I use Morning Exercises by William Jay as part of my daily spiritual exercise. It is a very old book that I pinched from the Mhinisteir’s library as I felt I needed something heavy duty to complement my three chapters of daily Bible reading.
Anyway, because the book is very old, the reference to scripture is in roman numerals! I thought I was good at identifying roman numerals until one day, when I was stumped. The scripture reading for that day was Psalm lv. Assuming the l referred to a hundred, I started looking for the respective verse in Psalm 105! Of course it wasn’t there as lv means 55!!!! Time to brush up on my roman numerals!!!
The Mhinisteir has a stole that needs altering. In case you are wondering what a stole is, it is a vestment that is worn over the shoulders by a priest. As I am hopeless when it comes to sewing, I decided to engage the services of a seamstress. I remember seeing a local advertisement and decided to enquire.
I rang the mobile seamstress on her mobile number but there was no answer so I left a message on her phone. Some people don’t check their messages so I texted her with the details. I was so impressed when she rang back within the hour. She started by saying that because of Covid19 all items of clothing have to washed before they are brought to her and that she can only do measurements outside her front door!!! Brought to her? Being a mobile seamstress, I expected her to come to us! Can you imagine the Mhinisteir standing outside her home getting his measurements taken while the whole neighbourhood watches! In any case, the Mhinisteir’s stoles are not machine washable.
Anyway, I told her that I will be in touch, thanked her and rang off. A pity I can’t give her my custom but she made it impossible difficult. The quest continues…..
I am totally fedup with the M word popping up all the time both on the radio as well as the newspapers In case you are wondering what I am on about… it is the M word !😆. I can’t bring myself to type it but this word is used to describe a part of ageing that happens to women in their mid 40s and mid 50s.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am all for raising awareness. It is very important, for some people it is a matter of life and death but please don’t bang on about it. It becomes very embarrassing when every other female celebrity feels obliged to give the most intimate details.
In this social media era, people feel the need to announce EVERYTHING all the time. Maybe it’s about time that one started behaving with some decorum.
I almost had a kitchen disaster last week while preparing to entertain a senior cleric. Regular readers will observe that these days I am often in the company of senior clerics!!!😀
The Mhinisteir was due to have a meeting with him at the Vicarage and since we all had to eat, we invited him to join us for lunch. I had only seen him from a distance at the cathedral so was delighted when he agreed to join us.
The lunch menu consisted of carrot and coconut soup, roast chicken sandwich, mini blinis with cream cheese and Scottish smoked salmon, chocolate cake and shortbread. All made by own fair hands!
I decided to prepare the soup a day in advance and as I set out my ingredients, I realised I had run out of chicken stock. Thankfully, I had Marigold organic bouillon powder but I had never used it before to make soup as previously I had only used either homemake stock or Kallo organic stock.
As per instructions, I put 4 tablespoons of the bouillon powder in a measuring jug. Just as I was about to pour some boiling water to make up the stock, it dawned on me that I had almost half a tin of bouillon powder in the measuring jug. I thought to myself that surely it can’t be right and decided to read the instructions again. 4 TEASPOONS not tablespoons!!!!! Oh my goodness, what a disaster it would have been!!!
Anyway, the soup turned out beautifully. The lunch too appear to have been a great success based on the thank you note we received.
The following has been happening for a while….within a minute or two after I press the publish button, I will immediately receive a notification that a certain someone has liked it. How could they have read the post so quickly? How do they do it?? I am flattered that they like my posts but do they really read it??? 🤣🤣 . I am intrigued.
This is the question I am asked at EVERY social event. I am so used to being asked this question that I have found the perfect answer which leaves the questioner gobsmacked!
These days, a woman is expected to be in some form of employment to be considered a worthy human being. My mother is a housewife and my two grandmothers were housewives. Like them, I too am a housewife. I used to be one even before I came down with this mystery illness.
