Just the ticket | 13 May 2006

I’ve got my ticket. I can’t quite believe how I managed it — I keep studying it under a magnifying glass and holding it up to the light to make sure it’s real — but I’ve got one. And like a lover who has to introduce the subject of the loved one into every conversation, I tell people who aren’t remotely interested in Saturday’s FA Cup Final all about it.

It’s a kind of revenge. Village life consists mainly of people pinning you up against a dry-stone wall and telling you things that neither concern nor interest you. Have you ever driven through a rural area and remarked how village after village appears to be deserted? Friends, they aren’t deserted: we’re all hiding from the village bores.

A branch of Alpha, the nationwide evangelical Christian outreach programme, meets at our house once a month. The organisers, a mixture of church ladies and chapel women, are all what they would call ‘on fire for Jesus’.