The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass: Adrian Plass and the Church Weekend

by Adrian Plass

Genres: Christian Fiction

Synopsis

Adrian has been trying to keep a low profile at church but his son Gerald is now an Anglican vicar and the two churches are getting together for a joint weekend away. Now Adrian's been volunteered to run it... From the confusion of arrival when Anne is allocated to the top bunk with a schizophrenic recovery group, and Adrian is in a low-ceilinged 'pod' at the top of the tower, to the hugs and tears of departure, this is typical Plass, humorous and heartwarming in equal measure. Adrian has a simple conversation about birdlife that ends with him being accused of harassment, Leonard Thynn and his wife turn up just in time to leave again after falling out with the SatNav lady, and Gerald's wit just keeps getting the better of him. There are as many questions as answers, of course. Will poor Sally, the unwilling nomad of the community, ever find a proper bed to sleep in? What exactly is it about Adrian's twinkle that Minnie Stamp 'lovey-doves' so very much? And how do you cope when your daughter-in-law shares a secret you simply cannot, must not tell? Once again, Adrian Plass gets us laughing just long enough for the truth to slip in by the back door, and for all the mishaps, this new instalment of the Sacred Diary series once again shows just how good God is at caring for this mixed bag of people we call the church.

Release date: April 11, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 208

Sample

1

Planning, Panic and Minnie Stamp

Have decided to resurrect my diary in order to keep a short journal recording highlights of the church weekend that Dennis has asked me to organise. Dennis Strang replaced dear Edwin Burlesford as chief elder of our church a couple of years ago, and he is a brilliant preacher and a very good man generally. I must say, though, that when he is not actually in action, as it were, he is one of the most extraordinarily laid back people I’ve ever met. In every situation, formal or informal, indoors or outdoors, regardless of the weather or the occasion or any presenting difficulties, he comes over like a man who is sunbathing in the Maldives. Our original conversation last year about organising this church weekend was a case in point.

 

Dennis: (apparently shielding his face from the sun with one hand and lazily rubbing sun cream onto his chest with the other, even though we are actually standing in the church porch with the rain pouring down outside) Ah, Adrian, any chance of you and Anne organising a weekend away for the church next year some time?

Me: (slightly taken aback) Er, well, possibly – probably, yes. We’ve never had a proper one before, I don’t think. Er, what sort of things would that involve, Dennis?

Dennis: (with just enough energy to speak before he tilts his Boycott trilby over his eyes and drops off to sleep with the sound of the seagulls wheeling and crying above his head) Oh, nothing much. Choose a venue. Organise the programme. Come up with a theme. ‘Where is the Love?’ might be a good one. Contact everyone. Sort the money out. Check transport. That sort of thing. Just up your street, Adrian. OK? Zzzzzzz . . .

Me: (quietly, so as not to wake him) OK. Right then. Good. Right. We’ll get on with that then.

 

Bit nervous about telling Anne. When I’d been home for a while I said, ‘Oh, by the way, Dennis has asked me how I would feel about organising a weekend away for the church.’

Anne casually flicked over a page of her magazine and said, ‘That’s interesting. Well, there’s no harm in his asking, is there? You can certainly give it some thought, can’t you?’

Pause.

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, I can give it some thought, especially as I’ve more or less said I’ll do it.’

Anne put her magazine down.

‘What does more or less mean? More? Or less?’

Started babbling.

‘Well, a little bit more more than less perhaps. Less less than more. Actually, quite a long way along the less to more continuum.’

‘What!’

‘I suppose I may have inadvertently given the impression that er . . .’

Anne’s deep intake of breath through her nose, and her signature ‘mm!’ noise through compressed lips has never boded well for me.

‘What have you “inadvertently” done? You’ve told him you’ll do it, haven’t you?’

Pause.

‘Haven’t you, Adrian?’

‘Well, Dennis did say that it was right up my street.’

Anne put her magazine down and looked at me for a moment without speaking.

‘Darling, has Dennis ever been up your street? Has he ever had a good look round your street? Has he caught a glimpse of the unrescuable wreckage of projects that litter your street, my love? You have some fine qualities, sweetheart, but organising events is really not one of them.’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, because . . .’

Suddenly lost my nerve. When the ‘darlings’ and ‘sweethearts’ and ‘loves’ start flying around in such profusion it’s time to take off the armour of God and put on something more substantial.

‘Because what?’

‘Er, because he actually asked if we’d both do it, and I said . . .’

‘You said we would.’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘You said we would.’

‘Sort of.’

‘You said we would.’

‘Almost.’

‘You said we would.’

