In the Gospel reading this Sunday, Jesus welcomes his apostles back from the work they have been doing and proposes a well-deserved break. These are men who clearly need a holiday. They get into their boat and set off, but it isn’t long before they realise that their ‘work’ has followed them.

The act of shaking the dust off their feet as they left a gentile town was a common practice of Jews in biblical times. The ground they had walked on was unclean, and the Jewish travellers were separating themselves from the ‘unclean’ gentiles by cleaning off the dust.

A common chat-show story told by celebrity A-listers is that, whilst the rest of the world adores them, their own family couldn’t care less about their fame nor their achievements. To a lesser degree, those of us blessed with teenagers can relate.