This morning I helped with our new, monthly, Messy Sunday School - it was great fun, with five children all busily making badges, decorating biscuits, making a collage and learning about Jesus the Good Shepherd.  Sometimes it's nice to get out of the 'pulpit' and into the 'classroom'

The photo is my decorated 'sheep' biscuit... I never new you could get 'edible eyes' for cake decorating!  Every day is a (Sunday) school day!!

Today I enjoyed some lovely rabbit holes researching assorted bits of information relating to the Vicar School.

In the chapel there is a wonderful tapestry that I have long admired (and lament the reality that it is now mostly hidden behind a rather large projection screen. Next to the tapestry is a small, almost eroded dedication plaque, just a few centimetres in either direction...

By photographing it, zooming in (a lot) and studying it closely, I was able to discern what it said...

TWO CITIES

THE EMBROIDERED PANEL IN THIS CHAPEL
WAS DESIGNED AND MADE BY RENATE MELINSKY IN 1978
AND PAID FOR WITH MONEY GIVEN
IN MEMORY OF
DAVID HALDEN

With a little bit of digging, I discovered that Renate Melinsky entered the UK via kindertransport,and her husband, Canon Hugh Melinsky, was the great grandson of a rabbi tortured in the 1905 pogrom.  Their connection to the 'vicar school' was the Church of England's Northern Ordination Course which was based here in Manchester for many years.

I don't know, and can't find anything to help me identify, the two cities (or the person in whose memory it was created)... is it Manchester and Mirfield? Or is it somehow linked to the vision of Revelation?  And does it matter?

An enjoyable diversion this evening, and one that, for me anyway, made a few connections.