Protect the building – keep everyone out.

J G Ballard in Miracles of Life tells of his experiences in China under Japanese occupation. As he went to school each day from the internment camp he passed Chinese who had been hung from lampposts; women who had been raped and left to die; back in the camp he watched fellow inmates starve to death. At the end of the war he was sent to his grandparents who lived in West Bromwich and it is the year he spent with them that he describes as the “lowest point of my life”. It hasn’t changed much.

I couldn’t move into the vicarage at Hill Top because the local children had used it as a playground and eventually torched it. The diocese had been told that it was vulnerable as the previous vicar had had several break in’s. But rather that put a security fence around it – which would have cost £1000, they left it open. After it had been empty for a few months it ceased to be insured so when it was burnt down the diocese had to sell the site and only got the value of the land. For the want of £1000 they lost a £200000 house.

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