This morning, benefiting from the extra hour's sleep due to the clocks going back, I drove to Newport, at Martin's invitation, to join him in attending Mass at the Parish Church of St John the Baptist, Risca Road. It's a beautifully appointed building, light and airy in the classic ethos of Edwardian Anglo-Catholicism, similar to others I've seen in East Anglia. There was a choir of four and six at the altar, with a dozen in the congregation, mostly older people but several youngsters too. The 1984 Welsh rite Eucharist was sung thoughtfully, prayerfully, no gimmicks, and I understood what appealed to Martin about the place, and its friendly people.
Although the lectionary designates this last Sunday after Trinity as Bible Sunday, it coincides with the Feast of the Apostles St Simon and St Jude this year, and this was celebrated instead. I was glad about this, as it reminded me of my time in the St Paul's Area Team Ministry in Bristol, where this was one of the Benefice Feasts of Title, due to the church of St Simon, Newfoundland Road being in the group of churches within the Parish. The building itself had been given to the Greek Orthodox community in Bristol in the early sixties, before I arrived there as a student. I worshipped there with a Greek Orthodox fellow student on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 1964. For me, that was a life changing experience, introducing me to the mystical ethos of Orthodox liturgy, and forging a bond of affection for me with Eastern Christianity, which lasts to this day.
Priest in Charge, Fr Colin, has been there many years, first as incumbent and now in a retirement House for Duty. It's a pattern that's proliferating itself across the Church in Wales nowadays. There are so many churches, ancient and relatively modern, which now have just a couple of dozen people regularly attending. It's very tempting to think this how the church will wither and die off eventually, but God sometimes has surprises in store for us, as well as disappointments. Monmouth Diocese is on the verge of bankruptcy for lack of support I hear. Who knows what the future holds? Merger with Llandaff, from which the diocese was originally carved?
We went back to Martin's house for a cuppa after lunch, and then walked to nearby Belle Vue Park, to visit an open air Sunday craft and food market. The park is set on the hillside to the west of the Royal Gwent Hospital, and was established by the landowning Tredegar Estate in the 1890s, and designed by Thomas Mawson who worked on Dyffryn House gardens. It's beautifully cared for, with a great variety of trees, effectively an arboretum, like Bute Park in Cardiff. There's a pleasant Victorian pavilion style building with a fine terrace below it, hosting a tea room, and market booths surrounded the house and space below. There's a covered bandstand in the middle of the terrace, but wasn't used by the DeeJay pumping out music to the delight or discomfort of visitors. A tent gazebo parked against a retaining wall was used instead. A strange lack of imagination, to my mind.
A restaurant lunch had been proposed, but by the time we got back, I was quite hungry, and rather reluctant to go out again and maybe wait another hour before eating, so Martin improvised a lunch of poached smoked haddock, followed by chicken pie, with wonderful succulent Medjool dates for dessert and an amazing Grenache and Carignan red wine from Languedoc to go with it.
I drove home as it was getting dark, and was relieved to find an empty space in the street to park the car. Not long after, Clare arrived from her rehearsal in Cheltenham, and we had supper together. It was a pleasant day out, the furthest I've ventured since returning from Montreux and the furthest in the new Polo. I was surprised I tired I felt, without much real exertion. I guess I've been fortunate not to have experienced much serious illness for most of my adult life, so am unused to coping with an affliction which has put much of my life on hold this past couple of months.
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