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The End is Nigh!
I am old enough to have been in the forces when there were still National Servicemen reluctantly completing their two years of compulsory militarism. They were, I recall, totally miffed when the East Germans inconsiderately built the Berlin wall just at the moment when their demob charts were nearly completed, which resulted in another six months being added to their sentences. We regular soldiers did not have demob charts. When we had just signed what seemed like the bulk of our lives away they hardly seemed worth the effort.
What really worried the conscripts was that, if the balloon went up in Europe, there was no point in going home anyway, they would be recalled to the colours before they had time to rip off their battledresses and grow their hair again.
My discharge from service to Her Majesty was finalised more than thirty years ago and I gave up being a soldier of the Queen to become a soldier for Christ. Now that I have attained the age of sixty-four (although I don't look it) I suppose that I should be starting my own demob chart. Forty-eight weeks to go! To be precise; three hundred and forty one days from 1st July and then freedom! No more early morning telephone calls dragging me out of bed, no more holidays cancelled because of weddings, no more struggling to raise funds to pay the stipend, no more days off lost due to workload. In fact, if the church was obliged to refund all the days off which it owes me, and all the holidays which I have been unable to take, I could have retired about three and a half years ago. What a thought!
The problem is, like those National Servicemen feared all those years ago, demob might be short-lived. As we have no money, barely any savings, no retirement home, and the church which we have served for so long is cutting the pension (cue the sound of violins), all that we can hope for is for a house for duty post. Work for nothing? As Billy Cotton Senior used to say, "I should cocoa". So the chart is a non-starter. Old Vicars, like old soldiers, never die, they just fade away. Besides which, I am still enjoying the front-line action in the fight to proclaim the Gospel. I might be around for a little longer, God willing.
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
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