The Hearth of Mopsus

I can only imagine Il Rettore  was to blame for prompting the church, completely unsuspected by me untill it happened, to celebrate the 20th...

Well, if not danger, mild irritation, anyway. At the beginning of the Clergy Conference at Swanwick it is now the custom to ask everyone to ...

Holy Week at Swanvale Halt wouldn't happen without lots of people doing and arranging things, and discussions with colleagues makes the ...

Purcell; Duruflé; Fauré; and Rutter's 'The Lord Bless You and Keep You', which I find a bit soppy but says what you want it to; ...

It wasn't even the Archdeacon who came to do the Archdeacon's Visitation at the church this week; it was the Deputy Archdeacon, the ...

The readings today were from Jeremiah 23 where God lambasts prophets who prophesy their own fantasies, and Luke 12.49-56, in which Jesus tal...

... at the meeting this week when a clerical colleague due to leave his role the day after described the frustrations of his prospective ret...

… has offered a variety of experiences. Monday: I attend on my Spiritual Director and mention that the Bishop, for the first time ever, is...

There is an Area Dean in the church-set TV comedy series Rev , but she has a minor role next to waspish Archdeacon Robert, who turns up at t...

This Sunday I was at Canley next door to Swanvale Halt, filling in for Sue the priest-in-charge, who was away. Canley is much, much older th...

It took the local council a matter of minutes after the Prime Minister stood in the rain in Downing Street and announced the date of the Gen...

The Deanery Chapter gathered yesterday to hear the head of the Mission Department at the Diocese talk about lay ministry. That's what th...

Every two years we clergy go through a Ministerial Review. I think that as one of the dwindling band of incumbents with freehold, technicall...

It may be - I forget - that the Reverend Alan Franks has been vicar of St Stephen's, Ambridge (and its linked parishes which The Archers...

For the last several months I’ve become something of a weekly fixture at the History Centre in Woking, working through first wodges of servi...

When I wandered into St Mark’s Farnborough South a little while ago, I wasn’t expecting the Anglo-Catholic adventure playground I discovere...

Essentially derived from the winter gown most medieval people might have worn from time to time, a cassock is the most basic item of the cle...

Before yesterday I’d never hosted the SCP at Swanvale Halt church, and was surprisingly nervous about doing so. Part of my anxiety was over ...

On the second day of the Triennial Clergy Conference this week, I went for what was a short walk down the hill and back again, and got dread...

The Archdeacon sat in the vestry with me and Hannah the outgoing churchwarden and went through a stack of documents, ticking them off a list...