Jay Hulme

The world contains horrors beyond comprehension.

Every time I see them I kind of want to buy the blue and green ones to see how much of that colour is the bottle.

I went googling (because English) and what the hell is going on over there? I love it. But I'm also scared. But also: congratulations.

The thing about being churchwarden is that I know where every single heating pipe runs in this cold old church, so there's a 50/50 chance at this time of year that you'll find me in some random corner where it's actually somehow a full five degrees warmer than anywhere else.

Right now I'm reclining on the dias in the Lady Chapel. Is this because I'm feeling a particular devotion to Our Lady this evening? No. It's because the heating pipe runs under the dias and it's warmed up all the wood so I'm toasting my booty.

Why yes, we have been having some real issues with antisocial behaviour around the church lately, and it has been driving me absolutely insane, why do you ask?

(I have to laugh because it's driving me insane. Stop digging up the dead people in my care. There are so many parks nearby where you can bury your drugs instead. Please.)

Why yes, we have been having some real issues with antisocial behaviour around the church lately, and it has been driving me absolutely insane, why do you ask?

My city centre churchwarden drama: people have been digging up human remains to get at the drugs that dealers bury in our churchyard My friends countryside churchwarden drama: birds nested in the church and after trying everything including flying a hawk inside she had to get a farmer to shoot them

Both of us: "who knew being a churchwarden would involve cleaning up blood so often?"

The thing about people getting married is that I get candids taken in my natural environment. Also, you know, I get to participate in the joy of seeing them share their love for one another, or whatever.

My top sartorial tip is to get little pewter pin badges of things you like and wear one as a lapel pin on your suit jacket. Especially if it's something a little bit odd. People go CRAZY for my bat lapel pin.

I don't have space for a sewing machine. I don't have money for a sewing machine. I don't need any more half-finished craft projects lying around.

(but what if having a sewing machine is what I need to finish the projects)

October is the month where I finish up making the year's event posters for church, and as much as I love the Holy Week poster I made this year, I think these are my faves. Probably because they're a series so I got to have fun making a set of them with a cohesive visual language that stands out.

I have a LOT of opinions about the importance of inclusive churches upping their graphic design game, but that rant is for another time. Suffice to say, I've been quietly teaching clergy and church administrators basic skills and helping them overhaul their design work for years now.

Happy baptism-anniversary to me. It's been six years. Between the getting taken to church court, and the BBC documentary about me and the Bishop, it feels like I really have speed-run this whole Church of England thing.

This shouldn't be a hot take, but the Church Of England needs to stop making people who don't believe in and/or care about Apostolic Succession into Bishops.

Also, the Church of England has too many Bishops. It's seen as a promotion to be grasped at, not a spiritual burden to be borne. There's well over 100 of them in active posts right now. For comparison, the Church in Wales has 6. The Episcopal Church of Scotland has 7.

I've always been disproportionately annoyed by adverts and after streaming got ad-riddled I decided enough was enough and got a personal jellyfin server set up by a friend, and have now set up a custom launcher for my Chromecast, as part of my mission to strip out every single advert from my TV.

As part of this ancelled all my streaming services for being too expensive and shit, except for channel 4+ because it is very cheap (£40 a year) and removes adverts from all of their own shows and some of the shows they licence (though sadly not all of them).