Creature comforts

Last summer, Daisy the Vicarage Dog was very poorly. This normally lively (to put it mildly) now eight year-old Cocker Spaniel was barely able to move at times and had lost both her appetite and her bark. After many appointments with the vets, specialist interventions and different medications, she was Read more…

Stability

Stability. It’s become the watch word of the current economic and political crisis. We’ve had the whole Brexit palaver. The pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Energy and cost of living crises. Inflation and strikes on a level not seen since the 70s. The death of the Queen. Economic turmoil from Read more…

Two new books

I first wrote a book over 30 years ago. Called All God’s Work it reflected on the nature of work being not just paid employment but also tasks done in voluntary,  community and domestic roles. It also explored the experiences of being unemployed. After numerous rejections it was finally accepted. Read more…

Seaside rock

The beginning of a holiday can sometimes feel like being in a badly landing plane. Whether ‘piloted’ by day to day work, family or other responsibilities, it can take a while to adjust to the change of pace and other aspects of being on holiday. Whether or not we like Read more…

Equipped to serve

One of the consistent messages of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations has been about the Queen’s service and stability. Thrust into the responsibilities of monarchy aged just 25, she has been, it seems to me, equipped to serve in a way that no other Queen or King has been. She has Read more…

A Good Innings

The first hour lasted for ages. It was cold. The seating was not exactly comfortable. The people around me talked while those taking part enacted their ritual and well-practiced actions. There were things going on which would seem strange to uninitiated. No, not church… it was good to be at county Read more…

Into the valley

Into the valley of Death    Rode the six hundred. It seems somewhat foolish to being calling it ‘Freedom Day’. With a third Covid wave charging onward, Tennyson’s famous lines have for me found a very uncomfortable echo in the lifting of restrictions in England on 19 July. Not though Read more…

A lasting influence

Sarah Everard is the latest of many, many people whose tragic death has uncovered deep, long-standing issues within society. Think too of others – Sarah Payne. Suzy Lamplugh. Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Emily Davison. You can probably think of others. People who have been more influential in death than Read more…