Boring for Some

It comes to something when the most exciting thing I can think to write in my letter to my mother is that I went out to buy a new kettle. As a church community with a closed church we're aware that we need to maintain contact with the congregation members who weren't joining in physical worship even when it was possible, but Lillian the former lay reader told me today how her phone conversations had revealed boredom rather than any more basic need. We want to talk to one another, but have precious little to talk about. The main topic of conversation concerns how wretched it is that we can't do this or that, the things that would normally form the grist to the mill of social interaction, and the overall mood seems to be a mixture of anxiety and tedium.

But of course some undergo more than that. Our councillor-congregant Polly (who wasn't coming to church even when it was open because her elderly mother lives with her) told me about rocketing numbers of Universal Credit applicants locally, businesses that are almost bound to fail once government support comes to an end, and the Community Store - a council-run food bank not termed a food bank out of deference to the church-run one not far away - having its busiest ever week in the days after Remembrance Sunday. Curiously our church has little connection with any of this except by report as our congregation is mainly retired, with older children who live away, as I may have mentioned. We contribute to the food (etc.) collections but all the ways we would usually contact and support locals in any kind of distress are suspended. I think perhaps I ought to hang around the centre of the village with a coffee a bit more.