St. Mary's Handbridge Two Gardening Get Togethers Centre for Our July Meeting but It Is Not to Be
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£ JULY & £1 AUGUST ST. 2021 – MARY’ S Five Star Summer Read! MAGAZINE WHAT IS IN THIS ISSUE? LAURA’S letter! THRIFTY Fifites! PHOTO Corner! ST CAMILLUS de Lellis! WEEKLY readings! YOUTH Speak! PEBBLE Fun in the Sun! Featured Article: LACHE LANE by John Elsley! PUZZLES for all! MEET a member of the Choir –Liz Young! ST. SWITHUN! IVY – Good or not! LETTERS Page! NEWS & Notices! OVERLEIGH ST MARY’S News! WHAT’S ON at St Mary’s July & August! BOOK of Remembrance July & August Pages! The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage. ERNEST W. EDGE & SON GREEN LANE VETERINARY CENTRE 54-56 Handbridge – Tel: 675156 5 Green Lane, Off Lache Lane, High Class Butchers. Local beef, lamb, pork, venison and chicken. Chester CH4 8LS Also fine cheeses, pates, cooked meats and Tel: 01244 683858 now home cooked pies. Consultation by Appointment RCVS Accredited Practice HANDBRIDGE PHARMACY www.greenlanevets. 7/9 Handbridge – Tel: 683454 Gordon & Staff welcome you to your local community Pharmacy. All prescriptions dispensed - prescription COMPUTER SUPPORT collection & delivery service available for the elderly & All your computer problems can be solved here the housebound. Full range of medicines, vitamins, homeopathic and with a fast & expert service by our friendly staff. aromatherapy treatments + medical & surgical goods, Visit our Service Centre toiletries and baby goods at 100 Boughton, Chester, CH3 5BP Tel: 01244 566280 for free estimates, SAMANTHA WILD HAIRDRESSING home visits and advice 58 Handbridge – Tel: 677557 www.computersupportchester.co.uk Our team is dedicated in keeping up with the latest styles and trends to provide you with a first class service. Call in for a free consultation and to ask about our latest offers. BROWN SUGAR Handbridge Coffee Shop with Internet Terminals & Free Wi-Fi Come in and enjoy our fabulous coffee, home-made cakes and freshly made food! Tel: 01244 683386 DOORSTEPS of HANDBRIDGE www.brownsugarinternetcafe.co.uk Tel: 675656 or 07889 021033 QUALITY SANDWICHES, UNIFORMITY CLOTHING LIMITED HOME MADE SOUP, JACKET POTATOES Business 22-26 Handbridge Lunches, Sandwich Platters, Tel: 01244 680187 Party Catering and Hot Buffets. Call in for *Clothing Alterations www.acateredaffair.co.uk (Contact Mike) *Schoolwear *Embroidery *Transfers *Leisurewear HOST FAMILIES REQUIRED We are looking for caring host families in this area HANDBRIDGE LAUNDRETTE for students from Italy and Spain aged 13-18 35 Handbridge, Chester throughout the year for 1 – 2 week stays *Service washes *Duvets £21 per student per night inc. bed & breakfast, *Dry Cleaning *Ironing packed lunch and evening meal. Up to three students per family. For more Tel: 01244 681009 information ring Susan Jones 07830 096900. Safeguarding Policy R. FODEN LTD St Mary’s, Handbridge takes its duty and obligation to 4 High St. Saltney protect all extremely seriously. We have adopted the Tel. 680224 – Mob 07973 661095 national Church of England’s robust procedures and High class custom made joinery inc. doors guidelines. Read about the policies and procedures & windows in hard/softwood. at www.churchofengland.org/safeguarding If you or Frames, Staircases & Conservatories. anyone you are in contact with would like to talk with (Guild of Master Craftsmen & FENSA reg.) someone independently, please call e-mail:[email protected] the Safe Spaces helpline on 0300 303 1056 or website:www.fodenjoinery.co.uk email [email protected]. Alternatively, you may contact our Parish Safeguarding COMPUTER TUTOR Tel: 01244 539507 Mobile: 07539 422 673 Officer Peter Dove or the Diocesan Safeguarding Complete beginners welcome Adviser in the Diocese of Chester, via email or No request is too small. We come to you. phone: 07703 800031. Lessons tailored specifically to your needs Business training also available Do not delay - get online and train today! www.pctrainline.co.uk Email: [email protected] The quality of life is determined by its activities. – Aristotle LETTER from Laura, Assistant Priest Since Easter I’ve been going back to work. Every day I get up, get dressed, fully and properly, including shoes. I brush my hair, put in my contact lenses and have to remember to take everything with me, like my computer and charger and lunchbox, every day. I sit in traffic, negotiate small parking spaces and then realise I have forgotten my keys or my security badge to get into the correct building. It’s exhausting, I can’t