Category: UK Visits

Golden Wedding celebration

My sister June & brother-in-law Garry on their wedding day 31st March 1962

I am the youngest of three children. My eldest sister June, is nearly nine years my senior. On Saturday 31st March 1962, at the tender age of eighteen, June married my brother-in-law Garry, the wedding taking place at Warwick Road Congregational (now United Reformed) Church in Coventry. The picture on the left is of the happy couple outside the Church following their marriage and the boyish face behind Garry’s shoulder is none other than Yours Truly, aged ten!

Exactly fifty years later, on Saturday 31st March 2012, June and Garry celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary. They marked the occasion by holding a most enjoyable buffet lunch in the Branksome Dene Community Rooms, Poole which overlook the beach near their home for the past twenty years in Westbourne, Bournemouth. The Prague Church Council kindly agreed to me having a pre-Easter rather than my normal post-Easter break, which allowed Sybille and I to be present and join the celebrations.

June and Garry 31st March 2012 © Ricky Yates

Our trip to the UK was only my second since moving to Prague just over three and a half years ago and was Sybille’s first during this same period of time. We flew from Prague to London Gatwick late in the evening of Thursday 29th March and stayed that night and the following one, in a little cottage in the grounds of Bishop’s Lodge, Worth, on the outskirts of Crawley. The Bishop’s Lodge of  Rt Rev’d Dr Geoffrey Rowell, Anglican Diocesan Bishop in Europe, is deliberately located only ten minutes drive from Gatwick making it very convenient both for him and us!

In order to make the most of our four days in the UK, I had arranged online in advance, to hire a car at the airport. In order save money on both hire charges and fuel, I chose to hire a vehicle from the ‘small car’ category. You can probably imagine my amusement when I discovered that the car allocated to me was a brand-new Skoda Fabia – made in the Czech Republic!

Whilst I am well used to driving my own right-hand drive (RHD) car on the right (as opposed to left) side of the road here in the Czech Republic, what did seem strange was driving a RHD car on the left side of the road, something I hadn’t done for over three and a half years. Several times I came very close to driving on the right with Sybille regularly telling me ‘links fahren’, in order to remind me not to cause an accident!

Just before 9am on Saturday 31st March, we set out from the cottage, to drive to Bournemouth/Poole. The journey took us diagonally across West Sussex, a part of England that was new to me having only previously visited the very north-eastern corner of the county to get to Gatwick Airport on several previous occasions and having once driven further south to Brighton. However, once we reached Hampshire and the M27 around Portsmouth, we were back on more familiar territory. We arrived at the Premier Inn in Bournemouth, where we were booked to stay the night, with plenty of time to park the car, get appropriately dressed and then walk down to the sea front to the celebratory lunch venue.

Garry & June cutting their Golden Wedding anniversary cake © Ricky Yates

My nephew Tim making his speech about his parents at their Golden Wedding celebration © Ricky Yates

It was interesting to realise that I was one of a handful of people present at the Buffet Lunch, who had also been present fifty years previously at June and Garry’s wedding. Most of the guests last Saturday, were friends that June and Garry have made locally since they moved to Bournemouth from just outside Leamington Spa in the Midlands, more that twenty years ago. Sybille and I also had the distinction of being the two who had travelled the furthest in order to join the celebrations.

June and Garry have two children, Tim and Tom – the arrival of Tim into this world making me an uncle at the age of twelve. Tim and his partner Deborah have since made June and Garry grandparents and in turn, have made me a great uncle! It was lovely to see my great niece Lilith and my great nephew Silas, for only the second time in theirs and my lifetime.

Below is the, probably never to be repeated family photo, unless that is, we all come together again to mark June and Garry’s Diamond Wedding Anniversary, now due in less than ten years time!

The family photo. From l to r: Deborah (Tim’s partner), Silas (great nephew), Jenny (sister), June (sister), Tim (nephew), Garry (brother-in-law), Tom (nephew), Lilith (great neice), Sybille & myself © Ricky Yates

A brief visit to my old stamping ground

Three regulars outside ‘The Red Lion’ at Little Tingewick © Ricky Yates

On Monday 19th July, I travelled by National Express coach from Derby to Milton Keynes, my first experience of travelling by long distance bus in the UK for many years. Whilst the journey went smoothly, it did include a tour of the campus of Loughborough University, (where actually nobody got on or off!), as well as passing through the centre of Leicester where we stopped for about thirty minutes.

