The Reverend Trevor Day, 65, is Associate Minister in the West Swindon Partnership with Lydiard Tregoze, serving four churches. He is also district chaplain for Avon District Sea Cadets and chaplain for Highworth Air Cadets. He led the recent special ceremony at the Lydiard Park Field of Remembrance. Trevor is married to Coby. The couple have three grown-up children and are grandparents.

MEMBERS of the clergy have plenty of opportunities to think about the best and worst of humanity, especially if their duties include commemorating the Fallen.

Trevor Day is no exception, but his message is ultimately a hopeful one.

“I see the world full of greed and the zest for power. You can see it in Black Friday, where people with wealth, sometimes, will mass into shops to get things cheaper because they can. It’s for no other benefit except they can probably boast that they can get something cheaper.

“Yes, they may save a bit, but at the end of the day it’s just, ‘I want something cheap.’ Or, ‘I want it better than the other person’.

“That’s not what we’re taught. That’s not what I feel. Jesus talked about loving your neighbour. He didn’t mean the person next door but loving your neighbour, whomever that might be.

“It’s the person you may meet on the street who is in dire need because they have nothing. I have wealth so therefore whatever I have I need to share.

“I need to share what I’ve got with people. That doesn’t cure the world’s problems, and you can see the different things they vote for, the people they vote for, situations they vote for whether it’s right or wrong, Brexit or Mr Trump or whatever.

“That’s not the point. The point is that if each of us can start to show – it isn’t just a Christian way but a way which I see as a Christian way – the teachings of Jesus, if I can show it and other people around me can show it to each other, people seeing that will then start to think that that’s the right way.

“It’s not what we say, it’s what we do and how we do it.”

Trevor, a twin and one of four siblings, was born in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, and grew up in Richmond. His mother was a headteacher and his father a teacher.

“Mum was brought up quite devout. Dad was a chorister, as his brother was. My grandfather, with whom we lived, went to church regularly, so I suppose yes, it was a Christian household.

“We went to Church of England School, Church of England Cub Pack, Church of England Scouts.”

Trevor was also a chorister, and remained one long into adulthood. Other passions included rugby and mathematics, which he began studying at university, but then realised he had made an error.

“I loved university. It was great at Exeter, but the maths there wasn’t the maths that I loved. It just didn’t work.

“I loved the maths we did at school, A-level maths – pure and applied. Then suddenly we got to university and it was just too ethereal.”

Leaving after a year, he became a postman, and later joined BT following its split with Royal Mail. His total time with the organisations was 37 years, and in 1981 his work brought him to Swindon.

In 2007, he accepted the offer of an attractive retirement package.

Three years earlier, during a holiday in the Netherlands, his life had begun to change in a far more fundamental way.

“It was a family holiday, 10 days, sit on the beach and do nothing except read. I opened up my bag that had my books in it – my Robert Goddards and my Ian Rankins. They weren’t there, but my Bible was.

“I don’t remember packing it. Coby, my wife, doesn’t remember packing it.

“I thought, ‘Well, I’m not going to buy an Ian Rankin book right now, not from a bookshop in the Netherlands, because they cost three times the price, so I might as well start reading the Bible.

“So I started reading the Bible. I started with the four Gospels, Acts of the Apostles and then Romans – Paul’s letter to the Romans.

“Five days down, read the lot again, and it was as if the stories that I had heard read at church for years and years and years suddenly came to life. Three dimensions, colour. It blossomed, if you like.”

Trevor went to Christ Church, where he was a worshipper and chorister, and spoke to a curate, Judy Ashby, who suggested a lay minister course.

He thought about it and she asked him to lead services.

In the second week of January 2005, he preached at Evensong.

“I was frightened. I was scared stiff, holding on to the pulpit and shaking, but it was a gate I had to go through.”

After numerous further courses and selection procedures, he was permitted to begin three years of training at Salisbury, and in 2012 he was ordained at Bristol Cathedral.

Trevor was initially a Deacon in the Benefice of Highworth, Blunsdon and Hannington and also Sevenhampton.

While training, he was asked by area Dean Simon Stevenette whether he wanted to be in chaplaincy with the Sea Cadets and agreed to take on the role. The Air Cadets chaplaincy came later.

Trevor relishes the roles, which involve providing guidance and counsel to people of all ranks.

He regards the whole of his past as a foundation for what he does now.

“Psalm 139 is my mantra, if you like, because God knows us before we are born, knows us right the way through to after our death.

“In the meantime He’s there to support when we’re feeling down,

“He’s there to push us down a little when we’re feeling a bit big for our boots.”

Trevor’s core values?

“Love for each other, love for our fellow person in whatever way we can.

“Sometimes it’s just the little mustard seedness of it, but that grows.

“It can be smiling at someone. It can be letting someone in at a roundabout.

“I know it sounds quite trite but those little things can make a difference, and if we all did that across the world, then I really believe that we wouldn’t have half the problems we have now.”