A Dinner at Willow Grange

For such a big and venerable house, there are remarkably few images of the Bishop of Guildford’s official residence, Willow Grange, around. This one from the catalogue when the house was sold in the 1930s, long before a bishop came anywhere near it, is quite fun.

I should have taken a photo of the house when I was there on Friday for the Bishop’s supper for ‘clergy and plus-ones’; as the Bishop himself pointed out, increasingly often those plus-ones are clergy themselves (I suppose that cuts down the number of guests at these things). I hadn’t been to anything like this for a long, long time, so I thought I ought to go, rather than scooting over to Emwood for Cara’s garden party which was happening at the same time.

It was all fine, as it happened. Rather than hang around in the marquee dithering over the social/emotional/theological implications of sitting at one already-established table rather than another, I went in ahead of most people, brutally sat at an empty table and dared others to join me. Tom from Charlham and his wife took up the challenge. The food we were served was tasty but could have been a bit hotter. Perhaps it was to encourage us to eat quickly, never usually an issue with me.

When people learn that I’ve been in Swanvale Halt for nearly 13 years now they tend to widen their eyes and offer the opinion that it’s a long time, but Tom has been incumbent of his parish for over twenty and he was curate there before that. ‘You need to keep yourself fresh if you’re in a place for a long time’, he told me, ‘Do lots of reading.’ Oh dear. When I try to read I usually nod off. The trouble is that I can’t imagine being any more fresh in another setting: I think of my predecessor Fr Edgar who basically did the same thing in three successive parishes and looked less trendsetting the longer he carried on.

I managed to reverse out of the car park at the end without destroying anything. There might have still been time to race across the county to Emwood but my socialising batteries were well depleted by that point so home was by far the more charitable option!