Thursday 7 September 2006

Can you still call it an "Indian summer"?

Or is that politically incorrect now?
Whatever, after a wet August, September has brought the hot sun back again. Even the wind the last couple of days has been warm, like the Mistral, and the heavy showers late yesterday evening did nothing to alleviate the warmth, just made it feel like the interior of a Turkish Bath ... or should I call that a Sauna now?

Thankfully today the air is a lot cooler and more clear, and the oppression has lifted. I much prefer this sort of autumn weather. I'd rather put on a jersey to keep warm than strip off and remain a sweating beached whale. (Not a pretty sight!)

The new Vicar of Bungay's parish church was licensed last night. It was a good service and the Suffragan Bishop spoke well. To illustrate the challenge of taking up a new post he used the story of the three envelopes that a new Governmental Minister finds when he enters his office on the first morning. These are to be opened when things go wrong. A few weeks into his job and he encounters the first problem, so he opens the first envelope. Inside is a note saying "Blame your predecessor", so he does. All goes smoothjly for a time, and then there's a bigger problem. Opening the second evenvelope he reads: "Reorganise your department", so he does, and it all settles down again. Later he encouinters a major crisis, and no longer able to blame his form,er incumbent, and with the department working as well as it can, he slits open the third envelope. The note inside reads, "Prepare three envelopes for your successor" .......

Even without the follow-on exegesis, the story is an apt picture of how parish life goes.

I'm not sure which envelope I'm on .......

1 comment:

  1. Interesting that they licensed the parish church rather than the new vicar, presumably the suffolk way of doing things.

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