Low Sunday blues

I woke up early and went to the eight o'clock Communion service at St Nicholas' Parish Church. I sat outside beforehand, on a park bench saying Morning Prayer from my phone. I'd have felt rather self-conscious fiddling with my phone in church, where it's customary good manners to switch off and attend to God without digital support.

Much to my surprise, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer liturgy has been supplanted by a select Easter booklet derived from the CofE Common Worship prayer book data store. A youthful looking retired priest five years or so older than me took the service and preached an excellent resurrection homily. I couldn't help but notice that congregational numbers are now down to twenty, having been thirty plus on previous visits. There can be a variety reasons for this, including a changing profile for the church going constituency with perhaps fewer older traditionalists attending. Older people may stop getting up so early, and move to the main service of the day, whether they like modern liturgy or not. Still, in this heartland parish of protestant middle England, I sincerely hope that use of the 1662 BCP hasn't entirely been abandoned.

Apart from me, everyone got up late. We had a late breakfast, and then after a good walk through Abbey FIelds and around Kenilworth Castle and back, lunch mid-afternoon, before parting company and heading down the M40 to Beaconsfield, for a night in a Travelodge hotel prior to the Memorial Service for a friend from Geneva days, John Meredith. He died last summer, six months after losing his wife Elizabeth. It's been lovely to get away, as we have done, but how tiring these days we find both the displacement and the effort.

Surprisingly, wi-fi had to be paid for in the hotel, but the phone signal was good enough for this not to be necessary. I leave mobile data on these days, and find I rarely if ever exhaust my rather meager weekly allowance, since I don't need to stream music or video. The room had a telly, we we were able to watch tonight's episode of 'Line of Duty', and be kept guessing for another week about the identity of the most corrupt cops of all - although I bet there are some corrupt politicos involved in all this as well.