Dear Friends in Belmont and Pittington,
Thank you all very much for giving me such a wonderful ‘send-off’ after my last service with you on 29th. Thank you too for your wonderful leaving gifts.
Some of you may not know about (or never saw), the really beautiful opal earrings presented to me at our lunch together. Here is a photograph of them. 
They look great with the ‘Di the Builder’ hard hat that friends at Pittington gave me the week before!
You also gave me a very generous cheque which I am carefully thinking about. I am waiting until I have moved house before deciding what to spend it on but I know I would like to get something that lasts, is beautiful and which I can look at and remember you all by.
Thank you too for the many cards and good wishes I received – and for the flowers which are still looking good even after a couple of weeks.
Above all I want to thank you for giving me so many happy memories of my time at Belmont and Pittington – I will always hold them dear.
Someone commented that the picture on the front of the St. Laurence Pew Sheet on my last day was of a path, not heading into a restful sunset, but rising towards some mountains!
Perhaps this is what retirement feels like at present – a new path ahead with some exciting climbing and some new horizons. However I am already missing you very much as my ‘companions on the Way’, as well as missing the familiarity of my role in the parishes and of the structures of my day. Everything is new!
There will be much that is new going on for you too as you prepare for the appointment of your next incumbent. Someone, somewhere, will already be preparing (probably unknowingly) for a move that will bring them to Belmont and Pittington. The great thing is that, if the listening is done carefully, you will find that it is the same Voice that is speaking to them and to you – even though the exact words may be different! And that is all that matters.
With my love and prayers in all the careful listening and all the newness,
Di
The loft conversion, the new space I have discovered, is virtually finished and the builders are now working on most of the other rooms. It is all very dirty and seemingly chaotic but it is slowly coming together. I am very glad I am not living there at the moment! Hopefully all will be ready by February for the move.
I have so enjoyed my time with you all. Thank you to those who have encouraged and cared for me. Thank you to those who have challenged and stretched me. Thank you to those who have laughed and cried with me. Thank you to those who have worked alongside me when I haven’t been easy to work alongside. Thank you to those who have faithfully shared the hard graft and who have joyously shared the many moments of reward.
A couple of years ago my family encouraged me to think about extending upwards into the roof with a loft-conversion as extending ‘out’ wasn’t possible. This week the builders have moved in and have broken through walls and ceilings into spaces that have not seen the light of day for 150 years! A new staircase has appeared that gives us access into a beautiful new roof space. There, large new windows allow light in and I will be able to sit at my desk with a wonderful view across fields that I have never had before, even from upstairs.
