Children Small and Large

If this year's assemblies at the Infants School include nothing more humiliating than the first one I shall be delighted. Talking about learning new things, I described my attempts to torment the piano I look after, and then despite having practised it perfectly at home, at church, and in fact on the piano in the school hall scant moments before, I positively wrecked a simple setting of Brahms's 'Cradle Song', much to the amusement of the assembled six and seven-year-olds. That was just the prelude (ho-ho) to recounting the story of Jesus calling Matthew the tax-collector, someone who also found himself doing something new. Now, to tell that story with any depth you simply have no option but to outline the tax system of the Roman Empire, even with small children. 'Buildings and roads had to be repaired, and the Emperor needed a big palace to live in -at least, he thought he did'. People having money taken off them to pay for the Emperor's palace is a pretty easy concept for anyone to grasp. 'I like the stories you tell us,' said Carey on the way out of the hall, oblivious perhaps to the undertones of anarcho-syndicalism but another little glimpse into the spontaneous affection little souls have for their parish priest.

In the church porch later on I met three rather older children, part of one of the various groups who have been orbiting around causing problems. I was able to have something approaching a reasonable conversation with them (there being only three of them helped). 'I saw you on your bike!' said Evie gleefully, 'You were outside the café!' Despite being nine or ten years older, she sounded exactly like the children from the infants school do, just the same sort of surprise that I should exist out of one context. That's a successful bit of interaction, I thought. Good work.

Later I came by and found they, or someone they knew, had smashed a candle, scorched the door with a lighter, and had a spitting competition up the windows of the porch.