Changes

Wednesday 28th March 2012

Preparations for the new season

In a few days everything will be opening for the Easter holiday visitors.  Meanwhile there are final refurbishments and signs of preparation in the car park near the ferry landing stage at Leaplish, where I went to deliver a batch of "Eternal Horizons" leaflets for the information points and for the room packs in the lodges.  In between various other visits, I also dropped some off at Kielder Castle and one or two hotels in the benefice, hearing how things are going in the economic recession.  For some there are redundancies, for others the taking on of extra part-time work to make ends meet.   A very quiet winter for visitor numbers is being replaced by a quickening pace of expectation, encouraged by unseasonably warm weather.
     My fixed points in the day were school assemblies in two schools thirty miles apart, one with ten pupils, one with nearer fifty.  Both schools, though, heard of Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem followed by the swift change of mood as welcome was replaced by hostlity and his execution on the Cross.  All the chldren who wished to have one received a palm cross to remind them of the welcome on Palm Sunday, the death on the Cross  --  and the rising to new life implicit in the fact that it is an empty cross, the resurrection which we will celebrate at Easter.
     I had a meeting with a churchwarden in connection with  sending out invitations for the six annual parochial church meetings.  As she left, we heard a shout from next door, which necessitated calling an ambulance for a neighbour who had had a fall.  There were a few other things to be done before I ground to a halt  --  before midnight.