The drop off point in Milton Keynes was fortunately not far from the main Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre. I was glad that I had chosen to take my clothes etc in my large rucksack which made walking from there, to and then around the shopping centre, very easy. I was also pleased to be able to finally purchase three packs of six ‘Thank You’ cards from the John Lewis Department Store. This is an extremely rare example of something I needed which I just could not find anywhere in Prague. Normally, having both Marks & Spencer & Tesco in the Czech Republic means that within reason, most things any Brit might want can be found.

After my brief foray around this familiar old shopping haunt, I then caught the X5 Cambridge – Oxford bus which took me from outside the CMK Shopping Centre to outside the even more familiar Tesco Supermarket on the outskirts of Buckingham. My good friends Mike and Nikki Geelan, had kindly offered me a bed for the night in their home in the village of Tingewick and Nikki picked me up from Tesco as she needed to do some shopping there.

Just after 6pm that evening, I set off to walk out of Tingewick, up the hill, to visit another old haunt, ‘The Red Lion’ at Little Tingewick. ‘The Red Lion’ is effectively the pub of Finmere, the village in which I used to live from January 1993 until September 2008. But whilst Finmere, together with the other nine villages of which I used to be Rector, are all in Oxfordshire, Little Tingewick is in Buckinghamshire – the county boundary runs down the middle of the road in front of the pub. Therefore I could always claim, as I did when drinking there, that I was at least six feet/two metres outside my parishes!

I caused a nice surprise to a few of the regulars as I walked in. The accompanying photograph is of three of them enjoying their respective pints in front of the pub. But for my pint (0.568 litre) of Staropramen, I was charged £3.75/112 Kc. In Prague, I will rarely pay more than 25 Kc for 0.5litre of Staropramen. I’m glad that one of the regulars kindly bought me my second pint!

Afterwards, I walked back down the hill to Tingewick and shared a thoroughly enjoyable evening meal with Mike and Nikki, together with our mutual good friends, their neighbours Marc and Donna. As we all said at the end of the evening, it was very much like old times.

Rev’d Christobel Hargraves, current Rector of the Shelswell Group of Parishes and me, former Rector, outside Finmere Rectory © Ricky Yates

An unwritten but most important rule for Anglican clergy is that they should not interfere in anyway in their former parish(es) to enable their successor to minister freely. This is one of the reasons why I’ve stayed away completely from the UK until now. My successor as Rector of the Shelswell Group of Parishes is Rev’d Christobel Hargraves who came into post in August 2009, nearly a year after I left. Chris and I had been in contact with each other by email on a number of matters, but we had never met. Recently she emailed me about a particularly tricky legal matter in relation to some land owned by a Church Trust. In my reply, as well as answering her query, I said that I would be staying overnight nearby on Monday 19th July and would she like to meet up with me. Her reply was positive with an invitation to coffee at Finmere Rectory on the morning of Tuesday 20th July.

On the Tuesday morning, I walked up the hill from Tingewick, past ‘The Red Lion’ and into the village. Seeing the familiar houses and roads did seem somewhat strange, as did walking across the gravel to the front door of my former home. I was greeted warmly both by Becky, my former part-time benefice administrator, and by Chris. Inevitably, a combination of redecoration and Chris’s own possessions, have put a different style upon my former home. But I had to admire the garden which, courtesy of her husband (also called Chris!), was in far better shape than Sybille and I had ever been able to get it!

My other reason for visiting my former home was because I had accidentally left some personal papers in the back of the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in the Benefice Office. They all related to the education of my two (now adult) children including various school reports. I was able to sort through them all; rescuing what I thought was worth keeping and consigning the remainder to Cherwell District Council’s paper recycling service.

Wizz Air flight delayed to 01.50 © Ricky Yates

I had arranged to fly back to Prague from Luton Airport with the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air. The flight was scheduled to leave at 20.10 on Tuesday evening meaning that I should have got back to the Chaplaincy flat by midnight CEST. As I queued at the check-in desk, there was an unwelcome notice that my flight was delayed 00.40 which I wishfully thought meant by just 40 minutes. The check-in clerk kindly broke my illusion telling me it meant the flight was now scheduled to depart at 00.40, four and a half hours late. As you can see from the pictures of the departure board, this eventually extended to 01.50.

