Hard work recognised as Powys school earns glowing report
The Powys school had its Section 50 inspection by the Church in Wales before Easter.
The report comments on strengths such as the school's welcoming, caring and inclusive Christian learning environment; the passionate Christian vision of the headteacher, which is very well supported by staff and governors; exceptional pastoral care and support shown to all pupils; and strong intergenerational links with the church and local community.
Inspector Neil Roberts, talked about all sorts of exciting opportunities the children had been able to take part in, including joint lessons with children in Kunágota, singing in the Plygain service at St Nicholas', Dydd Gwener Gwych activities, Open The Book stories, and taking on leadership and committee roles.
Headteacher Sarah Brian said, 'The report captures our school ethos really well
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Scotsman
2 days ago
- Scotsman
Last Words by Richard Holloway review: 'a warm and moving memoir'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A few years ago Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, published a book of reflections concerning old age entitled Waiting for the Last Bus. Happily the bus has not yet turned up - perhaps it has been rerouted - so now we have Last Words which, we hope, will not yet be the last. Richard Holloway | Colin Hattersley It is an affectionate and moving memoir of his early life and of a working-class youth in Alexandria (Dunbartonshire, not Egypt). The depiction of his parents is loving and moving; he doesn't shrink from their difficulties in what seems to have been an up-and-down marriage. Likewise, the depiction of conditions in Alexandria during the war and the next decade is both warm and critical; living conditions were deplorable yet loving families survived them. It is good to be reminded just what an important part was played by the cinema in these pre-television years. Programmes in Alexandria changed in the middle of the week, presumably because there were usually full houses. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here. It is well known that Holloway is a bishop who lost his faith, though on the evidence of this memoir he retains a deep loyalty to the Church. He has written before about his gradual loss of faith, a process which occurred even while he continued to serve his flock, many of whom, in the second half of the 20th century, must have had their own doubts and misgivings. What became impossible for him was the belief in personal immortality, life after death, and this belief has indeed withered in much of Christian Europe and America. Many still find comfort in the thought of being united with husband, wife, parents and friends after death, though, mischievously, Holloway recalls a woman who, hearing the minister promise that she would be united with her late husband again, muttered that this would give her no pleasure for she had "hated the old bugger" when he was alive. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Like so many who contemplate the decline of the Christian faith, Holloway quotes Matthew Arnold's lines in Dover Beach, about faith being on the ebb. Well, that was almost 200 years ago now, and, while the tide may be well out, the beach will welcome its return. Happily this little book isn't all about the loss of faith - it is also a warm and moving memoir. Now it seems that Holloway is content to live in uncertainty; yet his affection for the church remains. Reflecting on on the closure of a church where he worshipped as a boy, he seems to suggest that, while it served and strengthened so many, its relevance, or the need for it, has simply vanished. Yet though he doubts the existence of God and the afterlife, he doesn't deny the consolations of faith.
Spectator
3 days ago
- Spectator
Does Canopus have a connection with canopy?
I spent some time looking for the connection between the ancient city of Canopus and the English canopy. Nelson won the Battle of the Nile in Aboukir Bay. The bay was named after the city of Abu Qir, which was named after a Christian martyr, St Cyrus. Abu Qir stands on the site of the city of Canopus, to which ran the Canopic Way, from Alexandria. Canopus was said to have been founded by Menelaus, the King of Sparta who figures in the Iliad. Canopus, the pilot of his ship, was fatally bitten by a snake, and around the monument built by Menelaus grew the city. At Canopus, the Egyptian god Osiris was worshipped under the form of a jar with a human head. Modern antiquaries gave the name Canopic jars to other such jars with quite a different purpose: to hold the entrails of mummified bodies. The helmsman Canopus was also remembered in ancient times by a star in the constellation of Argo, itself named after Jason's ship, a beam of which killed him. Argo was among the 48 constellations named in the 2nd century ad by the astronomer Ptolemy in a book that we call the Almagest, from its Arabic name, deriving from Greek meaning 'the greatest'. The star Canopus is the second brightest in the sky, and it seems that the south-eastern wall of the square-built Kaaba in Mecca faces the rising point of Canopus, and the orientation of early mosques was taken from this. Mosques perhaps, but not mosquitoes. The Ancient Greek for mosquito was kōnōps, which does not come from konos ('cone') and ops ('face'), but perhaps from some pre-Greek word. Still, the Greek konopeion 'a couch with mosquito curtains' developed in two ways. One was into the French canapé 'sofa', hence a little bit of bread with something sitting on it: our party canapé. The other development, in the Middle Ages, was into canopy, a hanging, sometimes a hanging of honour. So Canopus has no connection with canopy, but I enjoyed finding that out.'
