Soul vitamins

Out of the house just after nine this morning, driving in heavy traffic to reach St German's in good time for the 'Class Mass', which Fr Phelim asked me to celebrate again today, while he and a group of parishioners are on pilgrimage in Rome. Since I came last, the liturgical set up has changed, with the chancel and high altar being used instead of the nave. There is enough room in the choir stalls to take thirty children and over a dozen adults, and it's a superb acoustic space for singing in, and for speaking without need for microphones. The kids responded well, sang well and it was easy to be more relaxed, as it took less effort to engage them in a space more enclosed than the vastness of the nave. It also gives the children an opportunity to see the marvellous gothic reredos and the huge Victorian stained glass window above it. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this. It was like a rejuvenating tonic. Soul vitamins, let's call it.

I've been celebrating this particular weekday service occasionally and sometimes regularly over the past seven years, since I first started helping out Fr Roy before he retired. This is the first time I can recall ever using the chancel, although I remember once using the Lady Chapel next to it with a full class of kids crammed into it. Why didn't this ever get tried before? Force of habit in using the portable nave altar? Some old taboo about not using the High Altar except on Sundays? This week Churchwarden Peter, who usually prepares for this service, and assists is in Rome with Fr Phelim, so was this a necessary fall-back arrangement, or has Fr Phelim introduced this since I was here three weeks ago? I look forward to finding out when he gets back.

When I arrived home after the service, our bathroom was a hive of activity. Yesterday, a new toilet seat bidet arrived, ordered by Clare on Monday, and she'd engaged a recommended plumber to come and install it. It's a simple design, the most basic in fact. Cold and hot water, no electrical electrical heating or remote control. As little as possible to go wrong. This will make a difference in managing my present condition, but also to both of us in the long term. We're delighted with it.

I called the administrator of the surgical team, and was told that the head colorectal surgeon on my case was not doing clinics during December or operations, because of teaching assignments. She promised, however to draw his attention to my concerns during the day, and get him to look at the scan images, which she knew would be on their record system already, then report back, end of  the working day. At ten to five, she called again and said that he had delegated reviewing my scan to a colleague, but that the team was still obliged to wait for the arrival of the radiologist's report before, deciding on any action. The letter I wrote and sent to the head surgeon first class post yesterday has yet to be received. It can take days to get from the mail room to the appropriate medical secretary, apparently. So this was not going to inform the present process. 

She did however say that I could ask my GP to refer me in extremis to the surgical assessment unit, as there is someone who's always on-call. The implication is that you have to be permanently in pain or otherwise disabled by a change in your condition to get examined. Will it be necessary to have a stroke or a heart attack or a life threatening hidden secondary infection to get seen? Living for any length of time with a chronic condition takes its toll on the immune system too, even in someone relatively fit and healthy to start with. 

Not dealing with this early enough could be much more time consuming and costly to deal with in the long run. I mentioned the possibility of seeking surgery privately, and the administrator didn't sound encouraging, any more than the practice nurse was. So many people speak of the private option as drastically cutting wait times, and being able to obtain MRI scan results on a much shorter timescale. It this true? Or marketing hype? I don't know what to think, but it looks like enquiries are becoming necessary now. Even if my GP pressed for an early surgical assessment of my case, there's no guarantee his request would fit within the criteria laid down for this by medical management. As sister in law Ann says, it's like something from a Kafka novel.

Late this evening, Channel Five screened an archaeological documentary on a mapping project at Port Royal in Jamaica, exploring the remains of the seventeenth century town, much of which sank beneath the sea in a matter of a few hours, due to an earthquake, followed by a colossal landslip and a couple of tsunami waves in succession. The port and its town was constructed on massive sand bar in Kingston Bay and this was destabilised completely when the earthquake effectively turned what seemed to be solid ground into quicksand. Port Royal has become better known in our time as the setting for the beginning of the film 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. It was once known as the wickedest city in the world for this reason.

The reason the documentary seized my attention was because I stayed in Port Royal at the Police College, the weekend I arrived in Jamaica in early 1982 on a study tour of schools funded by a grant from the Commission for Racial Equality. Norman Manley International Airport is not far away, and I was met on arrival by a brother in law of the Curate of St Agnes Bristol, who at that time was in charge of the Police College, and given hospitality for the weekend at the start of my six week tour of the island. In the programme, I recognised a few features of the location, but best of all, it showed St Peter's Parish Church Port Royal, and its Spanish silverware Communion Plate, stolen by Captain Morgan and presented to the Parish in 1662. I used this when I celebrated the 1662 Communion service in that church on my first Sunday, pondering on the ethics of using plundered plate.

Amazing to look back. I must find the journal I wrote during that trip and transcribe it, to remind me of all the places I went. Even in those days of film, I took over three hundred photos during the trip.