Yes – it is the flight to Prague! © Ricky Yates

When I and the rest of the frustrated passengers did eventually get on board our flight, we were finally offered some explanation for the five and a half hour delay. The pilot explained that earlier in the day, (by now, the previous day!), the aircraft had experienced a bird strike and had to be pulled out-of-service for safety checks. The flight was uneventful and once reunited with my rucksack; I walked out of Prague airport just after 05.00 on Wednesday morning and by means of two bus journeys, reached my home at about 05.50.

Whilst I enjoyed my trip, spending roughly seven hours sitting in Luton Airport did rather take away some of the pleasure. The experience was uncannily similar to what happened to Sybille and I the last time we both flew in September 2008. Then we were stuck in Corfu Airport for several hours by a combination of bad weather and the returning Easyjet flight being overbooked and overweight. Thus, instead of getting back to Finmere Rectory just after midnight as scheduled, we got there at 07.00, just an hour and a half before the removal men arrived to start packing up our belongings to transport them to Prague! I will certainly be thinking twice before booking flights with a low-cost airline in the immediate future.

A deputation visit for ICS

As mentioned in my previous post, part of the reason for UK trip was to fulfil a deputation visit on behalf of the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) who both prayerfully and financially support the Prague Chaplaincy. This was organised earlier in the year when Sybille and I had originally planned to spend two weeks holiday in the UK. Therefore on Sunday 18th July, I was the preacher and celebrant at the 9.45am Eucharist at St. Luke’s Parish Church, Goostrey, Cheshire.

I had originally asked Phillip if I could borrow his car & drive myself from Derby to Goostrey. However, in response to my request, Phillip kindly offered to come with me and be my chauffeur. We set out early at 7.40am as although the journey should only take just over an hour, I wanted to allow time for any hold-ups en-route and arrive at the Church in good time.

It was only when we had been driving for about ten minutes across Derby, heading for the A50 to Stoke-on-Trent, that I realised my cassock alb & stole were still hanging up in the wardrobe of the guest bedroom in Phillip’s house! For years when Rector of the Shelswell Parishes, taking my clerical robes with me in the car to a service, was a matter of habit. Almost two years of only having one Church and therefore being able to leave them hanging in the vestry, very nearly caught me out.  A quick return journey to collect them meant we left the house for the second time at 8am. Fortunately, there were no delays on the A50, A500 or the M6 and we safely arrived in Goostrey soon after 9am.

St. Luke’s, Goostrey have financially supported the work of ICS for a number of years. My task was therefore to thank them for that support, explain something about what ICS does, and in particular, say something about the life and work of the Prague Chaplaincy. But I also had my normal Sunday task of preaching from the biblical readings set by the Lectionary for that Sunday.

Earlier in the week, when I looked at the biblical readings, I discovered one those wonderful coincidences – what I often call ‘God-incidences’. On the front cover of the current ‘ICS News and Prayer Diary’ are words of St. Paul, “Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim….” Colossians 1. 27-28. What was the New Testament reading set for the day? Colossians 1. 15-28 containing those very words! This wonderful ‘God-incidence’ enabled me to give an exposition of the biblical text whilst at the same time quite naturally saying something about the purpose of the Prague Chaplaincy and the support it receives from ICS.

The Goostrey congregation were warm and welcoming. They are currently in an interregnum as there previous vicar had to retire because of ill health and his successor is yet to be appointed. Therefore having me come and cover a Sunday for them was particularly appreciated. Whilst the liturgy was familiar being ‘Common Worship Order 1 in contemporary language’, just as we use at St. Clement’s, Prague, one unfamiliar task was having to publish banns of marriage, something I haven’t done for over two years. Whilst I can conduct a legal wedding here in the Czech Republic, this can only happen once the couple have completed legal preliminaries with the local Registrar, not after the publication of banns of marriage in Church by me!

The return journey to Derby went smoothly after which Phillip, Charlotte and I enjoyed a Sunday pub lunch at the ‘Seven Wells’. Whilst I have now quite happily lived without a television for nearly two years, I do just occasionally wish I could watch the odd sporting event that appeals to me. Therefore, I did thoroughly enjoy spending the rest of Sunday afternoon, watching the final round of the Open Golf Championship from St. Andrews on Phillip & Charlotte’s TV and seeing the young South African golfer Louis Oosthuizen, become Open Champion for the first time.