I used to work before I got married and I continued to work after I got married. However, just before his ordination which was shortly after getting married, the Mhinisteir expressed his desire for me to give up work so that I could be his helpmate. I was pretty chuffed. I love being a housewife. I get a lot of free time to myself to pursue my own interests. I even have the luxury of an afternoon nap!
Like my mother and my grandmothers, I too have to run a tight ship. I have to work within a small budget. We have a cleaner who comes in weekly and a gardener. Other than that, I deal with everything that is related to the Vicarage from the ironing to the cooking which I do from scratch to the letter writing giving the Mhinisteir the time and energy to concentrate on his calling. Recently, I told someone that I am not an “evangelical” vicar’s wife who is very hands on when it comes to her husband’s calling. Nothing wrong with that but I prefer to work in the background. This is how I support the Mhinisteir.
To come back to the question…. and so what do you do? I am a lady of leisure!!!!
A few days ago, I received a WordPress notification informing me that I have had 5000 visits to my blog so far! I had another surprise in store when I discovered that I now have just over 300 followers. My goodness!
I don’t promote my blog anywhere including social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. I don’t have an account with either but quite frankly, I am not sure I am ready for such a big leap.
Over these past two years, I have had very kind messages from followers saying how much they enjoy reading my blog. I even had a handful say that they are slightly addicted to my musings! How very kind!
When I started the blog back in August 2017, I didn’t think I would come this far. It was only in 2019 that my blog became public! I was very grateful to the first follower and today, I am still very grateful to the three hundredth follower!
I am just so grateful to every one of you who reads this blog. Thank you to those who make the extra effort to get in touch with me since I don’t make it easy by disallowing comments!
After having lived in so many different parts of the world for most of my adult life, I find myself having lost my original accent. These days, I often get mistaken for a South African! South Africa is a country that I have never visited before so how I ended up sounding like a South African is a mystery. I would love to visit it one day though!
I used to speak with a gentle Scottish lilt but its now gone. It reminds me of the time when I used to go to a hairdresser in Glasgow. Barry spoke like someone from down south and so I mistook him for an Englishman until one day when he told me that he was born and brought up in Glasgow. His mother who ran the salon spoke like a true Glaswegian. Of course, I didn’t know she was his mother until much later! Anyway, how did he get the accent then? He had spent 5 years working in Manchester!!!!
I am frustrated, frustrated because nobody seems to get anything right anymore.
Earlier in the year, the Mhinisteir and I each got ourselves a new pair of glasses. I am very big on supporting local independent businesses and so we went to our nearest independent optician. They are reputed to be expensive but we wanted to make sure that we got the best! We had to visit the optician at least thrice after we had collected our glasses because the adjustments made were never right! What is so difficult about getting it right the first time? We had to waste spend so much of our time getting there and waiting for them to sort it out. Is it any wonder that productivity level in the UK is very poor??
At the time that we made our new glasses, the optician offered a second pair for half price. We were given 6 months to decide which was very helpful. It meant we could save up too! After much consideration we both decided to go for a second pair which we picked up about four weeks ago. The Mhinisteir was pleased with his but there was something wrong with mine. I was getting very bad headaches and was feeling sick. It felt as if I was wearing someone else’s glasses. Anyway, I decided to keep it on for two straight weeks and things weren’t any better. I had no trouble when I used the older pair. The Mhinisteir made an appointment for me to go back to the optician and after a long wait despite an appointment, I got seen too. They were adamant that the prescription was correct so they tried adjusting at least 5 times even though it made NO difference. Finally, when they looked at the prescription against my first pair of glasses, they discovered that the prescription was indeed incorrect!!!! I was fuming. They have promised to sort it out.
Standards are slipping in every area including the CofE. Gone are the days when people took pride in their work!
I have had a horrendous headache since the start of the week which is the reason for my absence from the blogging world!
The non stop rain on Tuesday seems to have triggered it and sadly it is still not clearing up yet. The headache I mean! I have not touched my laptop for the last two days but was keen to know what has been happening in the blogging world.
As I type this, the headache is slowly beginning to intensify yet again so I better make this short.
Secret Diary Of A Church of England Vicar's Wife 