This morning I joined Clare in the choir for the Sung Eucharist at St Catherine's, with Fr Colin celebrating and a congregation of about thirty. It was the first day for the resumption of Sunday School and there were half a dozen children in church with their parents at the end when we sang a whacky tongue twisting take on the Benedicite Omnia Opera canticle called 'O ye badgers and hedgehogs bless the Lord.' I think the adults enjoyed it even more than the kids judging by the round of applause we got.
Straight after the service I drove to St German's and arrived just in time for the recitation of the Angelus. Fr Stewart had celebrated and preached, and we had a chat afterwards about interregnum arrangements. I then joined the congregation in the church hall for a three course parish lunch with wine, laid on simply to celebrate the end of restrictions on such social activities. I think there were about forty of us present, all very happy about this return to normality.
I was on the retired clerics table with Fr Roy Doxsey and Fr Paul Bigmore, who was telling us about the launch next month of the fourth compendium of hymns he's written and published. Roy has been retired eight years, but Paul had to take early retirement after a stroke greatly limited his mobility. He's mostly confined to his apartment on Fitzhamon Embankment nowadays and unable to minister publicly, so he pours all his creative energy into hymn writing. It's so good that he was able to come.
Choral Evensong from St David's Cathedral started on the radio as I was driving home. The Collect for Peace and the Blessing were said in Welsh, which was very pleasing. I would have liked to hear a bit more in Welsh, but suppose the BBC barons would be averse to this as it's nationally networked. At least we in the Church in Wales have this expression of ancient diversity, being constitutionally bi-lingual, and with our first translation of the Book of Common Prayer dating from shortly after 1662, along with the French version, the earliest renderings of reformation vernacular liturgy.
I listened to the first half in the car and the second half at home. It was gone five by the time I went out to walk off that generous lunch, as I fell asleep for an hour in the chair after the service finished. After supper, there was a two hour programme on BBC Four about the history of artist's self-portraiture from the Renaissance to present times. It was absorbing watching for the range of paintings shown, described and interpreted by art historian Laura Cummings.
I was glad to spend time looking and listening to an expert whose insight in the personalities and spirit of an era in which personal individuality evolved and flourished was most worthwhile. Clare thought the content could have been packed into an hour long programme, but she was conflicted about such a long watch as she'd just embarked on a tricky sewing project to turn a set of four armchair covers inside out to improve the colour match.
After the programme, I completed and uploaded to YouTube this week's Thursday Office and Reflection. The time taken to put visuals together with the completed audio is reducing thankfully, the more I do this. The habit of regular video production is improving my ability to judge timings between the visual elements. Sure, I could plan properly by doing a paper time-line and stop-watch components of the audio, but that seems like such an effort. Real life event timing is not nearly as mechanical. It has a feel to it, just like playing something on a musical instrument. Now I get all the components roughly in place and play with what I see and hear until it feels right. Somehow that's much more rewarding than trying to engineer the product.
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