It can be hard to imagine what a Vicar does all day, particularly if you watch Midsomer Murders, where the clergy mainly seem to skulk about looking sinister and then getting murdered. Or doing something nefarious.
So to give you a glimpse of what the Vicar does in our parish, here’s a set of pictures from a couple of days ago, showing you what the Vicar does on a Monday after leading a school assembly and meeting with church staff to plan the week ahead.
He’s got the pump that we’re using temporarily to drain down the basement where the boilers for the church heating are located. The old pump has been broken for a while and this is actually the one from the birthing pool we used to use for baptisms (we now have a shallower, wider heated paddling pool). The old pump worked automatically, but this one has to be switched on when the basement gets flooded. And it can get a bit clogged and mucky. So after draining the basement down following some recent heavy rain, it was brought into our back yard for cleaning, and for making an amusing fountain.
They don’t give you lectures on drain pump maintenance at theological college. Or on boilers for that matter. But they probably should.
When people ask me what my job is these days, I usually say I’m a mother, or a full time clergy wife. And that I’m not paid to do either of these things! And since people like to pop people in pigeonholes, they are sometimes surprised to find out, usually at a much later date, that I used to design systems for mechanical equipment for water and sewage treatment.
The Vicar's Wife 