Once again, our intrepid explorers met early on a Saturday morning at St John’s Church for the latest coach trip, organised for us by Tracey, Catherine and Sandra. This time we were heading for Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes.

The March History talk by Paul Harding from Discover History was about Plague and Pestilence in Worcester and over 75 people enjoyed a highly entertaining talk again, if not a bit gruesome at times!

On Saturday March 2nd we held our 12th and most successful Community Breakfast.

At the 1993 Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, John Major launched what became one of the most widely-derided and satirised campaigns of modern times: ‘Back to Basics’. To be fair, the Prime Minister’s words were wilfully misinterpreted by the media; as he himself would observe years later, it was an example of how soundbites taken out of context can be misleading.

About 60 people enjoyed the first of Paul’s talks for the year, this time he gave us a lively, and of course interesting, talk on the 1950s. It was a fast-paced period of our history

Mental health issues have, over recent months, become a hot topic. There is a new openness and a reduction in the perceived stigma attached to acknowledging mental health problems.
February 4th – 10th 2019 has been designated children’s mental health week and so this is a good time for us to consider this matter and to ask, in particular: What is the Christian response to mental health issues? The immediate and short answer is of course, exactly the same as the Christian response to any form of human suffering: To meet it with compassion, with prayer and, where possible, with the appropriate practical action.

From Robert Jones, Archdeacon of Worcester

We live in tumultuous political times, so much so that many people are literally switching off from TV and radio news. It does indeed seem that megaphone diplomacy, which, of course, is no diplomacy at all, is playing a bigger part in our public discourse. We must not have a false sense that history automatically gets better as we learn to live better, when it is clear that human sinfulness can mess things up just as effectively today as it ever did.

The December presentation from Paul Harding was all about Christmas through the ages. As per usual it was a wonderful series of fascinating facts and anecdotes about Christmas introducing where things had come from and the links to pagan times but majoring on the Wartime Christmas.

On a dank and miserable morning, we gathered at church to go by coach to the Christmas Market at Bath, one of the best in the country. Bath is a UNESCO World Heritage Site so a wonderful day was expected and had by all!

“Luise has already bagged Good King Wenceslas” was the message I received from Graham when he told me that St Stephen is the theme for this month’s magazine. Out of the window, then, went my first idea!
So what does that leave me? St Stephen: the first Christian martyr, whose story is told in chapters six and seven of Acts, where he is described as “A man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.”