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Archive for the ‘Vicarage’ Category

Some more thoughts on warmth

Posted in Church, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , on 29 September, 2009| 13 Comments »

Ive not yet worn my hat indoors...

I've not yet worn my hat indoors...

Cold vicarages seem to be a hot topic for discussion. Since I posted last week I’ve also remembered a couple of other techniques that we use to keep the frostbite at bay.

  • Our electric blanket. Not yet on the bed but absolutely essential for later in the season. With cold feet I cannot get to sleep at all. The poor man’s alternative is the good old hot water bottle. My mother has bought a large selection to be set aside for visitors. The children like them too, especially when they have covers in the shape of racoons.
  • My teasmade. I have a hot cup of tea every morning (Roiboos, without milk, so much less hassle than having to fetch semi skimmed). This is also a great encouragement to prayer and bible reading. What else to do whilst tea-drinking first thing? It’s sometimes a battle to switch off the Today programme, though.

Quite a few commentators have mentioned the ‘sell the vicarage and buy something warm and modern’ option. This is appealing in many ways but also has its downsides. The expectation is that a warm modern vicarage is a pleasure to live and work in and doesn’t cost a bomb to heat or to maintain. However, not all modern vicarages are chosen well – it seems that some are poorly located away from the church or community, and houses that are not specifically designed as vicarages can lack rooms of the right size or configuration.

In our diocese cold vicarages have been identified as a source of clergy stress and there are plans afoot for double glazing. In the meantime, please continue to share your warmth tips.

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Keeping warm in the Vicarage

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , on 24 September, 2009| 17 Comments »

Living in a vicarage is an enormous privilege. Ours is a seven-bedroomed three storey detached Victorian house with a large garden, outbuildings and a cellar. It’s wonderful to have so much space to live in and to share with parishioners as we offer hospitality.

Big houses can be freeeeezing

Big houses can be freeeeezing

Vicars tend to have big houses so that they can have meetings and offer hospitality (well, I guess that’s the reasoning). I think there are even some minimum size stipulations for living rooms to ensure that you can fit the entire PCC in. So we have a big house. And a stipend of about £20k. The size of the budget is not at all proportionate to the size of the house and the associated heating bills. In fact, if we hadn’t made careful provision, I’m sure we’d fall into the government’s ‘fuel poverty’ bracket (more than 10% of income spent on heating).

We have a boiler that’s 20 years old, single glazed sash windows and 10 foot ceilings. Beautiful but freezing. The diocese is poor and doesn’t have the budget to ensure modern levels of comfort in every house.

So what techniques do clergy families use to keep warm in their huge and unheatable homes?

  • Clothing layers and slippers. As I type this up I am wearing my fleece gilet. Essential clothing for a vicar’s wife. At our last church, the vicar’s wife had a down-filled one which she wore nearly all year round.
  • Limited room use. We stick to the kitchen and one family room most of the time.
  • Baking. And porridge in the mornings. It really helps if you have the cooker on.

Before we moved here, we also decided to use some savings, our harvest from working as engineers in the Far East before we had children. We decided that we’d spend it on being warm in the vicarage. So we’ve installed two wood-burning stoves in the main reception rooms and underfloor heating in the bathrooms. We reckoned that this way we could be warm in the mornings and evenings without having to pay for the boiler to heat the whole house.

This seems to be working very well so far. We’ve managed to remain very comfortable without the heating until now and are hoping we can last until half term this way. The vicar is getting very skilful with the wood-burning stoves, but I’ll save all that for another post.

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Vicar’s wife job description – Part 12 – Crowd control and door answering

Posted in Garden, Vicar's wife job description, Vicarage, tagged , , , , on 14 September, 2009| 4 Comments »

I’m not sure how many people is a crowd, but we did have 15 children in our garden on Saturday afternoon. A sunny day always draws the masses, but after the 20th (I am not exaggerating) ring on the doorbell, I did begin to get a little hysterical.

Thankfully, some of the kids were there with their mums, which meant I was able to sit outside and enjoy a coffee with them and not feel that I had sole supervision responsibility. The bigger kids who were after bike mending spanners did not gain garden admittance. But they rang at least four times.

The trampoline can get a little crowded

The trampoline can get a little crowded

We have the largest garden in the neighbourhood, a trampoline and a monkey swing and sociable kids, so it’s no surprise that they all want to come and play. Folk don’t arrange playdates or invite their children’s friends over for tea in the inner city – the kids seem to arrange the social diaries themselves. If I’m feeling up to it I’ll let most of them in, but I’m feeling a need to reapply my Vicarage and garden entry rules. Am I missing any?

