Plus ça change

Warmer today but still overcast, but no rain, although it must have rained in the night. I woke up early and didn't fall asleep again listening to the radio as I often do. I got up at eight and we had breakfast early with toasted leftover waffles and pancakes from the freezer, which re-heat nicely in the toast if required. Then I spent time writing a sermon for tomorrow. The first two readings spoke about sudden catastrophe striking people unaware and unready. It made me think of what happened in Gaza on October 6th. I had trouble in difficulty getting started, so I looked at my archive for a sermon on the same set of readings, to stimulate my thinking. 

I found one from 15 years ago preached at St John's City Parish Church. Apart from allusions to events of the time, it read as if I'd written it earlier this week, with reference to the situation in Palestine. Disturbing to think so little has changed. I made a copy and used it as the starting point for a re-write, conscious my speaking and writing style has changed in those years more than the things I've observed and reflected on. 

We had an early lunch, as Clare cooked a fish pie, not realising she'd started work on it an hour early. As a result, this gave us an extra hour of afternoon before sunset. I worked for a while on a poster for St John's Church annual Christmas tree and neighbourhood illumination switch-on celebration, attended by Bishop Mary this year. I used Libre Office Impress, equivalent to Powerpoint for this. It was difficult to figure out how to do this at the start, but once I'd learned to control it, producing what I needed turned out to be a lot simpler than doing the same in Libre Office Documents. An attractive slide produced and made into a jpeg with ease. 

Then I added some new publicity material to the trial edition of a whole Ministry Area Sway which I started yesterday, and showed it to a couple of recipients for feedback. Hopefully I can launch this when the Canton Sway is issued next Thursday.

We walked over to the Secret Garden Cafe in Bute Park for a cup of tea. The Taff water level was up to the top of the fish ladder again, indicating much heaver rain inland than on the coast. I continued working on Sway after we returned until it was time for supper. There was one programme we both wanted to watch in the evening, and that was a documentary about the history behind the established story of the murder of young Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower of London. 

An investigation has produced verified documentary evidence that neither prince died at the alleged time, but were secretly spirited away to safe places and then to protection by powerful aunt Margaret of York in her Flanders fortress. Edward raised funds to launch a couple of failed armed expeditions to lay claim to the English throne, and probably died at the battle of Stoke, the last in the Wars of the Roses, a decade later. Richard subsequently launched his own campaign to seize the throne, but also failed. He lived on  in the Tower of London after capture, where he was eventually executed after an escape attempt. The story of an uprising against the first Tudor Henry VII, led by a youthful pretender to the throne called Perkin Warbeck is now thought to have been fabricated by Henry to cover up the real Royal actors in the story of the House of York's failed attempts at a coup d'etat. A fascinating tale nearly two hours long.

And so to bed..