God’s Own People

This Tuesday, I had the most interesting day. It all started with lunch with two very lovely friends, who are both priests. The lunch was filled with fantastic stories from my friend Ann who has been appearing on Big Brother with Rylan Clark-Neal and there were some great tales of her rapping in her dog collar amongst other things. Her husband Christopher is a Naval Chaplain, and we talked about his work in the Sea Cadets, which inspired me to explore the opportunity in the New Year to possibly get involved, apparently one of the key challenges for most organisations is getting leaders engaged; I’m up for the challenge. I’ve included my picture of Christopher in this blog, maybe you’ve seen him darting around London in his cassock on his Vespa.


This was followed by one of the best evenings I’ve had in an age. Since my first viewing in September, I’ve been captivated by the film God’s Own Country, from what I was to learn this evening so were a lot more people. I wrote another blog about this here too, featuring some of the pictures from my exhibition The Working Man from 2012.

I arranged to meet a number of other fans of the film in London for drinks and another viewing of the film. What I was greeted with were people who felt like friends instantly, I’ve never experienced anything like this since my days in the Royal Air Force.
The film seems to have captured the hearts of what I would call kindred spirits; people who ended up connecting this night with stories of their lives, loved scenes from the film and an overall feeling of love.

God’s Own Country has managed to stir emotions that continue to this day, and our conversation continues online. I have also created a Spotify playlist you can find here https://open.spotify.com/user/112943775/playlist/70d3RcJ9DVUhEpMvSSC1UG

In 2018, we plan to meet again, I hope regularly and continue to continue the journey we have started together, a coming together of kindred spirits, the creation of a new family connected by the amazing God’s Own Country.