Rain again today. I had a slightly better night but woke up terribly congested with thick catarrh, settled on my vocal cords, and this took hours to clear away. I didn't lose my voice, but it became quite crackly and the strangest thing of all was that my speaking voice dropped into the bass register so deeply that I found I could sustain a note three notes below what's normally possible for me. I have no idea why I should have woken up with a voice that sounded like a Siberian basso profundo - that's not happened before.
I uploaded the link for today's Morning Prayer half an hour later than usual. When I looked at my phone a message came in from Fr Rhys to ask if I could celebrate the Sunday Mass at St Lukes, as Fr Colin who was scheduled to celebrate there while Mother Frances is on leave has got covid. Clare and I were going to attend St German's together before their Parish lunch, as I had a duty-free Sunday until this moment, but I didn't feel I could say no at such short notice.
With a graveside funeral to take at eleven thirty this morning, I asked if the Pidgeon's driver could pick me up from St John's at eleven so that I could attend Mass. I think Fr Colin was also asked to take this service, so on arrival, I stood in for him instead. The funeral was in Thornhill's new cemetery section, with just six mourners. When I'd finished the service and invited the mourners to come and throw their yellow roses on to the coffin (no more token earth sprinkling), I turned to leave and noticed a familiar face on a headstone nearest me.
It was a vignette of Father Mac Ellis, the priest I succeeded as Rector of St John's City Parish Church, who died at a great age three years ago. I'd been standing on his grave. Impulsively I wondered if he minded - not so much being trodden on, as the service I'd devised, Mac was an old school traditional Anglo-Catholic, organist and choir trainer. He wouldn't have approved of no earth being sprinkled, tolerant of the flowers, but not as a substitute.
We had Clare's tasty fish and vegetable soup for lunch. Then I went into town, partly by bus, to bank a cheque and then walk back through along the Taff. I was grateful the rain had stopped for the funeral, but it re-started on the way home, leaving me with a coat to hang and dry out. There were emails from Costa del Sol West to answer, and then I got started on a sermon for Trinity Sunday at St Luke's. It's only the second time this year I've taken a service there. Before that it was Trinity Sunday last year when Archbishop Rowan preached beautifully and without notes, a biblically rooted trinitarian sermon with no esoteric theological terminology in it. That's what I call expertise. I wish I could do as well.
Another amazing Springwatch edition this evening, followed by a documentary following community nurses and Police Community Support Officers going about their business in Bradford, one of the most deprived and polluted UK cities. The city has been hit hard by changes to regional rail infrastructure government 'Northern Powerhouse' cities agenda, leaving it as the only city without a station on either east-west or north-south main lines. Converting a branch line into a main line station would have eased chronic travel problems and brought economic uplift to the region. It's been on the local structure plan for the past decade. The proposal now is just to tinker with the problem with improvements to what is already there rather than add to the existing national network. Government marketing rhetoric doesn't match the reality. People are feeling let down by Westminster yet again.
No comments:
Post a Comment