Letter Writing

This year’s thank you cards

I love letter writing and I also like receiving handwritten letters. There is just something special about them! Sadly, in this modern world, most people prefer to communicate via electronic means while some simply don’t bother! 😁

I love to look at beautiful handwritings and in order to improve my own handwriting, I started learning (self taught) calligraphy in 2019. There were no calligraphy workbooks for left handers so I just bought one that was for right handers and practiced religiously. Despite getting frustrated, I must say that I am super pleased with myself for having come this far with just the help of one book!

As you will see from the photo above, I have finally mustered enough courage to show off my work.

In terms of letter writing, the month of January is a busy month for me. The first two weeks in January see me writing thank you cards to all the people who gave us Christmas presents.

As we don’t send out Christmas cards, I spend the rest of January writing to people who are in our “Christmas” card list.

We stopped sending Christmas cards about 11 years ago when I realised through our own experience that due to the busyness of Christmas, the Mhinisteir and I often don’t have the time to read or appreciate the many many Christmas cards plus robin letters that come through the Vicarage postbox. It was also during this time that I discovered through casual conversations with parishioners that after all the hype of Christmas, January becomes a lonely month for most people especially those who live on their own. That is when the idea to write to people in January was born and since then I have stuck to it.

Rest in peace?

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In the last 12 months, the Mhinisteir has had at least 3 requests for exhumation. I will not insult your intelligence by explaining what an exhumation is. I was intrigued by these requests. I used to think that you only exhume a body in extreme circumstances like when a crime has been committed.

The Mhinisteir explained that requests such as these are rarely approved. As the Church yard is a sacred place, there should be very little disturbance. This is why we say rest in peace. Furthermore, when a person is buried, It should be their final resting place.

By the way, I have since learnt that at least one of the person requesting an exhumation is the wife of the deceased. The reason given was that the husband’s grave was vandalised but the real reason is because she is moving away!

Unusual week

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This week is an unusual one as we are away from the Vicarage. It’s not a holiday; not for the Mhinisteir anyway! He has a full week of meetings and so I am holed up in a self catering accommodation in a city; a very good one at that I hasten to add. The Mhinisteir leaves first thing in the morning and only comes back in the evening. Lunch is provided for him so I only have to focus on dinner. It feels strange not to have lunch with him but I will survive!

I am not at all happy with the lax way in which people are dealing with Covid19 and so I have decided to remain indoors. I have brought some reading materials and have also been catching up on writing. As I type this, I am waiting for my lunch to cook; I am having ramen noodles with salmon. I hope to have half for lunch and the rest for dinner as the Mhinisteir is attending a formal dinner this evening.

We leave either on Friday or Saturday depending on when the meetings end. It’s another busy week next week. More travelling including an overnight stay!!

Young Miss T

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Last week, as I sat in my study listening to the BBC world service on the radio, I found myself listening to excerpts of Young Miss T’s speech that was given in Italy. I am not a fan of young Miss T. I find her to be shouty, rude and blah blah blah! I know I am in the minority for young Miss T has been elevated to godlike status by both politicians and religious leaders.

As a Christian, I do not worship the creation instead I worship the creator and because of that I have a duty to care for all that God has created including the environment. I am not an eco warrior but I make a conscious effort to care for the environment in the way I live my life. I am not a vegetarian but here in the Vicarage we only buy organic or free range meat. We use the services of a milkman who brings our organic milk in a glass bottle. I recycle as much as possible and try to buy refillable packs where possible. We don’t make unnecessary foreign trips. Most importantly, I believe in keeping the Sabbath day holy where everyone and everything gets a rest. I hasten to add that my idea of a Sabbath rest is very different to that of strict Sabbatarians. You can read about it here.

In March 2020, during the first lockdown here in the UK , everything came to a standstill. During that period people reported of sightings of birds and animals that had disappeared years ago! People in the cities also talked about hearing birdsong for the first time ever.

Young Miss T is….. young😁 and therefore probably doesn’t realise that life is very complicated. For some people in the world, where they get their next meal is more important than the environment. The environment is just one of the many many issues that a world leader has to grapple with.

It is good important to raise awareness but obsession is unhealthy.

Overdressed!

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For the first time ever, I felt overdressed at the dinner party hosted by a senior cleric. Thankfully the feeling just lasted for a few minutes but it was threatening to consume me! I was quite shocked I felt that way. The truth is I wasn’t overdressed. I certainly didn’t arrive like the Duchess of Cambridge when she attended the premiere of the new Bond movie this week. By the way, she looked lovely. I just wore a little black dress. About 97% of the invited guests were underdressed which meant that wherever you looked you only saw the underdressed! There was even someone in a tracksuit bottom! The dress code was smart casual.

The occasion itself was a very happy one and we got to meet new people. The food was lovely too. It was a proper sit down 3 course meal with coffee/tea afterwards. Unusually, I even got to sit adjacent to the Mhinisteir.

The icing on the cake was that we got to stay the night at a local bed and breakfast!

Roman Numerals

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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 M Word

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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.

4tbsp or 4tsp?

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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 Mystery Follower

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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.

Have a lovely weekend!

And so what do you do?

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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!!!!