We've had Kath, Anto and Rhiannon with us for the weekend. Anto was playing a gig last night at Chapter Arts Centre just down the road from us. It was a night of re-union for 'The Third Uncles' a Cardiff 1980s rock band in which Anto had been bass guitarist before he and Kath married. This was their first gig in 23 years. The band was good enough to be signed by a big record label, then later dropped. This experience of the music business in those early days of electronic sound samples being added into live performances gave Anto a taste for making and recording his own music. This was how his post teaching career, running his own library sound track production company AKM Music began.
Clare and went to the gig, played to a packed house in an upstairs studio, a hundred or so of mostly middle aged people, re-united around their youthful memories, of bonding over loud music. The band played their hour long set with their hallmark tight precision. Either the protective earplugs I was wearing or the sound system balance muffled the vocalist, so the sounds retained their indistinct unfamiliarity. It wasn't really my kind of music, to be honest. I much prefer the Latino music Kath and Anto are performing these days with their group 'Lament', soon to be more cheerfully re-branded as 'Sonrisa'. I can even sing along to some of their songs. Thankfully, the gig didn't finish too late, so I was able to walk home and watch the first half of the last series two episode Inspector Montalbano on iPlayer before bed.
I was up early for an eight o'clock Mass at St David's Ely, followed by the nine fifteen Mass at St Timothy's. As it's Remembrance Sunday, I considered going into town for the Cenotaph ceremony, but by the time I was ready to leave church, it was already too late to arrive on time, so I listened to the Whitehall Cenotaph ceremony on the car radio as I drove home. Strange to miss out, after so many years of habitual attendance at Remembrance parades. But, if things had worked out differently in the summer, I might still have been out in Spain, where remembering victims of past conflicts is still a painful little mentioned issue for many.
After a family lunch and departures, I drove out to Tongwynlais to attend Evensong and hear Philip, one of my tutor group members preach his first sermon since arriving in College. He did well with both content and delivery, a promising start. The service was the much loved Prayer Book Evensong, seventeen people present, with four of the hymns sung traditionally sung at Remembrance-tide. I enjoyed it, not least because I found myself remembering my father who had attended my first ever preachment at St James' Taff's Well, the other church in the Parish, just a mile away. He'd spent some of his childhood living and going to school locally. It was easy to imagine his presence, and casual enjoyment of worship in this way, hardly changed since he was a boy nearly a century ago.
I was up early for an eight o'clock Mass at St David's Ely, followed by the nine fifteen Mass at St Timothy's. As it's Remembrance Sunday, I considered going into town for the Cenotaph ceremony, but by the time I was ready to leave church, it was already too late to arrive on time, so I listened to the Whitehall Cenotaph ceremony on the car radio as I drove home. Strange to miss out, after so many years of habitual attendance at Remembrance parades. But, if things had worked out differently in the summer, I might still have been out in Spain, where remembering victims of past conflicts is still a painful little mentioned issue for many.
After a family lunch and departures, I drove out to Tongwynlais to attend Evensong and hear Philip, one of my tutor group members preach his first sermon since arriving in College. He did well with both content and delivery, a promising start. The service was the much loved Prayer Book Evensong, seventeen people present, with four of the hymns sung traditionally sung at Remembrance-tide. I enjoyed it, not least because I found myself remembering my father who had attended my first ever preachment at St James' Taff's Well, the other church in the Parish, just a mile away. He'd spent some of his childhood living and going to school locally. It was easy to imagine his presence, and casual enjoyment of worship in this way, hardly changed since he was a boy nearly a century ago.
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