Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Vicarage’

Keeping warm in the Vicarage – some irreverent verse

Posted in Fun, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , on 6 May, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We had loads of visitors this weekend. It was great fun, though slightly bonkers. As ever, my Dad wrote some verse to commemorate the occasion. This one is about our first gas bill…

Our new Vicar’s first gas bill,

Would really take some beating.

So rather than face the bankruptcy court,

He turned off the central heating.

They shiver now at the Vicarage,

And wrap up really well.

Whenever (in winter) I visit

I long for the fires of Hell.

The poetic licence forbade mentioning our very toasty and mesmorising wood burning stoves, which stave off the longing for Hell… We hope.

Read Full Post »

Vicar’s wife job description – Part 5 – More on the phone

Posted in Vicar's wife job description, tagged , , , , on 27 April, 2009| 2 Comments »

My first post in this little series on the job description for a Vicar’s wife was about phone calls I answered early on in our time here in the Vicarage. The first comment was from rtpeat, who advised getting a separate phone line installed.

How can I help you?

How can I help you?

The thing about that is that the Vicar would then have to spend sermon prep time talking to people about local history and the shape of our church tower. I was glad to be able to do that for him last week, when a man rang trying to find a photograph of our church for a distant cousin in Canada. We had a discussion about the architecture of our church building and it turned out that it wasn’t our church he meant to track down after all…

I have also fielded two calls in the last few days from teachers (extra curricular and supply) who rang the Vicarage instead of our church school. It keeps me in the loop!

Read Full Post »

Stickers

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , on 24 April, 2009| 6 Comments »

The house that comes with my husband’s job is a typical Victorian vicarage. It has lots of space – high ceilings and even higher heating bills, you know the sort of thing.

When we first visited it, it was showing its age. It hadn’t been substantially decorated for about twenty years and the rooms looked tired. Many of them had not been used much of late, as the previous vicar was single.

The PCC kindly agreed to completely redecorate the house for us before we moved in, and I had to swiftly choose the colours as the team of decorators moved like locusts through the house. With the size of rooms we have, we don’t have to be afraid of colour.

Obviously, the Queen needed a pink room and she’d picked out a set of bedlinen and curtains in the Next catalogue. Her main motivation for choosing the design was a gorgeous sticker set that came with it.

We’d been moved in a few days when Icklesis came to visit. I’d been putting off the Queen’s request to apply the stickers. And a good thing too:

Looks lovely but definitely a team activity. Thanks Icklesis!

Read Full Post »

Vicar’s wife job description – Part 4 – Trees

Posted in Vicar's wife job description, tagged , , , , on 22 April, 2009| 1 Comment »

Where we live most people have small gardens, often concreted over, or live in flats. And not many can afford to have play equipment in their garden. Our church was recently given a generous grant towards having a playground installed in our grounds. It will mainly be used by the young children who attend our toddler group.Tree

As part of the project, some trees in the churchyard had to be trimmed back. As I came back from the school run yesterday, the tree surgeons were hard at work. And they were shredding lots of the wood. We have wood burning stoves in the vicarage and we’d been promised the logs. So I went to check that they weren’t chipping all the lovely holly wood. They assured me they weren’t but then started asking about which other trees needed pruning. This was definitely outside my field of knowledge.

The Vicar was out at a prayer meeting, so it was back to the vicarage to “phone a friend”. I got it right first time by calling the churchwarden who then came over to talk trees whilst I made tea for the workers.

The logs came over our wall later on. And the Vicar spent a lovely hour after tea chopping and splitting them with some local teenagers who thought they’d come over to use our trampoline.

Read Full Post »

Sofa debris

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , on 10 March, 2009| 4 Comments »

Things I found down the back of the sofa when we decided to hoover it before putting the new vicarage covers on:

  1. A plastic stick from Tumbling Monkeys (or possibly the Kerplunk)
  2. A plastic 2p coin
  3. A green tattoo pen
  4. A ‘what am I?’ game card
  5. A charm bracelet
  6. A piece of a jigsaw
  7. A marble (also possibly from the Kerplunk)

This does not include the ample feasting opportunities for mice which we hoovered up. And there are two armchairs and another sofa to go yet.

Apologies for lack of recent posting. The Vicar gets handed the church keys in a service this evening so the unpacking has been getting a bit frantic. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Read Full Post »

Vicar’s wife job description

Posted in Fun, Vicar's wife job description, tagged , , , , , , , on 25 February, 2009| 10 Comments »

This was a search term that recently led someone to my blog. So I thought maybe I could start by drawing one up as I go along over the next twelve months. I’ll try and make it a regular feature.

The Vicar's Wife

The Vicar's Wife

If you’re reading and also doing the same job, I’d love to have your contributions too.

This week I’m still not officially a vicar’s wife, but there have been a few phone calls to the vicarage, and I needed to know:

  1. How someone could hire the church hall.
  2. Whether a baby living nearly five miles away could be ‘christened’ in our church, as our phone number had been at the top of the list in the Thompson directory. The mother wanted to change the baby’s name in the ceremony.
  3. The meaning of firmament, purgatory and two other more difficult words I’d never heard before.

Read Full Post »

Mistaking the Vicar

Posted in Church, Fun, tagged , , , , , , , on 24 February, 2009| 1 Comment »

The other week we were visiting the vicarage, sorting a few things out before the move. The (then) Curate was doing some practical jobs wearing his allotment jeans, his hoodie and his beanie and was outside the house.

The Curate was wearing longer trousers

The Curate was wearing longer trousers


A lady walked by and smilingly said to him

You’ll need to get a move on with your work. The vicar is moving in next month, you know.

The (then) Curate said

“Actually, he’ll be here in just thirteen days.”

“How do you know that then?”

“I am the new vicar.”

You look very different without your suit on.

Read Full Post »

Moving

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , on 11 February, 2009| 5 Comments »

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.

Read Full Post »

My Blog Personality

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , , , , , on 24 November, 2008| 1 Comment »

Just found a great little site which analyses your personality type from your writing style on your blog!

I came out as

ESFP – The Performers

“The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead – they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation – qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.”

When I’ve previously done the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator I’ve been an ENFP, so this is pretty close for an instant analysis. I wonder if the site has detected my current preoccupation with vicarage decor and my great desire to avoid planning the house move. It certainly seems to be very much me at the moment!

Read Full Post »

My new favourite website

Posted in Family, Recycling, tagged , , , , , on 10 November, 2008| 3 Comments »

The Curate has recently been appointed as a real life Vicar and we will be moving to a grown up vicarage a few weeks after Christmas. This is all very exciting – the chance to serve God in a new place and put down roots after living in 7 houses, 5 cities and 3 countries in 13 1/2 years of marriage.

The challenge now is to get ready and one of my tasks is to sort our sofas out. The sofas were bought 9 years and 4 houses ago and on a different continent. We love them but a series of cats has meant that the covers are disgustingly shredded and are suffering from small children induced wear and lots of tear. They are Ikea sofas and Ikea have discontinued the range.

When I asked at a local furniture shop about the cost of replacement covers, figures of £600 per sofa were mentioned, sending me straight for the Ikea catalogue to look at brand new sofas. However, today I discovered this fantastic site where I reckon we’ll be able to recover our entire set for less than the price of a new sofa. Phew! And how eco-friendly too.

Now I just have to decide on colours…

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts