Christ Church Huntingdon Blog

Last Friday I went to prison. Don’t worry I haven’t been getting up to some illegal activity on the side of being a vicar, but rather I had the privilege of shadowing the chaplaincy team at a prison in East Anglia. I am very grateful to the Lead Chaplain and his team for showing me around, and to the many prisoners who I spoke to, who were willing to give up time to talk, including some of those who went to the Church of England service, and others who welcomed me to the Islamic prayer service, a first for me. Now there are a lot of things you aren’t allowed to take into prison. On arrival I had to leave any mobile phone, smart watch, cigarettes or cigarette lighters in the car. That’s all very well. And of course, routinely there are searches to check that visitors to prison aren’t bringing illegal drugs. But can I tell you two things that can get into prison. The first is ducks! Yes I was quite amazed to see a family of ducks with around 8 ducklings waddling around the...

  According to a survey a couple of years ago , roughly half of the UK regularly prays. Indeed, 51% of people surveyed on behalf of agency Tearfund said that they pray. It’s less than the USA who found that 84% of their adults prayed in the last week, but nevertheless it’s a bigger number than I would have thought.   And what’s fascinating is that even among those who say that they are not religious, 20% of them still pray, either for their family or in a crisis, or even to give thanks. I wonder if you are praying person? If so, I guess the question is who do you pray to? Maybe you are from a religious background, so you pray to Allah, or Jesus or God. Maybe you are not sure. But doesn’t the fact that we are hard wired to pray tell us something? I had a neighbour when I lived overseas called Manuel. He didn’t seem a particularly religious sort of guy. He would get drunk and phone me up and say rude things in the middle of the night, and then apologise the next ...

I wonder if any of you have got into acting before? I have, I used to do quite a bit of amateur theatre at school and university, but one part I never got to play was a good old fashioned villain. I’ve often thought it would be fun to just play a character of pure evil.  Well I read recently about one man who does just that! Kevin Lee – who actually grew up in Huntingdon – is one of the most famous British actors you’ve never heard of. Because he acts in Chinese films. His job is to play the white western bad guy in patriotic Chinese blockbusters, and he’s played characters ranging from an American colonel to a hitman to a blue monster with a face scar.  In an interview with the BBC he’s said “Foreigners don’t get the chance to play the main role/ If you look at Hollywood movies, how many Chinese or Asian actors do you see play the leading man?”  All that being said, Lee in that same interview suggests that he might like to play a slightly different role...

Well one of the most watched videos on the internet right now is the moment when actor Will Smith, famous for his roles in the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “Men in Black” hit comedian Chris Rock on the face last Sunday. Yes, that’s right ladies and gentleman, an actor who shortly afterwards went on to receive an Oscar, walked onto the stage in front of an audience of over 20 million viewers and hit another guy in the face. Will Smith in a tearful speech to receive his first Oscar for the film “King Richard” apologised to the academy and then subsequently to Chris Rock himself. The reason for the action was that Chris Rock had made a passing joke about Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Chris’ joke appeared to poke fun at Jada’s shaved head. She suffers from a skin condition called alopecia and so has her head shaved, which she has spoken about publicly. Well what do you think? Was Will Smith right to stand up for his wife in that way and do what he did? I don’t ...