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Archive for the ‘Inner city’ Category

Reaching the Unreached

Posted in Faith, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , on 20 May, 2011| 2 Comments »

Just to put the pinnacle on a super-busy week, the Vicar is off on a conference this afternoon. Only 24 hours, but it means I have some interesting travelling arrangements to make to ensure that the rest of us get home safely from the Boys Brigade awards evening, as I’m going to be carless.

I’ve mentioned it a bit late for you to book up too, but the website has some helpful stuff on inner city ministry and I’m hoping talks will be available online at a later date. Despite the hassle, I’m glad the Vicar is going – it’s a conference he needs to be at (and I rather wish I was too), especially after the experiences of the last couple of weeks.

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Weekend Adventures at the Vicarage

Posted in Faith, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 16 May, 2011| Leave a Comment »

My head is still spinning a bit after this weekend. On Friday an old pal from our Cambridge church turned up on our doorstep wanting a bed for a few nights – he’s on a walking tour of the country. My parents also came to stay and Rocky’s fiancee stopped over Saturday and Sunday nights. So we’ve had a houseful.

So far, so fairly normal – we’re glad that we can accommodate plenty of folk and love to show hospitality. But then the Vicar and I were both busy on Saturday – he on a Bishop’s Quiet Day and I on a Food Hygiene training course. And I was teaching Junior Church on Sunday and obviously it’s a pretty busy day for the Vicar aswell. So that made our schedules seem extra packed. We were very grateful to the grandparents who entertained the Queen, the Joker and the Engineer to soft play and a Chinese buffet whilst the Vicar and I attended our Saturday events.

But besides all the busy-ness, we’ve had some bother with buildings. Firstly, two of the Vicarage windows now have stone holes in them – a small pane in the living room and an enormous pane in the kitchen. Unsupervised primary school age children have been playing a stone-throwing game in the church yard so we think the damage is accidental rather than malicious. Doesn’t stop it being very annoying, though. The kids have now been banned from the church yard until we can work out something with the parents so that games don’t get out of hand and result in the sort of trouble that happened this week. The Vicar’s long-term desire to raise funding for a Families and Community worker gets an extra impetus every time something like this occurs.

And the banning of kids from the church yard now seems like a very wise move indeed after the discovery on Sunday morning of a plaster rose from the church clock face, shattered on the floor by the front door of the church. So the front doors had to be cordoned off and the congregation had to come into church through the North door. That made it extra embarrassing for the latecomers, who came in in full sight of everyone else. Various people have suggested calling the new Bishop of Ebbsfleet to sort things out with the masonry. Failing that we’ll be getting the builders in to ensure that things are safe and noone has the sky falling on their heads on their way into church.

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Spitting – A Brief Rant

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , on 6 April, 2011| 6 Comments »

I had to pop into our local town centre just now. To buy replacement washing-up gloves after I’d sliced mine whilst washing-up an opened can (hazards of an eco-friendly lifestyle). And to raid W H Smith for Flippers, my new tactic with helping the Queen to be able to explain all the interesting words she knows for her 11+ exam in November. Last week she tried to explain some to me using actions, which I felt might not go down so well with the exam board.

One of the things that always strikes me as unusual in our town is the number of men who are about in the day. Some elderly, some probably shift workers  and others who work odd hours or run their own businesses, but sadly many of them don’t have any type of paid work – unemployment here is higher than the national average by quite a way.

And today, as I walked into town, one of those men spat on the floor. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman do that. There is an abnormal amount of spitting in our locality. Yesterday I was taking the kids for their swimming  lesson at a local(ish) pool. A group of about half a dozen secondary school boys were outside chatting and two of them gobbed on the floor at the same time. I was so disgusted that I briefly berated them, to the acute embarrassment of my children. The offenders didn’t seem to be fussed.

Where do they learn to do this? I’m tempted to keep a range of hankies to hand out to offenders. I know I’m beginning to sound like an article in the Daily Mail, but I find it utterly revolting. And it’s the end of a long term. I’m glad we’re soon getting a break in rural Scotland, where I anticipate being free of the gobbing menace for a few days.

[Late edit: Seems like Enfield Council hate spitting as much as I do. Let’s hope Sandwell follow suit soon. I was shocked to find that it is now perfectly legal. Yuck]

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Drug dealers – Slow Burn to Justice

Posted in Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , on 25 January, 2011| 1 Comment »

Thankfully, since police installed a CCTV camera opposite the church yard a few months ago, our local druggies have been getting their supplies elsewhere. It got very frustrating last summer, with drug deals taking place almost daily under our noses. The police had a few near misses with catching the dealers, too.

