Kingston upon Hull: city of romance and mystery

We went back to Hull yesterday, to help celebrate the civil partnership of a very dear friend. A wonderful party; it's amazing to meet friends again after (ahem!) a year or two ... Some excellent evening entertainment too, including our friend's erstwhile neighbour, the really impressive Ted Key. Try the following for an example of how to make basic mathematics deeply attractive to your average punter.

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My first job was in Hull, at the University, teaching sums (I too played the guitar, though not nearly as well as Ted Key). I was in my mid-twenties, finding my feet socially as well as professionally. The local church was an important place for me. Both the church and myself have come a long way since. I remember feeling very alone in the first year, eventually suggesting to some of the other twenties in the church that we needed to put together a weekly group to meet and talk and pray.


Unfortunately, for good reasons too complicated to go into here, it turned out I wasn't able to come along to the group. That was a real sacrifice, and I felt I was missing out. Especially as it became clear that the group was working very well indeed. Having formed with a moderate number of people, it then attracted in further new arrivals, people who had come to Hull for various reasons, usually job-related, and who then wanted a place where they could share and be sociable.

One girl in particular, working through a teacher-training course at the local college, who told me much later what it felt like to have a place where there were people like her, people to whom she could relate. The group made the church seem relevant, and the group together with the church made Hull seem a place in which one might stay after graduating from teacher-training, so that she went for a maternity-leave vacancy at a local school and stayed in the area. 

Thus that little idea of a twenties group in its small way brought benefits to the wider society of Hull. It's a good feeling to notice when a chance idea has made a difference to one's locality. And I'm reminded of this now, as Holy Trinity Coventry has just begun to identify the needs of twenty-year olds as one of the challenges we maybe ought to be facing up to over the next few years. Groups like this prove their value exactly when there aren't many mid-twenty types around, because that's when the group can make a real difference. Not just to the mid-twenties, but also to the wider society, to Coventry as well as to Hull, because our wider societies need this kind of person and the gifts and character that they bring.

I still felt lonely, though, since the group was going well but I wasn't a part of it. Sometimes altruism doesn't seem enough.


Fortunately it doesn't always have to be enough. The girl whom I mentioned, because she stayed on in Hull, got to know me a bit better, and amazingly started to like what she saw. Three years later I married her, and our dear friend (with whom this little piece began) read the Bible passage at our wedding (Ephesians 3:14-end).


And so, for ever more, Hull for me is a city of romance and mystery.