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 Mardles  2020 & 2021

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August 23rd 2021

 

It's definitely time to have another mardle about this and that and the various things that have gradually been able to take place, as we all try to rebuild a life of togetherness again.

 

 

September 26th 2021

 

It's over a month ago when I wrote that last sentence and I have been meaning to find time to update things ever since. Perhaps this is a sign that we are beginning to get back into a lively church life once more; certainly things are happening.

 

Church Services have taken place on the second and fourth Sundays in the months of July and August and should continue as a pattern until December. We have a 'said' Evening Prayer service at 5pm and so far our congregation is tiny but we expect this to change as people become accustomed to attending Services and as we do our best to attract them.

 

Harvest Festival will be on the 10th. October at 5pm followed by a glass of wine and the Harvest loaf with cheese; we hope that we just may be allowed to sing about ploughing fields and scattering seed. It's two years, more or less, since Hymn singing was heard in St. Peter's.

 

The Clippesby Christmas Choir will meet to practice Carols in Church each week. Pauline is training us as usual and Peter is accompanying for the practices. It's so pleasurable to be singing together once again. The actual 'Carols by Candlelight' Service is planned for Wednesday the 15th of December.

 

Another activity that has restarted recently is 'Open the Book' Assembly in Rollesby School. The children seem as pleased to see us again as we are to tell them the Bible stories. For the present we are not able to use pupils to play acting roles but that will return soon we hope.

 

Finally a quick mention that 'Harvest of a Quiet Eye' weekend will be on the 16th and 17th of October. It will feature some unusual displays around what we did in Lockdown.

May 18th, 2021

Hurrah! It's simply great to be back into editing our website once more having been completely unable to do anything for the whole of this year. We have always taken a pride in keeping the Clippesby Church and Countryside website up to date so we found it frustrating and rather sad that it has been looking so neglected.

 

We are very grateful to Paul Cheall for enabling us to edit and add contents again and we ask you to overlook errors and typos as we work hard to deal with a backlog. We have  Sandy's sermons to input;  out of date notices to delete as well as trying to condense stuff and simplify things.

 

The Churchwardens' Blog is back and soon we hope to have phots and material to go onto the Events Page. The Fund-raising Team are eager to make up for all the time lost to the Covid 19 pandemic.

 

The Team's first event planned is an Evening Fete on Saturday the 29th 0f May from 6pm- 8pm outside Basecamp. We do appreciate being able to use this facility for our Church Fundraising and we thank them for welcoming us. Here's hoping for a nice, warm, sunny evening. There will be the usual stalls and raffle and tombola as well as some 20p games for children.

 

After a meeting of Churchwardens this week we expect to have more news of being able to hold services in Churches and Churchyards.

 

Basil Ransome, a Clippesby 'boy' has written a manuscript of his memoires, 'The Ransomes of Trolley Row', which we are editing  - and embellishing with drawings from Pauline Willmott - with a view to hopefully getting it published, as we did with his previous fascinating book 'Clippesby at War'. This is a true account of a vanished way of country life that deserves to be told.

15th December  2020

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Things have moved on since last month and with much sadness we cancelled the Christmas by Candlelight Service  planned to take place this week. But there is good news that some of us have received our Coronavirus vaccine giving us hope that life will be less scary and restrictive as we go into the New Year. We will be decorating the Church ready for our Christmas Service on Sunday the 27th of December. Places will have to be booked. Happy Christmas everyone!

23rd November

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Today we rejoice in the excellent news about the Oxford University vaccine for Coronavirus that is to go into production and the hope that this gives us; maybe the nightmare will soon be over. We have good news too that on the 2nd December restictions will be eased somewhat and things can open up again, so Clippesby Church can hopefully have a Christmas by Candlelight Celebration on the 17th. It won't be a Carol Service and we can't have a choir but it will be a lovely experience in a warm church with beautiful music. The church will be lit only by candles and there will be appropriate seasonal readings telling the wonderful Christmas story in different ways. I will give more details when the programme is finalised and we begin taking bookings which we will be obliged to do as space will be limited by Covid 19 restrictions

 

 

2nd NOVEMBER

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Oh dear! We were just beginning to have regular twice monthly services again in St.Peter's and now, sadly, we have another lockdown, which means the Church will be closed once more -  for at least this month.

