More Weasels and Wildwooders
As far as I'm concerned, every trace of Christian charity goes out the window, when it comes to these people who try and break into parts of the church building and steal things. I mean, no doubt they are deeply needy people. But I can't help feeling the thing they chiefly need is a damn good whacking.
Apart from anything else, I don't have a lot of sympathy with them because they must be so thick, if they think there's anything worth stealing in a church. Almost any other building in the parish has got stuff of more value in it. Yet there are still people who seem to believe this rumour that 'the church' - wherever and whoever that may be - is incredibly wealthy, and therefore any small parish church is worth knocking over. In practice we have taken to locking as little as possible in the building, on the grounds that if it's not locked, people can look inside and see there's nothing worth stealing, and won't bother to break the lock. The only major locked door is the vestry door, where we keep what little stuff might be called valuable like the photocopier, the altar silver and the parish registers; and this door and lock probably are impregnable to all but a chain saw. This is not a challenge! We have also put a lock on the robes cupboard, because a couple of years ago several of the choir robes were stolen. To what end I shudder to imagine, for I haven't yet seen any vagrants walking around in the choir women's old garments.
Well, on Tuesday afternoon someone found himself in the church alone, with a locked robes cupboard door in front of him, and thought with his tiny weasel mind that there must be something worth stealing inside, so broke it off its sliding track. This particular individual did not have any secret desire for choir robes, so left them there, having caused enough damage to cost us as much as replacing a choir robe.
It was while we were assessing the damage that we noticed that about a dozen music editions of Ancient and Modern New Standard were missing from the choir cupboard. This absolutely beats bizarre into a cocked hat. Has the Bible kidnapper turned his attention to hymn books now? Is a rival congregation trying to rob us of our music? or set up in competition?
I am having extreme difficulty persuading people I did not set this up myself in order to force the PCC to buy new hymn books ...
Apart from anything else, I don't have a lot of sympathy with them because they must be so thick, if they think there's anything worth stealing in a church. Almost any other building in the parish has got stuff of more value in it. Yet there are still people who seem to believe this rumour that 'the church' - wherever and whoever that may be - is incredibly wealthy, and therefore any small parish church is worth knocking over. In practice we have taken to locking as little as possible in the building, on the grounds that if it's not locked, people can look inside and see there's nothing worth stealing, and won't bother to break the lock. The only major locked door is the vestry door, where we keep what little stuff might be called valuable like the photocopier, the altar silver and the parish registers; and this door and lock probably are impregnable to all but a chain saw. This is not a challenge! We have also put a lock on the robes cupboard, because a couple of years ago several of the choir robes were stolen. To what end I shudder to imagine, for I haven't yet seen any vagrants walking around in the choir women's old garments.
Well, on Tuesday afternoon someone found himself in the church alone, with a locked robes cupboard door in front of him, and thought with his tiny weasel mind that there must be something worth stealing inside, so broke it off its sliding track. This particular individual did not have any secret desire for choir robes, so left them there, having caused enough damage to cost us as much as replacing a choir robe.
It was while we were assessing the damage that we noticed that about a dozen music editions of Ancient and Modern New Standard were missing from the choir cupboard. This absolutely beats bizarre into a cocked hat. Has the Bible kidnapper turned his attention to hymn books now? Is a rival congregation trying to rob us of our music? or set up in competition?
I am having extreme difficulty persuading people I did not set this up myself in order to force the PCC to buy new hymn books ...
posted by Tony at 11/26/2004 10:29:00 pm
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