After breakfast this morning I completed the recording and editing of Thursday's Morning Prayer, and got most of the slides I needed ready for integration into the video. We shared cooking lunch, as I had chicken and Clare had vegetarian sausages, needing to be cooked separately. At two, I had an assignment with the Benefice Mothers' Union Branch, leading a service to commemorate the centenary of the death of their founder Mary Sumner, the Vicar's wife who started a parish prayer and fellowship group, and lived to see it develop into an international network of M.U. branches in places where the Anglican church is planted. In reality it's a low key front-line missionary community working to educate and empower churchgoing women whose pastoral influence is perhaps all too often underestimated.
I was standing in for Mother Frances whose partner Sue Pinnington died two weeks ago. Sue's funeral was taking place as we met. Afterwards there was a traditional tea with lemon drizzle cake and bara brith, with a dozen women of a certain age gathering together as a group for the first time in twenty months. Their faces shone with joy and the pleasure of reunion. It was a lovely half hour, following a service that sought reflect on the lived experience of enduring and surviving the pandemic, using Psalm 90 'So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.'
Then, I took Clare over to Rumney to have her hair done by Chris. Being over the east side of town, I was minded to mooch around the big stores along Newport Road for an hour before going to St German's to celebrate the six o'clock Mass. I'd just done a tour of Curry's Digital when my phone rang. It was Clare with an invitation from Chris to return to his salon in half an hour and have my hair cut.
My last haircut on the day hairdressers re-opened, was squeezed in on a very busy day. It was quickly done, and in a style which Clare was adamant didn't suit me, so I've been letting my hair grow long, and trimmed rough bits out with my hair clippers since then. That gave Chris a decent head of hair to restore normality to with his expert eye. He only had ten minutes to do it, as I had to get to St German's in the rush hour traffic for six. Now it's as long as Clare likes it and looks respectably neat again. We're both pleased with the look. Next time we'll both book a slot with Chris properly on the same afternoon!
I arrived at St German's with ten minutes to spare and celebrated Mass with six others, in honour of Saint Lawrence the Deacon, martyred in third century Rome. I learned that when the first mission initiative in this corner of Roath Parish was established by the Wantage Sisters nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, it was dedicated to St Lawrence, which explains why the church has a small statue of the saint in one of its side chapels.
When I arrived, a lady was enquiring about having her first baby Christened before a second one arrives at the end of October. She was worrying about dates as booking a venue for a reception can be a real problem, with so many people wanting catch-up celebrations post lock-down. We tentatively agreed to provisionally book the last Sunday in September for her, and I promised that, as she'd met me, I would arrange to be available to take the service. I am in any case hoping to be asked to undertake interregnum duties there this autumn.
I reached home just after the Archers had finished. Having listened to it in the car, I listened again with Clare on catch-up, as she'd only just arrived from Rumney, having caught the bus home from town and done a small amount of shopping on the way. More melodramatic dysfunction from Alice to shock hearers unfamiliar with substance abusers extreme behaviour. I suspect the scriptwriters have even more in store to shake up genteel listeners. The character has been secretly an alcoholic for some years, then had a child which she had very mixed feelings about and didn't strive to keep bonded with. Post partum psychosis on top of alcohol dependency? Or has she started secretly taking crystal meth or crack cocaine in addition? Something more is up there, than what seems to be the case.
Two episodes of NCIS, neither of which I'd seen before, and a turn around the park in the dark before bed. Technically complex plots, and increasingly mumbled dialogue, which doesn't help.
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