Playing With Your Mind

Years ago I and Il Rettore attended a diocesan event at a benighted church elsewhere in the diocese. As we left the then Archdeacon - now a bishop in some far-flung part of Christendom - made a point of rushing over and fulsomely shaking his hand with a big smile. Il Rettore turned to me with a look which veered between incredulity and disgust. 'Did you see that?' he grimaced, still holding his hand out as though it needed a wash. 'He's trying to be nice to me!!' 'The bastard!' I offered, 'Is there no villainy to which he will not stoop?'

This Sunday I toiled up the hill from the 8am mass and found our current Archdeacon on my doorstep. He is a far cry from his predecessor and has no apparent desire for a pointy hat, but nevertheless an unannounced archidiaconal visit conjures up images of many, many scenes in the series Rev and is not at all what you want. In fact, as it turned out, it wasn't unannounced, though an email at 23.48 on a Saturday night is not something most clergy are likely to see - not too far off 'on display in a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"', as Douglas Adams described. 

On the doorstep were three bottles of wine, one for me, one for Marion the curate, and one for the headmistress of the Infants School. They had come from the Lord Bishop of Guildford and every clergyperson and Church school head-teacher was in receipt of one. If I could deliver them that would be great, the Archdeacon said from his car, and zoomed (but not Zoomed) off somewhere else.

Now, one understands and appreciates the gesture but. Guildford is not a large diocese and I suppose there are about 160 parishes. Let's be conservative and estimate that on average, excluding retireds, there are two clergy per parish, plus about sixty Church schools. That makes 380 bottles of Sea Change wine. Even if the diocese has got a good deal on them they'll be at least £5 a bottle: that's the better part of £2K. I can't imagine the Bishop is paying it, and I do wonder whether it's quite the best use of the time of two members of the senior leadership team to shuttle round eighty parishes apiece handing out drink. I'd've been content with a Christmas card and even more perhaps a phone call.

'Well', offered Marion, 'You could argue that it counts as a pastoral visit. Although if they're delivering the wine on Sunday mornings it does imply they don't actually want to catch any clergy in.' She and her husband drank theirs almost instantly.