“Robbie!” shouts a boisterous and energy filled voice across a crowded room, filled with mothers and young children that have gathered for the weekly rainbows group. All eyes fall on me as I walk through the doors looking bemused and slightly scared. Reverent jean Warham or “just call me jean” there is an incredible casualness resting heavily in the air considering we have just met. “So!” She proclaims “you wanted to know what we do here?” a simple yes leads to a tangle of expressive words that detail the 22 years this particular group has been running, how for her 10 years she has helped to re-establish the links not so much between “god and the community but between young and old” supposedly compensating for “the nuclear family syndrome” by which she explains the lack of family cohesion that occurs as we move further away from our families. At this point “Jean” waves at the group of local volunteers that help out with the group and then to the large crowd of children busily running about oblivious to the stranger within their midst.

 After receiving the “customary” cup of tea and toast we head off for a chat around the grounds where the revenant tells me of her introduction into the church of England, in 2000 she was ordained a Diaconate after being a reader for Six years prior and in 2001 she became an official priest able to give communion fighting past the objections of some of her peers. The new millennium was she reflects “both a happy and sad time” she lost her husband and as we walk through the small grounds she points towards a young yew tree and explains in a low melancholy tone that was his tree where his ashes now rest.

Reverent Jean Warhams parish is ST Georges & ST Giles in Newcastle-under-Lyme.