A View from the Chaplain’s Desk

 

A magnificent view

I used to live in a most beautiful vicarage in a tiny village in the Peak District in Staffordshire. Above us stood the huge Staffordshire Roaches, massive granite outcrops which soar towards the sky as the Pennines peter out north of the Potteries. The view from the lounge window was magnificent and we loved the four years we lived there because of the sheer beauty of the area and its remoteness. I was the last priest to live in the house because the size of the village didn’t really justify a resident clergyman. So when I left, the vicarage was sold and the village was looked after by the clergy of the nearby larger market town of Leek. I still drive past the house occasionally, it’s now called Meerbrook Old Vicarage, and wistfully wish I’d had the money to buy it when it went to public auction in 1981. It was sold for £60,000 and today would easily fetch half a million or more.

 

Evocative names

A few weeks ago I was in Grantham to see my brother and noticed that the local estate agent’s window contained no fewer than five former vicarages for sale, with those evocative names of The Old Rectory, Church Lodge or The Old Vicarage. Estate agents reckon that these properties are usually sold at a premium because although they may not have deluxe kitchens or bidets in the bathroom they have usually over the years been well maintained structurally with quinquennial surveys and good basic repairs carried out as necessary.

 

Asset stripping

At a recent Synod in York the Church of England was accused of “scandalous asset stripping” after it disclosed that it had raised more that  £100 million over the past five years by disposing of scores of often historic vicarages. A report on finance showed that the income raised from them had helped to fill a black hole exacerbated by mounting clergy pension costs. The official report noted that the sales had provided vital, if short term funding, at a time when some Dioceses were struggling and clergy were being asked to tighten their belts to pay for a £9.5 million pension shortfall. There is now even a pressure group called, “Save our Parsonages” (I promise you it’s true) who have accused the Church of England of disposing of crucial parish assets even in the face of fierce local opposition. Terry Waite, the once special envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is a patron of the group, said the Church had been guilty of a chronic lack of imagination in its handling of its rich heritage of historical properties. He said it sold houses in poor condition only to find them refurbished and back on the market a year later at up to four times the price. That is certainly true, yet many clergy could tell a different story in trying to heat huge ramshackle buildings or carpet vast halls and lounges on what is a very basic salary. Maintaining such old rambling vicarages is very expensive when a new modern house can be built, usually quite easily in one corner of the huge garden, fit for purpose and easy to maintain and heat. Usually the remainder of the land with the house can then be sold off and still show a profit.

 

Lift the spirits

The subject of the sale of vicarages might seem small beer compared with the arguments going on about women bishops or the row about homosexuality. Yet I rather expect a fine old eighteenth century rectory can lift the spirits of both clergy and parishioners alike. The authorities may argue that such a building is not relevant to the modern world but some people would argue that moving a priest out of the large vicarage that can be used for meetings and garden parties into a dreary modern building often has a depressing effect on the whole parish and thus weakens the church’s roots in the community. Like the present debacle in Israel and the Palestinian Territories there’s always two sides to a story and the truth and common sense usually lies somewhere in-between the two extremes. 

 

Fantasising holidaymakers

Not that there are many vicarages for sale in the estate agent’s windows of Majorca, yet you can still see the gawping and fantasising holidaymakers leering at the provocative photographs of villas and apartments whilst their imaginations run riot. I know, I’ve done it myself. Every year we would return home from holiday where my wife would proclaim confidently to any who cared to listen, “We are, it seems, moving to Italy/Greece/Spain/France”, depending on where we had been for our holidays. It happened during most holidays and after a couple of days of the sunshine and the positive aspect of the area I would find myself inexorably drawn to the estate agent’s window checking out house prices and wondering, just wondering, what life would be life if…… My wife being the patient soul she is had seen it all before and would raise her eyes to heaven with that exasperated look and say, “It seems we are moving to…!” She knew it would all pass and indeed she was always right as she always is. But for a few weeks I was allowed my little fantasy and my romantic notion of what life would be like on some desolate Greek island with just a bottle of retsina and a kebab for company.

 

Reality sets in

So it is with some knowing empathy and sympathy that I watch the tourists scanning the estate agent’s windows, I know, I’ve been there and I’ve done it myself, and it’s wonderful whilst it lasts, but reality soon sets in on the 7.10 am train from Milton Keynes to London on a cold October morning. Places can seem so attractive when you are on holiday without having to worry about work and the sun is shining but at the end of the day, as beautiful as Majorca is, it is not one long holiday for most of us. Come September it’s a case of getting real, you still have to get up in the morning, you still have to get the children to school, you still have to pay the bills and you still have to earn a crust. In fact let’s be blunt, a cold wet January day in Manacor is not a lot different from a cold wet January day in Manchester. I sometimes want to shout out and say to the window-shoppers, “Yes follow a dream, give it a try but don’t burn your boats behind you, be realistic and don’t get carried away. It might work for you but it might not.” It seems that two-thirds of people who move here permanently return within four years. I cannot believe the turnover of people that I have seen here as I now start my tenth year on the island. For some there have been a lot of shattered dreams and broken illusions, others have enjoyed life here for a period of their lives and it’s now time to move on. Whilst for others it’s worked and their whole future lies on the island.

 

Left or lost

Now here’s a little story to warm the cockles of your heart. “He” maintains that he got out of the taxi although I suspect that he probably fell out of it. It was the early hours of the morning and he had been out drinking with friends along the Paseo Maritimo in Palma. However, whatever the facts of the situation were, he somehow managed to part company with his wallet in the taxi home. It was three o’clock in the morning and we were woken up by my son to the wail of, “I’ve left my wallet in the taxi”. “Left” or “lost” I’m not sure, but it certainly was a brand new leather wallet which someone had given him for his birthday and it had 20 euros in it but more importantly contained his residencia. The following morning he phoned the taxi firm who asked us to phone again that evening when the night drivers would come on duty – but which taxi and which driver, who was to know! What we did know was that he had lost it and no one had found it. We gave it up as a bad job and he put it down to experience. Actually we never expected to get it back even though we phoned a few times. But it was “worth the try” as one says.

 

Fast forward three weeks and through the letter box came a very official looking brown envelope from Palma Town Hall’s “Lost and Found Department”. Would the owner of a wallet that had been handed in go and identify it. Yes it was indeed the one, it still had the 20 euros note in it and my son was very glad to see his residencia again. The only charge was five euros to pay the taxi driver who had to drive in specially to deliver it to the Lost and Found Department. A big thank you to him and it does restore one’s confidence in human nature.

 

Father Robert Ellis is the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca

St Philip and St James Church

Nunez de Balboa 6

Son Armadans, Palma

Tel: 971 737279

anglicanpalma@gmail.com

www.anglican-mallorca.org