We had had nowhere to live after leaving Uxbridge. Once again Tom Butler came to our rescue. He wrote to all parishes in the Willesden Area asking if any had a spare house for a spare bishop. The Vicar and PCC of St Alban’s North Harrow said, “We’ll have him.”
In April 1986 I began twenty-five happy years as an honorary curate at St Alban’s and an assistant bishop in the Diocese of London. Raymond Jones, a spiritual and pastoral priest and his wife Jo, gave us a warm welcome. Very sadly Raymond died from Leukemia a few months after we arrived. Churchwardens Wally Packer and David Browning ensured I learned my new job.
Later in the year a fire destroyed the large hall next to the church The insurance made possible the building of a new hall closer to the church, with a covered passage between the two.
Simon Farrer, the fulltime curate, looked after the parish until Peter Hemingway, vicar of a nearby parish, was appointed to succeed Raymond. He and his wife Babs helped to develop the parish. As a voluntary curate I did what I could to support Peter by helping with services, pastoral care and the work of the PCC.
Roger Davies and Paul Baguley were Lay Readers whose sermons and care for people always impressed me. Paul was later ordained and continued to serve St Alban’s as a voluntary priest.
Clusters
Thanks to twenty or so volunteer coordinators, Clusters came into being, each coordinator keeping in touch with people in a group of roads in the parish and alerting clergy to any particular pastoral need.
Bring and share lunches organised by a team of Cluster coordinators, led by Betty Cooper and Sheila Brownlee, assisted by Jane, became a regular feature of parish life. It was good to welcome people from other faiths and outside the parish to enjoy each other’s company as well as the food.
I was always cheered by our quarterly meetings. Neville Johnson was an assiduous minute’s secretary, and Valerie Rolph wonderful at keeping in touch with coordinators. Helping with Clusters was one of the joys of my time at St Alban’s.
PCC meetings were not always such fun, but I was grateful to be able to keep in touch by attending them when I was not elsewhere. As a member of the pastoral team I particularly appreciated celebrating Communion in people’s homes.
Ecumenical
I always enjoyed and was encouraged by the weekly ecumenical meetings of ministers and clergy from the five different churches in the parish. We met in each other’s houses, prayed together and supported each other.
Malawi
Members of the congregation were patient about my continual description of our life in Malawi and in 2006 a group decided to go to see for themselves. Gerry and Marilyn Divine, who led the group, Eileen Eggington, Jai Mahadeo, Philip and Paula Crouch, Malcolm and Pam Grant spent two strenuous weeks meeting people and getting to know the country.
A year later Eileen Eggington, Joan Foster and our son Bazil led a group of twenty young people aged seventeen to twenty-five on a two week visit to Malawi. Several people from Malawi have since visited St Alban’s and the congregation continues to support work there.
Eileen’s enthusiasm for developing a partnership with people in Malawi knew no bounds, in 2008 she became a trustee of the Malawi Association for Christian Support (MACS) where I and Jane were also trustees, and in 2009 became its Project officer which she continues to be.
Ordination of women
The ordination of women was something I had encouraged while in Malawi, I joined Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) immediately after returning to England. In 1987 Jane and I flew to New York where Bishop Hugh Montefiore, Bishop of Birmingham and I took part in the ordination of Susan Cole-King, who had become a friend during her twenty years as a doctor in Malawi. She was keen to have bishops from the Church of England to take part in the service. There is more about Susan in the chapter on Health.
In 1994 I had the joy of ordaining ninety-two women as priests in St Paul’s Cathedral on two consecutive days together with a different bishop each day.
In the following years I continued to ordain women as priests in several of London’s five Episcopal Areas where the bishop was refusing to do so.
It was good to be able to welcome Joan Foster as Vicar of St Alban’s in 1996 where she shared her many skills with the people in the parish and beyond. Joan’s creative mind brought to life a delightful all-weather garden between church and hall, providing a popular extension to the hall. She also did much to enliven the vicarage garden where she and Jonathan welcomed Cluster and parish parties.
David Tuck, whom I met in Zambia during the five years he served there, was vicar of St John’s church in the next-door parish of Pinner. I was delighted when he became an honorary curate at St Alban’s in 2004. David was enthusiastic about interfaith relations and arranged for members of St Alban’s to visit places of worship of the many different faiths living in Harrow. I was fascinated by those visits.
Leaving St Alban’s
We said a very sad goodbye to the generous-hearted and kind people of St Alban’s in January 2011. Our twenty-five years with them could not have been happier. It was the longest time I had ever spent in one place.
Memorial plaque
A working-party from the congregation, chaired by Philip Crouch, arranged for a plaque to be installed in the church in 2017.
