Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2009/January 2010 | Page 26

life

INTERVIEW

Photo: Graham pictured with his
grandmother at his ordination (1986)

Photo: Graham 4yrs (left) pictured with his brother Christopher .

years of history were the scruffiest, most

He’d found his vocation. If his father

ragamuffin group of people, those living

was disappointed to see his son giving

on the fringe of society in their day! How

up a successful business, he didn’t

do we relate to that, and how do we

show it. “My parents have always been

suffering and poverty was to take its toll:

treat those on the fringe of our society

wonderfully supportive, and that’s a

“Every time the windows got smashed I

today?”

lesson I hope I’ve carried over as a

sensed the urge to go and smash their

father,” he says, pointing to a photo

windows: I never did, I’m not that brave!

where his father was a builder, and

of his daughter Amy, who has recently

It caused me to reflect on the kind of

left school in 1976, a grim time to find

joined the Army.

person I was becoming.” Angela, he

Graham grew up in rural Herefordshire,

employment. So he took a summer job

Graham chose to train at Salisbury and

to be a vicar alongside poverty not just of
money but of values and priorities.”
But the intensity of working with real

says, has supported him in everything,

on a friend’s farm, loved the work, and

Wells because of its practical approach.

but he was becoming difficult to live

went to agricultural college. “I’m mad

“By week five you’re off to Toxteth,

with. “After nine good years there it

about cows,” he grins. “Mum and dad

immersed in a troubled community, then

was time to move on. I was in danger of

worried that instead of having pictures of

living as a down and out in London, or

burning out.”

Kate Bush on the wall I’d got the latest

off to a hospital for paraplegics. You get

pedigree Friesian!” When his first job –

men calling out: ‘You, training to be a

came to the Isle of Wight. “The time has

setting up a new dairy farm – came to

vicar – I’ve lost the use of my legs, what

flown by. Amy has grown up and joined

an end, Graham started a small business

has your God got to say about that?’”

the army,” he says, adding “I don’t stop

doing relief farm work. “I absolutely

Such hands-on training at Salisbury

So with daughter Amy and son Tim they

worrying about her, though she’d say

loved it,” bubbles Graham, “and I was

anchored him as a clergyman, he says.

‘Shut up, Dad, I’m 20!’ And Tim is doing

successful. It was almost a licence to print

After his first job in the rural community

A Levels, he is a great people person.”

money.”

of Ironbridge in Shropshire, he married

And yet he wasn’t completely satisfied.

As for Graham, he was asked to be

his wife Angela who came from his home

officer for rural affairs. The setting might

“You start asking what’s making all this

town of Bromyard in Herefordshire, he

have changed, but the brief is just the

tick? And theology was the only way

moved to down-and-out Wolverhampton

same. To reach out to people, to let them

to really answer that question. God‘s

“where you could measure the people’s

know the Church is there for them.

involvement with people like me in

values by the size of the satellite dish

the ordinariness of the world was just

on the house.” He says: “That’s where I

themselves the ‘corporate vicar’ – are

fascinating!”

earned my stripes, learnt what it means

constantly looking at the way in which

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So he and his ministry team – they call