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What Goes Through Your Mind in Church

12 July, 2010 by thevicarswife

Well, a small sample of it. Not listed are the additional Vicar’s wife’s concerns of ‘why isn’t so-and-so here?’, ‘has the Vicar remembered to bring his sermon notes?’ and ‘am I on coffee or Sunday school this morning?’

Happy Monday morning all.

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Harvest Time at the Vicarage

9 July, 2010 by thevicarswife

Well, gooseberry harvest anyway. After all my panicking about mould, I am extremely pleased to report that our gooseberry bush has produced masses of fruit. So: the solution to American gooseberry mildew is to catch it early and chop it off. So far we’ve had about 4lb of fruit from the bush and there’s still more to come. We’ve had gooseberry fool and gooseberry tart. – both delicious, though I say so myself. Not sure what to make next – any suggestions?

A very pleasing crop

Posted in Food, Garden | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Ten Great Things About Being a Vicar’s Wife

7 July, 2010 by thevicarswife

I only wear my pinny for special occasions

Inspired by Steve Tilley’s list of reasons to be married to a priest I thought I’d add a Vicar’s wife’s perspective. We’ve not watched the offending episode of Rev yet – we were interrupted before viewing on iPlayer by the Vicar’s diocesan golf team partner arriving to stay over so that he and the Vicar could get an early start off to their tournament today.

Anyway, I love being a Vicar’s wife, and here are some of the reasons why:

  1. I have a husband who is serious about loving me as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5v25).
  2. We get to work as a team in all sorts of ways (hospitality, church strategy, cleaning the churchyard…)
  3. My husband is around to take kids to and from school, take them swimming and eat with the family most nights.
  4. He’s involved with the kids’ primary school and knows their teachers better than I do.
  5. I love it that he has lunch with me most days.
  6. He has to chop logs outside my kitchen window to get the fuel we need to heat our Vicarage. This is a very good view when I am washing up.
  7. He reads parenting books and works hard to help our children to grow up as believers and not to be wild and disobedient.
  8. His job comes with a huge home which is great for hospitality, even if it is a deep freeze come January.
  9. Parish life is never, ever dull.
  10. And finally, as I was told in a seminar on a Vicar’s wives conference once: ‘The advantages of midweek daytime sex cannot be overstated’.

Posted in vicar, Vicar's wife job description | Tagged , , , , , , | 44 Comments »

Vicarage Kitchen Gadget

6 July, 2010 by thevicarswife

Actually, not so much a gadget as a bowl. Or is it a colander? Or a sieve? Well, that’s what makes it so great. It’s a metal bowl that you can also run water through. So *TA-DA* rinse your soft summer fruit and then serve it IN THE SAME RECEPTACLE. Cunning AND elegant, eh?

Sorry, I know I shouldn’t be too bothered about stuff but this bowl does lift my heart in the summer months. Got it in a French market, natch.

Don't eat them all at once, now

Posted in Food, Fun | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

The Vicarage Cheese Mystery

5 July, 2010 by thevicarswife

Not what you want to be doing at 5.20am

At last the Quinquennial builders have finished decorating and twiddling with our house. On their last day they had a fair bit to finish up and rushed around trying to tie up all the loose ends but they didn’t quite have time for everything. One loose end that they missed was the wire feeding electricity to our burglar alarm. The battery gave up at 5.20am the next morning. And then the alarm decided it had been tampered with and proceeded to go off almost constantly throughout Thursday until the alarm people came to sort it out.

As you can imagine, we were rather spacey throughout the day. My irritation was tempered, however, by the cheese mystery….

As the chaps were pottering around the house on their final day I  had decided to sort out the airing cupboard, which I needed to finish emptying and restock with sheets and towels that had been soaked in an earlier Quinquennial mishap. I went in to get the final bits and pieces out and… discovered a cheese.

How did it get there?

It was a Sunday night Vicarage supper cheese that I’d bought a couple of weeks ago. I’d wondered where it was on the previous Sunday evening. And there it was. Sitting in my airing cupboard. Not oozing or stinking yet, but perfectly ripe and ready to eat. A cheese mystery. And to date the mystery is unsolved. All Vicarage inhabitants deny putting cheese in the airing cupboard.  Perhaps I did it in my sleep – maybe it’s a sign that I need to go on holiday sooner rather than later.

One Twitter friend suggested that perhaps I would then find perfectly ironed linen in my fridge, but alas I only found some wizened ginger and lots of jars of obscure oriental relishes.

In the meantime, the mystery of the airing cupboard cheese makes me laugh every time I think of it. And we are considering leaving all our cheese in the airing cupboard in the future. As long as we don’t leave it there too long.

Posted in Fun, Vicarage | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Decorating the Inner City

1 July, 2010 by thevicarswife

Our jolly builders have finished their work now. Until they come back with scaffolding to fix the roof gullies, that is. And the electrics. But they’ve gone for now anyway.

