Many of us will have a friendly relationship with our hairdressers and barbers - telling them deep stories of our highs and lows as well as mundane small talk and chit-chat.

But one salon owner wants to take the connection she has with her clients to an even higher place by becoming a priest - while still carrying on with the day job.

Anthea Mitchell has worked at Hair Professional on Maidstone's King Street for three decades but a development of her faith in recent years has seen her start training to become a minister in secular employment.

Given she works some 70 hours a week, the process of becoming ordained can take as long as nine or ten years, and the 53-year-old who lives in Vinters Park, says she is around half-way through that journey.

Anthea's training involves weekly visits to St Augustine's College of Theology in West Malling, and stacks of homework she tries to battle through in the evening, like thousands of other students up and down the country.

"It's like any university really, I have to hand in assignments and go on placements for experience like everyone else," she said.

"I don't think people have known doing something like this is an option - the Church of England is a really big organisation and like most it's hard to make changes.

"They are very proud of the parish system and in more recent years they have managed to start accepting other forms of ministry - I certainly didn't see myself as a parish priest.

"But rather than wait for them to make a decision, a few of us have taken matters into our own hands - it's like a bottom-up approach, rather than top-down."

Anthea is on course to be ordained as a deacon in the summer of 2021 and will then spent three or four years serving curacy, described by the church as "a vital time" in which new ministers continue to learn and grow in the roles to which God has called them.

When discussing her plans with clients, she admits many were initially surprised at the idea of her coming to work in a dog collar.

However, she says they have since concluded that discussing spiritual topics in the salon is more common than they first thought, and more natural when not confined to formal church services.

"Hairdressers are really good at communicating and really good at building relationships so I think there are a lot of transferable skills," she said.

Read more: All the latest news from Maidstone

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