A Sunday Parish Feast

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.

Tyddewi, via The Shed

As the weather on our wedding anniversary day was so miserable we decided to postpone our celebratory lunch. So, today we headed south down the road to Fishguard and beyond in the direction of St David's to visit the fishing harbour of Porthgaen, now famed for a sea food restaurant called 'The Shed'.  Porthgaen owes its harbour to the fact that it was an industrial site for a century, being strategically located with slate bearing rock strata nearby, mixed in with the old Cambrian rock which characterises this rugged coastline. In its turn, slate was extracted, then local clay was extracted and fired into bricks, then the hard bedrock was quarried and crushed into tiny pieces for use as road-stone, all being shipped out from the purpose built harbour to destinations all over Britain. Industry ceased here in 1931 and most of the associated buildings in and around the narrow bay are ruins, except one. 

A large warehouse on the quay survived long enough to be restored and put into service as 'The Shed' sea food restaurant, offering locally sourced produce, and a choice between traditional high quality fish 'n chips 'n mushy peas, or a gourmet cuisine menu of great quality and freshness. The place is very popular, with outdoor tables along one side and indoor tables on two levels, able to cater for scores of eaters at a time. 

Arriving just ahead of the lunchtime rush, we took the precaution of booking a table then went for a clifftop walk on the north side of the bay. 

There are vast fields of barley rolling right down to the coastal path, and at this time of year they are pale golden colour. We walked the length of a field to the next bay - it must have been half a mile long - feasting on the colour contrast with the sea, the dark cliffs and a sky interestingly decorated with clouds. A glorious  unforgettable sight.

We shared a bowl of fish soup for a starter, then Clare had fillet of sole cooked in butter, and I had a large luscious hake fillet, perfectly accompanied by a warm salad of butter beans, sliced onion and tomato with coriander leaf, plus 'tatos newi' - Pembrokeshire new potatoes, washed down with a bottle of prize winning Tomos Watkin OSB bitter ale. It's a great place to eat, and I hope we can return and try other dishes on the menu before we return to Cardiff.

We walked along the coastal path on the south side of the bay after lunch, discovering the extent of the industrialised area and its quarry overlooking the sea. 

Then we drove on down to St David's and visited the Cathedral. The last time I was here was four years ago, when I was invited to preach the Good Friday Three Hours devotion.

Since then, Dewi's mediaval pigrimage shrine has been restored. Five new icons have been painted and installed in niches above its old stone base and a canopy mounted above, decorated in mediaeval style. Reliquaries attributed to St David and another local saint Justinian are on display in niches at ground level. These used to be housed in a repository behind the high altar wall which served as focus for pilgrim devotions before the ancient shrine was re-instated. The repository is a handsome piece of modern craftsmanship in wrought iron and wood in a prominent location, but it is now surplus to requirement and no longer labelled for the interest of visitors and pilgrims. It's merely an unexplained curiosity, in a way, rather sad.

Before leaving Tyddewi, we walked down to St Non's retreat house overlooking the sea and visited both the house chapel, the mediaeval ruins of St Non's chapel, and the holy well adjacent to it. 

 The well is watched over by a statue of Mary Immaculate, a reminder that the retreat house and domain belongs to the Roman Catholic diocese of Menevia, although it is widely frequented by people of all faiths and none. Fields in this vicinity have for many years hosted circle dance summer camps, and many of Non's pilgrims are new-agers, connecting with a sense of sacred space in this region which predates Dewi Sant himself.