Preston...

...is a place of happy associations for me, with family links. Bit depressing, therefore, on my Sunday evening visit to find the usual dreary British-city feel, gloomy louts in the main streets chucking beer cans and yelling obscenities, pounding beat from packed but uncheery booze-places (somehow the jollier word "pub" doesn't apply), groups sitting on the pavement drunk, sense of loneliness everywhere. Seeking St Walburga's, I asked the way from various people, included a busy Catholic church where a huge crowd of Indian families had evidently been enjoying a gathering in the parish hall, now dispersing. A lot of children running noisily around the church and shouting as people gathered, talkatively, for Mass...I felt a bit out of place, but everyone v. nice, the kind priest directed me to St W's, and then when I got a bit uncertain at a road junction a bit further ahead, some youths drinking on the steps of an Elim Pentecostal church got me right again, although inadvertently hitting a sad note as they did so: "Yeah..that's the one they're gonna close...right? Yeah, OK, it's just down there...

At the big old prestbytery at St W's, the Franciscans - in traditional brown robes with knotted ropes round their waists, bare feet and sandals - run a chaplaincy for students at the University of Central Lancashire. Numbers small for this Sunday evening gathering, but a warm welcome, delicious spaghetti, international group with lovely friendly atmosphere, much enthusiasm for my talk on Pope Benedict...it would be glorious if, through prayer and dedication, this chaplaincy could grow and breathe new life into St W's, currently threatened with closure...