On one occasion I had called 999 and the cops came, but it wasn’t our normal team, who happened to be out at a training day. The police car gave chase to the dealer, who they think had a large quantity of drugs on him. But the dealer got away and since it wasn’t the local team chasing, they weren’t able to identify who was driving. Alas.

The camera was up for about six months, I guess. It’s gone now, but the dealing hasn’t returned in earnest. But we still know that the dealers live in the parish, and occasional drug deals are spotted here and there. But when they happen, people don’t always report it. They don’t see any immediate effects and that can be discouraging. We’re glad we’re (mostly) free of drug dealing, but knowing that the dealers are still plying their trade elsewhere makes people doubt the strength of the police and the reality of justice.

West Midlands Police Superintendent (he’s recently been promoted) Mark Payne has a blog where he explains why things look so slow when people are looking for justice. He repeats what we heard from the local police sergeant at our neighbourhood forum the other week: small pieces of information are important, even if it looks like nothing is happening.

So for now, I’m waiting for the police to put it all together, reporting everything (and encouraging others to do the same) and praying for God’s justice to come quickly.

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How Government Money is Wasted

Posted in Inner city, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 20 January, 2011| 2 Comments »

Today in the Vicarage we had two reminders of how our  tax money gets wasted by the government itself and by individuals in our society on behalf of everyone else.

Firstly the Vicar had his PAYE Coding Notice come through from HM Revenue and Customs. This was corrected from the erroneous one we received two weeks ago, which gave palpitations to approximately 7000 Church of England clergy around the country as it almost halved their tax-free allowancee.

I wonder how much money sending out a replacement letter cost? The guesses on the grapevine cite the closure of the specialist clergy tax team as a reason for the error. Whatever the cause, it caused unnecessary stress and extra government-funded work. Not really good enough HMRC.

The other instance was that of a friend, who had spent the morning with a lady from the Benefits office. The friend had been reported for not declaring income from work. Actually, this was voluntary work she’d been doing, for which she received no remuneration. Once she’d explained to the Benefits Agency lady what remuneration meant, the lady was happy with her explanation (which was accompanied by a letter from the folk she was volunteering for) and left.

It seems that someone with a grudge had reported our friend and wanted to cause her inconvenience, rather than just speak to her and ask or even ask the place where she was volunteering. We’re only talking a couple of hours of volunteering a week here, not something that took all her time.  Or perhaps the person didn’t bear a grudge, but was concerned. It’s still a great pity that they didn’t feel able to ask directly. The cost to the taxpayer of letters, staff time and form-filling  must be sizable. Especially when you multiply this situation around the country. And now our friend thinks that someone is intent on causing her trouble. We have a broken society of broken people taking out their grudges by using government agencies. I don’t know how that can be fixed except by the power of change that is brought by belief and trust in Christ.

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Sandwell Schools and Burst Pipes

Posted in Inner city, Sandwell, tagged , , , , , on 5 January, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I notice this afternoon that ten schools in our area are closed because they have had burst pipes.

In the holidays  (28th December in fact) I had a phone call from a concerned parishioner who had noticed water gushing from our school’s boiler house. Obviously a burst pipe. She’d phoned me as she wasn’t sure who to contact about it.

So I went straight to Sandwell Council’s shiny new website and after a little hunting found a number for Emergency Property Maintainance/ Council Buildings – 0121 569 4537.  But when I called the number I was told that no forwarding or answering service was available and it rang off. So not much good for Emergencies with Council Buildings, eh?

In the end I called the Chair of Governors, who had a  personal phone number for the school’s Site Manager. He was able to go in and turn off the water and minimise the damage (and the water bills).

Obviously, we were rather fortunate to have had a call from someone who saw the leak and knew someone associated with the school who could do something about it. But if anyone else, without school connections, had noticed a leak in any other school building  during the holidays, Sandwell Council do not really make it possible for anyone to be alerted. Time to sharpen up the act, guys. There’s not much money around and the less wasted on water damage the better.

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A School to Learn in

Posted in Inner city, School, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 15 November, 2010| 4 Comments »

Our kids are happy in our church school here in the parish. The teachers are kind and dedicated and are working hard to make it better and better. The school is in a disadvantaged area and it can be hard to ensure that all the children learn to their full potential. But the staff are tackling difficulties one by one and making a real difference. One of the obstacles that our current school faces is a building built for a smaller school (2/3 of its current size) and built at a time when open plan classrooms were all the rage.

