Go on Go on Go ON....

Taking lunch with the vicar was a first for me yesterday. It wasn't just me and him, I'm not that important and as far as I know I haven't done anything too damning recently; no it was myself and a mixture of teachers from local schools, local business people and some of the church wardens and staff. The Rev. Mark Brown is the new(ish) vicar of the Parish of St. Peter and St. Paul, in other words the parish church. What I didn't know, but as of yesterday do now, is that Rev. Brown also looks after three other churches in the same parish, St Saviours, I knew about, Christ Church on the High Street and also one I didn't even know was there, St. Philip's (I think) out at Cage Green. It was quite odd and a little awkward at first, like all of these gatherings can be, but I decided that there was no harm in mingling and just being myself; a couple of glasses of lovely Gallo red wine helped to mellow me out a little (which I needed as I had just left a plummer at my house and only half an hour before there had been water spurting from the hot water tank as we frantically cleared the under-sink cupboard to turn off the stop cock! That's another story though.) The buffet was excellent: lots of mini quishes, small two-bite sized sandwiches with a whole range of fillings all with crusts cut off, vol au vent thingies, and of course cakes, buns and more cakes. We were asked to sit down and listen to a short sermon speech from the vicar and I must admit that I was thinking at this point "here we go, we've all got to come to church or we're going straight to hell..." but not a bit of it. He was friendly, asking us to join in wherever we could, offering his services to school assemblies, informing us about the new look Contact (church) magazine and most importantly of all keeping it brief. In fact I got the impression that he is a genuinely nice man. I then mingled and chatted as the sandwiches were now brought to us on trays, I chatted to church committee members, (more sandwiches,) I chatted to the curate (would I like cake?) I chatted to Slades Head Teacher (go on you can have another piece of cake.) Go on, go on now! There was no way that any of that beautifully prepared buffet was going in the bin. Honestly it was just like Mrs. Doyle on Father Ted; in fact it was more like having four Mrs. Doyles all at once! You just daren't say no. A very entertaining and satisfying lunch time, I should do it more often....