Phil White

I definitely feel this. Monetary gifts have to be A Large Amount or else they are Nowt.

If you know the person: wine/ gin/ stationery/ candle/ soap/ chocolate as per their interests.
If you don't: book token/ biscuits etc.
(If food, make it something with a long shelf life so if they don't want it they can send it on to the food bank/ next church raffle/ regift!)

A meme with two images of a dog looking at a computer screen. In the top image he is looking cheerfully at the screen, saying 'What a lovely day on the internet' and in the bottom image he looks directly at you with a disappointed expression and says 'Good lord.'

Yes.

I initially parsed 'PA' as 'personal assistant' and thought 'why couldn't they have a seat?!'

100k total (inc children)? Assuming so, 1/1000 is pretty much an ideal (medieval) ratio. Enough to do lots of stuff and keep the building functional, not too many to fit in on the days when 3/4 of the population came, and 2-300 households feels about right for one clergyman to look after.

Not quite the same, but the confusion between CMD and CDM is real and unhelpful.

Well quite

There is definitely a lot of truth in the Somewhere-Anywhere distinction, but it doesn't map easily onto class or education, and it is also not a value judgement.

Yes, this. I went to a good, rural state school and ~90% of the sixth form went to university, ~50% of that was to universities within 40 miles (of which there were 7), and probably about 50% of the sixth form then returned to the area where we grew up.

That's a narrative that's become so prevalent over the past ~40 years and it's wrong, demeaning, and worst of all self-fulfilling.

Why (in my perennial cry) is the Church of England website SO RUBBISH?

See also: must coax, beg, bribe and threaten tired toddler to get into bed and sleep.

O tempora...

I like Aaronovitch but am not a completist and haven't read this one. Adore urban fantasy!

Quite. (Tho I miss the days when something being on AO3 was a guarantee of basic grammar and readability.)

The supreme example of this of course is the Junius manuscript - heavily illustrated at the beginning (by at least two artists) and then nothing, though space left for illustrations throughout.

Oh I must have a look - it sounds great. The other thing one might want but not be able to get in Wodehouse is slash - but I suspect that's not included in the book under discussion!

It definitely sounds like a verger job. Anything where doing it a) on time and b) accurately matters...

Did he think you were 12?!

In the daytime he would !

Agreed with both of you! Just quibbling (for no good reason) with the idea that because there's a hospital in Banbury, nobody needs a bus to the JR.

Though you can't always control where you get referred to. I had to take 8yo to Banbury for an op (which was great! The Horton is lovely!) and I'm sure plenty of people from Banbury and surrounding areas get sent to see consultants at the JR.

Would it be cynical of me to suggest that Synod for the last couple of quinquennia has been stuffed with single-issue con-evos (via the superior planning and resources of that wing) and therefore the number of available people who can be bothered with real governance is limited?

Yes (though have been doing so less on the grounds of reducing energy usage, then wondering if it actually makes any difference)

The whole idea of knitting against the clock gives me the shivers.

Weird!

FWIW I think it's worth keeping both and that sounds a pretty sensible way to do it.

Apparently I am also an innovative Puseyite, which surprises me somewhat. (Doing it again with my second choices resulted in a crypto-liberal Laudian... but both told me I should relate to Charles Gore?!)

Amazing. Thank you!