Villages are the same...

Villages are the same in character but individually different. That's my hunch, anyway. Looking around my new one, in company with Barney

, I could see the village history in its street names and buildings. The church: big and important in the past, less so now. Most villages seem to have 'The Old Rectory' somewhere, like East Chinnock and Steep. Then there are signs of the former wheelwrights and carters who kept the wheels turning and goods on the move. (George Sturt's 'The Wheelwright's Shop' describing his family business in Farnham in the early 1900s is still an engrossing read). Then there's the forge which looked after everything metal, in trade, commerce and domestic use. I haven't seen 'The Old Bakery' yet, but am sure there is one. And then the encircling fields and footpaths around the still small village of 400 people.

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I've retired!

And I never thought I would. The removal van came and loaded all our stuff into it. We said our goodbyes, hugged the people we'd got to know so well after 13 years and then left. Retiring as a vicar is very odd. One moment I'm there, involved in the lives of lots of people in the community through the conduct of baptisms, weddings and funerals and the next I'm in a house a hundred miles away with all my worldly goods, a stranger in the local community. My wife and I have moved to south Somerset, to a hamlet of around four hundred people. It's not done to remain in your former parishes and anyway, house prices in my part of Hampshire were unaffordable for us. Before clergy pensions came in, clergy most often remained in their parishes until they died, and the concept of retirement was alien. There were therefore struggling parishes with elderly vicars in poor health, while some parishes had hearty eighty year-olds leading their services and carrying out significant pastoral ministries during the week. George Ewart Evans in his research in East Anglia in the 1950s has some interesting stories on this topic, gleaned from parishioners who saw their vicars ageing and declining alongside them.