Our building isn’t bad – it’s clean and well maintained. We’ve recently had a refurbishment of the Foundation Stage area which is fantastic. We have a wonderful school allotment and many other great outdoor facilities. I am thankful for many blessings there.

But the thing is, our old school just got a new building. And today I saw this wonderful video of it. If you manage not to blink, you can see a clay tile made by the Queen just before we left (at around 7 minutes in). This is the building that I am praying for our current church school. We are thinking long term here…

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Being Community

Posted in Inner city, State, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 27 September, 2010| Leave a Comment »

When you live in the inner city, people from the council or from government agencies are always coming round asking what facilities you need, or suggesting events that you should go to, that they have laid on. I never encountered government in such quantity until I came to live in a deprived area. They are involved in everything!

Sometimes I just want to suggest that the people asking the question give up their well paid job so the council can give the money to the church instead. And other times I want to say that they should come and live here instead of swanning in and trying to build “community cohesion” from outside, 5 days a week, 9am-5pm. Community doesn’t work like that. You need to be here. And you need the gospel to help you.

The Breathe Network seem to have a much better idea of what makes good community. NB From 3min30s onwards there’s no more action…

[HT Mark Meynell]

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Beautiful Hands

Posted in Fun, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 3 September, 2010| 4 Comments »

I’m going to a wedding tomorrow. My friend StarStudent, one of my first friends from our first parish, is getting married and the whole family has been invited to attend the big hoo-haa. StarStudent’s fiance is Sikh, so the wedding will be at the Gudhwara near to our old church. Her family are Hindu, so there’ve been all the usual Asian wedding celebrations. We were invited to three events – the wedding itself, the family farewell party tonight and I was invited to the mehndi night last night.

Nice, eh?

A mehndi night is when the bride has her hands and feet decorated with henna, and celebrates with girlfriends. Although the groom didn’t attend last night, contrary to Wikipedia’s take on the celebration. He had his own do going on instead.

So I spent an excellent evening with StarStudent and her lovely family and friends. I ate samosas, wriggled to Bollywood tunes and drank strong masala chai (didn’t sleep too well last night, but it was too delicious to resist). And I had some mehndi applied too. Just one hand, and on the back, so I could drive home. You have to leave it on as long as possible to get the dye to fix well.

I love the look of it and am pleased my dress and jacket have short sleeves so I can show it off. It’s the nearest I’m going to get to a tattoo, however much I think I should get one to fit in around here…

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Home from Abroad: Return to the Vicarage

Posted in Inner city, Uncategorized, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , on 30 August, 2010| 2 Comments »

Home from Abroad is that lovely poem by Laurie Lee that I learnt by heart for O Level Eng Lit. And here I am, skin not so much ‘well oiled by wines of the Levant’ as lightly tanned by Brittany sun… and rain.

I didn’t advertise my absence, though the more eagle eyed of you may have noticed a reduction in tweeting. I was a little concerned about alerting people on the internet to an empty(ish) Vicarage. As it happens, the internet was not what people were looking at.

Ha! He didn't get in.

It seems that some dodgy characters were observing a car with a roof box disappearing from our drive. And hadn’t noticed that our Ministry Trainee/lodger Happy was late back the day we left and out early the next. He had church folk over to dinner that evening and as they were leaving, there was a loud banging noise at our family room window.

Happy went into the room and was able to see at close hand a man with a hammer and chisel attempting to get in through the sash windows. When he saw Happy he seemed rather surprised. He had an accomplice with him in the garden and they both bolted off immediately.

They wouldn’t have had much luck getting in, as the windows are securely locked, so they’d have had to dismantle the structure of the window to fit through. But obviously it was pretty alarming for Happy. Thankfully, church family have been brilliant – our thoughtful Lay Reader parked her car in the drive for the remainder of our absence, and lots of folk have been phoning and calling in.

Although Happy got a good look at the chap at the window, he didn’t recognise him from our locality, and the police said the information would just remain on file.

Happy has also had Gone on the doorstep singing loudly at 6am, although he left and hasn’t returned. Not as bad as when we were on hols last year and Polly was confronted by a very nasty mess left by Gone on the doorstep, two days in a row. Our poor lodgers seem to really have a rough time when we go away.

We are grateful to God that the burglars didn’t get in, and that Happy was okay. We are also praying for our neighbourhood as crime levels seem to be increasing – this week a lady in our congregation was burgled by men who came to the door pretending to be from the council. We are hearing more and more about this type of crime. We are praying that people would be made new and stop stealing. Do pray with us.

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