One day in my history
You may know that the History Matters website is encouraging people to contribute to "One Day In History". We are all asked to post our own accounts of one day - Tuesday 17 October - to provide a kind of electronic time capsule for future generations.Well, you might know that I couldn't resist adding my 650 words - though even on an "ordinary" day I had difficulty keeping within the word limit. That shouldn't really surprise anyone either ...! ;-)
So, here is my contribution ...
Today has been a fairly ordinary, uneventful day! My wife and I have a wonderful 14-year-old son. She is a parish priest in the Church of England. I suppose women clergy are a new historic trend in the CofE. I am a Reader – effectively a volunteer worker for the Church.
My day begins at 7.25 am. Start negotiations with our son about him getting up. Kettle on – cup of tea essential! Make breakfast and packed lunch for son, then cereal for me. My wife joins me in front of Breakfast TV – I have my daily moan about how little real news there is on it any more.
Son finally up and out to school. I shower and shave. Got to write a talk for the service at church tomorrow, so now begins the desperate search for anything else to do, rather than knuckle down to work! The Internet – always good for prevarication!
Read my emails, some related to my role as a Governor of our local Primary School. Governors’ Meeting last night – for me two overriding impressions remain. Firstly, the continual need to raise academic standards; and secondly, I don’t know how our Head-teacher copes. Heads these days have such demanding jobs! I must admit to feeling gloomy about the whole thing – and I am only on the very fringes!
Since I am feeling down, it occurs to me that I ought to pray! Need to get some perspective on things – and God might even have something he wants me to say about St Luke – it’s his day in the Church’s calendar tomorrow, and I still haven’t thought of anything. Conclude in a better frame of mind, but without inspiration on the subject of Luke!
Then, just as I almost get down to work – the phone rings! My brother ringing from his home in France. Our Dad died only a few months ago – Mum died 13 years ago – and we are trying to keep in touch. I feel strangely “out on my own” without our parents there to provide the “glue” holding us together. Now we really must make an effort to keep in contact, especially since we can hardly pop round for a chat. On the history theme, both Mum and Dad were involved in World War 2: Dad was captured at Dunkirk and a prisoner of war; Mum in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force – a wireless operator. What a remarkable generation – we have so much to be grateful to them for.
After the phone call, I declare an early lunch. My wife is “in” today, so we can eat together – a real benefit of her working from home. When we both went out to work, it was always difficult to make our lunch hours coincide.
The afternoon is spent reading, reflecting and writing about St Luke – see, I finally got round to it! Only one interruption: when our son gets home from school I take him to our doctors’ in the town for a booster inoculation. This is a multiple “jab”: diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella. He faces the jab in his arm like a man; I have to look away – I know I get queasy about such things, so no point trying to impress anyone! We both survive OK! We take our healthcare for granted, but any one of those diseases would have been a threat not many years ago.
I’ve almost run out of words for my ordinary day – don’t worry, I don’t go on like this in church! Cooked dinner, then watched a film on DVD with my wife – unusually she wasn’t working this evening. Our son spends his evening upstairs on his computer. Then off to bed. Finished the day with a few pages from ex-President Bill Clinton’s autobiography – I love my modern history. Now President Clinton would never have been lost for words, even on St Luke!
posted by Chris @ 5:52 pm
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