Happy homecoming

A gloriously hot and sunny day, 24C. At last a day worthy of late June. After breakfast, I recorded and edited next week's election day Morning Prayer, then made the video slide show and uploaded it to YouTube, all before lunch. I had the other half of the chicken and chorizo dish cooked yesterday. Through the morning, I followed the progress of Rachel's homebound flight on Flight Aware and Skyscanner websites, until it landed just after one thirty. Thankfully it was on time, give or take five minutes.

As it's bin day I got to work on shredding another box file of ancient documents for recycling. A mixture of thirty year old old gas and electricity bills, and a collection of assorted documents from the beginning of my appointment and induction as Rector of St Agnes and St Simon with St Werburgh. A fascinating trip down memory lane with the responses from people invited to the induction. What struck me in shredding was how much thicker the paper used was fifty years ago, judged by the difficulty in shredding more than a couple of sheets at a time. The shredded content of one box file filled one large recycling bag. Clearing my office of old archived documents is going to take quite a long time.

I came across an exchange of letters arising from difficulties in relationships with the Methodist church and the three Anglican Parish churches, making up the Ecumenical Area of Experiment, as it was known. Despite my best efforts, the team ministry didn't work as intended. This was a cause of disquiet as it affected relationships between congregations. The heart of the matter was conflict between individual clerics with big egos, used to having their own way, unsuited to professional partnership working. As team Rector I took responsibility for this. There was nothing I could do about the decisions of authorities over me who thought they were good for working in the area. It's a situation I was at a loss to deal with. As if life wasn't difficult enough in the wake of the St Paul's riots. Anyway, what's past is past, duly consigned to the bin of church history.

Then, a walk around the park, and trip to Beanfreaks for extra groceries while waiting for Rachel to arrive. M4 traffic was slow so it was half past six by the time she arrived with her old friend Dom, who offered to pick her up and bring her to Cardiff. It was good to see Dom again after about thirty years. He offered to bring Rachel to Cardiff so the two of them could catch up with each other. It's not been so long for them as they've kept in touch on-line over the years. 

Clare cooked fish pie and we ate supper in the garden under a mackerel evening sky. Dom took his leave of us and then we made an effort to get to bed early to allow Rachel to catch up on her sleep loss after a night in the air, flying into the sunrise.