Christ Church Huntingdon Blog

Well I wonder if you remember Betty Boothroyd's life in politics? She was the first and only female speaker in the House of Commons. Between 1992 and 2000 she kept order in the House of Commons, and now she is keeping order in her own house.  Betty Boothroyd, or the Right Honourable Baroness Boothroyd OM as she now is, is 91 and downsizing from her London home to move to, yes, local Cambridgeshire, where she has bought a small cottage 1 which just doesn’t have the windowsills or space to display all the items from her time in public life.  So 40 items from her life (which involved mixing with Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and others) are going under the hammer in auction. There’s an ornamental box from President Yeltsin, there’s a limited-edition figure of Lawrence of Arabia that was give to her for her work as president of the All-Party defence group. There’s a decanter presented to her by the British Navy in St Petersburg, and all have to go.  “You can’t take it...

I don’t know how many of you are into football – I’m sorry if you’re not. I’m personally a Brighton and Hove albion fan, which isn’t the easiest thing to be, as they’re not the greatest team, but that’s by the by. What I want to talk to you about this morning is being a champion.  I was scrolling through sports headlines recently and saw that Manchester City Football Club have a decent chance of winning what’s called “The Quadruple” – that means winning the Premier League, the FA Cup, the League Cup (or Carabao Cup) and the Champions League all in the same season. They still have a long way to go, but it would be amazing if they managed to do it, because no other club in the history of football has ever done it!  And their rise to the top, as with any football team winning a tournament, is pretty straight forward. They win a lot of matches, they might lose a few, but it’s never in doubt that they’re going to at least get close to winning. It’s never likely that they’r...

Hasn’t it been great to have a few of the restrictions unlocking in recent days so that we can see our friends and family face to face. We still can’t go into other’s homes, and so there have been some chilly moments in gardens and parks, but it’s still wonderful to actually see people. As a family, over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been able to catch up with all the grandparents too which has been lovely. It’s been a long wait for so many. There’s nothing like seeing someone face to face. Zoom and facetime, emails and phone calls are all great, and I don’t know how we would have got through the last year without them, but there’s nothing like face to face. You avoid the painful delays, glitches, misunderstandings and miscommunications that sometimes happen with talking online. With zoom you can miss a whole sentence, because someone’s still on mute! As a church at Christ Church Huntingdon we have just enjoyed 5 services over Easter that were face to face, [or as our good fr...