 

We hope and pray that the measures being put in place by the Government will be enough to stem the spread of this horrid virus.

 

Yesterday we had a benefice All Soul's Service  at St. Mary's, Martham which will be the last one until December at the earliest. Till then we have to make do with services on our various devices; laptops, ipads and smart phones. When we have the Zoom meetings I use my phone to join in which is not ideal as the picture is really quite small and my arm aches with holding the phone up for a half an hour or so, but it is amazing that we can actually do all this anyway.

 

The uncertainty of how we can celebrate Christmas this year is definitely going to have a big impact on our preparations. Will some of the inevitable changes be for the better? Possibly less materialism with shopping curtailed? Who knows? But what we do know is we have had to cancel our popular Carol and Christingle services and Midnight Mass at Thurne. However I am sure our Rector will do what he can to help us mark this dearly loved season and, in due course, we will hear about these plans.

 

Meantime we must concentrate on doing our best as a church to reduce our carbon footprint. We need, as a church to actively work towards increasing the bio-diversity of our countryside and surroundings. I expect many of us have seen the wonderful David Attenborough film, documenting his ninety years and highlighting the catastrophic losses he has seen take place in the natural world; these, together with the pollution, deforestation  and devestation and the figures to back this up, send a very powerful message. His passionate plea to humanity to halt this rapid decline is very moving and  inspiring, for he says it's not too late to reverse things if we act together and we act now. I urge everyone to watch this film, read the book and do everthing they can to increase biodiversity in their own patch..

October 3rd 2020

 

Whilst I can blame the pandemic for curbing our village and church activities I can't really blame it for my lack of energy in keeping up with a monthly blog.

 

It seems incredible that with the extra time that should be available due to not being able to take part in so many regular happenings some things just aren't getting done! I know I speak for myself in this as others have done wonderfully creative things like painting, writing books, making imaginative props for 'Open the Book' and baking sour dough bread.

 

Anyway I think I should fill you in with the few events that have been taking place. The sponsor monies have gone off to the Norfolk Churches Trust for this year's Cycle Ride which was on the 12th of September; Sara, Pam, Fran and Felix got their bikes out or their walking shoes on (Cecily was sponsored for manning the church) and between them raised £587.00. That is a splendid amount, it will help St. Peter's as well as the NCT.

 

Sara and the Fund-raising Team held three small events - mini fetes - they had to be low key  of course so as not to attract crowds , and they were more for showing the flag for Clippesby Church rather than fund-raising ,nonetheless they did make several hundred pounds and these together with Karen Williams's Fleggburgh Quiz and Treasure Hunt, have been so helpful in  meeting the outgoing direct debits that still continue to be taken.

 

 

We are glad to be able to hold church services again; we wear our masks; we may not socialise and we are not permitted to sing nor to offer hospitality; curbs which go against the grain of our relationships with one another but we put up with them for the moment and we pray this situation will end very soon. One day we will be able to keep the church open again for visitors every day instead of only on Wednesdays. One day we will be free to worship without these Covid-19 constraints; we'll be praising the Lord with a cheerful voice and be able to offer one another hospitality and the brotherly/sisterly kiss as urged by St.Paul. One day soon, please God.

 

 

Meantime we have reinstated the first Tuesday in the month's Coffee, Cake & Chat get together but moving it to Basecamp, it's at the usual time of 11am. This went well on Tuesday for a little group of five. Pauline brought her book, that she wrote in 'lockdown'  to show people. It is incredible. Pauline started it to help an eight year old Rumanian boy who is learning English but it could be developed to help more children she feels so she was grateful for the feedback that she received, she found it very helpful. Amongst other topics we discussed the almost insurmountable difficulties in putting together a Carol Service for Clippesby without being able to sing carols.

