These Dear People

By Oleg Bkhambri (Voltmetro) - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71213067

Hello. Hope you are ok. We are fine. We managed to get through this morning's

Harvest Festival which had us wandering around the church looking at all the different ministries that the church "brings to the Lord as a harvest". Bit tenuous if you ask me but very interesting all the same. Think it was mainly an opportunity to get people to sign up for things. Obviously, we haven't been there that long so, for us, it was a chance to look at different things. I had to be quite firm with a lady on the Creative Team because she was insistent that everyone could knit a poppy. First of all, I am pretty sure that I can't and second (and perhaps more relevantly) I don't want to. 

Other than that, it all went very well although I'm not sure it is a Harvest Festival if you don't sing "We Plough the Fields and Scatter" and also if you don't have a parade where children bring forward cardboard boxes covered in foil - full of tins of sweetcorn and peas that mothers had found at the back of the cupboard that was just inside the sell by date (sometimes not entirely inside the sell-by date, to be honest). My mother used to send me to Mrs Walker's Corner Shop to try and buy the biggest fruit she had to try and fill the box up. Quite what the old people of Stoneclough made of two cantaloupe melons in their Harvest carrier bags, I'm not sure.

Anyway, it's all much more serious now. You can't really use the Harvest Festival to get rid of packets of Knorr Onion Soup anymore because we actually need to use the food to feed people now - quite often whole families - and lots of times, these people are working. As you know HOH volunteers at the Foodbank once a week and they can't keep up with the demand. I've just checked my watch and it is 2022, not 1802.

Walking home from church we cut through a community carnival which is held on one of the most "interesting" streets in Plymouth. In the past (i.e. about 2 years ago), it was best known as the place where sailors went to fight on a Friday night or sometimes kiss each other actually. However, good and earnest people are now trying to help it up its game a bit. Is it wrong to say that a lot of these people are of a certain type? You could watch "Alternative Cabaret" which involved watching a lady with her leotard far too far up her bottom introducing someone who was doing some card tricks. Is that alternative? Her leotard was quite an alternative I suppose. There was a lady with the best afro this side of Christendom selling crystals and a small child trying to give out brownies from the CBD stall. I turned him down - not 100% sure of their provenance as they say. Still, it was all very impressive and that fact that I felt it was time to leave when a nice lady with butterfly face paint took me by the elbow and asked me to write on a post-it what I felt about the sea - that says more about me being unimaginative and closed down than it does about the general concept.

This week we had the Queen's Funeral which was all very dignified (if maybe, not a teensy bit too much marching? Possibly? Just me?) Then there was a Budget Statement from some people - I dunno - it's such a revolving door at the moment. Would you mind if I asked you to look it up yourselves? What the actual.......? What was that? If they had twirled their moustaches and whipped black cloaks around themselves, they couldn't have been more shocking. No mention of the fact that there are over 2500 Foodbanks in the UK. Poor Faisal Islam at the BBC. He was slapping that new full-length screen with the palm of his hand trying desperately to come up with a graph that didn't seem to show that we are all doomed. 

One thing that has stuck with me all week was a news report after the budget statement. The reporter went to a church that was handing out carrier bags full of food. I don't remember everything the vicar said but he asked - why wasn't there any help "for these dear people"? These dear people. If ever the voice of God came through the voice of a man eh? 

I put a photo of Marcus Rashford up because - well why wouldn't you? But, he is a man who has known poverty but has also been moved by the problems of "these dear people". We can't just leave it to Marcus (partly because he is just coming back into form and I could do without him being distracted) but also it's not just his burden. 

People are being given help by footballers, volunteers and ladies who could have taken an extra size in their dancing gear and I think that I would like to include myself on that team. I've quoted it before I know but 

"I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

Matthew 25

PS. If you would like to comment, it doesn't always look as if it has worked because I need to check it and release it to stop spam and the like and, if I am a bit slow and I often am, it can take a while. Sorry.