Christ Church Huntingdon Blog

Click here for audio .    Don’t believe all you read on the internet. That’s the title of today’s “Thought for the Day”.   Sometimes when I’m cycling and listening to a talk on YouTube, it goes straight to an advert, and since I don’t want to stop my bike and skip it, I’m forced to listen to several minutes about some product, apparently proved by scientists that is going to change my life, or make me millions, or save me from oral hygiene disaster. I’m sorry I don’t believe it. I’ve got all I need thank you very much, I don’t need your gadget. As we turn more and more to Chat GPT and Google AI to do our thinking and possibly our homework for us, we need to be a little careful. Here are a few examples of things that you will find on the internet that aren’t true. 1.      The word “strawberry” has 2 ‘R’s in it 2.      You should add glue to pizza to stop the cheese sliding off . 3.      Cats can breathe ...

Click here for audio  Lynn Crawford, 71, Susie Matthews, 73, Rose Sulley, 74, and Christine Goodwin, 80 are all grandmas from Wales who have been friends for more than 40 years. They had an interesting plane journey recently when they went to take Rose’s late husband’s ashes to be scattered in Las Vegas. Due to a confusion about seating, they found a very well built young man called DeReiss Gordon sitting in one of their seats on the plane. They kindly asked him to move but he was convinced he was in the right seat. Well things got a bit heated, but eventually all was sorted out and one of the nans asked the young man why he was going to Las Vegas. It turned out that he’s a professional wrestler known as “ Man like DeReiss ”, and he got chatting to the women and invited them along to see him wrestle a couple of days later. Well they kept their promise and went along to their first wrestling match. They got a message through to DeReiss and he later said “I was at the merch ta...

 Click here for Audio .  I don’t know if you watch breakfast TV, but one of the BBC’s most appreciated weather forecasters, Carol Kirkwood, retired from the BBC after 28 years last week. Now if you are not familiar with Carol, she has a warm lilting Scottish accent and for nearly 3 decades has not only provided the weather but also reported from events like Wimbledon, Chelsea Flower show and has even featured on Strictly. Click on the BBC weather or the Christ Church Huntingdon Blog for a link ( here ) to some of her funniest moments. Well it must have been quite emotional for her as she did her last forecast, and glowing reports from various journalists flooded in from people she had worked with. I wonder if you’ve done something lately that could have been for the last time. Perhaps it’s chatting to an old friend who is no longer with us. Perhaps it’s being able to open a jam jar. Perhaps it’s more light hearted like running   the 100m in well, under 1 minute. N...

 Click here for audio.  Good morning and welcome to Thought for the Day. They say that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”, but I don’t think any of us think that’s quite right. You can still be struggling from the pain of words many years later long after any physical hurts have healed. Why do I raise this this morning? Well the Bible has a huge amount to say about our words. The book of James – most likely written by Jesus’ half brother, James, talks about our words by focusing in on the part of the body primarily responsible for generating words, the tongue. And it says, you know how a bit is a small piece of metal put into the mouth of a horse, and yet with it, a rider can control the whole direction of travel. Or think of a rudder on a big ship. Relatively a small piece of wood or metal in comparison with the whole ship, and yet it has huge effects. In the same way the tongue is one of the smallest parts of our body, but it can...

Audio here .  Good morning and welcome to Thought for the Day. Beachcomber Ryan Stalker from Weymouth , (click for pictures) had a bit of a surprise the other day when walking along the seafront at Osmington Mills on the Dorset Coast. He saw some rubbish washed up on the beach. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But on further inspection the big plastic item turned out to be an intact wheelie bin. Yes like our beloved HDC wheelie bins that line our street on a Monday and Tuesday (depending on where you live), a whole wheelie bin had washed up on the Dorset shore. But this particular wheelie bin turned out to have come all the way across the Atlantic from Alabama in the United States. Once this hit social media, Americans went wild, and managed to track the item by its bar code to one of three particular missing wheelie bins. And this one went missing in Hurricane Sally in September 2020. So the barnacle encrusted wheelie bin had travelled over 4000 miles in nearly 6 years. Talk abo...

Recording here .   Good morning and welcome to my Thought for the Day entitled what an "oppor-tuna-ty". Well I’ve been doing a bit of research and a tin of tuna will set you back about £1.50 in the Huntingdon supermarkets these days, though you might be able to get a budget tin for more like 80p if you hunt around. So guess how much Kiyoshi Kimura paid for his bluefin tuna in Tokyo last month? Answer, a staggering half a billion yen. That’s £2.4million for a fish! Well that must be the most expensive fish ever sold [1] . Apparently big blue fin tuna (and this one weighs in at 243kilos) sell for big money. But the first tuna of the year at the opening fish market in Tokyo in January are particularly sought after. They are believed to bring good luck. Mr Kimura who is known as the “Tuna King” bought the fish for the record breaking amount (yes £2.4M) for his restaurant chain Sushi Zanmai, and one customer said after eating some of the Sushi containing this fish “I feel ...

 Click here for audio... Happy New Year! And welcome to 2026. Well done for being up and about at this time of the day, and whether you had a big night out or a quiet night in, I hope you are in good health and good heart.  Well what does 2026 hold? The answer is no-one knows. Will we have a year of good news or bad, or a bit of a mix? I typed the question "What will happen in 2026?" into the internet and here are some of the answers I got, and I quote... No one can know for sure, but here’s a  realistic, high-level look at what 2026 is likely to be like  based on current trends... AI will be everywhere , not just chatbots: built into school tools, games, phones, search, and creative apps. More schools will  adapt to AI  instead of banning it—teaching how to use it responsibly Some  jobs  will change, not disappear—people will work  with  AI. Music, art, and videos  made  with  AI...

