Our great schools

The current Covid stuff affects every aspect of life at the moment. This week I have been reminded of one section of our society that is hugely touched, namely our schools. Yesterday I attended Zoom governors' meeting for both Christ the King Primary and Corpus Christi High schools. I am very happy to report that they are both doing a fantastic job in such difficult circumstances. I felt I should share with the Christ the King Governors my experience of last Thursday...

Year 4 (Standard 2 Juniors for oldies!) look at the priesthood in their RE syllabus and we often are asked to pop into the schools to chat with the kids. This year, of course, this was not possible so I "popped in" to a meeting with them and their teacher by Teams (that's Microsoft's version of Zoom for the uninitiated). I enjoyed it a lot, answering their 8/9 year old questions and chatting with them in their homes. Their questions were good, they were well-behaved and engaged with what was going on. When did I decide to be a priest, where did I train, what's good and what's difficult, were among the questions, the last one being did I think Fr Andy's jokes were funny!

Anyway, I told them how I trained in Rome, which caught their imagination, so when a thankyou card arrived, this was what they had drawn - that's the Colosseum of course, beautifully drawn, with me in front looking very clerical. Sorry the pic is a bit blue - my scanner is too old for my one year old computer and they won't talk to each other, so the pic is taken off a computer camera shot. Thankyou, Year 4!