Tuesday 11 July 7:30pm

Unexpectedly I take up my Diary again – for I am to resume my duties at the Church Organ a week on Sunday, and on an enhanced stipend!

And I think I shall have to appoint Mum my Agent, for while I was on my sickbed she has been working tirelessly on my behalf, with her ear to the keyhole of the PCC on which her friend Mrs Ramsbotham sits. Mum says Mrs Ramsbotham has taken great personal risks by keeping her informed of events, because PCC deliberations are supposed to be secret, rather like the Star Chamber or the town’s Golf Club committee minutes, but Mrs Ramsbotham knew where her duty lay, Mum said.

Our relief organist has been poached by St Gandalf’s across the river! And he has taken his choir and all their fans and hangers-on and aunties with him! St Gandalf’s is a bigger parish than ours and the Parish Church has a four-manual organ, about which they are very smug. But Mum says the irony is that the organ which lured him is not a proper Church organ, but one bought at a knock-down price from a theatre which was forced to close in 1963, having fallen foul of the Lord Chancellor by allowing the use of the word “Bottom” in a play (by Shakespeare, actually.) The pipes which inflated balloons at climactic moments in the Drama having been tactfully removed in transit, as well as the Vox Humana Cliffordo Ricardi stop, there was no obstacle to an Organ Blessing service conducted by a Suffragan Bishop, so everything was all right as far as the Church was concerned.

Mrs Ramsbotham says it is all the Vicar’s fault: the clergy should take services and shake hands with people on Sundays and give comfort to the sick and bereaved or do weddings the rest of the week, not go round behaving like Football Club Managers poaching other people’s players without consulting the Board of Directors – that is, the PCC. Apparently the relief organist was practically an ARCO and so he demanded £4,000 a year – plus weddings and funerals – to stay in my Church, but the PCC only offered him the same as me, £52.00pa.

But Mum persuaded Mrs Ramsbotham that Grade III Piano is nearly as good as an ARCO, and guess what – when I take up my duties again I will be paid £40 a month! And the PCC has agreed to refund the cost of my notebook, as well as allowing me to buy some new music to play. It is all down in my new Contract of Employment which is even now being drawn up by the Diocesan Personnel Department (Lay Division).

And I will make jolly sure I keep all my receipts in future, I can tell you!

But it is riches undreamed of! I shall at long last be able to purchase a proper computer for my IT studies when I have saved a little. One with e-mail so that I can correspond with other organists Around the World and perhaps help them along their careers in our Church, as I am sure they will do for me!