Today I received what will be the first I’m sure of many notices shoved through my door asking for my support at the upcoming election. Whilst there are many national issues to be dealt with in the general election, on a local scale there are big decisions to be made. And what a decision, there [...]

This year was the first white christmas I have ever experienced. Looking around the area things all looked pretty much like your average greetings card picture (or the atypical English winter depicted in The Holiday), so we got some nice pictures of the church thanks to Richard Owen who brought his camera along with his [...]

This afternoon we had Lucy’s Baptism Service at St James’, whilst we had a good many friends and family who made it along to the service and the party afterwards, we know there were some who weren’t able to come.
It’s not quite the same, but here is a copy of the service we used, which [...]

This is a little tribute to any Youth Leader, who having been asked to contribute to some Church event, has found themselves on stage with a number of semi-unwilling members of their youth group, feeling like they’re doing a solo, and yet somehow managed to pull it together in the end.
As a background to this [...]

This weekend was the annual Heritage Open Days weekend when historic buildings across the country, sometimes buildings that rarely allow public access, open their doors to the public. Locally this was organised under the banner of the Wokingham Heritage Weekend, and as our contribution we opened the church to visitors and as we do in [...]

So there we were, sitting watching the TV, when I hear a weird noise from outside. Stepping out into the garden, this is what we saw, a Virgin hot air balloon coming down rather quickly. These pictures show the view as it went over and came to rest on the garrison sports field, amazingly coming [...]

Along with our annual trip to see the Tappers, this weekend was also pretty busy as it was our patronal festival weekend at St James. As part of this on Saturday we had an evening from The Madding Crowd, a group of performers from Winchester, and then today we had the annual opening of the [...]

I’ve blogged from time to time about politics within the Church, but every so often, even at a local level, village politics and St James come into contact. In the past it’s been in relation to things like the villages memorial oaks being on church, rather than public land, and occasionally the Parish Council will [...]

I’ve just had one of those evenings where nobody knows what to do, but people turn to me because I’m the Churchwarden!
When I turned up at choir practice the kids were still over in the Parish Centre on their break, so I went into the church, and there was a small creature in the middle [...]

So after the brief snow we got for Easter, and the temperature reaching the dizzy heights of 18 ÌŠC this last week, on Sunday morning we awoke to this…
April Snow from Richard Peat on Vimeo.
By the time we had to head up to St James, the temperature had risen slightly and on the roads the [...]

So that’s Easter over for another year. Over the last twenty-four hours we’ve been to five services, and we’ve seen over five hundred people pass through the Church.
We kicked off late last night with the service that starts the Easter Vigil, which as in previous years the Youth Group took part in, and as with [...]

As we have done in previous years, during Holy Week we do something a bit different from the rest of the series. Last year we had a cinema trip, this time around we had Lance Pierson – who describes himself as a performer – presenting a selection of Poems for Holy Week. Having said that, [...]

Maybe I’m just overly critical, and perhaps I’d be different if it were my child playing, but I tend to not overly look forward to the prospect of school students being, how shall we put it, adventurous in their choice of concert repertoire.
This particular opportunity to experience a school musician came up as part of [...]

The final lecture in our Lent series was given by Captain Abi Brown, a member of our congregation and serving army officer, who had recently returned from a six month posting in Iraq – her second, having been posted previously during the initial invasion back in 2003.
This again was a total change of subject area [...]

Last night we had the next of our Lent Lecture series at St James.
After the more theological subject matter last week, this week we had a bit of a change of focus, and also our first home grown speaker in the form of Brynn Bayman, a member of the congregation who teaches at a local [...]

It’s years since I’ve been to a Barn Dance – in fact thinking about it, the last one was probably my cousins wedding about a decade ago. Certainly Beth had never been to one. I’d been to several at our Church when I was a child, and apparently they used to have them quite regularly [...]

I’ve just got back from the first of this years Lent Lectures, Berdine van den Toren speaking about The Struggle Against AIDS in Africa.
Berdine works for the Church Mission Society, and with her family spent over eight years living and working in the relatively unknown Central African Republic.
The basic facts about HIV and AIDS in [...]

Yesterday night I was up at the Church for a musical event where for once I didn’t have to do anything at all!
The event was the launch of the St James’ Handbell Ringers “Take it From Hereâ€? initiative – where they are planning to take their music into a variety of the local care homes, [...]

You know those moments when someone thinks they’re telling you about some really great secret, but you, and a load of other people already know? Various of us at St James had that experience this morning listening to Rev Richard’s sermon.
On his day off, he and Penny his wife had headed off to the Bramshill [...]

So after our trip to Cambridge in 2006, and a trip to sing at Rev Joan’s Licensing in Raglan the year before that, it looks like St James Choir is going to be on the road again in 2008. Firstly through contacts we have at various abbeys and cathedrals we’re looking at singing Evensong when [...]