It’s 1988 and I need to make an urgent phone call. Fortunately I was in the centre of Rochdale, near the post office where I knew there were four phone boxes side-by-side. However, when I got there, all were occupied, each - as it happened - for an interminable time. My impatience quickly grew and when I noticed that each occupant was Asian, guess what I thought? The truth is that we are all capable of racism. This morning’s Times gives a prominent lead to a paper by the National Centre for Social Research showing that 26 per cent of adults admit that they are prejudiced against people of other races. And that’s probably an under-estimate. The Times makes the observation that “

Sunday, 8th April, 2018. That’s the date I am planning to retire as vicar of Christ Church Aughton. And it’s going to be difficult, praise God. Praise God because I enjoy being vicar here and I am not eagerly counting down the days before I hang up whatever vicars hang up when they retire. But it is going to be a testing time. I know that from speaking to retired vicars over the years. “Grim,” shared John with me at the New Wine seminar last year. The problem is that retiring as vicar involves too many changes at once. Each change is challenging enough by itself – changing your job, leaving your church, moving house, new routines. But taken together retirement can be overwhelmin

In an attempt to maintain my fitness I am taking weekly swimming lessons at Ormskirk Park Pool – and finding them extremely difficult. The reason is that I can swim already. Something I have been meaning to do for some time. However, now that I have picked up two injuries to my knee and opposite foot, running is out for the time being. Tragic. The problem is that my default swimming style, like for everyone of my age group, is the breaststroke. It’s a problem because it is not good for your back. As a student I did teach myself a version of the front crawl (or freestyle) but as my daughter pointed out to me this summer I am doing it all wrong. “Dad, it would help if you breathe

“Hello, Adrian. It’s Ross Moughtin!” Huge laugh. “Come right up.” It’s September and once again I am organising the annual reunion of my class at Waterloo Grammar School 1960-1967. It began when I met up with Doug in 2009. We realized that it would soon be 50 years since we began our seven formative years together at WGS. So I thought it a good idea to organise a reunion at the Royal. However, such was the power of the internet the invitation went viral and no less than 24 classmates turned, most of whom I had not seen for those intervening 50 years. We now do it every year. Easy to organise. Colin comes over each time from Vancouver Island. However, one person we all had

“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine,” concluded physicist and long-distance cyclist, Arthur Eddington, “it is stranger than we can imagine.” That would be theme of the book I read on while on holiday: “The universe in your hand. A journey through space, time and beyond” by Christophe Galfard, who was Stephen Hawking’s graduate student 2000 to 2006. Fascinating – and baffling. For much of the time I hadn’t the foggiest what Galfard was trying to explain. I could just about understand the paragraph I was reading but no way could I explain what I had just read. Even so I was gripped. Essentially – and this is my take on the whole subject of modern physics, there are th