washburnmidwharfe (Page 3)

Dear Brothers and Sisters Earlier on this year I was at Ripon Cathedral for the Plough Sunday Service. It was a cracking afternoon. The Cathedral was full of farming families, we had all gathered beforehand to have a hot roast pork sandwich (with crackling, of course) and afterwards I got to have a look at a new John Deere tractor. I know that many of you will prefer other tractors but as they say ‘nothing runs like a Deere.’ Charlotte commented on the silly grin on my face as I had a good play on this beautiful machine. I didn’t mind as the old farmerRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters Ten years ago I was arriving in Afghanistan for what would be a challenging six months. None of us knew what was really ahead of us. We had trained for all sorts of situations, we were as ready as we could be for what lay ahead. And straightaway one of my friends was bitten on his foot by a spider and spent a couple of weeks out of action. Later on another friend had his little finger bitten by a mouse and ended up having rabies injections. We expected to be under fire, to have to deal with bombs, to haveRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters I was disappointed, but not really surprised, when I heard that Masham Sheep Fair was cancelled for this year. Over the past months we have become used to events being cancelled but there is still a sense of disappointment when something that we enjoy is cancelled or postponed. This Sunday would have been Open Farm Sunday when farms all over the country were planning to host events for the public to find out more about how their food is produced. Clearly this is something else that cannot happen this year but the event is going online and international. You may thinkRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters I’m sure I can’t have been the only priest in the country to have had a sleepless night after the Government announcement of the new Coronavirus measures coming in on Monday; the ‘rule of six.’ There was a lot of conjecture about  us being allowed to have 30 people at a Wedding, a Funeral or a Baptism but only 6 at Sunday worship. Thankfully the Government has clarified that situation and we are allowed to continue with worship as we have been doing. More guidelines on what we can and cannot do in church buildings over the next few months willRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters Each morning I receive pictures of long dead people. I follow the Auschwitz Memorial on social media and each day the lives of those who were imprisoned in that Concentration Camp are shared on line. There is a picture of the person, his or her date and place of birth along with a few other details and usually the date they died. It is heart breaking reading these messages. Most days I ask myself why I keep following the Memorial. It would be so much less painful to forget and that, of course, is why I will never be able toRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters I’m a little bit ‘achy’ just now. Nothing to worry about but I’ve spent my ‘break’ digging, cutting, chopping. Gardening over this past week with it’s very changeable weather hasn’t been very pleasant but I have filled a large number of rubble bags with garden waste. Now for the skip! I would love to say that I am feeling satisfied with my progress but all I can see is a muddy mess which will, one day in the far distant future, be a nice mixed border. We all want everything to be back to normal. And some things seem like theyRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters Our new hens have settled in well and are happily producing away. Most days we get five eggs from the six of them. Some days we get six, on one very strange day we got ten! I’m not sure how to explain that one. All our hens lay nice looking eggs; Otley show here we come, but two of them lay a lot of ‘double yolkers.’ Though these are much prized, especially by my brother in law, they aren’t very good for the hen. Hens who lay double yolkers tend to be shorter lived than other hens. Things may settle down;Read More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters One of my favourite authors is George MacDonald Fraser. Many of you will know him from the ‘Flashman’ novels and I must confess I detest these. But his short stories about ‘McAuslan’ the dirtiest soldier in the world have brought so much joy to my life that I can forgive him anything. His best work, in my opinion, is factual; ‘Quartered Safe Out Here’ is his reflection on the life of an infantry soldier and his mates in Burma during the Second World War. It is one of the best books ever written about the experiences of men caught up inRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters We now have to wear a mask during worship unless you are leading worship (and can remain 2 metres away from anyone else). As you all know I really don’t like wearing masks but I will not be taking advantage of this clause. It isn’t as if you can’t all hear me, even masked up. We are all in this together.  The pandemic news from around the world isn’t wonderful. Life isn’t returning to normal for so many in this country and abroad. And disease aside, 2020 is really shaping up to be a ‘bit of a year.’ Watching the portRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon and so far there have been no new instructions since Monday about what we should do in church. This is a first and I firmly expect that as soon as I press send a whole raft of new information will appear. So let’s see… I think those of us at church last week all struggled a bit with wearing masks. This was partly due to it all being new, some of us having masks that didn’t quite fit (this is a real problem for me and I’m investing in a variety to try to getRead More →