Away from St Alban’s
As an honorary curate it was possible for me to do a variety of things outside the parish, taking confirmations and ordinations throughout the Diocese but also being involved with other things, including becoming Visitor to the Magdalen Fellowship for clergy who had been divorced and Warden of the Friends of USPG.
Mozambique
The following are excerpts from the diary I kept for the two weeks I visited Mozambique in June 1989.
After co-leading a team visiting Malawi, I took a plane packed with Muslims from Zambia and Malawi who were travelling to take part in a festival in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Dinis Sengulane had been elected Bishop in 1976 on the day after his thirtieth birthday. He was the charismatic Bishop of Lebombo in Southern Mozambique and had built many links with friends in Britain and America. The Diocese of Niassa in Northern Mozambique, where I spent most of my time, had few links with any other part of the world.
The Sengulane home, with its four young children, was a first floor flat in a big block in the Avenida Julius Nyere. People wandered in and out of the flat non-stop – a young man from Bloemfontein – a sad looking mother hoping Dinis had found an evening meal for her and her child.
There were street boys outside. Religious Sisters ran a soup kitchen for them, followed by Bible study and an hour of school work, aimed at preparing them to go back to school. They had hopes of starting a carpentry training course.
Dinis is exploring the possibilities of contacting the one credible leader of the MNR (Mozambique National Resistance) in the country and leader of Frelimo (Freedom and Liberation for Mozambique) fighting to rid the country Portuguese rule. He feels strongly that the present policies are getting nowhere – they both remain strong and could go on for ever. There must be talk of peace. But with whom?
Dinis had a meeting with President Chissano this morning who said, “Only the Church can find a way to peace for us.” The British Ambassador is also encouraging and willing to help when opportunity offers. It is an awful responsibility. The Christian Council of Mozambique is carrying on an extraordinary amount of work from its tiny headquarters building.
Monday 12 June
I flew 400 miles north to the Diocese of Niassa with Bertha Manhique, Bishop Paulino Manhique’s daughter who was very shy about the English she had learned at school. The tourist book in the plane was bilingual; I read the Portuguese and was corrected by Bertha. She read the English and I corrected her. We got off at Nampula and were met by Bishop Paulino.
Bishop Paulino Manhique has many challenges in his Diocese. He has ten clergy now at Metangula falling over each other’s feet. He could transfer a few to Tete and Nampula – but what to do with the rest? Northern Brazil has offered priests with special skills but Government will not grant a post to expatriates, so he has turned down the offer.
I went on to Nampula, halfway to the Indian Ocean. It is ringed by mini moon mountains. There was another party to meet us, led by Grace Zingani, full of excitement. She didn’t know that I had a wife but was very anxious that I should give her love to Jane. In UMCA days missionaries were not allowed to marry and I think she is probably still laughing at the idea of Jane and I being married.
Four Sisters of Mother Teresa’s Order came to greet us as we finished our Eucharist in Father Silulu’s backyard. They came from India, Bangladesh, Uganda and Tanzania. To the three usual vows which Sisters make, these have added a fourth – to share what you have with the poorest of the poor.
Saturday 17 June
In Pemba I had an interview with the Portuguese Governor of the Province, very forthcoming but had no English. He was very appreciative of aid agencies, especially Oxfam. Transport was his great problem. “Don’t go off the new tarred main road, there you will be safe from landmines.”
15Km from Pemba we made a sudden diversion, they said it was too “gula, gula” nearby, to do some shopping. I thought they meant a few hundred yards – then I was told it was three-and-a-half Km – then another ten minutes and we ended up 33Km from the main road. I was not too worried about safety as there were many people about – continuous villages, a bulldozer remaking the road and two check-points. Our destination turned out to be a tiny basket-making set-up, with six people working on the khonde (verandah) and the purpose was to buy me a new hat.
We left at 2.10p.m., the programme said we had a meeting with the congregation at 2.30, a good hour away. At about 3.00p.m. and 12Km from the main road, two men came running towards us – “Bandidos in the village!” We waited to see developments – then a third woman came reporting shooting. We headed back to alert the militia. They agree we should have an armed escort to test the road before we travelled on it. They said two other vehicles had passed safely but soldiers on the road reported that two people had been killed in an attack. We went on to another militia HQ at Mecufi, a deserted Portuguese small holiday resort. The very clued-up commandant offered us the alternatives of going now with 8 militia or staying the night. As it was dark by now we decided to stay. We sat about in collapsed chairs at the militia HQ until 8.00pm. We were then taken to another house with a bed and loo and given an excellent meal of pasta.
