The Soldier Bear Dear friends, Last week over a hundred Polish war veteran families and their descendants, Polish dignitaries and Checkendon parish notables gathered for a stirring commemoration outside the Black Horse pub, where a blue plaque was unveiled to honour the 80th anniversary of the first arrival of Polish service personnel to Checkendon Camp in 1946. These were mostly soldiers from…
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,…
Indian Summer Dear friends, As I write the morning sun is slanting across the front garden as it creeps above the village hall roof. The light shines through the greenery of the lilac tree, where a great tit flits about, searching for aphids and other bugs on the leaves and branches, his colouring blending him in with the foliage. The low angle…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Land of Heat and Glory Dear friends, Congratulations to the England squad for carving into the Mexican defence like steak on the barbecue of the Azteca stadium. In the place where Diego Maradonna of Argentina hand-balled a knock out goal against us in the same competition forty years ago a measure of justice and redemption for English football was earned, and that…
The Call Dear friends, Yesterday (Monday 29th June) was a “double Feast” day. It was the day when you could celebrate St Peter and St Paul together, as we might do at Checkendon, or just St Peter by himself (which is called Petertide). This latter feast is perhaps more widely celebrated, not least because it is the main season in the calendar…
The Crumbling Centre Dear friends, We are continuing to witness the era of the self-purging Government. Politics appears to be now just a race to be the “least unpopular”. Please, please, if anyone is listening, we just want the “least incompetent”. The combination of generational national problems, an inflated and overblown media, and a febrile public blown here and there by social…