Mostly Off

As is my custom once Harvest is out of the way, I've been on leave for a fortnight, a period which is drawing to an end. My sojourn actually away from home was spent at the Pump House on the Chillington estate not far from Wolverhampton, which has been in the ownership of the same family since 1178. I was able to join Dr Bones on a guided tour of the Hall and the current representative of the Giffards, Charlie, told guests that the family's long tenure can basically be put down to them keeping their heads down and never being involved with anything, apart from a brief episode of unpleasantness during the Civil War when they were under house arrest at Boscobel a few miles away.

For the first time I can remember my break has been disrupted. We have some roofing works in hand at the church which in themselves are relatively minor but require scaffolding, and the insurers insist that scaffolding requires six-foot hoarding to keep off it people who shouldn't be on it. There's not much space to park in the centre of Swanvale Halt, and we don't own the car park right next to the church which is rented by the Day Centre from the Council. Painfully aware we hadn't really got a clear idea from the scaffolding contractors how this was all going to work practically, the first task of my holiday was to call by at the church to speak to them and to the Day Centre staff to try and ensure everyone spoke to each other and worked around each other as far as possible. I was down there again yesterday morning to answer complaints. The second issue that came up was online access to our bank account being frozen after our bookkeeper entered the wrong details. That took a forty-minute phone call to the bank only to be told that I'd passed one level of security checks but not a second, so the following day I had to visit a branch in person and prove my identity. Then a man claiming to be a homeless Iranian Christian refugee turned up at the church office and somewhat hurriedly I found the details of the homeless action people in Guildford to pass on, while I was waiting for a train to Mortlake to plan out the route of my next history walk and to see my god-daughter. There's also someone locally with longstanding links to the Iranian Christian community so I put him in touch with the action centre too. Now for years my breaks haven't been disturbed in any significant way and I am rarely bothered out of hours so I shouldn't complain. I've just been watching a creaky old episode of Crown Court centring on allegations against a probation officer which mentions him being called at home at all hours by his clients threatening suicide and so forth: surely probation officers now don't give out their home numbers to clients? Clergy are always advised not to and over the years I have learned the wisdom of this. Nevertheless it would be nice if these events occurred when I'm at work rather than a long distance away!

Four St Catherines seen on my trip, all modern, and two in each of the cathedrals I managed to pack in: at Lichfield, a statue and an unusual window showing the saint disputing with the philosophers; and, from Chester, a 20th-century window from a parade of holy people depicted in the cloisters, and a what looks like a rather earlier Kempe window.

I will see what else might be worth while sharing!