I have avoided writing about it up to now, but if you’ve seen the news recently you will have heard about what happened last weekend. Our usually quiet corner of Berkshire has been rocked by three murders.

The most publicised has been the shocking muder of two schoolboys, who were well known to a number of the young people in our youth group, and who attended the Emmbrook school where Beth taught before she moved to her current school. Although most of the reports have mentioned Wokingham, and the bodies were found in Barkham, both boys actually lived in Finchampstead, close to many people from our Church. Another teenager has been remanded in custody over the crime.

On top of that, the day before the murder of the boys, a man was murdered at Pine Ridge Farm, again, just outside Finchampstead. Again, a suspect has been remanded in custody.

All in all, Finchampstead, Barkham and the local area is very much a community in shock. What crime there is around here is low level stuff, a bit of vandalism and burglary. Certainly the Finchampstead and Barkham bits of the local paper are generally listing the local gardening club, or grumbling about kids hanging around on the street. If a young person dies, it’s usually in a car accident. Now the area has been catapulted out of obscurity into the international press.

It is fairly likely that our Church building will host any funerals, if a Church ceremony is requested, as although the boys lived in the adjacent parish, St Mary and St John California meets in a local school building. Therefore for any weddings and funerals our building is used. Indeed there is already a growing carpet of flowers alongside the porch.

There is currently an increased Police presence in the area (usually there is just one local beat bobby who covers Finchampstead), trying to reassure local people. This is in addition to the specialist officers who have come from as far afield as Milton Keynes. Of course we’ve also had local press around. We’re somewhat out of the direct attention living in Arborfield, but apparently some press have been going around local streets looking for quotes.

Hopefully, things will return to normal soon, once the attention has died away. We can be thankful that with both crimes the suspects were fairly clear, and so we are spared a protracted murder hunt, and the fear of a murderer being on the loose. Also, as the local authorities are keen to remind us, events like this are rare, and Wokingham still has one of the lowest crime levels of anywhere in the Thames Valley Police area.