Bleeding canker

One of my colleagues was hit and, in falling as a result, broke her arm badly in one of our churches yesterday evening. She was rehearsing a wedding when it seems a couple of men came in; the family chased them off, the groom administered first aid, and a Churchwarden came when called and spent a long time at A&E. Two men have since been arrested. We are all a little shaken by this (although not as much as my colleague is); it is not that long ago that the diocese urged us again to take all the obvious safety precautions, but there is an inevitable vulnerability being open and accessible doing our work.

This is not the only bad news of the day. We had to send out an e-mail to all the partners in the Inspiring Communities project to say the Government has suddenly ceased funding it and will only honour any expenditure from here on which results from an existing binding contractual agreement, which may not, for instance, include courses some school pupils are expecting to be part of their core provision at the beginning of the new academic year. When the programme had not been included in the earlier list of Government cuts we had assumed it would run its course until funding ended next Spring, but it turns out we were wrong.

So there is not much rejoicing as we begin a summer holiday. Meanwhile, an earlier sadness was the loss of several horse chestnuts in Bradley churchyard to bleeding canker, but some of those at Evensong on Sunday did think this stump and the growths on it had an ethereal beauty, so I went back yesterday and took these pictures of it.