SHORTS

Goslings

I read an article recently that said that all sorts of Hollywood stars were trying to look like Ryan Gosling, and that ordinary men should follow their example. My problem is that I don't know what he looks like, but I suspect there's no point in finding out. Real goslings, though.. we do have them! A genuine sign of spring is the appearance of baby waterfowl, and a pair of Canada geese on the canal have produced two goslings, slightly comical fluffy yellow-and-charcoal things. I was fascinated to see one of the adults getting very aggressive, standing up and hissing, with wings akimbo, apparently because of a dog, which ironically was wearing a muzzle and paying them no attention whatsoever.


School Clubs

I was told the other day about a local primary school (with which I have no connection) which has a maths club for gifted and talented children. This club is run by a teaching assistant, who happens to be very well qualified; so well-qualified in fact that they offer private tuition in maths. Nothing remarkable about that, except that the only people allowed to be part of the club at school are those who employ the private tutor outside school. Let's just say that I'm pleased that the schools I'm involved with would regard that sort of thing as very foreign to their ethos.


Flower Arrangements

One of the things I enjoy least about being a parish priest is having to ask people to take on jobs for the parish; I'm just temperamentally bad at it. I'm embarrassed to ask someone to do a job I wouldn't want to do myself, and don't want to burden already busy and committed people. I'm also a poor talent-spotter compared to many clergy. The added complication, in parishes like my last one, is that sometimes someone is sitting there waiting to be asked, and so you run the risk not only of heaping an unwanted burden on the person you do ask, but of offending the person you didn't ask (despite the fact that you had no idea they wanted to be asked). Well, this week I had to find a new flower arranger for St Peter's. Our existing flower arranger has developed a painful medical condition that makes it all rather burdensome and she finally threw in the towel when she found that all her Easter arrangements had been interfered with, and the water removed from some, and hence expensive flowers that should have lasted three weeks were all wilted after a few days. As she had spent four hours doing them she wasn't best pleased. Our problem is that the building is in constant use, and most particularly three other worshipping communities use the church, none of whom have much interest in flowers, and two of whom move almost everything, and one of whom has children who hare around, poorly-supervised. It's one of the perils of having a modern all-purpose building that people just don't behave with the same respect as they might have for a more obviously churchy space. Christians from other traditions have other priorities: the Pentecostalists are uninterested in things of beauty but very exercised about big amplifiers, while the Ethiopian Orthodox have no place for anything not mentioned in their traditional formularies (though they'll happily burn any candle you leave available for them). Our normal defence is to lock things away, but obviously we don't lock away flower arrangements, and hence they got messed up. So, retirement of angry flower arranger. I have been successful, though, in recruiting a new flower arranger, who seemed happy to be asked.  


On the Doorstep

It seems to have got very busy on the doorstep since Easter. Among others recently I've had  the very drunk homeless man (who only ever wants a cup of tea and a sandwich), the Pakistani Christian who is also now homeless and was in court for allegedly causing criminal damage to a police cell, the Irish, Arsenal-supporting, self-harmer who needed to get back to his psychiatric in-patient unit, the plump man with missing fingers and stab wounds who needed help with his gas and electric, the big West Indian with multiple health issues who now has TB, and a young Hungarian who was looking to do odd jobs (and observed of one of the others, "Father, I think some people don't want to work.") And as I was writing this, the wife of the man who now needs a liver transplant.