Our external paintwork is looking lovely and bright in the rather lurid blue we chose. Our lay reader called it ‘Greek blue’ which I think is good description. One of the first things they painted, on Thursday of last week, was the garage (wood shed) doors. On Friday we spotted that someone had been out with a key or similar sharp object and attempted graffiti. You can just about spot it on this photo:

You can just about see the scratches if you zoom into the middle of the shot

Thankfully the jolly lads were still here with their paint pot, so they’ve painted over it. And they’ve left us the rest of the tub for dealing with any future vandalism. Although I’d really like to paint the vandals rather than the doors, I know that what I need to do is pray for them.

Posted in Inner city, Vicarage | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Sweet Garden

30 June, 2010 by thevicarswife

I just picked my first ever home-grown sweet peas this week. They look a little pathetic climbing the plastic trellis we have up – mostly they are sprawling around at knee height. I think I probably need to work on my gardening (and photography) techniques, but I’m still rather pleased with the result. Look:

They smell heavenly and remind me of my Yorkshire Grandpa, who grew sweet peas and lots of edible things in his long garden.

Posted in Garden | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

Vicarage Decorating Progress

28 June, 2010 by thevicarswife

Vicarage life this week has been very busy with the addition of the Quinquennial builders. On Monday we spent the morning with seven workers swarming over the house, comprising our normal team of the three jolly lads, their boss & their electrician, the boiler service man AND the washing machine repair man after the laundry emerged smelly on Friday afternoon.

The main project has been painting external woodwork, and the blue I chose last week is being applied today. It’s rather more lurid than I was expecting, but I’m getting used to the cheery tone. They’ve had a cherry picker in too, to reach the eaves of the house, which is three storeys, with 10′ ceilings. Rather them than me up there wobbling about.

It’s been a bit of a hot and sticky week for them, especially for the Jolly Lad who’s been doing the plastering in one of our attic rooms and in the bathroom. I’ve been keeping them supplied with ice lollies as well as coffee.

So here are a few shots to update you on how things are looking:

Posted in Vicarage | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

What does the Vicar do after Evensong?

21 June, 2010 by thevicarswife

Well, actually, it’s not Evensong, here in our more contemporary parish. But it’s our weekly 6.30pm Evening Service. And usually, the Vicar comes home at about 8pm and spends a little time with any still wakeful children (usually the Queen, sometimes the Joker). Then he and I and Happy gather around a plate of cheese and biscuits with maybe a glass of wine or port. We might pray and then we watch some TV comedy on DVD (currently Scrubs and Outnumbered). Sometimes we say Compline together before bed (an innovation since Happy, who’s far more Anglican than we are, has joined us).

A good relaxing way to finish off a very busy day. But last night Happy was out, and this is what the Vicar did when he got back:

The Vicar hard at work

Yesterday afternoon, some local kids were ‘enjoying’ themselves by throwing gravel from our front garden all over our street whilst we were in the house. They were throwing stones at my kids in the garden at one point but once I went to sit out there in the sunshine too, they desisted.

This is just a minor annoyance, but it’s this sort of stuff which wears down folk in our area who are already exhausted by daily life. The loud music played by a neighbour late at night, the kids banging the playground gate repeatedly or throwing stones, other kids smashing glass in people’s recycling boxes, cheek, rudeness, name-calling, lack of respect. Small things, but a massive headache when you live with them day after day.

We don’t know who the gravel culprits are exactly, but we have some very good ideas. Sadly, it’s mainly kids without much to do at home, or with a home situation they like to stay away from. Sunshine is lovely in many ways but it brings out the worst behaviour in youngsters who lack good boundaries and supervision.

This morning the Vicar preached from Colossians 3&4. The tragedy is that so many local children are embittered and discouraged (Colossians 3v21).

Posted in Church, Inner city, vicar | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Vicarage Building Work

19 June, 2010 by thevicarswife

This week our Quinquennial work started. Our Victorian vicarage needs a fair bit of patching up and the diocese very kindly pay for it to be sorted out every five years. The work was identified back in February and we now have three cheery lads stripping paint, sanding things and generally working their socks off to make us look respectable. They’re taking advantage of the good weather to work on the outside stuff just now. All the indoor bits should be done next week.

The photos aren’t great, but they give you an idea of the work that’s begun. More will follow next week as our exterior paintwork changes from faded red to a marine/navy blue. Most of it’s grey just now as they’ve now put the primer on.

I am making a good few cups of coffee and tea. On Thursday I gave them lollies as it was stinky hot by the end of the afternoon.

The woodshed (aka garage) door loses its red paint

Rather blurry picture of the van. This cheery lad spent most of Friday high in the air (we've 3 storeys) painting our eaves.

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