A visit to the UK

Phillip & Charlotte at Matt’s birthday sports afternoon © Ricky Yates

On Friday 16th July, I set out to make my first return visit to the UK since moving to Prague nearly two years ago. The five day trip was part holiday – spending sometime with my son Phillip in Derby; and part work – fulfilling a promise made earlier in the year to undertake a deputation visit for the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) who prayerfully and financially support the work of the Prague Chaplaincy.

As usual, the wonderful Prague public transport system got me from the bus stop, five minutes walk from the Chaplaincy flat, to the front entrance of Terminal 1 at Prague Airport, in little more than thirty minutes. Much more surprisingly, my Easyjet flight was taxiing down the runway at 10.45, exactly the time it was meant to be departing from Prague. Less than two hours later, we landed in the UK though, because of the one hour time difference, it was only 11.40 BST.

I flew into the rather incongruously named ‘Robin Hood Airport’ which serves Doncaster and Sheffield in South Yorkshire. At the end of 2009, Easyjet ceased to operate out of East Midlands Airport, the airport that serves Derby, and passed the Prague – East Midlands route to bmibaby.com. In their wisdom, bmibaby.com have suspended their Prague – East Midlands flights during July and August, presumably because it is more profitable to use their planes to fly British tourists to the Costas in Spain or the Greek islands during this time.

At UK passport control, I had great difficulty stopping myself from saying “Dobrý den” to the immigration officer, instead of saying “Good morning”. This was a problem I continued to have during the following few days, adjusting to the fact that I could actually speak in English and be completely understood. That I needed to say “Thank you” and “Goodbye”, not “Dekuji” and “Na shledanou”.

It was equally strange once I met up with Phillip in the airport car park. I got into the front passenger seat of his right-hand drive (RHD) car, in that respect no different from being in my RHD car in Prague. But he then proceeded to drive on the left-hand side of the road! After nearly two years of travelling or driving on the right-hand side of the road, that took some getting used to once again.

A forty minute drive down the M18 and the M1 got us to Derby. After Phillip had purchased a few things from Morrisons supermarket, I tried to get some Sterling currency out of the nearby ATM, using my Barclays Bank debit card. I had deliberately transferred funds from my Czech bank account to my UK Barclays account to be able to do exactly this. My attempt to withdraw cash was declined – a security measure because I hadn’t used the debit card in the UK for nearly two years!  So, before proceeding to Phillip’s home for a late lunch, we drove to a branch of Barclays Bank plc where I duly produced my passport and debit card with the request that I be allowed to withdraw my own money! I was extremely glad that I had arrived in the UK on a weekday rather than a weekend.

During my visit to the UK, I was asked several times whether there was anything I missed about the UK now I lived in the Czech Republic. My answer was always negative – as things currently stand, I don’t see myself living in the UK again in the foreseeable future. But on that Friday evening, I did do two thoroughly enjoyable things which it would not be possible to do in Prague.

Firstly, en-route to the city centre, Phillip and I purchased our evening meal from a Fish & Chips shop. We then walked slightly further on to the County Ground where we ate our fish and chips, (in Phillip’s case, pie and chips), whilst watching a day/night Twenty20 cricket match between Derbyshire CC and Northamptonshire CC. However, one less enjoyable, (though expected), thing was paying £3.00 a pint (0.568 litre) for a beer whilst watching the cricket when a 0.5 litre beer in most Prague bars would cost no more than £1.00.

The following day, Saturday 17th July, Phillip and his girlfriend Charlotte, had been invited to the birthday celebrations of Matt, a university friend of Phillip who, like Phillip, has stayed on in Derby after graduating. Matt kindly assured Phillip that his Dad was more than welcome to come along with him.

Matt lives with his heavily pregnant wife, in the village of Hilton, just to the west of Derby. For his birthday, he had invited various friends, his brother and sister, together with their respective boyfriends/girlfriends, to a picnic lunch and a sports afternoon on the nearby village playing field. So, after sandwiches, crisps and other goodies, accompanied by a variety of liquid refreshment, we spent the afternoon playing rounders and kwik cricket.

Afterwards, I returned with Phillip and Charlotte to their home. We quickly ate a stir-fry and got washed and changed before we rejoined the others in the centre of Derby where the birthday celebrations were resumed and the following two pictures were taken.

Father and Son © Ricky Yates
Phillip & Charlotte © Ricky Yates

More about my UK trip in my next post.