  1. No entry without me seeing you come in.
  2. No entry if my kids are not in the mood.
  3. No entry if I haven’t met your mum/nan/carer (I didn’t apply this rigorously enough yesterday).
  4. You go home when I say.
  5. Shoes off indoors.
  6. Be kind to everyone.
  7. Speak in a way that pleases God.

We want to be hospitable to the local children – we have a hospitable God who invites us to eat at his table, and we want to reflect his character. It’s a challenge for me to be graciously inviting all the time though. And so on Sunday I lacked grace with a doorstep caller. I am praying that I will remember God’s welcome more and more so that I am able to share it in increasing measure.

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Gone News

Posted in vicar, Vicar's wife job description, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , on 14 July, 2009| 11 Comments »

If you’ve been following my Twitter account, you’ll know some of this news, but here’s a summary of the latest developments with the homeless alcoholic who’s been spending every morning on our doorstep for the last couple of months.

Whilst I was away on my conference last week, the Vicar arranged to take Gone to Betel in Nottingham. He decided that they could go by train, as Gone is anxious travelling by car. They agreed that folk from Betel would meet them at the station and take Gone by himself to their centre.

The journey went well, although Gone was still anxious about going to stay with people he didn’t yet know. He is very mistrustful, which I guess is a default position when you live on the street.

Once at the station, they had a while to wait and the Vicar spent the time calming Gone and assuring him of the warm welcome he’d receive once he got to the centre. The men from Betel arrived ‘looking like angels, they radiated so much joy’. Gone seemed happy to go with them, so after a prayer, the Vicar returned to the station and headed home to relieve our babysitters.

A good way for the anxious to travel

A good way for the anxious to travel

That was Tuesday evening. On Thursday morning our doorbell rang early. It was Gone. As you can imagine, the Vicar was very disappointed.

‘There were some men I knew from prison there and I was worried they would beat me up,’ said Gone. ‘I came back by train.’

The Vicar left Gone on the step and went to consider what to do. He rang Betel, who told him that Gone hadn’t actually made it to the centre. He’d been too anxious in the car and got out before they left the station. It is a big thing, to leave your familiar haunts and your regular life, however awful that life is.

I returned that afternoon and together the Vicar and I agreed that we would tell Gone that we couldn’t help him any more, save taking him back to Betel. We’ve been realising how his constant presence has been draining us both. The Vicar’s hardly done any parish visiting since Gone has been on our doorstep, and his predicament has been sapping much of our pastoral energy and our time. Gone has spent a few days thinking about it, and yesterday he had a second telephone interview with Betel and this evening the Vicar and another local pastor are going to drive over with him, right to the front door of the centre.

We still don’t know whether Gone will make it. It’s a massive step for him to change his life in this way, so we are praying that God will give him the courage to do it. I’ll keep you posted.

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Uses of Mobile Phones: Vicarage access

Posted in Fun, Vicarage, tagged , , , on 24 June, 2009| 2 Comments »

A handy tool for Vicarage life

A handy tool for Vicarage life

You need to have a mobile phone if you live in the Vicarage. Polly has used it three times recently to call the house:

  1. When our doorbell was broken and she was outside the front door without a key and I was in the kitchen listening to music with the dishwasher and microwave going.
  2. Yesterday evening when she was at the front gate, which had jammed shut.
  3. Also yesterday evening, when she’d been up in her attic room putting her baby to bed and the Joker had locked the door leading up there.

Mobile phones are so useful.

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New Vicarage Garden Quiz

Posted in Garden, Kids, vicar, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , on 16 June, 2009| 2 Comments »

More blooms are appearing in the Vicarage Garden. Since this blog got tweeted yesterday, lots of new people have been visiting the Vicarage and I’m hoping that some of them are gardeners.

So, after success with the last identify-a-flower game, here are some more mysterious plants that I’d love to know the names of. Once they have a name I think they are less intimidating. Though I still only really get gardening when there are so many kids in the garden that I think there’ll be an accident unless I supervise.

Yesterday I failed to go out and my kids had a major blow out with each other cos the trampoline was full and the Queen wouldn’t let her brothers on. And there were only seven children in the garden – this is a low number for our garden. Ten is my must-supervise number.