 

We look forward to our Harvest Festival Service on Sunday the 11th. of October. The church has been simply decorated as befits the climate in this pandemic. The flowers are mostly in Autumn shades of bronze, orange and gold. (There are a few photos on the latest news page.)  Our Rector will lead the Service and a sermon written by Sandy will be preached. We will have some recorded music. As singing is not permitted  we won't be bringing in the sheaves or ploughing the fields and scattering the seed. Nor will we be having our Harvest Supper  afterwards but if by following all the rules we can help eveybody to stay safe it will all have been worthwhile.

 

The pattern of services for Clippesby of the second and fourth Sundays in the month is resuming so our next service which is on the 25th of October is when we put the clocks back to Greenwich Mean Time meaning that Evensong (we wish) I meant Evening Prayer will be at the winter time of 3pm as it was in times of yore. How many things go full circle !

 

I'm running out of space and things to say so I'll sign off for now. God bless.

August 2020

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My fellow Beaver, Pauline, who does most of the work maintaining and keeping this website up to date, has been nagging me to update things as I have not written much since the ‘Looking Back’ Notes at the start of the year.

 

When I wrote those notes it was inconceivable that Clippesby Church – in common with all churches in the country – would be shut within weeks and remain closed for worship until such a time as the authorities considered it safe to reopen. So, here we are five months down the line and figuring out the best way to keep worshippers safe as we are being allowed to hold services which we plan to resume on the 23rd of this month.

 

 

All the church events that we enjoy during the year, usually at least one per month, haven’t been able to happen which is quite sad but the Fund-raising Team held a mini, mini fete last Saturday and raised just over a hundred pounds for the church so it’s a start for us to build on. We know that our annual ’Harvest of a Quiet Eye’ weekend cannot take place in the church but perhaps we can do something on line? It may be too difficult for us to figure out how it could happen; we shall see. What we were hoping to display this year were the activities that people got up to during Lockdown.

'Looking back' ~ 2020

We begin this New Year with a fresh start, opening a new page for St. Peter’s, and, since this is to be my last regular monthly Notes for the Parish Magazine, I thought I would like to glance back at some changes I have seen in Clippesby since attending Annual Parochial Church meetings in the 1950s, these were held after afternoon services either in the church or the church room. The PCC didn’t appear to meet much at any other time in those days; now we have concurrent PCC meetings with the other churches of the Benefice three times a year plus we each have one or two separate meetings, things move on.

 

As well as accommodating church meetings the little church room – having been requisitioned - was home to the CO of the Newfoundland Regiment for a time during WW2. Mrs. Annison’s Sunday school lessons took place in that little room, also community gatherings, such as funeral wakes, wedding breakfasts and some very popular whist drives. There was just enough room to cram in fifteen tables for whist but the four players on the fifteenth had to stand up! With only a small open fire and a kettle Mrs. Annison would make tea for everyone and offer her famous Norfolk Rusks. Now we have a proper kitchen – not very big – in the church tower with a water tap, such luxury!

 

At one time I think the Sunday school numbered up to forty two children, it closed in 1958 when there were twenty two on the roll. I remember when the Sunday school outings by coach to the seaside at Great Yarmouth were the highlight of the year. Now there are few children in the village and no Sunday school. In times past children could safely walk round the village carol singing and now because of the traffic it would be too dangerous.

 

There have been several costly restorations of St. Peter’s over the years, not all were good; I recall how sad I felt on seeing that our beautiful wall paintings on the Arches and in the Chancel had been plastered over and obliterated. Other changes have been for the better though. The Electric heaters are so much more efficient than the two little oil stoves of long ago. The pews being made moveable let us stage exhibitions and have hospitality areas. A paved path makes the church accessible and the compost loo fulfils a need.

 

The list of things needing doing is still quite a long and costly one but I’m confident that our new churchwardens together with the Rector and the Clippesby Church Fund-raising Team have this in hand. We all have a task to do for Our Lord and His Church and over the years so many dear friends, long gone, have played their part in the life of Clippesby church, some of them lie buried in the churchyard and others live on in the memory; they handed on the baton to us just as it was given to them, and so it goes on.

 

Jean  January 2020

(stained glass border from the Margaret Rope window)

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