Coffee Morning Chats

On Thursday mornings, I organise a coffee morning in our church hall. I try to invite all the mums from the school gate, but in practice there are a regular group of about ten who come almost every week. They are a great bunch – friendly and chatty and fun to be with. I bake [...]

Read Full Post »

Happy in Sandwell

Happy is our new lodger. He’s also the Vicar’s new apprentice (aka the ministry trainee). Yesterday he went to a training event about our area. It was laid on by diocesan missioners with input from speakers from the local council and other taxpayer funded bodies.
We live in Sandwell, one of the most deprived boroughs in [...]

Read Full Post »

Dealing with Drugs

So the kids are back at school and everyone is busy catching up on the local gossip. The neighbourhood drug dealers are a popular topic of conversation. Chattychap thinks that some of the teenagers in the area are being recruited to make the actual drug deliveries. This distances the dealers from the deals. And sadly [...]

Read Full Post »

What scares you?

Some folk think that it must be scary living in our parish, with its deprivation, drug dealers and people like Gone. Last week I found some great quotes on what we should really be afraid of, selected by étrangère from Tim Chester’s recent book ‘The Ordinary Hero‘. I’ve been thinking I should buy it to [...]

Read Full Post »

Regular Vicarage Meals on offer

Together with a room in the Vicarage, tons of interesting ministry experience in our parish and a place on the Midlands Ministry Training Course. See the Vicar’s post and check out his blog to find out who’d be training you.
We’d love to have someone join us who’s passionate about Jesus and keen to share that [...]

Read Full Post »

More on Cheap Inner City Shopping

essica Hagy has lots of clever graphs at her Indexed site. She posted this one today, but it’s not accurate for our parish.
Our milk costs between 99p and £1.20 for 4 pints at local shops. It’s £1.53 at Tesco’s. We use a lot of milk in our house.
I love living here.

Read Full Post »

A (Rather Shallow but Still Good) Reason to Live in the Inner City

There are lots, of course – the closeness of community, the terrific range of ethnic cooking ingredients available locally, the way that people are real, the great public transport, the wonderful places to eat bacon butties and drink strong tea…
But today it is the value of the shopping experience that I’m chuffed about. I know [...]

Read Full Post »

Pigeons – a rant

The other morning I got really aerated about pigeon food. As I’ve mentioned before, people put food out to feed the birds in our local shopping precinct. Unfortunately, they overcater, so this was the sight that greeted me on the school run. This food will either turn to mush for folk to slip over on [...]

Read Full Post »

The Beautiful City

The Curate remarked that my artistic shot of a beer can might give you the wrong impression of the lovely place where we live. Empty beer cans are a fact of life here, where excess alcohol is the cause of many troubles. But you mustn’t think that discarded beer cans are all there is to [...]

Read Full Post »

A Snowy View

Here’s a snap I took in the snow on the way home from our mum’s coffee morning today.
You may not be able to read the strapline across the pale blue at the top of the can: ‘Enjoy Extra Cold’. I guess the drinker who deposited this with the fag end was probably extra cold. Not [...]

Read Full Post »