BILL GOES TO PRISON
At last I can tell you my new appointment and give you an address, which I hope will be permanent for a few years. Susan Martin said I ought to be a prison chaplain. Patrick Reeve and others threatened the Bishop if he did not send to be Brighton. So hero I am Parish Priest of Woodingdean and Chaplain to Lewes Prison. Woodingdean is a big housing area in a fold of the Downs, East of Brighton between Rottingdean and the Race Course. The first drink stop on the Canterbury Pilgrimage was in this parish. And everyone knows where Lewes is! My address is on the reverse. Pilgrims are always welcome, although they will probably get some work to do!
EILEEN’S ACCIDENT
On Tuesday 15th June Eileen Mahoney suffered a serious cycling accident in Arundel High Street. She was badly injured and unconscious in St Richard’ s Hospital, Chichester for some time. But by mid July she was very perky again and recovering in Arundel Hospital. She is now back at Arundel Priory. I have left her booking on the Buckfast address list because she is talking about joining us somehow.
PILGRIM HEALTH
Other pilgrims have been suffering poor health in the last couple of months. In June Gillian McLauchlan was in hospital having lots of teeth out. In July Sarah Lane was in hospital for a cataract operation. She says the surgeon is pleased and she can now see as through a wet windowpane instead of through a pea soup fog. Monica McLauchlan has been having further neck trouble, and may not be able to take part as booked on the Buckfast Pilgrimage. Chris and Geraldine Hedgecock are expecting another baby at the end of August, but it is not expected to survive birth. "A little pilgrim on a short pilgrimage,” Geraldine says. Please pray for all these in their difficulties.
C’EST LA SARAH DE FLIP FLOP
Sarah Birch is going to the University of Limoges in the French Massif Central next September. This will be the third year of her French Degree course. She is coming to Buckfast first, and promises on her honour not to wear flip flops.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Anne de Normanville is back in Brighton again from Guildford, like myself, and is looking for a job.
Dominic O’Hara is working for Woolwich Borough Council as a Social Worker and earning lots of money. He has also passed his driving test - that should ease the “traffic flo".
Peter Dare will be returning to Canada in September to continue his studies in Survey Science at the University of Toronto. He asked me to put his Canadian address on the Buckfast list, which I didn’t!
Rupert Quail has been attending a solicitor’s course at Bristol Poly this past year. He is due to start work as an articled clerk with a firm of solicitors in Nottingham in September.
Margaret Morton successfully parachuted 2,500ft in May to raise funds for Corrymeela. She plans to help at a children’s holiday home in Donegal, Northern Ireland, go to a hospice for the dying in Milton Keynes and serve at Oakham for her parish placement before returning to theological college at Cuddesdon in October . Which puts most Wonersh students very much to shame !
Ann Credland has now finished an intensive retraining course to teach business studies at Southlands College. She will be doing her teaching somewhere in the Borough of Merton.
Pamela Gill, who we will meet on the Buckfast Pilgrimage, apologised for paying late because she had just returned from New Zealand, which is the most far out excuse I have received.
Lots of pilgrims went to the Aylesford Youth Day on 4th July, which turned out to be something of a mini-reunion. Father Hans Burgman has gone into the coffin making business to cut the cost of funerals in his parish at Pandipieri, Kisumu, Kenya, and to provide some work for his young parishioners.
YOUTHGATHER 1982
The date for Youthgather this year is Sunday 26th September. I have no more details yet — but book the date now!!
W.J.H.