Gabby Logan says 'my heart was racing' as all eyes on daughter's big day
Our website is temporarily delivering an degraded response in your location. We are working hard to get it back online.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
UK's first female archbishop tells of how she hid her sexuality for decades
The new archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev Cherry Vann, has told of how she kept her sexuality secret for decades as part of her struggle to be accepted as a female minister in the Anglican communion. Speaking to the Guardian on Thursday, the day after her appointment, Vann, 66, said that without the strong belief that God had called her to the priesthood she 'would not have survived' her journey through the ranks of the church. Vann became one of the first female priests to be ordained in England in 1994. Now, as the UK's first female and first openly gay archbishop, and the first openly lesbian and partnered bishop to serve as a primate within the Anglican communion, she has well and truly broken the stained glass ceiling. 'It happens that I've lived in a time that's meant that I'm a trailblazer, but I'm not a campaigner,' the Leicestershire-born archbishop said during an interview at the Church in Wales's offices in central Cardiff. 'I'm not somebody to be out there all the time but I do seek to be true to what I think God's asking of me.' Working in the Church in Wales since 2020 has been very different from the many years Vann spent at the Church of England, she said, as clergy are permitted to be in same-sex civil partnerships. In the Anglican church in England, same-sex relationships are technically allowed, but gay clergy are expected to remain celibate. Upon becoming bishop of Monmouth five years ago, Vann publicly disclosed her civil partnership with Wendy Diamond, her partner of 30 years, for the first time. 'Other people in England were braver than I was and made their sexuality clear. A lot of them suffered the consequences of that, certainly when going forward for ordination,' Vann said. 'For years we kept our relationship secret because I worried about waking up and finding myself outed on the front page of a newspaper. Now, Wendy joins me everywhere, and when I take services, it's just normal. But in England she had to stay upstairs if I had a meeting in the house.' Being a woman in the church had been difficult enough, she added. 'You can hide your sexuality, up to a point, but you can't hide being a woman. There was a lot of nastiness; the men were angry, they felt they had been betrayed.' Vann said in the 1990s, she and a handful of other female priests began meeting for prayer and conversation with male colleagues opposed to their ordination. 'It was awful, it was really difficult for all of us, but we stuck at it,' she said. Over time, the hostility dissipated. 'This is what I'm hoping around the sexuality issue too – modelling that we can vehemently disagree about something, but we can still love one another in Christ and recognise one another as children of God.' Vann will be enthroned in red and gold at her home cathedral in Newport this autumn in what many in the church hope will mark a definitive end to a tumultuous period. Andy John, the former archbishop, announced in June he was standing down with immediate effect after an alcohol-fuelled financial, bullying and sexual misconduct scandal at Bangor Cathedral. John was not accused of wrongdoing, but calls for his resignation gathered pace after summaries of two reports were published and six 'serious incident reports' were sent to the Charity Commission earlier this year. Two members of the cathedral's college of priests have called for an independent inquiry into the events at Bangor, but Vann downplayed the demands, telling the Guardian that she believed the Wales-wide 'cultural audit' announced by the church's representative body in the wake of John's resignation would be sufficient to 'hold people accountable'. The new archbishop's top priority is 'healing and reconciliation', she said. 'There's a lot of work already going on in the background, we haven't been standing still … We must work to build trust with those who have been hurt and angered by what has gone on.' Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion According to Tim Wyatt, a journalist focusing on the Anglican church, Vann's arrival in Wales in 2020 as bishop of Monmouth was also part of a clean-up job after factional fighting over the conduct of her predecessor, Richard Pain. Vann is also somewhat of an outsider to Wales, symbolising a clean break with the John era and the Bangor scandal. The archbishop grew up in a religious family in Whetstone in Leicestershire, following in her church organist father's footsteps by studying at the Royal College of Music and then the Royal Schools of Music, where she trained as a teacher. She entered an Anglican theological college in 1986 to prepare for ordination and then worked in the Manchester diocese, becoming a priest in 1994 and archdeacon of Rochdale in 2008. Gender and sexuality are still highly divisive issues in the Anglican communion. Even in her new role as the first female and first openly gay archbishop in the UK, Vann was cautious on the topic of gay marriage. 'I don't personally feel the need to get married in church; Wendy and I have been together for 30 years, we've made our vows, and we are committed to each other. 'Gay marriage in church is inevitable, I think: the question is when. There are people who are very opposed, and as leader, I have to honour their position, which is theologically grounded. It isn't my job to push something through that would alienate a good proportion of clergy.' Vann's appointment has caused outrage in some circles, with one prominent conservative group calling it 'tragic'. In response, the Church in Wales has highlighted the warm welcome her appointment has received from dozens of other denominations and churches. For her part, Vann said she was not worried about whether her election would be perceived as tokenistic. 'It's a two-thirds majority vote in the electoral college, the bar is high,' she said. 'I don't think any of those people voted for me primarily because I'm a woman or I'm a gay person. They voted for me because they recognise I've got the skills to lead the Church in Wales at this particular time.'
