Tea for a Tiger

My kids love Judith Kerr’s book ‘The Tiger who came to tea’. Last week the Joker’s class spent some time reading the book. They also drew a dinner plate full of food for the hungry tiger who ate all of the food in Sophie’s house.

The Joker tells me that the following foods are on the plate:

Fishfingers, broad beans, ice cream, a sweetie, a jelly baby, peas, a carrot, baked bean, broccoli, a packet of prawn cocktail crisps, a radish, ribena, pizza and chips.

Can you spot them all?

Modern reports

My kids had their school reports today.

One of the comments in the Queen’s one was

The Queen has good mouse control.

My rodent capabilities were never commented on when I was at school….

Mourning in the parish

Two young men have died in road accidents near us in the last few weeks. The Curate officiated at one of the funerals. I was reminded of one lad who died today, when I realised that some silver graffiti on the road on the way to the junior school was a memorial to him. He was a popular lad and his friends were moved to write a song about him which was played at the funeral.

Last week, on the way to town, we passed this memorial to the other boy, who was just sixteen when he was in an accident, driving his new moped.

There were twice as many flowers here when I passed this spot yesterday

These expressions of grief are new, creative and increasingly popular amongst the young. But the comfort they bring can’t last. One of the great privileges in parish ministry is meeting people who are grieving and pointing them to the eternal comfort that God offers to human beings through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

The Father is a merciful God, who always gives us comfort.

2 Corinthians 1v3 (ESV)

Knitting (what do you expect from a curate’s wife?)

My granny was a fantastic knitter, but I only decided recently that I wanted to try my hand with needles and wool. My helpful mother-in-law gave me a knitting book for Christmas and this is one of the results - a gift for a friend’s 40th birthday.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while… I suspect most of my huge array of readers will have seen either the bag or the pictures before. But just in case you haven’t….

The outside of the bag

The inside

Lovely floral lining

Thanks to Louisa Harding for the pattern from her accessories book.

The disconnection of Radio 4

This morning I was running a bit late, so I heard ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4. Dr Mona Siddiqui was talking about how the slowdown in the housing market makes people feel frustrated because

“We have taken the buying and selling of property as a costly but essential part of our lifestyle choices.”

This is one of the reasons for all the repossessions in our neighbourhood: people bought into the lie that everyone should own their own property and then just couldn’t afford it. Where families are still managing to pay their mortgage there are difficulties here that you don’t see in middle class neighbourhoods.

Our neighbours, the Jollies, very rarely spend their annual leave together, as they can maximise the free childcare by taking it in turns to take their holiday. I see Arthritic Granny, obviously in much pain, struggling with the pushchair to the school gate, as her son and daughter-in-law are out at work all day and she is left with three little ones to watch.

But mainly I don’t think it wouldn’t occur to most of the people in our parish that having a mortgage was ‘an essential part of our lifestyle choices’. People don’t have that choice in the inner city. But then, they don’t listen to Radio 4 either.

The echoing crunch…

The other week we had the bailiffs round. Not calling for us - the Church of England isn’t in such a bad state yet. Sadly asking about our next door neighbour who disappeared at the end of February after telling us he was going on holiday.

The following morning the bailiffs were here again, breaking in next door and going to repossess two doors down too. That makes the fourth house in our development of forty or so houses that have been claimed back by lenders.

Wolverhampton has one of the highest rates of subprime mortgages in the country. It’s been so sad to see what’s happened to our friends, who have been trapped by plummeting property prices so they can’t even sell up and go back to renting.

This week the repossessed house next door got its ‘For Sale’ sign. It joins around five or so in the close that are up for sale. If you’re looking for a bargain priced property near to a good bible-teaching church and an excellent church primary school, this is the place to look. A two bedroomed terraced house on the road up from ours sold for £60,000. Just don’t get a sub-prime mortgage…

Tales from the crossing

Crossing the road with Mr Goldtooth today, the Engineer shocked me by saying ‘Thank you’ for the first time without being prompted. I was so pleased that I laughed and pushed the buggy on for the afternoon pick-up.

My three year old then chastised me as we headed for the school gate: ‘Mummy, you didn’t say ‘Thank you.”

You know it must be nearly the end of term when…

1. The children are very grumpy and argue with each other even more than usual.

2. The Joker screams while the Queen tries to boss him around.

3. The Engineer cries all the way home when he has to walk rather than go in the buggy.

4. In the next two days, you have to prepare a Pathfinder meeting (on work and idleness), write a monthly prayer diary and bake multiple trays of flapjack for the school summer fair.

5. You’d rather spend your time blogging about the things you have to do than actually getting round to doing them.

6. You find that you have put the lettuce in the freezer instead of the fridge.

Happy Wolves

Apparently, we live in the second happiest city in Britain. If you read the article, though, we are reported as being happy about having our football team.

Some Singaporean friends were visiting recently and asked us what Wolverhampton was famous for, and we could only really think of the footie. And motor cars in the 1920s.

The Joker’s plans

Today a good friend of the Joker’s pinched him on the arm at school, so he told a teacher. When the teacher went to resolve things, the Joker’s friend apologised. The teacher asked if everything was then okay with the Joker.

‘It will be, when I marry her’ he said.

Good to know that he’s planning ahead.