My kind of Christianity

                      'So what do you believe in?
               Nothing fixed or final,
               all the while I travel a miracle 
               I doubt, and yet
               I walk upon the water'

   From the poem 'Interview' by the wonderful Sidney Carter
                                                                               1915-2004

Memories and such...

My number 2 son has taken to writing stories of a rather dark nature and  has had a modicum
of success, though not to great riches it has to be said.   Most of his stories seem to me to take place in dark old houses situated in vast and lonely places as certainly these types of tales very often need this kind of setting.  This has me wondering if his childhood memories are of visiting
friends in old and atmospheric houses as we certainly had a few who did live in them.
One of our dearest friends lived on the Pennines in Greater Manchester in a huge and much neglected vicarage.  Charles was vicar of a sparse congregation and a huge, cold church but he and his wife Clare loved it and the people scattered around this bleak landscape.  Clare was a lovely, kind and wise lady who took on the long empty post of 'lollipop lady' which enabled her to get to know every child in the area of the school by their first names and often their mothers too.
Before long many of them were attending events she and Charles organised in church and were
able to be greeted with a hug and called by name.  A stroke of genius!
The church house was huge and they could not afford the heating bills and it was usually freezing in winter and summer so Clare usually kept her 'lollipop lady'  layers of uniform on in the house between duties prompting Charles to to be able to ask her 'Is this the way to the kitchen Miss?' whenever they met in the house. 
They asked us to come up and visit them and told us of the glorious views from their house stretching across endless acres of Pennine moorland but stressed not to come before May as the icicles on the windows did not usually melt until then.   Oh! how we laughed, we thought it was a joke.
They lived very happily there until the diocese decided to close the church and they were moved into a small town but were never as happy and decided to retire soon after. 
I should have taken lots of photographs but digital cameras were far in the future then; but it would have been a great help to our son's imagination.  You never know what experiences might come up again in your future life.   RIP Charles and Clare, you were the best.