Memorable weekend

A slightly warmer day today with clouds giving way to sunshine as the day went on. It was good to hear positive feedback about the marvellous range of traditional and new music composed for the Coronation on this morning's 'Sunday' religious affairs programme. I also learned that for the first time since the reformation a Papal Legate attended the service as well as the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster who played a small part in the ceremonial along with other faith leaders. It was a gesture of mutual goodwill after centuries of antipathy persecution and antipathy. 

It seems that church and other faith leaders all stayed at St James' Palace the night before, so it wasn't just the Chief Rabbi who was able to walk together to the Abbey beforehand. Ecumenical and inter-faith encounter and engagement has been part of my life in ministry from the start, and it's wonderful to have witnessed such a marvellous and gracious transformation of relationships between religious believers of every kind over the years.

I went early to St German's as I'd been asked to hear someone's confession before the service, and had to sit in the car saying Morning Prayer from my phone before the doors were unlocked. There were twenty nine of us in church. Afterwards there was a Coronation cake to share with glasses of Prosecco to wash it down with. The cake was decorated with a large coloured medallion of the King made of icing sugar. It's amazing what can be produced that's safe to eat these days.

I drove straight to Conway Road to meet with Owain and Clare who were waiting for me in the pub of the same name for lunch. It wasn't a great meal from my point of view. Yorkshire pudding that was tough and leathery and roast spuds that were drying out, but the huge piece of chicken fortunately was perfectly cooked. Afterwards I drove Owain to the station for his train back to Bristol, then slept for the nearly two hours before going for a walk in the park. 

Swimming in the pool below Blackweir bridge was a Mallard mother duck with four chicks with only the remnants of the yellow down feathers, they had on hatching, so they're probably a week old already, if not more.  There were two herons as well, a younger one perched at the bottom of the overflow channel of the weir and an older one on the bank two hundred yards downstream.

After supper we watched the Coronation Concert from the grounds of Windsor Castle. It was an action packed variety of entertainment, reflecting the King's love of creative arts and culture. His son William, now Prince of Wales gave a lovely tribute, honouring his father's achievements over the past sixty years. The twenty thousand strong crowd was enthusiastic about every every performance. It was a brilliantly executed production from start to finish, with an amazing light show throughout, projected on Windsor and enhanced by a fleet of LED drones programmed to paint the night sky with the shapes of animals and flowers. There were similar light shows in cities around the country, all different but demonstrating how effective the use of programmable drones can be. There must have been thousands of them in use at the same time around the country, showing how far such technology has evolved in the past decade of Cloud computing. And a good time was had by all.