The ironic outcomes of the bureaucratic mind

Part the first: the strange case of the empty House.
I am wondering what will happen to the delightful if sometimes awkward and certainly expensive-to- run house that we occupy until July 2004. And hereby hangs a Tale. You see, when I was informed that my post was being made redundant, Tracy -my spouse- had just started training for ordination and was going away early in the week and coming back for the weekend. Since I had been given to hope that my post would continue we had planned that we would continue to live at Faith Sawrey's House [as it is often known] until Tracy was ordained in 2005 at which point we might move and if necessary I might be looking for some other suitable employment. Perhaps it should be noted that people in the diocesan structures were aware of this and no-one told us that it was inadvisable to plan like this.

When I was told of my redundancy, one of our first thoughts was that we would ask the diocese if we could continue to live at Faith Sawrey's house for the extra year until Tracy had finished her training. This ought to be possible we reasoned, because the house is a vicarage in a parish that is amalgamating and would be surplus once the appropriate legal machinations had ground through, normally taking a couple of years, we understood. So the diocese are forced to keep the house for at least a couple of years, and if we are not in it then there are surely disadvantages to it being empty for longish periods of time, not least in this area disadvantages with price tags. Not an unreasonable request, we felt, for an ordinand whose husband was being made redundant by the diocese at a juncture in the children's lives when some continuity would be useful.

Well I'm sure that you have realized where this is going, else I wouldn't be writing about it. And likely you're right. Yes, indeed; we were told that perhaps we could use a vacant curate's house somewhere further away [places mentioned which would mean no real possibility of maintaining school continuity], perhaps. But it seems that staying here was out of the question. To this day we cannot understand why. Unless they have in mind to place an awaited archdeacon here, perhaps? If it remains empty there will be maintenance and security costs to the diocese, not least the garden and the risks of vandalism.

Next of the ironic outcomes articles and the third of the articlesironic outcomes