Have a go at our next caption competition (above) and win a prize of Fairtrade chocolate!
Send your entries by email only to captioncompetition@churchtimes.co.uk by 9 a.m. on Monday 7 June.
Here is the winning entry for last week:
Lynda SebbageLynda Sebbage
Our raised beds are being threatened by the sea, not the see (Janet Stockton)
THE Bishop of Dunwich, Dr Michael Harrison, is already something of a TikTok star; so it is good to see that he is prepared to provide laughs in the printed (and online) pages of this newspaper.
- Bishop takes creative measures to protect his church-plants” (Ian Barge)
- Ah, another faceless ecclesiastical bureaucrat! (John Saxbee)
- It looked as if the new Assistant Bishop for Rural Affairs could be a stuffed shirt (Michael Foster)
- The new Bishop Worzel was to have a special mission to Suffolk horticulture (Richard Hough).
It is not just the parish clergy who are overworked:
- Now I’ve arranged some cover, I can go off on leave (Jean Shepherd)
- The Bishop Suffragan was given gardening leave (Brian Stevenson)
- Bishop Mike thought he’d found the ideal stand-in for when he went on sabbatical (Sue Chick)
- The Bishop’s job-sharing idea was so successful that soon he had twice as much time for gardening (Avril Forrest).
All the result of a misunderstanding, perhaps:
- Oh, Bishop Worzel! The Latin for Durham is ‘Dunelm’ not ‘Dunwich’. Honestly! (Che Seabourne)
- I said I wanted a spare crozier, not a scare crow (Valerie Budd)
- From a long way off, I thought it was the Prodigal Son, but our lad is still in a red zone (Julian Ashton).
Some other entries that we enjoyed (apologies that we don’t have space for them all):
- At last, a Bishop with his ‘Thinking Head’ on (David Hill)
- Bishop Mike was amused when he saw his daughters’ effort to protect his strawberries from avian marauders (Daphne Foster)
- Is this a bid to be a bishop down in Zummerzet? (Paul Brett)
- The scarecrow was ordained a bishop because he was out-standing in his field (Mark Parry)
- The Bishop’s text is taken from Exodus 5, verse 11: ‘Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all’ (Richard Spray)
- The Bishop was so hard up he had taken to nicking the clothes off scarecrows (Mervyn Cox)
- ‘I scare off flocks of crows, said Bishop Worsel. ‘Who do you scare off?’ (Bill de Quick)
- I love the face mask (Ben Woods)
- My see may be under the sea, but I will scare off all who try to claim my patch (Brian Lillistone)
- ‘Let’s put out turnip heads and be off to Synod,’ said the Bishop. ‘How apt,’ replied Worzel Dunwich (Vicky Deasley).
- Bishop Mike (no Man of Straw himself), asking ‘Bishop Worzel’ after the health of Aunt Sally (Lesley Cope)
- Straw Man promoted . . . for Tin Man and Lion, watch this space (Richard Strudwick)
- The Bishop reflects on his hay days (Alex Stockbridge)
- The Bishop, in his battle to prevent more of his diocese yielding to the waves, appreciated the cock’s singing (from the safety of his treetop perch) ‘for those in peril on the see’ (Chris Townsend)
- Where did you get that hat? (Janice Brett)
- Bishop Mike felt that Bishop Martin’s plant-based diet had gone on a bit too long (Sue Jack)
- Using his crosier instead of a hoe, the Bishop knocked the stuffing out of the Suffragan when it came to the best-kept allotment competition (Paul MacDermott)
- A right strawy episcopacy (David Billin)
- Luther would have called you ‘An apostle of straw’ (Charles Taylor)
- Does that make me Aunt Sally? (Katherine Valentine)
- Another one who’d crumble without the power of his post (Martin Kettle)
- So that’s what they meant when they told me to get stuffed! (Paul Crabb)
- If this doesn’t put the fear of God into our avian friends I don’t know what will,” thought the Bishop (Philip Deane)
- After a straw poll, Mike was pleased to introduce the new diocesan bishop (Tim Goodbody).
As ever, the winner receives a prize of Fairtrade chocolate, courtesy of Divine Chocolate. www.divinechocolate.com