Adrian Plass

Hello, everybody.

Hope the first of the tennies / tens / tense / teens / is going well for you. Last year was busy and productive for Bridget and I, as well as being lazy and unproductive at irregular intervals. Trips on behalf of World Vision to Canada and Germany in the autumn were particularly interesting, not least because they were preceded by a major crash on the M25 in which our car was demolished by a lorry and had to be written off. We were unharmed apart from minor bruises caused by tightening seatbelts, but it was a shaking, jarring experience that has probably not been properly processed by either of us. It is, as we all know, common practice for Christians to talk about how even the most dreadful events make sense in retrospect. We’re not holding our breath over this one.

Traumatic as that incident was, perhaps the most significant aspect of 2009 was the fact that, in the middle of August, Bridget and I moved from the town of Hailsham in Sussex where we had lived for thirty years. We live in North Yorkshire now, near the little village of Kettlewell, home of the famous Calendar Girls - remember the film? Walk a mile from Kettlewell in the direction of the even smaller village of Conistone, and you will find the entrance to Scargill House. Just inside the big black gates at the bottom of the drive you will discover two semi-detached cottages. We live in the one on the right.

Why are we here? Good question. Why on earth, at this stage of our lives, did we (and our dog Lucy and our cat Pepsi) make the decision to sell up and move from one end of England to the other? The answer is quite long and complicated, but its heart is very simple. We believe that God wants us here. We are proud and privileged to be a small part of the resurrection of Scargill House, a Christian Conference / holiday / retreat / centre that closed eighteen months ago for a variety of reasons. We intend to spend the next two years contributing everything we can to the development of this captivating project.

What will we actually be doing, apart from giving our full support to Phil and Di Stone, the new director and his wife who happen to be old friends of ours? During the first six months of 2010 we shall be acting as ambassadors for the Scargill Movement, primarily in the north of England, combining our usual mixture of storytelling, humour and poetry with updates and information about this brilliant resource.

In addition, as full members of the community, we will be available as speakers for church weeks, weekends, away-days or retreats at Scargill itself. Alternatively, we will be able to contribute a workshop or entertainment evening to any event. Have a look at scargillmovement.org to find out more about all this, and to see some pictures of the house and estate.

Our happy involvement with the street child charity ‘Toybox’ continues this year. In February we shall be travelling to Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador with a small team, looking at work done with children by some of the churches in that country. Hopefully we shall come back newly fuelled with a passion that can be channeled into a major fundraising initiative to be launched by Toybox later in 2010.

As far as writing is concerned, a new book is due to be published in the spring of this year. My friend Jeff Lucas and I have compiled a book of letters which, I believe, is to be called ‘Seriously Funny’. Writing letters is rather fun, because a greater freedom of expression is possible. Having said that, I would prefer you to read the unedited version…

A special joy for me is that a book containing all my poetry is coming out in the autumn. ‘Silences and Nonsenses’ celebrates twenty-five years of writing, and I am thrilled like a child at the prospect of holding the first copy in my hands. Some things are so very exciting.

Bridget and I do all sorts of thing in the course of one year, and we feel woefully inadequate at times. If you have a moment please be kind enough to pray that we will find the courage and the trust to do what has to be done, enjoying what is enjoyable, and living peacefully with what is not. We pray the same for you, and we thank you so much for your support.