Just after eight again this morning I uploaded to the Parish prayer WhatsApp group my reflection for the day. I went to the Eucharist at St Catherine's and afterwards drank coffee in the garden with Emma from a flask I took with me in response to the invitation in the weekly newsletter to post Eucharist socially distanced fellowship time. Only half of the eight people who attended stayed on, but it did give me an opportunity for a welcome chat with Emma.
After lunch, I fetched the week's grocery order from Beanfreaks, and then went for a walk in the park. On returning home I had an idea about a suitable sermon for Pentecost Sunday, the week after next, so I sat down and wrote a complete draft in the hour before supper.
I watched an interesting documentary on BBC Four about the bombing raid on Canning Town during the London blitz, and how it exposed the woeful lack of preparedness to deal with those whose homes had been destroyed. An overcrowded temporary rest centre in a local primary school was bombed with the loss of over two hundred lives, because of the disorganised emergency response to the result of bombing night after night for weeks. Seven thousand bombs fell on a district of poor working class people, living in crowded conditions.
Investigative journalist Ritchie Calder, working for the Daily Herald became a critic of government and local authority attitudes and inaction, advocating a more integrated approach to addressing the need of the most vulnerable. Eventually Churchill appointed Henry Willink, MP for Croydon as Minister of Health, and as well as tackling the most critical concerns of the homeless and displaced, he drafted the first integrated policy documents that led to the foundation of the Welfare State. It was a valuable lesson in the social history of the years before I was born. In Wales, we all know about Nye Bevin and the NHS and Ritchie Calder I'd heard of, but Henry Willink I'd never heard of before. All people to whom I owe the quality of life I've enjoyed throughout my life.
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