A Week in the Life of a Curate, Day 3

Wednesday

Pottering out of bed this morning, the ritual of tea, papers, prayers &c. begins as normal until a text reminds me I was supposed to be in Kensington Gardens with my running buddy. He has a real job so we meet in the park at 7am, which is horrendous at least until you're back and in the shower. The unusual service for the school has distracted me and I missed our date. He forgives me but, although I enjoyed half an hour more sleep (otherwise a 6.30am wake up), I'm pretty irritated. I try and run at least twice a week and having someone to go with is helpful. We have agreed to do the Grizzly next year and he's sent me information on a 200mile week long race called "The Dragon's back" in the welsh mountains, which looks "interesting". A letter arrives from an estate agent (these are very regular) saying that they've just rented a 2 bedroom house in my street for £900 a week. I briefly fantasize about moving in with the vicar and renting the house. A very quick way to more than triple my salary...  Meanwhile the gas board are digging up the street and have decided to begin their work immediately in front of my kitchen. My recently planted flowers will probably die from the dust, if general neglect does not finish them first. I read another articulation of guilt, anger and shame by Hughes, learn briefly about the marginal revolution in economics, and then head to church. The service is actually very nice - I quite like Common Worship morning prayer and we have a couple of hymns which give it a lift; our new organist is very amenable. The homily is brief but seems to go down well. I'm finding it easier to take in a sentence at a glance and keep my eyes up.


Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells of the early Christian communities, on the one hand fearful of persecution, on the other hand growing quickly and taking the name of ‘Christian’ for the first time.  We also hear of how these early Christians took this social and religious identity seriously, giving what they could for the relief of their fellow Christians in other places. It should give us pause to think that here we are so far removed from Turkey and the Middle East, and two millennia later, yet carrying on this same name, “Christian” - as Christianity and latterly the Middle East have come to West London. But what does it mean for a school to call itself ‘Christian’ and ‘Church of England’?

We live in an age that hates institutions. Membership of the Conservative Party has fallen in the last 60 years from 3 million to 175 thousand. The RSPCB now has more members than all the parties together.  With the new social media people feel little need to belong to anything serious beyond casually ‘liking’ and ‘following’ a celebrity or show. We are so far from making the life and death commitments of the early church that our only point of contact with this seriousness-of-life is the terrifying news reels from Syria, which seem unimaginable, a different world. This is hardly to be regretted, but I’m reminded of those snarky comments you hear about the middling banalities of the English - that ‘they’re always willing to admire anything so long as they can queue up’; that ‘an Englishman thinks he is being virtuous when he is only being uncomfortable’; that ‘the English think incompetence is the same thing as sincerity’.  And yet the last two years, the wedding, the jubilee, and most of all the Olympics and Paralympics, has touched a passion for deeper solidarity and belief, some genuine shared cultural identity in Team GB, that is a recognisable good. People talking on the tube? National pride instead of self-deprecation? And London, now a glorious picture of success, hospitality, openness, energy? The weather may bring us back down, but for now at least we bask in a delightful Indian summer.  

What gave the early Church its enthusiasm and enough energy to blow it across the known world within two generations was the discovery of a shared sense of purpose, solidarity founded on the belief of God’s unconquerable love.  A universal message of reconciliation, peace and charity in a truth that sort to communicate a message of hope in the darkness of poverty and suffering. The Church of England is the Church of this realm. This is a position of privilege but it should not be a position of control and exclusion. It is called to serve this country with those same values of solidarity, hospitality, openness and generosity experienced in London this Summer, welcoming all, being present for everyone. As a Church of England school we have an opportunity at the start of this term to foster these values. To push the sense of pride, collaboration and friendliness between old friends and newcomers, as well as the individual excellence that earned our medals. 

We also celebrated 150 years of this historic school this summer, a testament to the faith and hard work of generations - teachers and staff who believed in the Church’s ministry of education and pastoral care, children who were shaped and grew out of these values. Building on what has gone before, let’s continue to foster the legacy of team GB and the deserved reputation of a great world city. This means not turning in on ourselves in fear like those early Christians after the death of St Stephen; but supporting one another joyfully like those in Antioch, who in seeing the needs of others gave, ‘each according to their ability’.


After the service a colleague and I head over to the estate coffee morning. It's largely an event for housewives and the elderly, fuelled by gossip, caffeine and the admiration of each other's houses. Most of the chatter today is about holidays so it has a slight back-to-school feel. When I first arrived these things were hard work. It's mostly small talk with occasional narrow-mindedness and complaints about how people in the area 'can't even speak English'. As you get to know the people though it actually becomes really quite fun and you pick up on the internal politics and class struggles of eyebrow raising and posture. Today we are graced with a veritable banquet, which neatly becomes lunch.

Stella is at the house cleaning when I get back so I hit the roof for some sun before heading down to watch the beginning of Prime Minister's Questions. He looks harried and while it would be almost impossible for the opposition not to come off better, Miliband is now looking a little more like a politician and less the gawky, bolshy school boy. Having said that I suspect if an election were held tomorrow no one would bother voting: 'shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labor. And here I am... perhaps the last island of beauty in the world...'. Perhaps.

It's the children's confirmation class in the afternoon so I spend some time thinking of how to explain the Bible to 9 year olds and devise some games to get them to learn the books and how they fit together. The class actually goes really well; it's a lot more fun than I expect and most of the knowledge is there even if it's not always tied together very well. You always get funny and amusing tangents from kids and although they have real trouble saying "Deuteronomy" they are quite insightful about subjectivity and how the same thing seems different with different eyes. The vicar has returned having had a particularly good holiday and is in fine form.

