Anne’s Gallery

  Ever since I was a small child, I loved to draw pictures.  When preparing for A-levels, the art teacher encouraged us always to carry an A5 notebook and pencil, and to observe and sketch from life - capturing an expression, a movement, whatever caught my attention as interesting.  My husband John helped me take snaps of some of these impressions.  The first is a view of the houses in Church Lane in Horsted Keynes, a lovely community where Father John was the Rector from 2009 to 2017. Conkers!  The glossy brown nut in a downy bed, protected by a prickly exterior.  Children boring holes in the nut and threading a piece of string through to try to smash the conker of a rival.  Autumn had arrived, and soon the days would be shorter, and colder.  In the 50s, primary school boys were more likely than girls to be competing with conkers.   Here’s the hapless Jonah being swallowed by the big fish, having chosen to disobey God’s command to take ...