THE ROAD LEADING up the hill to Desmond Wisley’s warehouse is fringed by the usual detritus of the recession. There are scrubby construction lots, and a cluster of unoccupied apartment complexes. The centre of the development is a big new supermarket with a cavernous underground car park, from which gleaming escalators hum emptily up to the store: at eleven o’clock on a Monday morning, there isn’t a single car.

But for Desmond, known to most as Dessie, business is good. He runs Wisley Ecclesiastical Supplies, a business that sells religious essentials to churches. Their biggest movers are prayer candles: the ones you light as you wish a trouble away. Continue reading →