Grey skies with occasional glimpses of the sun and mild today, no rain. In fact the sun shone briefly during the Mass at St German's this morning. There were thirty of us present. Heather came and after the service was discussing her son's funeral Mass with a group , including Brian the organist, trying to remember the name of a piece of music which belongs to the Requiem Mass repertoire. I guessed rightly that they were thinking of the 'In Paradisum' from Faure's Requiem at the departure from church. Minutes later when I switched on Radio Three in the car to listen t while driving home, the final sixteen bars of this piece of music were playing. What a strange coincidence!
Lunch was on the table when I walked through the door a ten past one. I was a bit later than last week, but Clare judged it rightly. Afterwards, I found a full Requiem Mass text in congregational booklet format in my digital archive, edited it and sent to Heather to add details of hymns and readings. Co-incidentally the booklet had been prepared for a funeral I took at St German's five years ago, during a previous spell of locum duty.
Clare's monthly Sunday study group was due to arrive at four, so I went out and walked for an hour and a half before tea, listening to Choral Evensong on my phone. It was the recording of last Wednesday's Eve of the Epiphany service. I find this rather disappointing, as we've moved on from the Day of the Kings to the Baptism of Christ on this first Sunday of Epiphanytide.
I received an email this evening from Manel, an old friend in Geneva, chasing me up for a potted biography for the former chaplains' page on the HTC Geneva website. That was a lot easier to do than find a decent digital photo of Clare and I together from our time living there. It'll be interating to investigate, and awaken a few good memories.
I also had an email from Fr Stewart to say that ex-St John's Churchwarden Allan Frampton's funeral would be tomorrow morning at St Margaret's Roath, Lynne rang up to tell me, the day he died, it was the week before Christmas so I knew it would happen in the New Year, but not precisely when, and I don't read the death notices the the Wales On-line website. Fr Stewart took a long time to answer my email enquiry as he was away after Christmas, but it arrived just in time for me to attend. I was very fond of Alan, a staunch churchman and chorister, warm, hospitable, enthusiastic. Alzheimer's got him hospitalised in the end, and he died in Llandough. May he rest in peace.
At St German's this morning recruitment started for a possible Parish trip later in the year to Auxerre where our Patron Saint was Bishop. Back in the summer, based on the biographical research I did, the idea of writing a plan based on scenes from his life emerged. I wrote almost all of it very quickly, then had an idea it would be better to insert a narrator into the script, but then stalled completion for several months. Tonight, I got started on it again and completed a full first draft. It's only eight and a half thousand words long, a twenty five page script, so not exactly a blockbuster. Now I have to tried it out on a few people, watch this space.
I'm not sure where the energy for this came from, given how leaden footed I was walking earlier, after a very broken night's sleep, cause by not taking my medication early enough in the day. Serves me right for being forgetful and distracted at breakfast time. Anyway, I think I'll sleep normally tonight.
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