1. I walked the day we moved from leafy Strawberry Hill to Woodford in 1960, for my dad’s work. I was youngest by 5 years. With 4 sisters, I was destined 2b named Charlotte, & everyone was shocked. Fortunately I was baptised Michael Anthony, sharing Padua’s feastday. #OfGodAndMe 
2. It was a ‘mixed marriage’: so Catholic schooling. I lived the slow impact of Vat2. Our churches were Franciscans at Woodford Green & a brand new church of Blessed Anne Line a walk away; my school was solid. I adored Midnight Mass, the words of hymns, but much else was a blur.
3.I loved my sisters & felt truly enfolded in family. We did homework together. If they weren’t quite ready 2 go out, I took their boyfriends into the garden for football & cricket, & got them proper sweaty. The eldest was married & gone 2 NZ in 1967. She had been my second mum.
4. With the War & RAF my dad had married quite late, & he now had health challenges. I remember reading the Evening News with him: the Picture Crossword; his stubbly face. He’d been a sportsman, & told me how he went to school each day from the IOW 2 Portsmouth, by train & ferry.
5.With his ops, I was packed off at 3 to Eastbourne gparents: they had a cat! & Yorkshire vocabulary. The dislocation gave rise 2 a stammer: a huge life challenge. My gdad took me daily to parks. He sat on a bench; I sought out a ballgame with likely kids. Only turned down once.
6. In 1969, I was found a summer camping experience in North Wales. The brochure promised ‘a sane Christian influence’. It was fantastic to see hills, coast & another country. A Filipina kitchen hand named Bambi came up Snowdon with us...I guess I related to her as a sister...
7. ...she was (already then) Charismatic, and told me that God loved me, that I was his special child. No one had ever spoken to me like that about God. Maybe she said that to all the boys... but it had a profound impact, as did buying a copy of Good News For Modern Man NT.
8.1970 was a tough year. Orient got promoted (I went on Saturdays with a school pal, & with my Dad 2 night games) but 2 more sisters got married, in June & August. Reader, I came home & cried. My dad retired. I left school & we moved to Christchurch where he could sail once more.
Tomorrow... Do you remember travel?! Memories from Greece to the West of Scotland; being A Community Service Volunteer; discovering #ThomasMerton & being Home Alone quite a bit...these words this morning kind of fit. It's something to be doing this in the light of Pentecost!
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