After a speedy evening prayer I head off to meet a fellow Roman curate in King's Cross. I've found a sherry bar in a nice little courtyard which is marvellous. Roaring would most certainly approve with her frequent trips to Malaga. My comrade prefers cocktails however so we go next door first for a pair of French 75s each. The staff condescend because we don't choose their own cocktails. After a large sherry we go for steaks found on google maps, where the staff condescend because they think they're very fashionable. The steak is the bloodiest I've had and comes on a big board. Unfortunately the board is too big for the table and my plate is pushed right to the edge. Disaster occurs when the plate flips steak on to my lap and plate, loudly, on to the floor. "Would you like a new plate sir?" The staff condescend further and I cover my shame with a red wine filter. After a brief interlude involving mojitos we end up St Pancras hotel where the staff turn condescension into an art, though to be fair we are a little rowdy and it's past midnight. They do, however, provide delicious snacks with our drinks. My fellow lush has missed his last train and comes back to the house for a final glass of wine. At 4am I call Roaring to see how her retreat is going. She is pleased to hear from me and I drift off to sleep sometime following...

A Week in the Life of a Curate, Day 2

Tuesday

The beginning of the day reads as yesterday. I bled out of bed at 7.25am somewhere between amoeba and jellyfish on the evolutionary scale. For some reason I don't get tired at night but look and feel every lost second in the morning. Being a simple and very immediate creature I haven't learned to curb my late nights, regardless of the fact that they are usually unproductive (e.g. watching Total Recall). Anyway my lost time meant I forgot my poem and economic idea which annoyed me periodically the rest of the day. I am wholly and obsessively a creature of routine. The exciting development, however, was that news has returned with the cabinet reshuffle so the Guardian was mildly less full of nonsense. Polly and George, however, did appear, but so did the delightful Hadley Freeman so it wasn't a total disaster.

Anyway, I struggled into church just after ten as playgroup began. This is an hour and a half of gossip over babies and coffee with a ten minute guitar session in the middle. We don't do Christian songs which I'm convinced is right. It's not why people come and insisting on 'worship' in everything gives the impression that the church should only be doing church. Since school hadn't started some alumni turned up which was most delightful and my blues version of Down in the Jungle was surpassed only by the hopping bunnies and snapping crocodiles.

The jollyness was all cut short by a distressed visitor. The most disturbing thing about the parish is the number of entrapped women, some very visible, some less so. The most horrifying examples are the beggars on Edgware Road that are moved about by gangs, given injuries and have babies passed between them. This is a very direct form of slavery that is difficult to walk past. There is also the infamous Sussex Gardens, destination of the curb crawler, littered with 'vice'-cards and prostitutes, also often trapped in inescapable situations. Finally, however, there is another class, a couple of which I have had long conversations with in the last week. These are kept women. In some cases there are complications with visas, sometimes they have become financially completely reliant on some man, sometimes children are involved, sometimes heartbreak and manipulation. These women can be easily threatened with eviction, with being cut off, abandoned, and in some cases face extortion and violence. The vagaries of life can throw them between first class flights and outright imprisonment. Anger, depression, misery are all too evident. I am looking into what more I can do; there are some shelters and charities available, but often these situations are bound up with invisible ties in carefully constructed cages.

The life of clergy is necessarily ironic. This is not cynicism but often you are forced to shift from the utter seriousness of human misery to the banal or frivolous. So the shift to the business of the car park and administration is frustrating but inescapable. Mugs and stuffed horses will not order themselves, nor will classes for children for a Confirmation service that is really much sooner than is practical. Equally urgent was the task of putting together a Mattins service for the school staff tomorrow and a blessing for the children's first week at school on Sunday. Our faithful administrator was on hand to proof, print and staple but putting services together and formatting takes longer than you might expect.

Lunch had me back on the roof with a pizza before a 10 minute power nap, hoping to dream up a sermon for tomorrow morning. Back in the office the service sheet is finished; some colleagues email suggestions for a title of an edited collection due to be published next year. The back-log list of things I haven't done increases and I begin to feel quite stressed. I've been doing some work for a trust for the past few years and the accounts are due, I've a funeral to arrange, and begging letters for prizes from the local restaurants. On top of this I have an adult confirmation class tonight and a sermon to write for the morning. I finally get through to the stables who are on track for the end of the month, say evening prayer and get to Waitrose for catechesis snacks.

After scrambling to tidy the house the confirmation class goes quite smoothly, though I worry that I am talking a lot. The subject is the Bible and I explain something of how the canon was formed, the Four senses of Scripture, dealing with problematic texts and how we read the Bible, how it can help and how we orient ourselves as Christians by engaging with the stories. At times I wonder whether my own horizons have so fused with Scripture, after years of reading narrative theology that the class will think I'm mad. It is clear that they find Scripture hard to relate to. I surprise myself by realising how much I value Scripture as an encouragement and an orienting force in my life. Dangerous admissions for a liberal! The group is forcefully honest, which is fantastic, but they will not accept easy answers or empty platitudes. There is a real sense of wanting to make sense of what faith is about.

They are gone by 10pm and I change gears to write the school staff sermon listening to Chopin Nocturnes. It comes relatively quickly, having been sporadically on my mind for the past 24 hours. The staff are not always enthusiastic about church so I try and keep it brief and engaging. Will see how it goes tomorrow. I have not gone beyond snacks so I'm hungry going to bed but I'm pleased to have bought a Lynx Final Edition deodorant, which amuses me.

I slip into bed at 1.34am.