonwealth will be spilling out into the streets this weekend to celebrate seventy years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. You don’t have to be a staunch royalist to appreciate all that she has done over the last seventy years and still continues…
Dear friends, This time of the year is always special for me, I always look forward to Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. In my past life the biggest incentive was that it was the first Bank Holiday of the year, which I used to look forward to as I set out to work on dark…
My first proper bike, a two wheeler had a bright blue frame and splendid white mudguards. My dad had got it from a bloke at work because his son had grown out of it, I remember pushing it home, on that journey it was a tatty navy blue with no mudguards and I guess looking…
Dear Friends, I think that it matters little whether you are a royalist or not, the platinum Jubilee at the beginning of June is a landmark event in all our lives. Bearing in mind that our Queen was only 25 years old when her father died and she took the weight of being the head…
One of the biggest challenges of the current era seems to be that a whole range of familiar experiences have disappeared from our lives and I am finding it challenging and exciting as dormant memories are reawakened. This little chapel in the village of Conistone in upper Wharefedale has been important to me for almost…
We were woken abruptly last Sunday morning (8th May) just before 5am by a horrendous sound outside. We currently live opposite a building site and the main road has been closed to through traffic for the last five days, so the loud crash and grating noise outside caused us to wake immediately and look out…
We have a season ticket for Jimmy’s farm, just south of Ipswich where we live, and it is some of the best money I have ever spent, we get our money’s worth out of our ticket and visit the farm frequently. Over the last few years we have got to know some of the staff…
During the early summer of 2006, I was still a bit wet behind the ears and was so new to the work of being a minister, that I would give anything a go. One of the men in one of my churches who was fairly new to a life of faith came to me with…
Dear Friends, The seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost always feel a bit strange to me, it is as though we remain in a kind of hiatus, but I think that a bit like the season of Lent, we have an opportunity to reflect. I remember being at a meeting once where we shared Holy…