28  November 2025

I have a very encouraging thing to do on Sunday. At Pittenweem Kirk, we are ordaining two new elders. Both have been participating in the Congregational Board and are experienced in the governance of the Church. One has been working for the kirk for decades. The other is in his twenties.

We had a rehearsal in the church. Where to sit, where to stand, what to say and what to do. The Session Clerk was with us and helped me understand how things had been done in the past and the best way to arrange the Kirk Session.

It all went very well until that moment when I got the two new elders to practice signing the Formula. I gave them the fountain pen I use for weddings. One started to sign her name. It didn’t work. There was no ink inside. It must have dried up since the wedding in July!

Fortunately, I had a fine-liner and that worked its cure. But the incident reminded me of the reprimand which I got from the Registrar in East Lothian concerning the use of blue-black ink. Although it was styled as ‘permanent’, she insisted on the use of black ink. As a consequence, I wrote a little limerick:

There was a wee Rev. from Traprain

whose Registrar thought him a pain.

She created a stink,

he got rid of the Quink

and now he can marry again.

I don’t know what the Registrar thought of my sense of humour since I didn’t get a  reply. But I got a reply from the Session Clerk. ‘It seems to me that you had a lot of time on your hands to write limericks. If I had known, I could have given you some ironing!’