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Archive for February, 2009

The success of my complaint to Asda about their lads’ mags display was written up in our local paper this week. The article was pretty fair, although I’d hardly call a five minute queue at customer services and a five line complaint a ‘battle’, as they headlined it.

As the Express and Star have an online version people have the opportunity to comment. The commentators seem to fall into two camps – the ‘good on yer’ set and the ‘you’re a prude, haven’t you got anything better to do with your time, you leech on society you’ group.

So far, all the ‘vicar’s wife=prude’ comments have been from men. Interesting, but sadly not that surprising.

Meanwhile, my friend Mrs Starcook has complained about the same thing in the Wolverhampton Asda. They, however, phoned her and said they couldn’t do anything about the position of the magazines because ‘head office decide where everything is placed’. Sounds like buck-passing to me. The Asda I went into didn’t have the same problem.

Maybe they just need a few more people to complain. Any takers?

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Grammar – working it out

I’ve just realised why my children do things

on accident.

It’s because they didn’t do them on purpose.

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Flower Arranging

Flower Arrangement

Flower arranging. A vicar’s wife’s duty and joy, you might think.

But it’s just something I’ve never learnt about. I have a very good friend whose mum is a professional and did the flowers at my wedding. But somehow I never picked anything up from her.

I love to look at flowers, but making a stunning arrangement for the table or the front of church is just beyond me.

I once had a conversation with the wife of the chap who was my vicar when I was a teenager.

‘Flower arranging – it just makes me very disagreeable’ she said. ‘So I try not to.’

Good advice I feel. Best leave it to the pros.

And maybe get the t-shirt too.

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Moving

The Curate is going to become a vicar very soon (10th March is his official start date, since you ask).

This means that we are moving house next week. We’re making the shift at half term to enable the kids to transfer to their new schools without too much of a break. Nanna is kindly taking them to stay with her and Grandpa for most of the week to make things easier at this end. Moving house

So we’re having an odd sort of week. Lots of ‘lasts’ as we say goodbye to friends and parishioners. As I write this the Curate is off visiting some housebound folk to bid farewell.

And I am still feeling like it’s not really happening. We’re moving just eight miles away, only twenty minutes away in the car. But it will be very different.

The Curate is going to be the Vicar. He will have to worry about the drains as well as his sermons. He’ll be responsible for the congregation – the buck will stop with him.

The children will be moving to a new school where they will finish their primary education and growing up with the folk they meet there. Their Black Country accents will be strengthened.

And I need to find my feet, my real-life ‘vicar’s wife’ role. How can I best support my husband as he seeks to tell our parish about how the cross of Jesus is good news? I don’t have a job description and will be making it up as I go along, blagging, as the Curate puts it.

But I am a bit of a blagger, so I should be all right. On everything apart from flower arranging I think.

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generations

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?

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The other day I had a surprising comment on my blog. I’ve not approved it for reading because it was from a reporter!

She’d read my story about my success in complaining to a local Asda store and wanted to write it up for our local paper.

On Friday night I was out with friends for the first farewell of many (we’re moving to the Vicarage very shortly). As I told them about the paper’s interest, Mrs Discoman commented that she never took her children down the magazine aisle because of the lads mags on display.

Another friend announced that she would be going into a local Asda and doing exactly the same thing as I had – putting the complaint in writing and indicating that a lack of action would affect her shopping habits ie that she would no longer patronise the store. So it seems that the campaign is spreading already!

The reporter I spoke to wanted to write about how I’d had success with my complaint, so she’s going to interview me properly in the next few days and send a photographer round.

Hence the hair appointment.

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Our newish ministry trainee, Gentle, had a friend from his home country of Ghana to stay over Christmas. Gentle and his friend very kindly babysat for the Curate and I whilst we went out to see the Queen performing in Snow White (she was dancing, no speaking part this year as she’s only a lowly Year 3).

I had made a cake that day and said that Gentle and his friend should help themselves and provided them with cake, plates and a knife. It was a double layer chocolate Victoria sponge with butter icing sandwich filling and topping. Yummy.

When we returned I realised that this must be a new type of cake for them. This is how they left it:

The Victoria sandwich - an unfamiliar foodstuff

The Victoria sandwich - an unfamiliar foodstuff

Cultural differences can be surprising.

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Crazy Feet

The Joker loves the movie ‘Kung Fu Panda’. So here he is doing the big fat panda’s ‘Crazy Feet’ routine. Enjoy….

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Our School is the Best

snowflakeOur school is the best. It’s snowing heavily here at the moment. But our school is open.

The wussy schools down the road are shut, but somehow our teachers made it in. Whether they get home again is another matter. The snow’s at three inches and deepening.

I’m glad I’ve got wellies.

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