Evening Standard
35 minutes ago
- Evening Standard
Car loan customers may be owed money after landmark court decision
Allow Google Search To use the search feature, we need your consent to load Google Custom Search, which may use cookies or similar technologies. Please click 'Allow and Continue' below to enable search. See our privacy policy for more information. Allow and Continue
The Guardian
35 minutes ago
- The Guardian
A poem by David Brooks: ‘Counting sheep is difficult for me – I try to give each one a face and personality'
I count to try to get myself to sleep the numbers backward from one hundred as someone told me was the way with sheep ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six…then if I reach zero, still backwardly begin to count forward againminus one, minus two, minus three … each exhalation a ewe or wether stepping from the exit planks, each one a whisper of breath across my tongue In a month, as I calculate, I'll unload three thousand or so, in a year at least thirty, and in two my ghost shipment could at last be free but something always happens the numbers oscillate exits turn into boarding ramps the ships always depart for the sweltering days at the Equatorial, dry heat over the Gulf the acrid water washing the baking deck the sea-mad crew, the dying lambs the bodies sinking in the fleece-white wake On a good night I'll count almost none or lose track after forty or so, my thoughts straying, or one or another of them wandering off to watch the kelp in the tide-flow On a bad night I'll count four or five hundred and get no sleep at all I'm a longtime insomniac. Almost nightly I 'count sheep', though it's more a case of counting breaths, as the poem suggests. Counting sheep is difficult for me. I live with rescued sheep and to me each sheep's a face, a personality. I've tried to give each sheep I count a face and personality, but that's exhausting. I can't get beyond a dozen or so. The repetition of faces I know becomes too distracting. Then there's the matter of point-of-view. To count sheep effectively they must pass a set point individually – follow a path single-file, say, or go one-by-one up or down a ramp. In the poem I've chosen the latter. I abhor live export; I want to save sheep from it. The ramp my sheep come down is an exit-ramp, before their ship departs. In effect I'm stealing sheep, each one an escapee. But it isn't so easy. The sheep are trapped. Save one from export and you condemn him/her to slaughter anyway. At least with live export there's a cruise first, though of course – again – it's hardly like that. The voyage is a horror worse than any the Ancient Mariner experienced. And live export's just an example. Count sheep any which way and you realise you're both in an awful bind, trapped in the messy guts of the human mind. The ships depart regardless. Exits become boarding-ramps. Numbers seem to progress but in fact move backward. All these things are in the poem one way or another. The exhaustion and frustration (insomnia) of animal advocacy, the hopes dashed repeatedly. The way you must keep going, day after day, night after night. But also ('kelp in the wave-wash') the glimmers of hope, of how things might be. Australian Poetry Month runs throughout August and includes festivals, events, workshops and a commissioned poem of the day brought to you by Red Room Poetry. Find out more here
