Wearing my episcopal socks

It’s not every day you sit around chatting to a Bishop. And Good Friday seemed as good a day as any.

No, I haven’t been seeking out members of the clergy and pestering them with questions of an ecumenical nature, before you ask. And you were going to, weren’t you.

When you spend the days around Easter at a vicarage, it’s one of those things that’s just bound to happen. Having not gone to church on Good Friday (or technically for the last 30 or so Good Fridays), the last thing I was expecting was someone bursting through the door exclaiming ‘quick, the Bish is coming!’. And ten minutes later, there I was chatting to a Bishop.

As is the way on Good Friday, conversation between a Rev Canon and a Bishop quickly turned to typically clergy subjects: trains. Then there was astronomy, music and a brief skirting around evolution. All to the accompaniment of scones, cake and freshly-brewed tea. Seriously, I’m not making this up. But there was something a little odd.

The Bishop looked at my socks, which were a mixture of faded and black a effeminate pink, and said, ‘may I congratulate you on your episcopal socks – did you wear them specially?’. What’s the correct reply to such a question from a senior cleric you’ve known for only minutes? I chuckled, trying desperately to make it sound reassuring and confident rather than masking a somewhat nervous reaction, and said ‘I’d like to be able to say yes’. This in many respects covered every possibility – to be honest, I’d love to be able to say anything in answer to that question, but my mostly secular upbringing left me with a small vocabulary problem in this exchange.

But, do you know what? I was wearing episcopal socks – I looked it up…