24 September 2025

Because I love porridge and cook it every day, I was interested to go to the cinema to see a recent documentary about the World Porridge Making Championship which is held annually in Carrbridge in the Highlands. The film was called, ‘The Golden Spurtle’ and directed by the Australian, Constantine Costi.

It featured the Chieftan, Charlie Miller, and a committee of older volunteers who were responsible  for the organisation of the event in the modest but pretty Village Hall. People took pride in playing their part not least the group of dish-washers responsible for cleaning the contestants dirty porridge pots!

Charlie Miller had a charming personality, open, honest and down-to-earth. At one point, he is having an argument with a woman on the committee about the location of the gas rings on the tables. In his frustration, he declares, ‘I don’t have time to argue with you. We’ll do it your way!’

The contestants came from all over the world - a young Australian, a disabled woman, a young man who won it, a grocer from London who had been in the final ten times, a nuclear physicist … They were all competing for the beautiful trophy, a golden spurtle not unlike the wooden ones the Chieftan crafted to raise funds!

It reminded me of a lifetime’s involvement in church and village halls with various committees, organising multiple events over four decades and all the fun we had in creating something special in four assorted parishes. The film portrayed accurately the warmth, enterprise and pride in  Scottish community life.

The local church was featured too. We saw part of the morning service where the worship leader was interrupted by his own mobile phone. Later on, an elder opened the big, pulpit Bible in a cloistered vestry  and read the ‘Parable of the Yeast’.

‘To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’ (St. Luke 13;20) It was an unusual component in a modern documentary but a splendid text for this community enterprise – modest, surprising, wonderful!