I've just had the most difficult conversation with a parishioner.I was going to baptise her baby on a Friday, but she said she'd changed her mind and would like to do the christening in our regular Sunday service.
Naturally I said my fee would be twice what I had quoted her.
She wondered why.
I told her, rather patiently I thought, that obviously we charge double-time on Sundays.
And I've insisted to my executive that all the closet homosexuals in the Church of England identify themselves. I believe that is consistent with the age-old Labour movement principle of "one out, all out".
I've taken my cue from Britain's biggest trades union, Unite, which has been doing a lot of defending the rights of the clergy lately.
Last year, Unite was busy lobbying the Church of England to do something about the "severe health and safety risks" posed to Church of England clergy by dilapidated vicarages and rectories.
I'd have thought there were greater safety risks to the bank accounts of those who have bought old rectories, but never mind.
Now Unite has set up a "hotline", where clergy can report abuse.
Bullying and abuse are no laughing matter wherever they arise and I very much appreciate Unite's support, though I'd have thought there was a better case for us being members of Unison.
Unite says it deals with 150 cases of clergy abuse every year, and that is very sad.
But the po-faced way in which barrack-room lawyers of this union address the issue does raise the odd vestry giggle.
"Bishops have got a lot nastier," says the Rev Gerry Barlow, chair of the "faith workers branch" of Unite. Can that be true? Can the imperious prelates of the 18th and 19th centuries really have been kindlier old stooges than today's pussycats? And, going further back, the likes of Cardinal Wolsey were apparently no slouches when it came to keeping order in the English Church.
I'm under the authority of the Bishop of London, on whose escutcheon is not the faintest blot when it comes to the care of his ordained ranks. I have to say that or he'd take me behind Chapter House and beat me to a pulp.
But are bishops elsewhere really nasty? I've heard of weeping secretaries and some chaplains' livers that have taken a battering at the dinner table, but never any real managerial nastiness. Apart from anything else, the freehold system in parishes somewhat protects clergy from episcopal harm.
Bullying from congregants is a different matter. They can be altogether more pugilistic, especially after a sermon. And all we're allowed to do is blow kisses in return. But it's not a union's job to protect employees from customers, surely? I'd have thought that is the job of the police. And some priests do increasingly need protection from the more militant atheists.
Most of mine seem to be online these days, so I suppose we need to watch out for cyber-bullying.
My favourite is the comment I received on my blog, apparently without irony: "It's people like George Pitcher who are responsible for all the violence and hate in the world. I'd put him up against a wall and shoot him."
Perhaps I should have called the Unite helpline with that one. It could send a couple of flying pickets to check that everyone attending my church is a card-carrying and paid-up Christian, comrades in Christ, as it were.
Unite does, somewhat chillingly, say that it's lobbying Government to give priests greater "protection".
Broad shoulders and wraparound shades come to mind.
I wonder if they could send round Charlie Whelan, Unite's Mr Fixit, to look after me?
Whelan it was who lost his job at Number 11 as Gordon Brown's minder some years back for making foolish phone-calls from the pub.
Ah, now it makes sense.
Maybe Whelan is looking for a manse for the Prime Minister to retire to this year.
Even a dilapidated one should do.
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