St Mary the Virgin Church

There is quiet celebration in the Carrington household this summer. Our house-moves over recent years fell strangely into a 3-year rhythm. This month we mark our 3rd anniversary of moving here – and we’ve no intention of going anywhere else. We are delighted at this more settled prospect. For you this may be for-better-or-for-worse! In some walks of life, regular moves are of course the norm. In my former training life at the Met Office, we liaised with the Navy’s meteorological training centre in Plymouth; a strong relationship with my opposite number would be building, only for them to be […]

Summer – what a wonderful word! The days stretch and relax. The sun shines (or not!). Warmth fills our bodies – winter’s cold becomes hard to imagine. Memories of childhood summers, lying back on the grass with gloriously nothing to do but gaze up at the deep blue sky and pick out animal shapes in the drifting clouds. A pint in a pub garden. The smell of suncream. Of bar-b-ques. What are you doing this summer? Less traveling than in others, perhaps. In whatever way Covid chooses to cramp our summer style, the season will still sing for us its […]

Images of Service It’s less than 24 hours since the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh as I write this. The images are raw. The military precision of the procession in the bright sunshine. The Royal family, grieving but together. Most of all, the Queen in the double pain of her husband’s funeral with Covid restrictions. The first glimpse of her seated in the limousine, face-masked. Then most poignantly of all, sat in the Chapel isolated from her family members. Vulnerable and frail, she walked the painful path so many others have done in these past months, her mourning cramped […]

Does life win? It’s Saturday of Easter weekend last year, on the hill above Feniton. It’s dawn. We can’t hold our usual Sunrise Service there the following day due to this new national ‘lockdown’. I am making a fumbling attempt at filming an introduction for an Easter video service. And the sunrise is perfect. The huge orange ball emerges inch-by-inch above the hills over Honiton. At the end of the year I will compile an album of 2020 lockdown photos – that sunrise is now its front cover. Resurrection comes. Often slowly, but it comes. Those compact three days from […]

Once upon a time… there was a beautiful forest. Everyone called it the Christmas Forest. Each winter all would come to it for a merry and festive time. Every patch of woodland was named after the particular delights it brought: Shopping Wood, Parties Wood, Carols Wood, and more. But one winter a Man with a Mask brandishing a chainsaw arrived at the forest. Brutally he began to raze all the lovely trees to the ground. Parties Wood was first – the majestic timbers of fun and jollity crashed to the earth, the buzz of conversation and fuzz of drinks extinguished. […]

2020 has been different in so many ways. So let us make our village Remembrance commemorations this year different too. Let us make it a ‘Silent Remembrance’. Silence: the silence of a First World War battlefield when the guns have ceased and the scattered dead lie still. The silence of a COVID intensive care ward, save for the wracked oxygen aided breathing. The silence of grief of loved ones, bereaved by war or by disease. The silence of a peaceful country lane with wayside summer flowers mingled with birdsong, more still this year in lockdown. The silence of sunset, as […]

How often in a typical day do I ‘judge’ someone? Many times, probably. There’s the car driver who’s too fast / too slow (compared to my own perfect speed, of course). There’s the inconsiderate neighbour – not that I’ve ever been one myself. The Government gets a good dose of my judgements on their decisions. And the Opposition. And the judgemental person on social media. I could go on. Three short startling words of advice Jesus gave us: ‘Do not judge’. Is this perhaps his most overlooked instruction? Yet it’s one I see increasingly as being of the highest value, […]

Winners and losers have emerged from the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, is reported to have seen his financial worth balloon to an extraordinary £150 billion. Meanwhile others have tragically lost their jobs and now struggle to make ends meet. Thankfully finance is not life’s only measure. But the waves created by the pandemic have rocked most people’s boats. As schools finally return fully in September, young people who were unable to sit public exams this summer have had a particularly torrid time. We’ve all witnessed the waves of confusion and exam-grading changes which have crashed over […]

Masks. Yet another word that has entered our frequent use this year. Another article now a household item. For some professionals, masks are always essential protection, of course. For children, masks can be the fun of dressing up. But for most of us, masks spoke of falsehood or distrust – the ‘masked gunman’. Even veiled faces may invoke unease. So I could understand when served in a shop by someone who knows me, when their normal friendly manner was replaced by notable caution the first time I was masked. After all, how could they see my smile? How would they […]