 Click here for audio. ( A big thank you to Lee McMunn who takes the credit for this illustration, and for sharing it with those in the AMiE network, you can read his carol service talk on this theme here ).  I wonder if you have seen the TV programme " Traitors " hosted by Claudia Winkelman. It's been hugely popular, with the last season of Celebrity Traitors attracting 15 million viewers. In case you are not familiar with it, the programme features a group of contestants hanging out in a Scottish Castle to take part in a kind of elimination competition. Each day they participate in challenges to raise money for their charity. Some of the competitors are called "Faithful" and others are called "Traitors". The Traitors know who each other are, and they can band together to so called "murder" others, meanwhile the Faithful have to try and work out who they are before it's too late. It's been hugely popular, and another series of Celeb...

"The Message of Christmas for the World to hear" It’s great to be here on the playground tonight Thanks all for coming on a cold murky night. It’s good to hear carols sang so beautifully And all topped & tailed by our own Mrs Lee. If you’re from Hartford please give us a cheer… And those from St Peters are you anywhere near…? You sang Little Donkey - and turning down lights, Away in a Manger for cold winter nights. But there’s just one carol that pricked up my ear “The message of Christmas (for) the world to hear”? What is this great message, what does it all mean? What lies behind Christmas and gives it its sheen? What is the great key that can turn sadness to joy for adults and kids- every girl and each boy? Children like Evan and Devon, and Bevan The kid in year four who keeps shouting “six seven”?! I guess it’s the presents, is that where it’s at? Stockings from Santa and stuff just like that? You could get a phone or a bike or some jumpers Or even a toy from...

 Listen to recording here .  Is it a bird, is it a plane? No it’s a comic worth over 9 million dollars!! When three California brothers finally came to clearing out their mum’s attic after she passed away, they came across something quite remarkable amongst a box of old newspaper clippings. A pristine copy of “ Superman 1 ” – the first ever superman solo title comic published way back in 1939. Well, although there had been rumours from their mum of a rare comic collection somewhere,   they didn’t expect to find anything of value up there, they were just clearing stuff out. But exactly two weeks ago today that comic went on auction at Heritage Auctions and fetched a record breaking $9.12 million (that's nearly £7million). (Well maybe I can share that with my wife as a reason for keeping all that stuff up in the loft and in the garage. It might be worth something one day! Not sure that will go down well!) It’s a lovely story, and those 3 California brothers, who ...

 Click here to listen to audio My last "Thought for the Day" happened just before I set off for a long bike ride across Scotland. It was quite an adventure, and if you log onto the Christ Church Huntingdon blog, you’ll see a link to my photos . It was a really wonderful and memorable trip. But it wasn’t all easy. On day 5 we had a 50 mile bike ride and some of it was hard work up a very steep hill with the wind against us. It was exhausting. It was so hard we had to get off our bikes and push them up hill like heavy shopping trolleys. And then going down hill on the other side, it was still hard work as you had to cycle hard to push against the wind even when going downhill. Exhausting. I thought we weren’t going to make it. But there was one thing that kept me going.  Now vegans and vegetarians please forgive me, but a t the end of day we were due to have a meal at the family of Pastor Paul, a local church minister and friend, and he and his wife had prepared a meal of r...

  We are all coming to terms with the shocking news of the events that unfolded near and at Huntingdon station last night. Our hearts go out to all involved, and we continue to pray for healing for those who were injured, particularly the individual who is still in critical care, a member of LNER staff, who according to the BBC website acted with great heroism to protect others. What an extraordinarily sacrificial and Christlike thing to do. You might like to listen to our prayers at church this morning, led by Kendi M'Marate, a member of our congregation.  Click here . She led us through a time of prayer and quiet beautifully. Please pray for the station staff and first responders. On behalf of CCH, I went down to the station this afternoon (photos above) to take some flowers and some "Heroes" chocolates to give to the staff, both police and station staff, with a message to say that we are praying for them. One of the police said that staff on duty last night had of cour...

 Listen here to radio recording.  Good morning and welcome today’s Thought for the Day on HCRfm entitled “Be Prepared”. If everything goes to plan, when you are listening to this recording, I’ll be on a train in the Highlands of Scotland, (somewhere near the famous Glenfinnan viaduct featured in the Harry Potter movies) and soon to get on a ferry with my bike and 3 friends. I’m off to the Outer Hebrides, cycling around 160 miles on 5 of the UK’s most rugged and remote islands. For any trip you need to be prepared, and hopefully, I’ve done enough preparations! I’ll soon let you know! Preparations have included: buying a new bike (big shout out to all the guys at TAG bikes in Huntingdon Community Centre who have been so brilliant) buying train tickets, getting spare inner tubes, mending tyres, planning a route, packing kit and stocking up on sweets! One part of being prepared has been talking to people who have done this before, this has included Rob at TAG bikes, Kev ...

 Click here for audio.  Do you want the bad news or the good news? I wonder how you normally answer someone who gives you that option! I think normally we want to get the bad news out of the way so that we can be cheered by the good news. Christianity contains both bad news and good news. I wonder what your version of the bad news is. None of us can be in any doubt that there is something seriously wrong with our world. Sickness, wars, natural disasters, politicians being shot in front of crowds of thousands and their murder watched on screens across the world by millions. What’s the bad news? Is there a root cause? There doesn’t have to be a root if you think everything is a bit meaningless, but for those of us who think that things should have a rhyme and reason, what’s the bad news? Many people think it’s political . In our polarised world where the algorithm tells us the news that we want to hear, it’s the other people’s fault [1] . Other people think it’s educati...