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May 2000, Page 3.
Index of articles.
New Vicar:
background,
his son,
his holidays.
Vicar's letters:
index,
"Starter for ten".
In this issue:
(May 2000)
Vicar's holidays,
Question.
Our new vicar's holidays
Dear Church Members,
This is my third piece of trying to tell you a little bit about myself before you all meet me on the big day. Somebody once asked me if vicars were allowed to do normal things like everyone else?
On my application form for being your new vicar I wrote down things like playing the trombone, making marmalade, playing bridge, watching Star Trek, cycling and walking and so on. I didn’t write going to the Pizza Hut for lunch, but I enjoy that too. However, there’s always room in life for more interests, and three years ago I got keen on canals and narrowboats.
It all started with Peter. As I wrote last month, Peter (then 8yrs old) is an escape artist. Go to a caravan site on holiday, and forget to lock the door one day, and guess what? He could be under any of 250 caravans, or inside them (for he has no sense of personal space), or he could have wandered off the site onto a main road or into a ditch, or anything. Holidays could be highly stressful times.
However, Peter has always been quite good in other respects. He has a good sense of safety on a climbing-frame. He never falls downstairs. He can balance on a wall. Quite by chance, Shuna and I wondered about having a holiday on a narrowboat. At least he wouldn’t be able to run off when the boat was in the middle of the canal!
As you can guess, we did a lot of thinking and planning. We got lots of dog-leads and reins, so as to tie children onto the boat; and life-jackets in case the worst happened. We visited the hire-company and made sure the boat would be escape-proof from the inside. We investigated how locks worked, and we planned the route pretty carefully. And just after Easter 1997 we took the plunge and did the “Four Counties Ring” (a local cruise from Stoke).
And we had a marvellous time. Peter loved the boat, and was quite safe on it, Shuna and I found it relaxing as well as very beautiful, and we are now regular boaters for our holidays. I have even been writing the magazine for the local canal society. Who says vicars can’t be normal?
John Hartley