I received a phonecall today from a lady who, long ago before the war, was baptised in Swallow.

As churchwarden and local historian I get quite a few such phonecalls/emails wanting to check dates and so on. I like doing that kind of thing and have trancripts of all the extant registers, the censuses from 1841 to 1901, lots of old photographs (not actually mine - the village archive), historic maps, enclosure maps, archaeological maps, and notes made from the school log book, various local directories, the archived Yarbrough documents, etc. etc.

This lady's request was different. She changed her religion 25 years ago, and has now decided that she wants the record of her baptism deleted from the parish registers. I explained that I cannot do that.
a) I haven't got the original register - it is in the archive in Lincoln.
b) Even if I had got it, church registers are legal documents which may not be altered. (I would probably be breaking the law if I altered any record after it has been signed by the officiating priest.)
c) Annual returns (historically the Bishops' Transcripts) are made to the diocese - these are also legal documents.
d) Whatever her current views, her baptism is an historic fact which cannot be changed by altering records. History is full of things we don't like - wars, executions, slavery, massacres, child labour . . . they happened, and we can't alter that.
e) The church of England isn't a club. The baptism didn't make her specifically a member of Holy Trinity Church, Swallow: it welcomed her into God's family - a family to which she still belongs albeit on a different - and, to my way of thinking, rather odd - branch.

As I said - nowt so strange as folks.