‘Yes.’

Bit chilly after that. Anything I said about anything at all was diverted straight into the ‘You’ve said we’ll organise the church weekend’ channel.

‘Shall I put the telly on? It’s your favourite programme about the department store.’

‘Are you sure we’ve got time to watch the television? Shouldn’t we be planning the church weekend that you’ve said we’ll organise?’

‘I’ll take the rubbish out, shall I?’

‘No, I’d better do it. You might meet some random person on the pavement who’ll ask you to be in charge of something, and you’ll agree, and then we’d have less time for organising the church weekend that you’ve said we’ll be responsible for . . .’

Got a bit wearing after a while. Quite glad when bedtime came.

Came down in the morning to find Anne humming happily as she dropped bread into the toaster.

She said, ‘Sorry I got so grumpy last night. Gerald’s been on the phone.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Yes. I told him what Dennis suggested, and he said how about his church and ours getting together for a weekend away? They’ve already got somewhere booked and St Jim’s will only have quite a small group. Lots of beds left apparently. Not always a good sign, of course.’

She glanced at a notepad on the shelf next to the toaster.

‘Place called Scarleeswanvale Deep Peace Retreat Centre. It’s in a village called Stanwick. Quite a bit further away than would be ideal, but I think we’d have trouble getting anywhere very local this close to the time. Gerald says this Scarleeswanvale place is known to have had one or two problems in the recent past, but apparently they’re offering really good discounts to churches to get the numbers up.’

Suddenly looked imploringly at me. Aaaah . . . Such relief. When Anne looks imploringly at me it’s like the sun bursting triumphantly from behind a cloud.

‘Adrian, I’d love it! Gerald says Josey and Cameron are going. We’ll all be together. And I’d be fascinated to see some of his people away from home. What do you think?’

Nodded solemnly and judiciously, trying to look as if this was a decision that would need some careful thought.

‘Well, I’d have to check with Dennis, of course. Can’t go off half-cocked with these things, you know, Anne. Got to keep people in the loop, if you see what I mean. Act responsibly, and all that.’

Anne said sweetly, ‘Do you want your orange juice in a glass or over your head, darling?’

Rang Dennis that afternoon at his house and put the idea to him. Could have sworn I heard the sound of rippling waves lapping softly against a tropical shore in the background.

‘Love it,’ he said languidly, passing his glass across to the Cuban barman for another Pina Colada with a touch more rum and a little less pineapple. ‘Sounds a great plan, Adrian. Go for it. Love to Anne.’

He rang off. Gone. Probably comfortably late for a barbecue of giant prawns and wild boar steaks down on the waterline.

Got quite excited after that. Anne really got into the whole thing, thank goodness. She always was very organised. Making lists all over the place and chatting animatedly to Josey and Gerald on the phone.

 

So glad Josey and Cameron, my sixteen-year-old grandson, are coming on the church weekend with Gerald. Cameron is a real box of tricks, if you know what I mean.

And Josey – Josey. I remember the first time we met our future daughter-in-law. Gerald and Josey had become close after being on the same course at Ridcliffe Hall Theological College in Camford. Anne and I were to meet her and Gerald in a restaurant in Barton Road near the college on a Friday evening, and I was ridiculously nervous. What would she make of me? What had she heard about me from my son? We met in the lobby of the restaurant. She turned out to be quite small and very pretty with short dark hair and the steadiest, kindest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.

She whispered, ‘Are you as nervous as I am?’

‘Terrified,’ I replied.

She tucked her arm in mine and reached up on the tips of her toes to kiss me on the cheek. She’s been doing that ever since. Anne and I fell in love with her that day, and we never fell out again.

Funny about love. You think you know something about it, but you only ever know a very small bit about a little piece of it. You think you know the different kinds of love. Being a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend – but there are always surprises. Josey was one. She found a place in me where no one else was living, and moved in.

Must be something wrong with me. I remember trying to talk to my friend Richard about this when Anne and I were on holiday near Middleton-in-Teesdale with the Cooks, shortly after Gerald and Josey had announced their engagement. Richard and I were walking down the footpath to High Force Waterfall after that part of County Durham had endured a fortnight of heavy rain. I said whimsically, and obviously not loudly enough, ‘Do you ever think about all the different kinds of love, Richard?’

‘Yes,’ he replied emphatically, raising his voice against the increasing roar of the falls, ‘as a matter of fact I do. I think I can still name quite a few. I used to study them as a sort of hobby.’

‘What?’

‘Do you want to hear some of the ones I know?’’

Richard Cook? Different kinds of love? Study? Really intrigued. You think you know a man . . .

