Profisciere

A weekend of gloriously sunny weather continued today. We went to the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's and again there were thirty adults and half a dozen children present. After the service, I was able to make contact with the next of kin I needed to speak to in order to prepare the second funeral service I will be officiating at this week. Another service for an octogenarian who was a child in Cardiff during the Blitz, who lived most of her life in the next street over from where she was born. It's hard to imagine that could happen in Britain today.

We had lunch in the garden as it was warm enough, then a siesta, followed by a walk in the park and down to the river. The cricket pitches were busy with practice matches, and the temporary practice nets structure appeared and was in use in a corner of the field nearest the tennis courts. Another wave of trees are blossoming as the first wave sheds petals and sprouts leaves. It's amazing to see how much growth there has been in leaf cover in just the past few days, yet half of the trees have no leaves at all and buds are yet to burst or flower. I don;t suppose I have ever spent so much time observing the arrival of spring in such wonderful detail.

After an absence of a month or longer, there's a heron perched near the fish ladder at Blackweir Bridge, on the lookout for food. I also caught sight of a wagtail on the river bank downstream from the weir, and for the first time got lucky with a decent sharp photograph taken with my new Olympus zoom lens, which is a pleasure to use. It was rather puzzling to identify as it has grey chest plumage fading to yellow around the bottom half and legs. Is it a grey or a yellow wagtail, or a hybrid?

Clare and I chatted with sister in law Ann about Prince Philip's funeral, impressed as we were by both the content and the beautifully orchestrated choreography of the hundreds of participants. Ann observed that when the prayer 'Go forth Christian soul...' was said by Archbishop Justin, the Prince's coffin disappeared from sight. I wondered if this moment had been edited out of the recording we watched later in the evening, but it seems that the catafalque was positioned on top of a neat platform lift, to lower the coffin straight into the undercroft of St George's Chapel, where other royals are laid to rest.

The 'Profiscere' prayer as the 'Go forth' Latin text is called, is a sending off prayer which belongs with the Last Rites prayers said as person dies, but it fitted in this context. It's perhaps better known to music lovers as a text used by Edward Elgar in 'The Dream of Gerontion'. I noticed there was no prayer of Committal in the liturgy broadcasted, and wondered why, but learning about the coffin lift, helped me make sense of proceedings. The public service ended, then the Royal Family members descended to the undercroft with the clergy, where the Committal prayer would be said as the Prince's coffin was put in its resting place. When the Queen dies, Prince Phillip's remains will be moved to wherever she is laid to rest, and that will be where their shared tomb and memorial will be erected.

After supper, we watched an episode of 'Call the Midwife' together, which combined insights into the impact of Pacific nuclear testing on service personnel and their families, with an elderly nun experiencing what she describes as 'the dark night of the soul'. Set in the year we got married, it was very evocative of our shared experience of life and its concerns in those days. Then another episode of 'Line of Duty' ending with another cliffhanger, and more plot twists and turns than you can count. The story line had a strong elements of the Stephen Lawrence case, and the murder of the Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. a couple of years ago. Enough to keep the media commentariat busy for another week until the next episode, no doubt!