Suffolk Heights Benefice News
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SUFFOLK HEIGHTS BENEFICE NEWS COMMUNITY NEWS MAGAZINE FOR CHEDBURGH, CHEVINGTON, DEPDEN, HARGRAVE, HAWKEDON AND REDE St Edmund, Patron Saint of Pandemics JUNE 2020 Rector: Rev Dr Simon Hill 01284 850857 [email protected] Reader: Barbara Hill 01284 850857 Suffolk Heights Benefice News June 2020 Welcome to the June 2020 edition of the SHBN. Thank you to everyone for your contributions. Don’t be shy about sending in photos! Please DO NOT SEND PDFs if it can be avoided. Only Word docs, Publisher files or Jpegs. Thanks The deadline for the July/August 2020 edition is 5pm Monday 15th June 2020. [email protected] Another lockdown edition so no forthcoming events but some lively articles, a couple of quizzes, another Rede Recipe and some sound financial advice. Also some virus cartoons to lighten the mood and Ian Leggett’s early years memories. The photo here and that on the front cover are of the statue of St Edmund by Leonard Goff which stands in the Edmund Chapel of St Edmundsbury Cathedral. If you haven’t already, please take the time to have a look at it when it re-opens. This is my favourite representation of Edmund as it actually shows him at the right age at his martyrdom and at least looking like the saxon he was rather than an old bloke with a beard wearing medieval clothes. The idea of St Edmund being the patron saint of pandemics (a plague saint) took off in Toulouse in the 17th Century after plague swept the city and quickly disappeared after the citizens prayed to Edmund (his relics were thought to have been at the abbey of St Sernin in the city although it seems unlikely). Arrows are used as metaphors for infectious disease in the Christian tradition and we all know how Edmund met his untimely end. So when you are at your prayers, send a quick one up to Edmund—can’t do any harm. JdL 2 LETTER FROM THE RECTOR Simon writes We still have no real information as to when our places of worship will re- open. The suggestion is that this may be at the beginning of July but there is considerable uncertainty how this can be done within continuing guidelines on social distancing and given the nature of collective worship. Obviously I hope that we can join together in worship in ways that are practical and socially responsible as soon as possible, but for the moment it remains a case of watch this space. Many a rainbow in our windows is symbolising our continuing support for the NHS staff and Carers in these challenging times. Our clapping each week shows our support also. The work of doctors, nurses and carers is expressed through their hands as they care for the sick and vulnerable. And so, in the tradition of Dürer’s ‘Praying Hands’, I would like to offer you five fingers of prayer as we begin to ease out of lockdown: • for those infected by the coronavirus around the world, especially in those countries and places where the virus is out of control; • for those who care for them and authorities who are combatting the spread of infection; • for all who at this time are feeling anxious, especially for those with friends and family potentially at risk, and for those who mourn that they will be comforted; • for one another as the economy slowly opens and life resumes; and, • for those whose livelihoods have been adversely affected and who are faced with hardships beyond their control. Thank you and with every blessing 3 Rectory Mardle The passing of time is one of the strangest phenomena of this pandemic. Confined to home, I had anticipated that time would pass slowly and I would be left scratching around, searching for something to do. And yet the weeks seem to fly by, which is strange. (Usually I know what day of the week it is by the number of days left to prepare my sermon for the forthcoming Sunday. As this is no longer the case for the time being, I have no idea what day of the week it is.) So what have I been doing, besides sending out an occasional circular to those who have asked to be ’kept in touch’? Gardening, and lots of it, as I’m sure many of you have too. If we are out of social distancing in the Autumn, we will open the garden so that you can admire my hand-weeded lawn. I have never been on my knees as much, or shuffling around on my knees, as over these past few weeks. When I have dug up one daisy and espy another pesky one close by, I have to decide between struggling to get up and stagger a step or two before falling to my knees again, or shuffle along the grass on my knees. I would certainly not claim that I was praying whilst on my knees. But I did think, between shuffles, the other day, that it is not the falling down but the getting up again that matters on one’s journey of faith. Shuffling along on one’s knees is so unbecoming. And then there is my stamp collection. The Great Britain Concise Stamp Catalogue has a prominent place on my desk. I have collected British stamps for over forty years but have never really mounted them. So that’s keeping me quiet. A skill I am slowly acquiring is ‘zooming’, which has become an essential tool of life today. Meetings, when you can only see someone’s head and shoulders are odd. What’s worse is looking at yourself all the time. I spend most of the time trying to re-adjust my Ipad so that others aren’t looking up my nostrils. But, from the various missives received, it’s clear ‘zooming’ is the way forward if you wish to progress, which fortuitously I don’t. What these strange days have emphasised for me though is the important of place. Present times excepted, our lives are frantically busy and one of the real joys of a church is the opportunity to just be still and quiet and be yourself. I would like to think that when this pandemic is behind us we will all live more peaceful and grateful lives. I wonder. For me I don’t see anything replacing the importance of companionship in flesh and blood. I hope we will meet again soon. 4 Rain Matters Jamie Robertson The month was dry and although the graph shows a fairly dramatic downpour at the end of the month it was anything but: no more than 10mm on any one day and only four days of desultory rain. In total we had 32.75mm in the month (1.29 inches). The days were warm and sunny. The grass, and most vegetation have been stubbornly slow to grow, but the nights have not been warm. According to the Met Office it was the sunniest April on record for the UK: all the four UK countries made it in the top five sunniest since records in a series from 1929. England, Scotland and Northern Ireland had their sunniest April, beating the previous record set in 2015 for England and Northern Ireland, and 1942 for Scotland. April is a hugely variable month for rainfall. Take the years 2011 and 2012. In the first year there was just 2 mm of rain in the month. In 2012 119mm. As is so often the case there seems to be no pattern. 5 The Good Samaritan Not long ago, although now it seems an age away it was only the 18th of April, we at Lavender Cottage took delivery of a mountain of grass turfs, 150 square metres of the stuff to be precise - and that would really be an end to the story were it not for the intervention of “unforeseen circumstances”. My son and I had prepared carefully. We had rotavated, raked, rolled and raked and rolled again. Until you do it, you do not realise how large an area 150 square metres is, particularly when dotted with the occasional tree, shrub and water feature but, breathless and aching in muscles I didn’t even know I had, we were ready. Delivery day dawned. If you can remember the weather back then, it was beautiful, early summer in spring, warm, with wall to wall sunshine and it was going to be hot. Just the sort of weather you need when laying turf! But we were ready and just awaited a call from the delivery driver to let us know his arrival was imminent. The call came - but to enquire about our exact location. He was certainly somewhere in Queens Lane – and this is where unforeseen circumstances intervened – I mistook his description of his location and he mistook mine of ours. The driver was, when he called, only 100 yards from our drive and heading towards us but he thought he had to turn round and head in the opposite direction. Dear reader, I don’t know how familiar you are with Queens Lane Chedburgh but it is what one might call a quiet country by-way, frequented by walkers and small children on tricycles, certainly not the sort of location one would choose to perform a reversing manoeuvre in a six wheel HGV laden with I don’t know how many tons of turf and bulk bags of top soil but our intrepid driver tried none the less ---- and this is where unforeseen circumstances really did come into their own.