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Archive for the ‘Inner city’ Category

Faintly Hoping

Posted in Faith, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 24 January, 2012| 1 Comment »

We’ve had some great encouragements so far this year – new folk in church on Sundays and signs of spiritual hunger in all sorts of places. And yesterday we were reminded of the Lord’s presence and promises as we walked home from school: a fragile rainbow appeared right over the houses opposite the Vicarage. I managed to take a photo through our landing window, but you’ll have to look carefully to see the rainbow against the dark clouds.

Sometimes it can seem that hope here is fragile – there are challenges ahead aswell as encouragements. I need to keep reminding myself that the Lord is not fragile and that hope in him does not fade like a rainbow, but is living, secured by the resurrection of Christ.

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope 1Peter 1v3

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Christmas, Crime and CCTV

Posted in Church, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 10 January, 2012| 4 Comments »

On Saturday a dear member of our congregation, who was 91 in December, was mugged as she walked out of an alleyway close to her home. Thankfully, she wasn’t that badly hurt and some brilliant passers-by came to her aid – one chap chased the mugger down the street and was able to get details of a getaway car.

We have some hope that the mugger will be brought to justice – the police were able to follow up on the vehicle, thanks to CCTV footage. Now we’re praying for our friend’s recovery and for wisdom and enough evidence for the police.

And then yesterday morning the Vicar reports that our school was broken into AGAIN this weekend. This time they got into the office, although we’re not sure if anything was taken this time. Our site manager was talking about getting CCTV cameras in after last week’s break-in. Alas, I don’t think he’d managed to install them before the weekend.

I wonder if January, when people are feeling the pinch after splurging money at Christmas, is a peak time for crime? There certainly seems to be a wave of it here in the parish just now. Mind you, there was plenty of crime before Christmas too – typing our postcode into police.uk makes for depressing reading. In November there were 5 burglaries within about 200yds of our front door. Perhaps this is contributing to the rising numbers we’ve been seeing at church of late – seeing wickedness so close up can make you wonder about who’s in charge of the world and long for God’s justice.

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Do Inner City Families Need Nursery Care?

Posted in Family, Inner city, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 29 November, 2011| 4 Comments »

George Osborne is apparently going to announce today that 260,000 2 year olds will be allocated nursery places, especially targetted at deprived areas. This sounds like it will result in children in poorer homes being given great education (a whole extra year at school!) and impoverished parents being able to get back into employment earlier.

But will it work? I can see there’ll be a benefit for parents already back at work – they’ll bear less of their childcare costs. And childcare may look more affordable for someone getting a full time job. But in our parish, I can’t see many full time jobs available and barely any of those part time jobs that someone could do in between dropping a child at nursery and returning to collect them 3 hours later. One friend would love to work during the school day (and year) but very few jobs are that flexible, unless they’re in a school. So perhaps that’s the government’s plan – employ all those unemployed parents in the nurseries that will be expanding.

It’ll be a good break for some knackered (mainly) mums but then it supplies the message that a 2 year old is better off in the hands of a government run nursery than at home and out and about with their family. I think that this was what the communists did. Aren’t we heading for the ultimate Nanny State? Am I missing something, or is this just something that the Chancellor is announcing to deflect attention from the horrors of the economy? I note that it’s been used as the headline in the online Telegraph site and doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the Guardian. Hmmmm.

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Jollifying Jumpers

Posted in Fun, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 7 September, 2011| 3 Comments »

So now we’re all back to school and back to the realities of the parish after a great summer break. I’m glad that today the Vicar dragged me up into the tow-un to run some errands. On the way we passed our open air market, where you can buy cheap fruit, mobile phone accessories, underwear, overalls and all sorts of clothing. Everything on the market is pleasingly good value. We bought the Queen a gorgeous deep pink furry fleecy throw for her bed there. She adores it and sleeps under it in preference to her duvet.

The jumper stall is my absolute favourite, though. He sells a random selection of very end-of-line (but still brand new) knitwear, from shops I’d buy from anyway. Over the last couple of years I have bought (or been given) three excellently warming long cardies for Vicarage wear from the market. And today we had a great jumper day, stocking up for the Vicarage winter. The Vicar acquired three M&S v-necks (including a gorgeously toasty lambswool one) and I bought a Next jumper dress and a Monsoon angora/wool mix cardie. Total bill £17. Result. Sometimes I can be cheered up by pretty shallow things…

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Home from Abroad: Part 2

Posted in Alcohol, Church, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , on 1 September, 2011| 7 Comments »

We were not only greeted by a scraggy old flytipped sofa in our drive on our return home last week. As we unloaded the kids, the camping gear and wet swimming towels from the car, we also spotted a couple of items which made us think that we might soon again be seeing Gone, our on/off doorstep lodger.

The traditional bottle of Frosty Jack in our flowerbed

We were proved right the next morning, when he sat on our doorstep until lunchtime and tried to persuade the Vicar to ‘do just one small thing’ for him (take him out to McDonalds). After our previous experiences with Gone, we now say that we will take him to Betel to start rehabilition, but that is all we will do for him. Anything else seems only to sustain his destructive lifestyle and terrible cycle of living rough followed by living at Her Majesty’s pleasure. In the meantime, he’s back in our drive, sometimes singing loudly at 6am, sometimes aggressive, sometimes sad and wanting to talk. Pray that we are able to treat him with grace as his behaviour seems so intractable, and pray that his self-destruction stops.

Some information that Gone is too far gone to really make use of...

