As a teenager I used to dread Mothering Sunday because there was a practice in our Church of giving a bunch of daffodils to mums in the congregation. At some point in history it had been deemed unfair that women with five children would get five bunches, while mothers with a single child would get…
We have just spent five days on holiday in Norfolk, when apart from a very orange day on Wednesday thanks to the Sahara sand, we have had a lovely week. We have travelled less than five hundred miles during the week but the signs that have made my heart sink over and over again is…
Two separate, unconnected events over the last couple of weeks have got me thinking about the people who have influenced my life. I was contacted by the Church Secretary at Calverley Methodist Church in West Yorkshire to ask if I would go back to take part in the one hundred and fifty years anniversary. I…
I first attended the Methodist Assiation of Youth Clubs annual MAYC London Weekend in May 1979 and it was an experience that changed my life forever. Even forty years on the memory is still very real to me and I find myself remembering detailed moments of that event, when I find, that I sometimes struggle…
Dear Friends, As March gets underway, so does Lent, a time of great significance in the Christian calendar as we prepare for Easter. I always see Shrove Tuesday as a sign of hope that the dark days of winter are now giving way to the (hopefully) much brighter days of spring and even as I…
On two separate occasions I have forked out good money to ride to the top of Snowdon in one of their trusty little trains and both occasions have been memorable and one day I would love to repeat the experience. I have been enticed into making this journey each time with pictures like the one…
As a little lad, I used to love it when my Dad and Uncle James started telling stories of their childhood. One of my favourite stories was about the skin of the rice pudding. This was back in the days when dinner was eaten at mid day and tea was the early evening meal. The…
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we go out for early morning walks, at the time of writing, we were setting off in darkness and arriving home in daylight. It is a reminder that the days are getting longer now, that this week is the first time that we have set off from…
“You cannot cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore” The above quotation is attributed to Christopher Columbus. This quote made some kind of sense to me during last summer when I read a delightful book entitled “Four mums in a boat” the wonderful story of four quite ordinary…
I am often in awe of great wordsmiths who write profound lines in poetry, hymns and songs. George Matheson, a blind Scottish minister of religion wrote a famous hymn on the evening before his sisters wedding. Mattheson had lost his sight aged twenty, while he was trianing for the ministry and engaged to be married. …