Two doorbells?

Having had my "last Christmas off", I started preparations for next Christmas by doing what clergy normally do - disappearing for a good long break!

We went back 'home' to Ferndown for a few days, staying with friends Lisa and Ian and celebrating New Year with various 'Singstar' renditions. Tasha was most displeased that I can outsing her on karaoke!!

A flying visit to St Mary's Church where I promoted the Ridley Lent Book (of which more soon) and shared the good news of the curacy situation. Far too many familiar faces and only 30 minutes of coffee time to speak to not many at all....

After that, we were treated to a visit to the pantomime in Bournemouth, and then we retreated further west to Lee Abbey in North Devon, where several Ridley (and many other) ordinands and their spouses and families gathered, to be led by the Bishop of Bolton, Chris Edmondson. Note to future curates: try to get a job with this man!!

Titled 'Navigating a sea of change' we considered many of the practical aspects of life in the vicarage - much of which was not new to the ordinands, but maybe was to the spouses, and anyway it was being presented in a fresh way, by a bishop! Several sessions were immediately followed by detailed discussions on whether to have one or two telephones / mobiles / doorbells, development of family policies on answering the door etc.

We hardly saw our children all week - one of the many benefits of youth workers! We were afraid that the usual (deliberate) lack of facilities of a retreat centre (no TV, no internet, no mobile network even!) would be a bit of a problem, but Lee Abbey are realistic about what children need, and at least the TV was not denied them - Beth kept us up to date on developments in EastEnders from the youth suite TV!

However, we didn't see the news. Daily weather reports didn't prepare us for the snow that was blanketing the country. We assumed the lack of newspapers was because there was a slightly icy hill between the paper shop and the Abbey. It was only when we were on the way home, having driven through some cleared snow drifts, that we stopped at a service station and saw a newspaper with that iconic satellite image of a snow covered UK that we realised what had been happening.

The snow was unbroken either side of the car until we got home, when we discovered that the gas engineer who had been fixing our boiler in our absence had tripped the electricity safety devices 48 hours previously and had been unable to access our fusebox! Fortunately it was so cold inside the house that the contents of the freezer were virtually unaffected, and after a small hiccup restarting the boiler (gas man didn't look impressed at being called out on a Friday evening) we finally got the house up to temperature by the time we got out of bed on Saturday morning.

All in all a leisurely break, slightly extended for both me and the children by the Lee Abbey week, but now back in anger to the January Intensive courses. I'm doing a compulsory one on Sexuality. Deep joy.....