believe I used to do this every day. It’s a shock. At the same time, all the things I used to do, I can’t. I can’t make meals for truckloads of students, I can’t meet staff for coffees, I have to bother them online instead. I run online support groups where the students happily talk to each other and we have drop ins, where virtually no-one ‘drops in’ because no-one is quite sure of the rules anymore. Earlier in the pandemic, life was very busy, but as rules relax and students recover from a difficult year, I don’t seem to be as useful. I find the online world generally more tiring and less rewarding, more time faffing and less fruit produced. I seem to want to bring back the glory days of 2019 and I’m not sure where my place is in all this. Then I watched the Italy v Turkey football match where Italy won 3-0. The commentator said at the end about the Italian goalkeeper, ‘He’s a good goalkeeper, but he didn’t have much to do.’ Ah yes, I think, that’s me at the moment. Our church is full of good goalkeepers, brilliant at the thing they do, but there may not have been a lot to do over the last fifteen months; only a few have been able to keep their jobs in the same way. Some will be raring to get back to ‘how it was’ and others will be wondering if they want to return to that pace of life. We have been through fifteen months of patience, confusion, and hardship. In January, I knew that 99 percent of the congregation spent their time having the same week. Now all our experiences are starting to diverge. So I ask: what are we trying to do now, with ourselves, the church and the world? Firstly, ourselves. I’m a good goalkeeper, with nothing to do, but who are you? How do you work that out? How do you listen to God? How do you discern what is next for you? Do you listen carefully to your thoughts, filtering out what is good and fruitful and what comes from a place of fear? How do you reflect and pray? Who do you have around you for support and guidance? Secondly, the church. I went to a course recently about church after the pandemic. The message was simple: put your energy into finding the leaders on the edges. Could you lead something, take something on, dream something up without being asked? In the last 16 months we have had to think a lot of interesting things about being a Christian that don’t involve meeting together in a building once a week. This has been interesting and difficult, and what do we do with it now? Do we ignore everything we have learned, and go back to making it about meeting in this building every week? Are you, like me, trying to return to the ‘glory days’ of the past? Or are we heedful of the words of Isaiah, ‘see I am doing a new thing.’ The Christian organisation, Heart Edge, uses the slogan: ‘A future that’s bigger than the past.’ Thirdly, the world. How do we learn to inhabit the world in a more sustainable way? Archbishop Stephen said, if the Church of England said in March 2020, the whole church has to move online, they would have been laughed at, but somehow we did it. What else could we do? Eco Church (ecochurch.arocha.org.uk) seems to be a good place to start. Have a look, see what you could get involved with and what we could do together. Let’s make our future bigger than our past. Laura The Thrifty Fifties by Wendy Gorman Thinking about the ‘use it once and throw it away’ culture of today, you may have already read about the rubber bed pans that used to have a permanent layer of urine crystals even after the machine wash, they also used rubber sheets that did nothing to prevent bed sores. At the Children’s Hospital, we wore starched white aprons and caps, can't remember any plastic ones. I loved working in the Path Lab which was a separate building which had doors that rattled in the wind. I didn't mind working there after the staff left, even the pickled brain on the shelf didn't faze me. My job was to go into the wards and collect all the used syringes and needles, I then took them back to the lab where I tested the needles for bluntness by running the points across my finger nails and where necessary, sharpen them on a wet stone and then inserting a wire through any blocked ones. After everything had been washed and dried, I would wrap the individual syringes in brown paper, write the sizes on them before putting them into the autoclave to be sterilized before returning them to the wards to replace more used ones; imagine this method if used for the Covid jabs! Remember when shoes were made to last by using stick-on soles and replacing those little metal stegs on the heels.