Metro
6 days ago
- Metro
'I tried to save doomed caver from most horrifying death imaginable - here's why
A first responder has described the final moments of John Edward Jones who went on a doomed spelunking trip to Utah's now infamous Nutty Putty cave and never returned. Jones, 26, suffered 'one of the most horrifying deaths imaginable' when he took a wrong turn and became trapped upside-down in a terrifyingly small crevice, essentially 'crawling into his own grave'. Unable to turn or move backwards, the 26-year-old father suffered 27 hours of hell as his family sent desperate messages of support by a two-way radio. Now, the man tasked with the impossible job of trying to free him has spoken of his ordeal. A devout Christian, medical student and father to a newborn baby, John Edward Jones seemingly had the world at his feet. Born into a large family, John and his brother Josh had been avid cavers when they were children, and sought to rekindle their love of spelunking with a trip to the Nutty Putty cave. The brothers arrived at the cave with a party of nine other friends and relatives of varying degrees of experience- a fairly large group by caving standards. Upon arrival, the group soon split off into two groups, with children and less-experienced adults exploring easier sections of the cave while the seasoned spelunkers went deeper. It was here that things started to go wrong. John's brother Josh was the first one to find him. Creeping forwards down the crevice just inches behind his brother, his stomach filled with dread when he saw John's feet sticking out of the tiny hole which had swallowed him. 'Seeing his feet and seeing how swallowed he was by the rock, that's when I knew it was serious.' Josh told the Salt Lake Tribune. 'It was really serious.' Josh tried to pull his brother out of the hole, but only managed to inch him up a little. As soon as he let John go, he slid right back into the crevice. 'There was this, 'I'm not getting him out,' he said. 'I don't know how anyone is getting him out.' As they waited for rescuers to arrive, they prayed together. At the end of the prayers, though, Josh could hear his own voice waiver and crack. John began to comfort him, telling Josh it would be OK and to be good to his girlfriend. 'The way we spoke', Josh said, 'it felt like John knew what the score was.' What transpired over the next few hours was an intense brainstorming session from a rescue party, who tried every method they could to free John from his subterranean prison. In addition to pulling him, they also tried lubing the walls and drilling away chunks of rock near John, but the hard material and the awkward position made the drilling slow and painful work. After drilling over for an hour, they abandoned this approach after only managing to drill through a couple of inches of rock. Eventually, the team came up with a plan to pull John to safety using a complex system of ropes and pulleys, which they would attach around his feet. 'How are you?' one rescuer asked. 'It sucks. I'm upside down. I can't believe I'm upside down,' John responded. His eyes were red and looked tired but otherwise, had a smile on his face. 'My legs are killing me,' he added. The team decided to take a quick break to regain their strength before making the final push. John was nearly out. But as they grabbed hold of the rope for the fourth and final time, something disastrous happened. All of a sudden, the entire team fell backwards, and the rope became loose in their hands. The closest rescuer felt something hard hit him in the face, and momentarily blacked out from the impact. At the very last moment, one of the pulleys had collapsed under the strain and flown off the wall, sending John plunging right back into the crevice – even deeper than before. John himself had become unresponsive. At this point he had been trapped for over 25 hours and his body had begun to break down from the stress and strain. In a blog post, explorer and YouTuber Brandon Kowallis spoke of first arriving when Jones 'was in and out of consciousness' and talking about seeing 'angels and demons around him'. 'I went in first', he wrote. 'As I wormed my way in I felt my feet touch something soft which ended up being John's feet. I felt them move and immediately lifted my feet and worked my way horizontally into the crack. 'After stabilising myself by jamming my body into a narrower section of the crack I began speaking to John asking him how he was and introducing myself. There was no response. 'I shifted my position a little and tapped him on the leg. I could hear him breathing a deep, gurgling breath, as though his lungs were filling with fluid. 'Then his feet shifted as though he were trying to manoeuvre his legs out of the crack he was jammed in. 'The kicking looked fairly frantic and after a second he stopped and it looked as though he had drifted into unconsciousness.' He added: 'I continued tapping him on the legs and hip to see if I could get a response, but there was no response. 'From there I spent a few minutes studying the passage, the positioning of John, and the rig that was set up, to see how we could get him out from here. It looked very bleak. I wondered if it was even possible to get him beyond this point. 'There was a request to take the radio down to John so that his family could say some words to him. I think it was his father, mother, and wife who spoke to him, telling him that they loved him and were praying for him and that his father had given him a blessing. His wife mentioned a feeling of peace, that everything would be OK. She talked to him about 5 to 10 minutes before I told her that we needed to get back to working at getting him out.' 'At that point I decided to try using the jack hammer. So we waited for it to arrive and then I carried it down to where John was located. The tool was much heavier than I anticipated and to hold it up while wedging my body in the crack took everything I had. Even then, I couldn't get a good angle on the rock because of the confined space and limitations in my own mobility and positioning.' He added: 'And even if we could get him into a horizontal position, he would then have to maneuver the most difficult sections of the passage he was trapped in. 'If he were conscious and had his full strength there was a minute chance he could possibly do it. But even if that was the case it looked grim'. He estimated it could take a week to free him using this method but now it was close to midnight and he was asked to check vitals on John. 'I didn't hear a distinct heartbeat, only some ruffling, fluttering sounds that were probably a result of me shaking as I tried to steady myself in an awkward location. I then jammed my hand between the rock and pressed as far up his torso I could go to feel for breathing. I didn't think I felt anything. 'I reported my findings to the paramedic above and then crawled out so that he could see if he could squeeze in. 'He was able to get down to the point where he could feel his feet and confirm he had passed away. John Edward Jones was pronounced dead at 11.52.' His wife Emily, still outside, refused to leave her husband's body trapped inside the cave, and the local Sheriff assured her they would recover it. More Trending But even following his death it was deemed too dangerous to attempt to recover his body, and the entrance to the passage he was trapped in was collapsed with controlled explosives. Once it became clear that John's remains couldn't be safely removed from the cave, Nutty Putty was permanently sealed off and John's family had a plaque put on the entrance of the cave in his memory. Jones's body remains entombed inside the dark cave to this day – his death becoming a cautionary tale about the dangers of spelunking. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: I died for 10 minutes — this is what it's like to be dead MORE: Trump Burger owner faces deportation from US after ICE arrest MORE: British girl,11, dies after drowning in swimming pool on holiday in Spain
