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'Mouth of the Tees'
So many people told me how much they enjoyed what I last wrote in the Cayton News (the people of Eastfield and Osgodby miss that joy) that I was moved to go and reread it. By the time that the newsletter is published I have completely forgotten what words of wisdom I have penned. I try not to worry about the impact that it will have, especially after the first edition, which reached the pages of the Daily Mirror when journalists completely reinterpreted my meaning.
Debbie has the vapours whenever I appear in the public domain because she knows that I have the unerring habit of opening my mouth and putting my foot in it. Like the time that I upbraided a young couple for parking their car in a space reserved for the disabled, only to have the girl clamber out and face up to me, standing on her one remaining leg.
I try to plan my sermons carefully but it is difficult in a Vicarage, where the doorbell and the telephone ring in tandem and there is no peace for the wicked. It is a wasted effort because the Spirit usually moves me to go off in an entirely different direction to that which I had planned. However carefully I peruse the scripture passages, a new angle always presents itself two minutes before I am to preach. I envy those preachers who can produce a carefully edited script and read it out flawlessly. An old hand at ad lib, I cannot keep to the notes that I have spent so much effort on and I have, as you will have noticed, the failing of saying something dreadfully profane in the middle of what was intended to be an edifying presentation.
I am heartened to realise that Jesus was the master of the one liner, whether it be when a woman who was caught in the act of adultery was brought to him, or someone asked him a question about taxation, and to know that he told his disciples not to worry about what they were to say because it would be given to them. When innocent visitors look shocked or strangers describe me as “controversial” I sometimes wish that what was given to me to say could be a little less earthy and somewhat more refined but you can’t expect a terracotta pot to be Spode china, can you? The mouth of the Tees isn’t exactly Henley on Thames is it?
God bless you all, Fr Allan.
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