‘Yes, all right, go on then.’

‘Do you want them in alphabetical order? That’s how I learned them.’

‘Er, yes, I suppose so, if you like.’

‘African collared dove, African mourning dove, Bar-shouldered Copper Neck Dove, Beautiful Fruit Dove, Black-naped Fruit Dove . . .’

Shouted like a maniac against the wind and water.

‘LOVES, NOT DOVES, RICHARD!’

Richard was striding on into the spray, loudly and mechanically listing doves as he went.

‘Jobi Dove, Key West Quail-Dove, Laughing Dove . . .’

‘LOVES! LOVES!’

‘Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove, Mountain Witch Dove, Red Turtle Dove, Tambourine Dove . . .’

Gave up. I seemed to have entered another, quite different parallel universe. At the very least, standing under an unstoppable outpouring of water listening to an unstoppable alphabetical outpouring of every species of dove on the planet for no good reason has to be one of my slightly more unusual experiences.

 

Rather less pleased to have a call from Minnie Stamp one evening, informing me that she is definitely coming on the weekend.

Minnie is a junior school teacher who joined our church a few months ago. She’s in her mid-thirties, thin rather than slim, with a head, body and legs that never seem to end up in a straight line, probably because she’s always curling some part of herself in unsolicited sympathy. I know you’re not supposed to notice these things, but she has a slight problem with pronouncing the letter ‘r’, especially, to my fevered imagination, when she says my name. Quite pretty in a soppy, daisy-chain sort of way, but really annoys me, mainly because she reacts to anything I say as though I’ve come to her for counselling.

One day in church last year, for instance, I asked her if she had anything to contribute to the Harvest Festival entertainment that I was quite happily organising. She tilted her head to one side and crinkled her eyes in a caring, compassionate sort of way.

She said, ‘Oh, Adrian, is no one wanting to do your little supper thing?’

‘What? Er, yes, no, I mean, there isn’t a problem, Minnie. Quite a lot of people have signed up, thanks. It’s not really a supper thing, and it’s not that little. It’s not actually my supper thing. All I’m doing is . . .’

‘It gives you an excuse to go round and speak to people, doesn’t it, Adrian?’

What kind of demented pixies does the government allow her to teach, for goodness sake?

‘Minnie, I don’t need . . .’

‘We all lovey-dove you, Adrian. God loves you through us. You do know that, don’t you? There’s no need to feel tiny and lost. You’re what I call one of God’s little sad elves, always working away really hard to make us notice you. Well, we do notice you, and we lovey-dovey-dove you!’

Moistened the tip of her forefinger with her tongue and touched my forehead playfully. If she knew how close this little sad elf came to altering the shape of her face with the nearest blunt instrument she would have been appalled. Asked Anne afterwards how I could feel such rage surging up in me about such a relatively trivial thing. Why on earth would I feel such a powerful need to justify myself to someone who inflicts her patently ridiculous insights on me every time we meet?

She said, ‘Adrian, what I reckon is that, most of the time, what other people think about us is none of our business. Having said that, there is a bit of the little sad elf about you. I never noticed it before. I must ask Gerald what he thinks.’

Hmm.

 

After I’d said hello to Minnie on the phone on that particular evening she said, ‘You sound all grumble-chops, Adrian. Would it make your grumble-chops day go all merry and bright if I said I was coming along to support you at the churchy thing? Because I am!’

Could hardly say, ‘God, no! No, on the contrary, I wish we had a special anti-bursary fund for paying people like you to stay away.’

Actually said, ‘Oh, that’s – that’s great, Minnie, really good. I’ll put you down on the list.’ Added hopefully, ‘You do really want to come, do you? Only I don’t think we’re going to have any trouble filling up the places, so if you’re just . . .’

‘Mister Adrian Plass esquire!’ she interrupted with mock severity, ‘Minnie says you are to march straight off to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I am a fairy light on God’s Christmas tree, and everyone loves my twinkle.” Promise you’ll do that?’

‘Well, I . . .’

‘Promise?’

‘Oh, all right . . .’

As I came out of the bathroom and got into bed that night, I said to Anne, ‘Anne, do you love my twinkle?’

Silence for a moment.

‘Not your very best feature, my darling,’ she said.

Huh! Thought so.

 

I must say, having to organise one of these events makes you realise that an awful lot of folk in the church see life as a matter of making sure that they move as serenely as possible from one comfort zone to another. People who have always seemed quite relaxed and co-operative in the past suddenly develop all sorts of awkward corners and sharp edges that have to be smoothed and sanded down, as it were, by people like m. . .