Retirement Deferred

A chilly morning, with clouds and sunshine. On the way to St Catherine's midweek Eucharist, I called at the surgery and picked up my prescription and took it to the chemist's opposite. There were a dozen of us for the service, in which we commemorated the 16th century Anglican priest poet John Donne. Mother Frances read us his sonnet beginning 'Batter my heart three person'd God', a nice touch.

After lunch I went and collected this week's organic veggie bag from a new pickup point in Conway Road which replaces the one in Chapter Arts Centre. It's out of use for a while as it's located in an enclosed outdoor area no longer directly accessible from the Chapter car park. Another pandemic casualty. It's only recently Chapter has been able to open at all, and thenonly in a limited way. It's a disaster economically and socially, as it's much used as a community eating and meeting place as well as for cultural activities. 

Then I went for a walk around Llandaff Fields and down to the weir, where I took a couple of photos of a heron stretching its wings on one of the long reefs of stone in the middle of the river. As they were about forty metres away from me, I had to use almost full telephoto reach with my little Sony HX90, and was surprised they both came out with negligible motion blur. Sometimes you just get lucky! 

When I got back, the clock told me that the regular Wednesday choral Evensong was still running, but three quarters completed. I listened on BBC sounds, as it allows you to roll back to the beginning. A very traditional service with some modern musical settings of the responses and canticles. The Old Testament lesson was beautifully read by a young man with a north country accent. This really suited the use of the King James Version of the Biblical text. The second was equally beautifully read by a young woman with a gentle rural Ulster accent. The service came live from Clare College Cambridge, so live that a very loud fire alarm went of for 15 seconds during the lesson. She continued reading perfectly without any lapse of concentration as if nothing had happened. Very impressive.

Mother Frances is away next week, and as both her colleagues are off work at the moment she asked if I could cover the Parish Morning Prayer services on WhatsApp. It's the first week of Advent, so I'll enjoy putting six services of fiver or so minutes duration. I also get to celebrate two of three weekday Masses in the Parish, another unexpected pleasure. I started work on the content this evening, but the delivery is of more concern - how to present a video in a way that isn't annoying or distracting. I'd be a lot happier if it were just audio, but hey ho, another little challenge. Retirement is on hold again, and I'm happy that the op has freed up some energy occupied for too long in keeping low level infection at bay. I have a lot to be thankful for.