Questions and answers

 I'm going to take a few posts to answer questions starting with one from Jackie.

How did you and Jack meet?

When I was working, my vicarage had a coal fire in the sitting room and Jack had a side-line as a chimney sweep.  That's how we met originally but, as I am sure you realise, nothing is straightforward with Jack.

As he was leaving the first time he told me he always gave a present to his customers.  The first time it was a tin of shoe polish but  subsequent gifts included Winnie -the-Pooh sticking plasters, rum flavoured bubble bath and a bunch of carrots with a knife to scrape them.

Soon after that first visit I went to see an elderly gentlman whose wife had just died and there was a familiar face in the corner.  The funeral was for Jack's mum.

Jack continued as my chimney sweep for as long as I lived in that house but one day I came home and found him waiting to talk to me.  His daughter wanted to get married in the same church in which Jack and Mrs Jack had been married.  I explained the procedure and we shared a cuppa before he left.

As he was leaving he said, "Your garden looks a mess!" so I said, "If you think it looks a mess you do something about it."  And he's been looking after me ever since.  

I conducted the wedding of both his daughter and his son, and the funerals of both his parents and his brother.  Sadly Mrs Jack died during the first lockdown and I wasn't allowed to take her funeral but I did write something for another minister to read.

Bereavement is always hard but it was especially hard during lockdown when the usual sources of support weren't avaiable so I tool to phoning him each morning and we still talk most mornings.

I still make lists for him.  But then again, I still make bacon butties and leek soup for him.  So he shouldn't complain,

But he will.  Even though I gave him a hat labelled "Horticultural Enhancer".