Out of the house by quarter past eight this morning, driving up the A470 to celebrate the Eucharist in Abercanaid, part of the Benefice of Merthyr Tydful, somewhere I've not visited before. The last time I was in the Taff Vale was last August when I took services at Aberfan. The rising sun shone at my back, bathing everything with golden light. Windows in Valleys terraced houses caught the sun in batches, making them appear like distant floodlights lighting a stadium. A glorious start to the day.
Abercanaid village is tucked in behind the closed, derelict Hoover factory site. You have to drive right around its desolate perimeter to access the main street by car. The sizeable church building suggests the prosperity of a former era of mining and manufacturing in this area. It is however no longer used as worshippers can't afford to maintain it. On the same site there's a smaller stone clad hall. This was the original multi-purpose mission church building. It has now reverted to its former function, housing community activities and Sunday worship.
The congregation were very welcoming and kindly understanding of my no-show last Sunday. There were twenty of them and they sang with gusto, sixteen women and four men. They read lessons and prayed thoughtfully. It was lovely to hear voices speaking in my native mid Glamorgan accent again, and I enjoyed telling them about Miss Mabel Hill of Llandaff and Taormina, as I unpacked the meaning of baptism into the Body of Christ in the sermon.
I got back in time to pick up Clare at the end of the service at St Catherine's so that we could go to the market together before lunch. She had an afternoon meeting, so I considered going out for a walk, but it was too cold to be enjoyable, and the sky had clouded over. So I whiled away the rest of the day, doing nothing much apart from reading Giles Tremletts's book on Spain post-Franco, and talking to the kids by phone.
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