"حكاية جد: مذكرات معنية في أغلبها بالخدمة في الجيش الهندي والخدمة السياسية الهندية في الهند والخليج الفارسي في الفترة ١٩٣٢-١٩٤٧" [و‎‎٥‎٥] (١١٨/١٠٩)

July, 1984
Rottingdean, Sussex.
In 1961, after a very short time with "Overseas Service", then being
run by Dr. Harry Holland, the elder son of my old friend Sir Henry, I
applied for the appointment of Diocesan Secretary and Secretary of the Board
of Finance of the Diocese of Chichester. Roughly 140 other people had the
same idea but I was lucky enough to be the one chosen, and served as Diocesan
Secretary from 1961 - 1976. It was very hard work, but one of the most
satisfying jobs I have ever done, and during my first three years in the
Diocese, which covers the whole of Sussex end a few square miles of Kent,
Surrey and Hampshire, I managed to visit over 90$ of the five hundred clergy
in their own homes, and became good friends with most of them. At the least
I was no longer a faceless stranger at the end of a telephone. As the old
Army adage has it "Time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted", and I put
this dictum into practice in the Diocese just as I had done when touring the
four hundred villages in the Abercorn District of Northern Rhodesia.
When Synodical Government came into force in 1970, I became, in
addition to my other duties, Secretary of the Chichester Diocesan Synod, and
remained so until my retirement in 1976.
Apart from my Diocesan work I was appointed to the Hove Bench in 1965*
having previously served as a magistrate in Surrey from 1957, and I still
remain a Justice of the Peace, although I ceased to sit on the Bench in 1982
on reaching the age limit of seventy. Since I had been a magistrate on and
off from 1936, on my first Political Service appointment to Baroda, I was not
after 46 years, too sad at having to retire.
I intend to write in greater detail, at some later stage, of my service
in Central Africa, but this, for the time being, is the end of my story.
Hugh Ranee