Announcements

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From the Rector: Tuesday 13th October 2026

Return to the Riverbank Dear friends, Toad was bored. For want of petrol, his shiny new car languished in the garage, its bright red paint spotted with dust from the beams above. In his morning room at Toad Hall, Toad looked at his paper, then threw it down in disgust. “Why am I not in the news?” he cried. “I’ve been in…

From the Rector: Tuesday 29th September 2026

The little Dutch monk Dear friends, You won’t have heard of Anno Brandsma. He was born in Friesland in the north of the Netherlands in 1881. He was a devout and studious boy, and joined the Carmelite religious order as a novice in 1898 at the age of eighteen, taking his father’s name of Titus. He took his vows as a monk,…

From the Rector: Tuesday 15th September 2026

A late birthday Dear friends, It was my birthday over the summer and, unusually, I bought myself a present. I had to order them, as they needed to be custom made, and so I’ve had to be patient. But they arrived a few days ago, and I’m very pleased with them. A new pair of cases for the two tom-tom drums in…

From the Rector: Tuesday 8th September 2026

Bitter memories. Dear friends, One drawer of my filing cabinet is used for reference and stories. It is in alphabetical order, so there is a rough guide as where a particular article or file may be found. Even with the increasing use of firstly the computer, and then the internet, I still find it useful. What started as a place for newspaper…

From the Rector: Tuesday 1st September

The Chocolate Cathedral. Dear friends, Here’s a quick quiz question for you: Which of the 42 UK cathedrals has a chocolate pot for its font? No, really! I know for some the idea of being baptised in a vat of molten chocolate might appeal, but I’m afraid this particular large burnished copper vessel now contains (merely) cold water, the red-gold of the…

From the Rector: Tuesday 11th August 2026

Due Diligence Dear friends, “What is truth?” said Pontius Pilate, revealing in his conversation with Christ that he was a stranger to it. Or that he found it elusive, a puzzle. More likely that he was unconcerned by it, being as he was a person of power, who felt, by reason of this power to be able to dictate how things should…

From the Rector: Tuesday 4th August 2026

Gods and Men Dear friends, Older than Reading, older than London, older than Rome, Luxor sits beside the Nile, a town beholden to the greatest waterway of the Ancient World. Fiercely hot at this time of the year the scrappy modern streets are dominated by the two great temples, imposing ruins from the times of the pharaohs; that at Luxor itself, and,…

From the Rector: Tuesday 28th July 2026

Homeward bound Dear friends, Christopher Nolan’s epic new film “The Odyssey” powerfully depicts the pull of home, after years of war. In Ukraine, the war and destruction continues, with thousands displaced, and in France and Spain many are forced by nature’s wrath to leave their dwellings. Communities are broken. Will they ever be re-made? Can our connections with time and place be…

From the Rector: Tuesday 21st July 2026

System failure Dear friends, I wonder if you remember the famous Windows “blue screen of death”? Something had “gone wrong” in the computer’s system, and it would freeze up, leaving you with a sky blue screen, a useless keyboard, and, now and then, some kind of error message. The only thing for it would be to restart the whole machine with the…

From the Rector: Tuesday 14th July 2026

For the beauty Dear friends, It is the last week of the school term for many. Spare a thought for teachers, working through the heat, and their charges, who’ll be leaving for other schools, or moving up into a different class next term. Endings, and beginnings, and a time of rest and refreshment ahead of the changes to come. “He has made…