REV RICHARD COLES

REVEREND

Number of candles on birthday cake: 0 Number of birthday cakes: 0

Number of times selfpitying birthday Billy No Mates tweet was read: 4,557,984

It was my birthday this week – my first birthday of widowhood. My partner David died at Christmas, and among his many gifts was a tremendous flair for throwing a party – for my 50th I walked into what I thought was an empty church to find nearly everyone I knew shouting “SURPRISE!” in Eighties fancy dress. I have no such aptitude, so the sole concession I made to the day, apart from looking up famous people who have the same birthday (Richard Dawkins, the Bishop of London, and Nancy Pelosi), was to have a breakfast of kippers, a delicacy I adore but David despised. I tweeted a picture of them and to my surprise the tweet took off and within 24 hours four and half million people had seen it, and so many people sent me encouraging birthday messages.

Isolation is about more than the Covid-19 lockdown. Plenty of people are isolated for different reasons; as a vicar I have a responsibility for them, but one of the wonderful things that is happening right now is how everyone is discovering more and more imaginative ways to stay in touch. Each evening I visit an online pub, where we raise a glass to each other and swap stories with people as far afield as Sydney, Reykjavik and Mexico City. It’s Quiz Night on Sunday, and I’m already having to curb a burgeoning competitiveness. Bad vicar.

But I’ve been a good vicar, too, celebrating the Eucharist and Morning and Evening Prayer on my own in the vicarage dining room, and from the kitchen table helping to form a network of volunteers. We’ve been organising on Whatsapp and Zoom and, like so many others, I have also spent the week discovering that a close-up of nose hair does no one any favours.