Living by still waters … and a bottle of sherry

The post of Poet Laureate is up for grabs as the current incumbent, Carol Ann Duffy, completes her ten-year term this year. You can’t apply for the job; instead the Queen appoints someone on the advice of the Prime Minister who, I suspect, is a bit too tied up at the moment to give the matter any serious consideration. It is an intriguing job in that you don’t actually have to write any poems, which makes me supremely qualified for the post. However I would struggle to accept the appointment, if invited, as I wouldn’t know how to deal with the butt of sherry (equialent to 720 bottles) that comprises the stipend for the role.

Sally and I bought our first, and last, bottle of sherry not long after we were married only because Sally’s grandmother was coming to lunch and we knew she liked a drop of Harvey’s Bristol Cream before her meal. The bottle remained untouched in our drinks cupboard, apart from that single glass poured from it, for decades. It moved house with us three times with no hope of ever being opened again, yet we could never bring ourselves to throw the bottle away. (Sally’s grandmother, the only person who touched the stuff, had died not long after we were married, but long enough after her lunch date with us for there to be no suggestion that it was our cooking that had done her in).

In some regards the location of that bottle defined where home was. It was finally disposed of before we set off on our gap year (another deliberate severing of emotional attachments?) but its moral equivalents were moved onto our narrowboat and we proceeded to haul around the country, several bottles of random spirits that not once saw the light of day in seven months on the waterways.

At the end of November we moved into our new house in North Somerset and the ‘sherry’ bottles came with us, thereby defining this as being the place to put down roots (because where your drinks cabinet is, that is where your heart is!).

I never envisaged living in the countryside, but as with all the other houses we have lived in, this one seems to have been hand- picked for us by God himself, and I couldn’t be happier to be here. It lies in the foothills of the Mendips with stellar views over the Bristol Channel to the west and into the Somerset levels to the south but still gives us easy access to the vibrant, multi-cultural city that is Bristol. (And for those of you who have followed previous blogs, you will be relieved to hear that the beach is not too far away either!).

The overriding sensation though is having been brought to a haven, a tranquil place in which we can put down roots, but with a whole series of new adventures and new relationships to explore. Our travels have taught us to hold lightly what God has put into our hands and it is with excitement and expectation that we face the months and years ahead.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he refreshes my soul. (Psalm 23 v1-3)