The Prices' Christmas Letter 2004

I take up my virtual pen to compose our 14th Christmas Letter from Marston. I suppose I should be getting used to this feeling about the strangeness of life, but somehow I don't, and each passing year life seems if anything stranger. I imagine by the time I'm 95, I shall be looking more perplexed than your average two-week old does at present.

The shape of change this year, has been determined by Esther going off to university. During her unplanned gap year, she spent 3 months working at Oxford Brookes Institute of Education, helping in the MA office. Then after Christmas she left there and went to work at the Odeon cinema in Oxford. This was a mystery to me: low pay, long and unsocial hours till late at night, not much scope for job satisfaction or career prospects; but Esther loved it. She got to know a whole lot of young people from many countries, as well as how to prepare hot dogs without breaching health and safety regulations, and quite a lot about new films, besides. In the middle of June she went off to Greece for three weeks, with some (male) friends, and island-hopped happily around the Aegean. In September she went off to Nottingham University to start her course in Sociology, though so far the only essay she has told me about is one she's been writing about Karl Barth, so a bit of theology has crept into her modules somewhere.

Esther's departure left just three of us at home. We enjoy having Naomi here; she has been working as a Biomedical Scientist in the Histopathology Lab at the John Radcliffe Hospital for 2 1/2 years now. She enjoys it a lot, though I sometimes have to censor her mealtime conversation when it gets a bit too anatomical. She is studying hard for her MSc, and deserves to do very well. It's a day release course from the hospital, for which she has to go up to London once a week. Her boyfriend Alex is also studying for an MBA, so they ration their going out so as not to interfere with studies. They would both like to save up enough to leave home and get a place of their own, but with Oxford prices being what they are, it will probably be a while yet.

Martha finished her PGCE at Roehampton, and started work in September at Cheam High School, teaching RE. Though it may be called something different nowadays. Since she continues to hold the title of The Child Who Phones Home Least Frequently (though Esther has run her pretty close this term) we don't know much about this. But as far as I can make out she is really enjoying it, and looks forward to seeing her year-group of first-formers getting through to GCSE. She moved this year to another house (still shared with boyfriend Paul and others) nearer to where she works. It's somewhere in the Badlands between Clapham and Balham, though not entirely Francophone so I think she gets by.

The news which has us most aflutter this year, is about Tom and Annie. It was back on St Valentine's Day, when we had a big family get-together in the church hall here, to celebrate Alison's mother's 80th birthday. Most of her descendants were there, as well as in-laws, which was quite a feat. It was also immensely enjoyable, and even the younger generation who thought they were there on sufferance and might only stay for a half-hour or so, were happy to stay to the end. Tom and Annie didn't stay beyond that, as Tom wanted to get back to London claiming he was supposed to be cooking a special meal. In the event he telephoned us in great excitement at around 8 p.m. to say, "I've just asked Annie to marry me - and she's said Yes." Thanks to mobile phone technology, and everyone having their own, we were able to hear Annie in the background sharing the same loud and exciting news with her parents, Jane and Moy, in Cardiff. The wedding is due to take place next June, at Annie's home church in Radyr. Tom and Annie, meanwhile, are in the process of buying a flat in London and hope to complete early in the New Year.

Alison is still working hard at the Institute of Education of Oxford Brookes University. June and July were very stressful, and since then she has been trying to be more careful about her workload, and not overdoing it too much. Higher education is in a pretty parlous state at the moment, and it's all too common that the system only works at all because willing and committed staff flog themselves too hard. (You can hold me partly to blame: I voted for Them. But I'm really wrestling with whether I will again.)

This time last year I wrote about the Faith Sharing Team we were getting together and training. The big event finally happened in May, when a dozen of us from Marston went down to the parish of Meads in Eastbourne to spend 10 days with the people of St John's Church helping with their 'Celebration of Faith'. The team was led by Rosemary Green, and included, as well as Alison and me, two young mums, two retired couples, one of our churchwardens and a friend from the local RC church. Michael Green came and spoke at various events on the last weekend, but I think some really significant and special work was also done by the team in the course of the first weekend and week between: at coffee mornings, teas and lunches and all sorts of other meetings. I felt really proud to be the vicar of a church that could send out a group of its people like this. Alison preached for the first time and found she has a gift which she is wanting to explore by feeling her way into some different kind of ministry involvement in the church.

Altogether there was a tremendous sense of purpose about the week, and of being upheld by prayer by each other and the congregation that remained at home. We needed this subsequently, because it has been a pretty hard year of loss for the church. Something like seven of this year's funerals were for people who were very committed members of the church, and this leaves a big gap. In addition to this, a number of long-married couples are facing the situation in which one partner is developing some form of dementia; while several of those of about our age are having to care for ageing and infirm parents. (My own Mum and Dad are in this position, with Mum physically frail, and Dad suffering increasingly with Alzheimer's.) We are praying and hoping that next year will bring some relief, especially that we'll have an influx of new people in the church!

2004 has been the Year of the Blog - it's official. And Tony has been an early(-ish) adopter, starting his Online Journal on January 27, and changing to Blogger on July 1. Astonishingly, people actually read this stuff. Not many, compared with the really big blogs - but there is in fact a reading public out there, which is not just the children looking in to see what Dad is up to. You can find my blog at www.godspell.org.uk/wordpress

Don't know what a blog is? According to Merriam-Webster Online:

Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer

This was the most looked-up word in 2004. And do you know what was the second most frequently looked-up word? It was:

incumbent, noun Etymology: Middle English, from Latin incumbent-, incumbens, present participle of incumbere to lie down on, from in- + -cumbere to lie down; akin to cubare to lie
1 : the holder of an office or ecclesiastical benefice
2 : occupant

For any who are interested in what I've been reading: this has been the year I set myself the task of reading Jane Austen, most of it (I'm ashamed to say) for the first time. She's marvellous, isn't she? Other highlights have been some of J.L.Carr's novels (don't buy them from Amazon, order them direct from the publisher, Quince Tree Press); Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible which I discovered rather late; Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and most recently, Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Carr to Stephenson is like upsizing from the small and perfectly-formed, to the gargantuan: if you like that kind of thing. As you can see, most of my theology this year has come from reading novels. Which may be better than some of the alternatives.

That's all for now. So, from this blogging incumbent, his loving wife, and family, it's all good wishes to you and yours for a truly Happy Christmas, and for all God's blessings during the improbable-sounding 2005.