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By Megan Carter, TSL Books, £5.50 One of the Parish Pump poets, Megan Carter, has just published a book of poems, called Amazing Grace.  If you would like to order a copy, please contact enquiries@parishpump.co.uk.  A copy costs £5.50 including P&P.

All in the month of FEBRUARY ‘The day the music died’ The Satanic Verses and the fatwa QWERTY celebrates a big birthday Marie Curie and The Great Daffodil Appeal Downsizing our social life Long walks are not so long The GOOD news about chocolate National Nest Box Week:  14th – 21st February National Pizza Day...

(Luke 2:22-35) Sometimes old people see things, sometimes they understand, their years and experience lending wisdom – sometimes. But that day in the Temple was beyond human sight and understanding, beyond human wisdom. That day in the Temple, God moved. And Simeon saw, with Holy Spirit sight, with revelation light, the realisation of God’s promise....

St Kew has nothing to do with gardens or the ‘Q’ of James Bond fame.  This Kew was a girl who lived in Cornwall in the 5th century, and should be the patron saint of girls with difficult older brothers. Kew’s older brother was a hermit who felt his younger sister was not worthy to...

It was: 200 years ago, on 14th Feb 1819 that Christopher Sholes, American inventor was born.  He developed one of the first typewriters and invented the QWERTY keyboard. 150 years ago, on 14th Feb 1869 that Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Scottish physicist was born.  Winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the...

Scholastica (d.c. 543) should be the patron saint of any woman who can bend her brother to do her will – no matter how ‘powerful’ that brother might seem to other people. For Scholastica’s brother was no less than the great monk Benedict, who founded the famous Benedictine order and lived at Monte Cassino.   In...

Heavenly Father, Thank You for loving us. Thank You for sending Jesus and for the work of Your Holy Spirit in opening people’s eyes to recognise Him. Please open our eyes and hearts afresh to Him. Help us to truly trust Him and to be aware of the price He paid so that we can...

The day the music died – according to Don McLean in his epic song American Pie – was 60 years ago, on 3rd February 1959, when rock-and-roll star Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in Iowa. With him were two other singers, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. Charles Hardin (Buddy) Holly, who was...

Caedmon (d 680) should be the patron saint of all farmers who enjoy humming to themselves as they do the lambing this Spring.  For Caedmon of Whitby was a bit like David in the Bible – he grew up as a simple herdsman out on the hills who enjoyed composing songs and poetry for himself...

It was 30 years ago, on 14th February 1989, that Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a “fatwa” calling for the death of the writer Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses was accused of being blasphemous to Muslims because it seemed to cast doubt on the divine nature of the Koran. Publication of the book had...

There are two confusing things about this day of romance and anonymous love-cards strewn with lace, cupids and ribbon: firstly, there seems to have been two different Valentines in the 4th century – one a priest martyred on the Flaminian Way, under the emperor Claudius, the other a bishop of Terni martyred at Rome.  And...

The inventor of the QWERTY keyboard – now almost universally adopted in English-speaking countries – was born 200 years ago, on 14th February 1819, in Pennsylvania. Christopher Latham Scholes was an Episcopalian who could trace his ancestry back to two of the original Mayflower pilgrims, John and Priscilla Alden. Although he did not invent the...