There was a time when the Baptist Times used to find the most tortuous connections between the stories they told and Baptist life - you know the kind of thing Mr X lived nextdoor to Mrs Y who just happened to have bought her pedigree dog from the same breeder as the former president of the Baptist Union.  So here's one that I spotted today... courtesy of Sainsbury's 140th birthday magazine supplement:

During World War II "the East Grinstead store was so badly bombed it traded temporarily from the local Baptist church" (Sainsbury's Magazine, Souvenir Supplement, third page).  So that explains why so many Baptist ministers shop at Sainsbury's!!!  (Whether or not this was a BUGB church I cannot tell but, hey, it never seemed to worry the BT...)

Whilst in there today I picked up a pack of Fry's Chocolate Cream bars for one of my ninety somethings who recalls the days when she used to buy them from vending machines on the railway station in Dibley (well the adjacent town anyway) when she went to Leicester with her husband to watch the races.  Ironic that having had a Stephenson built railway Mr Beeching stole it from us.

Pastoral care, nostalgia and weird Baptist connections - not a bad afternoon's work!