“Being Cornish, St Piran is really special – so this award means more to me than if it came from the queen!”

 

Amy is retiring after serving on the Landulph PCC for 62 years. If it were not for ill health, it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if Amy kept going because, as she says, “I love God and I love the church.”

There is a gentle contentment to Amy. She feels blessed to have a loving, caring family around her, to have lived in the county all her life and to have been married to Jack who, before he died 33 years ago, made sure she was equipped to carry on their horticulture business. She also loves the fact that the church has been there for her for all of her 85 (“and a half!”) years. “I was christened at St Dominick, confirmed there and sang in the choir. I couldn’t really sing mind, but I made up the numbers!” she laughs.

Amy still remembers the prayers she was taught at her confirmation and uses them as the basis for her daily prayer life. Prayer is vital. Without it, she says, she wouldn’t have survived the cancer that meant she had to wear an itchy wig!

Amy has a wonderful ability to look on the the brighter side of life. When talking about a long day at hospital recently, “because they found a bit more of it somewhere else,” she says she had no complaints because they treated her so well, “And they had lovely comfy chairs that I could recline and dose in.”

Amy also served as a church warden for 10 years. It would be easy to look at Amy, see the light shining within her and think she was probably a bit of a softy. But as Amy says, “I was told that if you were church warden, you could overrule – and there were times when I had to!”

Of her many decades on the PCC, she believes that, despite being quite shy at school, “There’s no sense being part of it if you’re afraid to say what you mean –  saying this and that and not what needs to be said.” Wise words for those who’ve suffered long meetings, but it’s hard to imagine anyone ignoring what Amy would have to say, given the loving way they would be delivered.