This weekend it will be our turn to be one of the host parishes for the West Lindsey Churches Festival. Some churches do no more than allow it to be known that their door is unlocked always or on this weekend, others make a huge effort. Holy Trinity, Swallow is in this latter category.

The festival is in its eleventh year and we have been involved from the start. Our original co-ordinator retired after a few years and it looked as if nobody would take over when 14 year old Joe volunteered, with me as his safety net. Seven years later we are both still in place.

This year our theme is "My Favourite Things", and we have flowers, a local history display and refreshments starting with sausage and bacon butties in the morning, soup for lunch and cakes for tea . . . all in a church with no kitchen, just a cold tap in the churchyard!

It is all a lot of work! And I have to confess that I wonder whether it is worth the effort. My feeling is that there is a finite number of people visiting the churches who will plan their tour with very little regard as to what each church is offering in the way of food, and that our menu will attract no more visitors than tea and biscuits.

The trouble is that Joe gets a bit carried away when he sees what is done by parishes with a population 10, 20, even 50 times the 150 in our village and a church with an attached church hall or at least a kitchen and loos in the tower, and thinks what a good idea it would be if we did that too! I have told him that if we don't get a great many more visitors this year than we have for the last few we will revert to a less labour intensive contribution to the festival next year when our theme will be 'Swallow People' in the hope that non-church-goers in the village will want to contribute their own photographs and memories and make it more of a village festival and less reliant on outside visitors for success.

In the meantime, we haven't begun yet and I am already shattered!