Back to Change

In many ways, the parish seems normal on my return to work, despite the masks ubiquitous in the shops. I was able to go for a coffee yesterday, the children make their way to school, the bell of the church rings, just as usual. Meanwhile in Wales my friends Cylene and Dee are incarcerated apart from food shopping, even though just up the valley from them the infection rates are lower than here. That's devolution for you.

Yesterday's coffee fortified me for a virtual school governors' meeting in the evening. This year, we were told, there are 18 pupils who qualify for pupil premium, a little over one child in every ten. At Branscombe Meads school at the other end of the village, this would be nothing remarkable, but Swanvale Halt Infants has never had more than a handful of PP children. The great majority are in this year's Reception class, so they have been assessed since the epidemic started. Meanwhile the headteacher's been contacted four times this half-term by social workers with concerns about pupils; normally, she says, she gets one such enquiry every term or so, so by this rough index family strain is running at eight times the standard. Things look normal-ish, but they aren't.

The church congregation is generally on the older side, like many, and I get the impression - not that I have counted it up - that where members have families including younger children they tend to live elsewhere. It means that my sense of what is actually going on in the parish has to come more from random scraps of information and conversation with those who feel confident enough to talk to me about troubling matters, and not everyone does. I encourage church members to talk to their neighbours, too, and to pray for them.