The Vicar's Wife

The Joker was six the other Sunday. We’d already planned a party for him at a local soft play park, which happened after school on Monday. So what about celebrations on his actual birthday?

To tell the truth, we’d not completely factored in his birthday when planning our last few Sundays in this parish. So we’d invited three church members to lunch. They were an octogenarian chap and a couple who are both retired.

I hope you’re not surprised to learn that we had a delightful Sunday afternoon. The Queen, the Joker and the Engineer are used to having all sorts of folk over for lunch, so they didn’t notice that the people around the table were older than their grandparents.

Before lunch they’d enjoyed showing their baby pictures to our friends and the Joker had been demonstrating his new birthday toys in the living room. Thankfully, not the pogo stick. We all particularly enjoyed his sharing of new jokes from his Basil Brush joke book.

I can’t think of many of my friends or contemporaries who regularly share meals with those of a different generation other than grandparents or other family members. So it is one of the great joys of being part of a church family that we have friends of different generations.

I was recently told that the promotion of intergenerational relationships is a current trend in community development. The Big Lottery Fund is certainly supporting it.

I wonder if the government would just consider encouraging people to join a church family instead?