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High Street Blues

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 11 July, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This weekend the Engineer’s godmother, Song, told me that our tow-un had been mentioned on Radio 4’s Food Programme. But not in a good way. It was in a programme looking at the effects and prevalence of trans-fats – factory produced fats which are used in cheap foods and which are linked to obesity and other health problems. Some national companies like McDonalds and KFC have signed up to a pledge to remove all trans-fats from their food by the end of this year. But small independent companies, like most of the ones in our high street, have generally not signed up.

The Food Programme’s presenter, Sheila Dillon, visited our high street (at around 15 minutes into the programme) with Sandwell’s Director of Public Health, Dr John Middleton. Dr Middleton says that Sandwell has been described as ‘fat central’ and that the quality of food that can be bought in the area is a factor in the obesity issues here.

And last week our local paper posted an article about how the high street here is one of the worst in the UK. The rental prices for retail property in the town have plummeted because the profits that can be made are so low that retailers are reluctant to operate here. So nearly all the shops sell cheap or heavily discounted products, which brings us trans-fats in the cut-price food and then the associated health problems.

So here, unlike Bristol, here we’re waiting for Tesco to save and regenerate our high street, as their new superstore is built. Saving and regenerating the town’s people, however, is something only God can do.

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Never a Dull Moment: This Week’s Parish Crime

Posted in Church, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 1 July, 2011| 1 Comment »

We had some excitement in the parish today – a ‘suspicious package’ was found in a house just round the corner that was being raided for drugs. Residents in houses close to the raided property were evacuated, and we were asked if we could accommodate them in the church hall.

So we were there with the teapots and some biscuits, on and off all morning, whilst we all speculated about what was happening. I quite enjoyed myself – particularly because I met a couple of neighbours that we’d not previously had the chance to speak to. It was a bit of a pain for them, though – one friend was without her diabetic medication, another lady had her two young children with her, but not their toys, people needed to get their cars to get to work. Most folk took the opportunity to go shopping in town but returned later to hang around and chat at the end of the street or pop into the hall for more refreshments.

Finally, after about 31/2 hours, we were told that people could go home. I stayed behind in the hall to tidy up and the local PCSO and his Sergeant came and chatted. Turns out the suspicious package wasn’t Semtex, as had been suspected, but something to do with with preparation of drugs. They seized cannabis wraps from the property and made three arrests. More drug dealing – the house next door to that one was raided a few weeks ago and seizures made for the same thing. I reckon you could probably raid a couple of houses on every street in this parish and find evidence of drug use or dealing.

The police were quite cheery, as these arrests were made on top of two successful operations locally earlier this week. A house just opposite the church was raided and found to contain a stolen motorbike and 27 stolen bicycles. And only last night they carried out some checks with immigration officials. They found illegal immigrants, but also some dodgy vehicles that were being stripped down, including a vintage Rolls and a BMW that had been nicked from Police HQ.

So a good week for clamping down on crime – well done to our local coppers. It does make you wonder what’s happening behind closed doors when the police aren’t calling. And makes us pray for this broken parish all the more.

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High Street Changes

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 28 June, 2011| 7 Comments »

I drove into tow-un yesterday morning to get some messages (as the Scots like to say). As I was driving I noticed a few new shops that have opened recently that should give you the flavour of the boom industries in our neighbourhood. They were:

  • A Polish delicatessan. I think we must now have half a dozen of these shops in town now, along with a good few Polish hairdressers and beauticians. A sign of the changing face of immigration in the area – many Eastern Europeans have joined the mix that brings a buzz alongside many challenges and gives us 22 languages spoken in the homes of the children in our church primary school.
  • A new ‘wine’ shop. There are very many off licences in our high street, and all the grocers sell cheap booze along with the chapatti flour. I saw a chap who must have patronised one of the local off licences in the carpark of Lidl at 11am, rolling as he walked and clutching a bottle of Frosty Jack cider.
  • A Brook ‘Young People’s Health Shop’. A sad indicator of the ubiquity of the sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility that is the norm here and that contributes to the brokenness of so many lives around us.

Talking of my trip to Lidl, as I went into the shop a chap charmingly spat generously on the floor by his car, which his wife and child were sitting in. He looked shocked when I mentioned to him that his behaviour was both disgusting and a health hazard.

I didn’t wait to discuss it with him any further though, chicken that I am, and dashed into the shop to stock up on cheap sliced ham and fresh peaches.

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Reading. Or Not.

Posted in Faith, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 1 June, 2011| 3 Comments »

Last week my two younger kids were in bed, but they were having trouble getting to sleep. That was mainly because some of their classmates were still playing loudly in the street below our house. The youngest of the kids still playing out was eight. And it was 8.30pm, so I thought it probably appropriate that they go home and possibly even consider going to bed themselves.

When I proposed this to them, they were incredulous. They didn’t want to go to sleep yet. So I suggested that perhaps they could get into their pajamas and read a book before bedtime. The eight year old then emphatically told me:

Books are for BABIES!

A report from the National Literacy Trust has been in the news this week, talking about how book ownership is linked to educational attainment. We have lots of work to do here if the children of our parish are going to reach their potential. And be able to read their bibles so that they can know the living Word.

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Hydroponic Cynicism

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , on 23 May, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Now, I don’t want you all to think that I’m cynical, but at the end of last week I saw some laminated sheets tied to some railings just round the corner from us. They were adverts for a local company who supply hydroponic equipment. Hydroponic systems are used for growing tomatoes, but also for growing cannabis plants.

Obviously, it’s completely legal to sell hydroponic systems because they can be used by gardeners growing fruit, vegetables and flowers. But after last week’s tale of the cannabis factory raided locally, and very regular stories in our local rag on the same subject, I thought it a little unlikely that they were hoping to get the majority of their trade from allotment holders.

Tomatoes are the best things to grow

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