Settling Scores...

...One never knows when one's past generosity - or as H would call it rank softness - of heart will return to bite one hard.

Time out of mind, it seems, I have dipped into parish funds to provide essentially outdoor poor relief, as we used to call it. Ted needing a fiver to settle the gas people, Widow Thomkinson tipped the odd tenner for food, even shoes for farm labourers' children have, it appears, all been bought or paid for from funds strictly striped down for other purposes.

Worthy purposes in their ways, no doubt, such as the maintenance of the fading boiler in the Parish Hall or possible replacements for those wretched treble pipes in the Church organ that do play so horribly sharp from time to time, but lacking the urgency of real, immediate human need.

Not that rank fraud as such has been committed you must understand - not according anyway to Simon - Parish Council treasurer and confidant in troubled times, i.e. times just before an inspection - who avers that one - myself - has merely omitted to vire the money from one cost-centre heading to the required other. Robbing a Peter to pay a Paul indeed - and quite within my canonical authority it seems.

An easy task according to Simon, simply a matter of remembering and recording what has been shunted when, when and why. (Not sure we ever 'vired' anything at theological college or were inducted in the mysteries of cost-centre budgeting, though maybe these were classes I skipped in my innocence.)

It is, though, not just a case of accounting amnesia, but more that one has been hesitant to mark down in pen the precise purposes of these loans (gifts rather) lest public revelation embarrass the recipient. Does the world really need to know, for example, that the aforementioned Widow Thomkinson is far from the wealthy toff of local legend, being rather the toff quite on her uppers since that debacle with split cap shares some years back? I do know that she would not wish it so.

What is done is done is spent. Mouths - or at least one mouth - has been fed, certain feet shod and overbearing Gas Board personnel repelled. The choice now for myself is either the let it ride and beam haplessly when Father Bill's henchmen reveal one to be nearly a grand short of target revenue (see how rapidly one learns the lingo when necessary!), or else to pick over the doings of the past three years and, in effect, name and possibly thereby shame.

You'll be gathering I am sure that the latter option is not on - not even H would wish it - though playing the poor Franciscan innocent is not going to wash with Fr. Bill, of that I am equally certain.

Direct appeal, therefore, to the highest authority of all is being considered. Not God Almighty you must understand, although you may be surprised this coming from a clerk in holy orders. Forgive though the sleight on the Creator of all. In cases such as these even His omnipotence carries less weight than that of Sister Edwina Mildenthrope.

Who she you ask? No less a personage - and here there is none greater - than the Diocesan Treasurer herself. By repute a Royal Marine commando before finding God and the Sisterhood of Our Lady of Succour, Sister Eddie - as she is known with a certain over-familiarity throughout the diocese - is the ultimate keeper of all our purses, and a tougher keeper comes there none than she. (Even Bishop Tom, it is said, dare not lash out on new altar cloths for the Cathedral without her say so.)

She and I have not had many dealings over the years, front-line troops generally being beneath the piercing gaze of her fiscal radar. Quite how Eddie then may take my predicament is desperately hard to fathom. She might pat me on the head as a weak-willed yet sainted fool; alternatively she could order my head to be struck from my shoulders and piked above the Cathedral's West door as an example to other feckless parsons to mend their ways or else.

Can't see any other reasonable course of action, neither can Simon sadly. So it's off to the study for a swift malt or two then on to the blower to Eddie. ("Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall announce thy praise." - A suitable prayer in all the circs. methinks!)