I am one angry minister!  Today I finally managed to get some folk from church to come and retrieve the roll of honour from our former day school that listed all the boys who'd won scholarships to the grammar school.  When we unlocked the church and went to the room where it had stood, it was gone.  As was virtually all the copper piping in the building.

Frankly, I don't care about the copper but I am MAD about the roll of honour because there is nothing useful they can do with it and it is an irreplaceable historical artefact.

Now I'm waiting for the police to arrive, waiting for a crime number for the insurers (who won't cover us because the building is closed but I have to notify them anyway) and trying to calm down enough to write a logical press release.  That and pray for the thieves - that they'd find their way out of this path that will ultimately destroy their humanity.  Do I forgive them?  In so far as it is my power, yes, I do.  But it isn't them who has to deal with a wounded congrgeation come Sunday...

(updated - the police have said their media department will put out a press release which saves me the job of trying to concoct something)

This is an aside, not even vaguely important, but it delays a bit of essay wrestling!

When I was learning Baptist history the twin-forebears (they weren't twins but there were two of them, together, even thought they squabbled and fell out later) were Thomas Helwys and John Smith.  Common or garden Smith, nothing fancy.  Recently he seems to have had a Hyacinth experience, especially across the pond, and become John Smyth, pronounced smythe to rhyme with scythe.  Googling him (with Helwys who is rarer, so makes the whole thing work) brings back both spellings, though from UK sources more typically Smith.

So is 'Smith' just not posh enough?  Should Smyth be pronounced smith or smythe?

And just who are the equivalents to Onslow and Daisy?!  Answers on a postcard to the usual address.