Sunday 18 June
Off at 6.30a.m. with eight militia armed with rifles and bazookas. When we reached the village of the night before – Murébue – we heard reports of two people having been killed and that the children had run away into the bush. Everything in turmoil. I asked to go and see what had happened. Beside a hut was the body of a young man of perhaps nineteen, shot through the chest. Three huts had been burned down, there was a burned-out lorry on the left and a burned-out army ambulance on the right half full of maize. The bandidos had attacked, shot wildly, threw one hand-grenade which did not explode, burned down huts and lorries and after looting, took fourteen captives. The whole village was in a state of shock.
On the other side of the road was another body covered with palm leaves on an overturned bed. They said he came from Pemba, was about 25 and was working on a firewood lorry. He had been shot through the neck and groin and abdomen. The bandidos had disappeared into the bush and the militia did not seem very interested in pursuing them. We took two on board our pick-up and 1km down the road we passed a man being carried on a stretcher to a clinic 3km ahead. Half of his jaw had been shot away and the rest was hanging down 4inches. We loaded him on the pick-up, dropped the soldiers at the army post and took the patient to the small general hospital.
Then to the congregation who had been expecting us for mass in the Assemblies of God church at 7.00am … It was now 8.30, too late for the service so we had a brief meeting in a nearby hotel. I talked in Chichewa and João translated. There were gifts from the Mothers’ Union – a carved Madonna, a walking-stick and from Phineas a basket and hat, which had caused all the problems and wrecked the planned service. Everyone was apologetic and reproached Phineas in a variety of languages. To the airport and off about noon back to Maputo and on to London.
It was good to be able to share my experiences with the Willesden World Group when I got back.
In 1998 a Covenant was signed by the Bishop of Lebombo, Dinis Sengulane, Bishop of London, Richard Chartres and Bishop of Niassa, Paulino Manhique.
ALMA (Angola London Mozambique Association)
In 2008 the original Covenant was extended to include Angola. The partnership continues to go from strength to strength.
Retreats
With a little trepidation we signed up in 1990 for our first eight day silent retreat spent on Bardsey Island , a teardrop in the sea off the tip of the LLeyn peninsular in North Wales. No books, no radio, only a bible and no turning back as the boat only crossed over on Saturdays, weather permitting. No talking, except for half an hour each day with one of the leaders to discuss the bible passage we had been with.
One wonderful night we “found God in all things” while we accompanied a RSPB worker ringing Shearwaters flying in at midnight to their hundreds of burrows on the hillside.
From then on we usually managed an eight-day silent retreat each year in different parts of the country.
Concern Universal
Was a fast growing fully ecumenical aid agency I joined as a trustee after meeting one of its staff in Malawi during a return visit there. The agricultural work they were doing alongside people in the central region, and a similar project on the Mozambiquan lakeshore, impressed me. They were also doing much to support a variety of water projects. In Sierra Leone staff were running a project for refugees.
I was a trustee for over ten years attending quarterly meetings in Hereford and was fascinated and encouraged by the contribution they were making in some of the poorest countries in the world.
Mines Advisory Group (MAG)
In 1994 as a member of the Board, I attended a meeting in the House of Commons on landmines – the anti-personnel variety. Ray McGrath an ex-SAS sergeant who trains mine lifters all over the world, laid out ten of the commonest types of these evil weapons; not designed to damage vehicles or buildings, but deliberately aimed at maiming and killing people. Made from plastic, different shapes and colours, some like powder -puffs They mostly kill children as they look after goats, collect firewood and maim adults as they struggle to till the land.
One of my most moving days came in 1997 when I was listening to Chris Moon and Princess Diana speaking on landmines. Chris had a leg blown off lifting mines in Mozambique and this year ran one hundred and forty-three miles across Saharan sand-dunes to raise money for the cause. “You don’t wibble when you get blown up” has gone into the memory bank.
Norway
Three times in the 1990’s we spent two weeks in Balestrand on the shores of Norway’s largest fjord. The European Chaplaincy arranged for me to be chaplain to the English-speaking congregation in a beautiful hand-crafted wooden traditional style stave church. Every Sunday was like a mini-Taizé with over a dozen different nationalities filling the church.
But there was plenty of time to walk, climb, slip and slide over the snow on the peaks, gaze down over breath-taking views of mountains and fjord, clamber over a glacier using ice-axe rope and nail boots, marvel at the blue of the glacier and puzzle over why the water flowing from it was jade green.
At the end of two weeks we would explore more remote places. In the spectacular Jotunheimen national park, one of the hostels we reached after a day’s walk, received its supplies of tinned food once a year by helicopter. We enjoyed watching the reindeer and learning how to crush tins.
Over an evening meal in another hostel, four skilled Norwegian climbers wanted to know where we had done our training for the Besseggen walk we had completed that day. They were adamant I should be profiled in the press for having done it as an untrained eighty-one-year-old. We didn’t tell them about my spectacular bruising from hip to knee! The most hilarious time was Jane doing the last ten metres on her backside and I doing ditto twenty seconds later.