Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
One of the reasons, though, that church schools are popular here (at least the Church of England and Catholic ones - I don't know about the others) is that they generally have excellent academic records, hence many parents are keen to send their children there regardless of religious beliefs.
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My wife and I were introduced to the vicar of the school my kids were about to attend. He asked me when was the last time that I went to church.
It must of been a miracle that I'd been in St Paul's cathedral that very lunchtime and I began to tell him how I had been playing backgammon in the church yard when it had started to rain. My wife just looked at me in horror. My friend and I had decided to go down into the crypt to continue our game. Unfortunately, as we played, we were surrounded by more and more onlookers and eventually a curate(?) came over and wanted to know if we were playing for money.
I should point out at this point that it cost £10 to go into the main church, even the crypt we were playing in had been converted into a coffee house, and of course we were obviously playing for money - I naturally assumed that they wanted a cut. This seemed to upset the poor chap and he demanded that we leave. It seemed the same to my simple brain whether they made money from coffee, tourists or backgammon but he simply stated that this was a house of God. I looked around at the queues for coffee and cakes, the restaurant in the corner (which actually looked quite good) and the ticket machine for people wanting to see Nelson's grave - I guessed he must of skipped that bit in the bible about the tax collectors.
Luckily at the school the priest chap was taken away in the middle of my story and my wife looked very relieved. I had to spend the rest of the evening being steered away from believers by my poor suffering wife.
PS the next time we went in to the crypt the very same curate came over and said he'd be happy to let us play if we tried not to attract too much attention - this seemed like a very good compromise.