Many years ago, I heard a Christian stating that “Video recorders were invented for the benefit of Christians who didn’t believe you should watch TV on a Sunday!”  Presumably, this would enable the Christian to watch a Sunday programme on another day without any sense of guilt.  I find the record facility helpful for a…

Do you remember going to the cinema and watching the B movie, or perhaps buying a 4rpm record with a B side song? Sometimes there was a hidden gem amongst these B movies or songs. They were a vehicle for up and coming actors and singers. You got two for the price of one –…

As a little lad growing up in a village in West Yorkshire, you could roughly divide religious people into four categories, Church folk, chapel folk, Roman Catholics and “not religious at all” The vast majority of people would class themselves as “CofE” if they had to align themselves with a denomination of any kind when…

Recently I’ve had cause to travel to and from Cambridge on quite a few occasions. I live in Felixstowe and my husband has been a patient in Royal Papworth. Most days the journey to and from the hospital was reasonable, if perhaps a bit slow on the way home. The one thing all the driving has…

Born in unhygienic conditions, even by the standards of Israel during the Roman Empire, in an unfamiliar region surrounded by strangers, in appearance just an ordinary baby boy, the salvation of the human race centred on Jesus. The prophet Isaiah gave four descriptions of the Messiah who would come, who we now recognise as Jesus:…

It may be almost forty years since my mother died but I can still hear her ranting on about the iniquities of frozen vegetables. If frozen was suspicious, canned was sinister and dried bordering on the demonic. She was wrong of course, but against the background of growing up with some appalling apologies for fruit…

I was born with spina bifida which resulted in me having one leg shorter and smaller than the other and I spent most of my first two years away from home in Great Ormond Street London. I was not expected to live and I am told I had the last rites read over me. But Father…

A few weeks ago, I was walking with some friends and their dogs and we happened to look in the windows of a charity shop. I came across a beautiful walnut bookcase with glass doors which stopped me in my tracks. I went inside and ten minutes later was the proud owner of the case.…

I have recently been revisiting early mornings. Since retiring 3 years ago, one of my favourite times of day is that time after you first wake up. There is no sense of urgency and I indulge myself in having a cup of tea and a good book – perhaps even THAT Good book! It’s an…

One of the problems with my line of work is that every so often, I am required to attend some kind of training, some voluntary and others mandatory.  I’m not a great lover of the training course, no matter what the topic and am much happier just getting on and researching what I need, when…