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Vicar’s wife job description – Part 9 – Teens and Drunks

Posted in Alcohol, Teenagers, vicar, Vicar's wife job description, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 8 June, 2009| 1 Comment »

It’s been another busy week at the Vicarage. Not only do we have Polly and the baby still in residence, but we’ve had Voice staying as well. Voice loves to lead singing in church and is on a week’s work experience with another local church. We are just providing accommodation for Voice as she’s spending most of her time with the other church, singing in services and meetings and helping out with their activities.

Voice is only fifteen, so it’s been interesting having her stay. We’ve been trying to get her to give us the inside track on being a teenager so we are better prepared to handle our gang when they hit those challenging years. Her capacity for sleep is enormous, even to the extent of being completely comotose through our jet-engine sounding shower pump going.

Gone has called at our front door three times in the last week, drunk, homeless and very sad. This morning I gave him a cup of coffee and a sandwich as he sat on the front step, waiting to speak to the Vicar. As he added more Frosty Jack to his coffee, he became more restless and abusive.

Frosty Jack

Frosty Jack

I was trying to find out about local hostels for him when he finally left. He couldn’t wait for the Vicar. The booze had made him too jittery. One minute he was weeping and admitting the mess he’s in, the next he was swearing and threatening to throw lighted paraffin over the front door.

I didn’t feel in any danger, though. As spoke to him softly, I could see the self-loathing in his eyes. And the Vicar and his elders were meeting in the study.

He probably won’t find a hostel place, though, cos he’s on the booze. He told me that he’s thinking about doing something to get himself locked up. At least in prison you are fed and given a warm bed. He’s 51, and has been told that he’ll die soon, given the state of his liver. He keeps warm by begging for a day saver ticket and then spending all day on the bus. That way he can cope with being out all night.

He needs too much help to stay with us. I can only pray and feed him sandwiches and gentle answers.

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The Vicarage Garden – Help needed

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , on 2 June, 2009| 10 Comments »

I am a gardening ignoramus. I know nothing about plants at all. And now I am (jointly) in charge of an old-fashioned garden with proper herbaceous borders filled with pretty flowers that are coming out in an impressively sequential manner. I don’t know what any of them are and I think it might be good to know. At least if I know their names I might feel like I was vaguely in charge.

So here are some pictures of some of the current garden beauties. If you can tell me what they are I’d be very happy.

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Polly and the Baby

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , , on 20 May, 2009| 1 Comment »

Polly and her baby are staying with us. They became homeless the weekend of the Visitors, and moved into council funded emergency accommodation for a week. It was clean but horrible – noisy, rather smelly and insecure (she could open her room by shoving on the door).

Aaah

Aaah

I’d known Polly for a while and get on well with her. She is from Eastern Europe and all her family support is back at home. Her baby is only five months old and she was exhausted. We have a whole floor of the Vicarage which is unoccupied because it’s dilapidated. I don’t think the rooms have been used for at least twenty years.

So I invited her to come and stay in the attic whilst the council sort her out with housing. Since she’s now officially homeless, we’re hoping it’ll not be toooo long. She’s going to paint the attic room and we already have the promise of a bed for her – at the moment she’s in the spare room.

So now we have two extra people to stay. So far it’s been great, but it’s also coincided with a whirlwind of meetings and people in distress calling at the Vicarage.

My head is buzzing and yesterday evening, as we passed each other at the front door, the Vicar said to me ‘See you on Friday’. (He’s not actually going away anywhere.)

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Vicar’s wife job description – Part 6 – Visitors

Posted in Vicar's wife job description, Vicarage, tagged , , , , on 8 May, 2009| 4 Comments »

We had a great weekend this Bank Holiday. We had tickets for Basil Brush on the Monday – the Joker’s fave, natch. Nanna and Grandpa, Granny and Auntie Icklesis and Uncle Trainspotter came and joined us, so it was a real full house.

There were more of us than this...

There were more of us than this...

This is one of the blessings of Vicarage life – you have the big house, so family gatherings can be, and therefore are, held at your house. But family gatherings happen mostly at weekends, when the Vicar is working, so there is a lot of busy-ness all round. Fun but a bit crazy.

Our busy weekend of visitors was made a little more manic by the addition of a  young mum and her baby who’d been made homeless on Sunday morning and ended up staying for a couple of nights too.

The challenge for a Vicar’s wife is to remain godly and gracious in the midst of the blessings and chaos of visitors. I’m not sure I did all that well so I’m especially greatful that my helpful visitors mucked in with cooking, clearing up and even helped to scale my Everest-like washing pile!

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