This morning I drove to Llanishen to celebrate the 10.30 Sung Eucharist at St Isan's Parish Church, now in interregnum after the recent retirement of Mike Whitcombe, Vicar for the past 25 years. It's a typical old country church, swallowed into suburban Cardiff a century ago, with a ring of six in the bell tower and surrounded by an ancient churchyard. It's a mainstream church, well organised well attended with a prosperous congregation, popular for weddings.
The first time I visited St Isan's was for my cousin Christine's wedding 48 years ago. My Uncle Gordon and Auntie Joyce were parishioners. When he died 13 years ago, I attended his funeral there. My only other visit was to preach on behalf of USPG about 35 years ago. It's still quite well attended with a congregation of over sixty, and good small choir which sang a responsorial Gradual Psalm to Gelineau Chant unusually well. The congregation was responsive, and also sang well.
As the church chancel is narrow, and the Communion rail accommodates around eight at a time, the distribution of the Sacrament took longer than I'm used to. Interestingly, the choir quietly sang through an entire Mass setting during this part of the service, which was something of a surprise, but I felt it worked quite well.
A little later than I had expected I left the church after greeting people, and drove to neighbouring Cyncoed for a midday meeting with John and Paul, the two sons of Sheila, whose funeral I'll be taking this week. John, I met last week in UHW. Paul had since then arrived from the USA where he has lived and worked for most of his adult life, without losing his British accent. We chatted for a lot longer than I intended and it was almost two by the time I reached home again, not least because of traffic congestion along Cathedral Road, generated by an afternoon cricket match.
Later, I caught up on the final two episodes of 'Follow the Money', in which the series villain meets his end, and then the last episode of 'Line of Duty', in which I'm pleased to say, I had already spotted the main secretly corrupt cop of this series early on. Hastings the heroic chief inquisitor is revealed to be a flawed man, but not a villain. It's not all over, however, and although it has yet to be written, a sixth series is promised. It's not over until it's over, as the oxymoron goes.
As the church chancel is narrow, and the Communion rail accommodates around eight at a time, the distribution of the Sacrament took longer than I'm used to. Interestingly, the choir quietly sang through an entire Mass setting during this part of the service, which was something of a surprise, but I felt it worked quite well.
A little later than I had expected I left the church after greeting people, and drove to neighbouring Cyncoed for a midday meeting with John and Paul, the two sons of Sheila, whose funeral I'll be taking this week. John, I met last week in UHW. Paul had since then arrived from the USA where he has lived and worked for most of his adult life, without losing his British accent. We chatted for a lot longer than I intended and it was almost two by the time I reached home again, not least because of traffic congestion along Cathedral Road, generated by an afternoon cricket match.
Later, I caught up on the final two episodes of 'Follow the Money', in which the series villain meets his end, and then the last episode of 'Line of Duty', in which I'm pleased to say, I had already spotted the main secretly corrupt cop of this series early on. Hastings the heroic chief inquisitor is revealed to be a flawed man, but not a villain. It's not all over, however, and although it has yet to be written, a sixth series is promised. It's not over until it's over, as the oxymoron goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment