Episode 37 - Hector departs as George arrives at the crease

Welcome back to the Sunday Service with Church and Vickers – we hope you've all had a peaceful cricketing week.

This week, Mark brings some sad news to the Parish.

In a hard-hitting Sermon, Mark reveals that Hector is leaving the Parish after 36 fantastic services at the pulpit. "It has been a joy and a pleasure to serve at The Parish, and I will miss our weekly catchups" Hector announced to the village hall this week.

But fear not, The Sunday Service will continue, as Churchy is well-met at the crease by a new addition to the team.

As of next week, normal service shall resume, as George Gompertz steps up to the pulpit for the first time. With plenty of ideas to hand, we are very excited to see where this show goes.

Once again, a big thank you goes to our friends at Newbery Cricket for all their support.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Good morning, I trust your cricketing week has been full of orchestrated retirements, leading to standing ovations and then an hour and a half of complete and utter madness, leaving lots of questions still to be answered. It has been an extremely busy week in the parish, and the opening session of the week started with some sad news. And I'm not talking about England losing to a quality New Zealand side and Ben Stokes riding off into the sunset, leaving everybody with their mouths wide open. No, this involves young Mr Vickers. Because on Monday morning he came to see me at Boycott Vicarage to tell me he has another job in a different parish. It's a fantastic opportunity for him and I am delighted for him, but it means he will be no longer with us on the Sunday service. We are all going to miss him hugely, especially the choir, the parish eleven and the ladies of the Women's Institute. After he had told me the news we went to the Badgers Googly, watched England lose to New Zealand, and he told the parishioners. There were tears, especially from Ted the Landlord, who made young Mr Vickers stand under the dartboard as he received a standing ovation that Ben Stokes would have been proud of. Tuesday was spent doing parish visits and calming down the ladies of the Women's Institute who had received a double whammy of young Mr Vickers and young Mr Stokes riding off into the sunset. Mrs. Bartholomew was particularly upset and got herself very muddled when describing young Mr Vickers' match winning innings in the World Cup final and young Mr Stokes' beautiful reworking of Butch Casty and the Sundance Kid for the choir last Christmas. I reassured her that young Mr Vickers would be visiting the parish regularly, but she still asked why Mr McCullum was not leaving with him, and at that point I smiled and read her some stats from the good book. Wednesday I made my way to Chelmsford for Surreyshire's latest T twenty game against Essexhire. It was a night for the batters, as bowlers balls ended up in the river at regular intervals, and the cheers were heard as Harry Kane brought divine intervention to our association football team who continued to advance in the World Cup of America and now for England Mexico. At the same time, England were playing India in the opening T twenty international in Durham, and I did think to myself it is very confusing all this sport being played at the same time, but then I am old and easily confused. Thursday was spent helping young Mr Vickers pack his cassocks and he then had his final arts class in the Badgers Googly. We thought it only appropriate that Mr Vickers should model for the class and some of the portraits are magnificent. Unfortunately Mrs. Bartholomew is still very muddled, as hers was a beautiful depiction of Mr Stokes in a cassock leading the choir in song, but I do not have the heart to tell her that she had got that all wrong. I have left that to Mrs. Watts, who herself seemed a little perplexed when she produced a wonderful portrait of Mr. Vickers hitting the winning runs against Australia at Headingley back in 2019. At this point I left them to argue it out amongst themselves, and Mr Vickers very sensibly changed out of his cassock and came with me to the Badgers Googly, where Ted immediately burst into tears on seeing young Mr Vickers and made him stand under the dartboard again. This proved to be dangerous as Sexy Rex was attempting to hit a double six and with his poor eyesight did not see young Mr Vickers, but thankfully Sexy Rex hit double top, meaning he was bust but thankfully avoiding the top of Mr Vickers' head. We watched England's women beat South Africa at the Oval Shire to set up a World Cup final date with Australia on Sunday. Friday was spent doing paperwork with Mr Vickers, and he then gave a rousing speech to the Parish Eleven to fire them up for Saturday's game against the Gardeners of Great Knebend. His words were inspired as he talked about going to the well with him one last time. Although Mr Jenkins took him a little literally and asked him what time young Mr Vickers wanted to meet in the morning and who was bringing a bucket. It was a wonderful evening, and I left thinking the gardeners of the parish of Knebend were in for a proper game tomorrow. Saturday dawned with the sun shining, and young Mr Vickers joined me for breakfast where I presented him with a copy of the good book signed by the entire parish. We then made our way to the pavilion, and the eleven formed a guard of honour for young Mr Vickers, including Ted, who promptly burst into tears once again. The gardeners of Great Knee Bend arrived, and at the toss our captain Mr Reynolds told their captain that today was all about Mr Vickers. The gardeners won the toss and batted first. Reg, our opening bowler, in honour of young Mr Vickers, had arrived early and stayed off the local ale and he bowled a beautiful opening spell. The only problem was the gardeners lived up to their name and there was a lengthy delay between each ball as they did some gardening, which involved long discussions on the quality of grass and edge trimming. Anyway, they eventually made 255 off their forty overs, with Reg taking four for forty five and Ted spending the whole innings crying in the pavilion. At tea time I chatted to the gardener's eleven opening batsmen, who made a lovely thirty-five, and he has agreed to come and prune one of my bushes in the garden of Boycott Vigoritch. In fact he is very much into topoury and is going to prune our bush in the shape of Sir Geoffrey playing a forward defence which will be lovely. Anyway, our chase did not start well when sexy Rex was run out first ball backing up. I say backing up, but it looked like Rex had overindulged in Mrs. Bartholomew's pilchered sandwiches during the tea break, which caused something of an eruption at the non strikers end, and he was suddenly waddling back to the pavilion with batting gloves over buttocks and was promptly run out. We were all surprised when he dashed through the pavilion doors and headed straight for the gents and wasn't seen again until the end of the game. Biffer Harris came in at three and did some high quality biffing, but our chase stuttered throughout and the gardeners were always on top. We were eventually bowled out for 155 with our final wicket being that of Reg, who had taken to the local brew at tea time and during our chase took the novel step of taking his guard behind the stumps, and as the ball was bold he attempted to hurtle the stumps to meet the ball, only to demolish them with his trailing foot. We made our way to the Badgers Googly, where Ted was still crying, and he paid yet another tribute to young Mr Vickers, who was presented with Mrs. Watts' rather strange portrait of him from the art class, but he did seem delighted to have himself in paint hitting the winning runs at Headingley. So this morning it is the final sermon before Mr Vickers' last musical reworking for the choir, and somewhat appropriately in a few moments' time the choir will be singing his interpretation of Frank Sernatra's My Way. The service will be back to normal next week, and I am delighted to announce that young Mr George Gomperts will be joining the parish and will take up the mantle of interviewing the parish guest, recording a cricketing sound and writing a hard-hitting competition question. Young George has many new ideas, and I feel he will take the parish and the choir into a new era and his debut will be next week. But this week I felt just a sermon was appropriate where we could thank young Mr Vickers for all his efforts and wish him all the best for the future. It has been a pleasure working with him, and we shall all miss him, especially you, I know Ted. Can someone please get Ted a handkerchief? A quick parish notice we'll be meeting in the parish hall this afternoon to watch England in the women's T20 final against Australia. And Mrs. Bartholomew is putting on her famous salmon and peanut butter sandwiches, which is something to look forward to. Anyway, my cricketing friends, have a successful and run-filled week. Until next Sunday, Bat well everybody. Bat very, very well.