Valleys visit

Last week, I set myself the task of preparing all the material needed for the next three Thursday Morning Prayer and Reflection videos before we leave for our fortnight's holiday in Watchet a week today. After breakfast this morning, I recorded and edited the audio for next Thursday's video, and then had to rush to get myself out of the house in time to reach Cardiff Central station, and buy tickets for a trip to Crosskeys to spend the afternoon with Rufus. 

I also wanted to buy advance tickets for a trip to London to visit my sister for the first time in three years, as I have Monday and Tuesday free, and feel confident about making the journey, after such a long time needing to plan every step with medical needs at the forefront of my thinking. I'm looking forward to this.

Fortunately, I gave myself time to do both, and was pleased to find that advance booking of off-peak fares gave me a reasonably priced ride to London on Sunday afternoon with return ticket I can use any time off-peak within the next month. I can stay for one or two nights and choose when I head for home, as long as it's later in the day, which suits me anyway. Electrification of the line has reduced journey time now to two hours. It costs three times more than by bus, but the travel time and convenience make it worthwhile.

Crosskeys is on the Ebbw Vale line north of Newport. The line heads inland, rising from the coastal plain  through suburbia and a then wooded valley where the line runs above the villages. It made me think of places I'd visited in Switzerland, a memory enhanced by the appearance of a young fair haired train conductor with a local accent, enjoying her job on the train. She reminded me of her equivalent on Swiss railways, sometimes, an apprenti, accompanied by an older railwayman. It's funny how memory surprises you like that.

Rufus and Daria are re-settling happily in their family home of twenty eight years, after ten years elsewhere in ministry. They live in a part of the village where four terraces of neat well kept houses, typical of the mining Valleys enclose a garden with the village war memorial at the centre. The back of their house overlooks a wooded valley, and the terrace is dug into the steep slope. They have converted the loft, and below the ground floor is a day room overlooking the garden below, and the valley. Over the years, Rufus has done all the work himself. Craftsmanship of all kinds is his hobby. I often heard him talk of this when I was his College tutor. This was the first time for me to see what he'd done with the house, and I was most impressed.

We had a good three hours of conversation before I took the return journey at five. It was good to see him at home, relaxing and pondering on how his next period in ministry might develop, now that he's officially a pensioner, and free to accept or reject whatever invitations come his way. The church is more than ever reliant on clergy with means of their own to sustain its offer of ministry in this time when the slide into bankruptcy is a grim reality. Retired clerics are not seen as stakeholders but beneficiaries of the church excluded from participating in its decision making processes. It makes no sense. I wonder how desperate the hierarchy needs to get before acknowledging that a radical change is needed towards voluntary clergy, who see themselves as stakeholders in the church's mission notwithstanding?

After supper, I walked to St Catherine's to deliver stuff for tomorrow's Autumn Fayre, then continued work I started earlier in the day. There was nothing worth watching on telly anyway.