Remembering my mentor

After seven and a half hours of sleep out of nine hours in bed, I woke up feeling drowsy as I have done several times lately. I can't blame it on medication now, or not drinking enough water. is this an ill effect of getting up to empty my bladder disrupting rest, or lack of fresh air? Stiffness and pain in my lower back is easing. I can move with little discomfort when I first get up. My neck and shoulders are tense and slow to relax, no matter how much gently exercising the muscles I do. Maybe when the new mattress arrives it will make a difference. I must get myself an osteo-treatment this week.

I went on my own to St Catherine's for the Eucharist, as Clare had arranged a trip to Stroud with her study group members for a recital of Schubert's 'Winterreise' preceded by lunch with Jackie her former eurythmy colleague. Fr Andrew celebrated and preached on this All Saints' Festival Sunday, he spoke of the many and varied ways saints influence others, encouraging us to reflect on stories we tell about the holy who have been part of our lives. When he greeted me after the service he asked if I would write a story about someone I knew for the Ministry Area Facebook page. 

The person who immediately came to mind was the late Dean of Llandaff, the Very Reverend Alun Davies, Vicar of Ystrad Mynach when I was a teenager, a diligent pastor who regularly visited our family home and supported me when I offered myself for ordination, when I was a rather chaotic if enthusiastic undergraduate at the time. I succeeded in missing my ordination candidacy interview, but maybe accepted because I'd met Archbishop Glyn Simon whose son was in the same student hall of residence as I was. I invited them both to tea in my room during a visit, and was known to my Vicar who was also the diocesan Director of Ordinands at the time. There was little by way of rigorous scrutiny in those days. 

When I got home, as Clare was in Stroud, I wrote a seven thousand word tribute to Fr Alun, as I was on my own, keen to get on with writing it. It was past three o'clock by the time I started cooking myself a  lunch of savoury veg with haricot beans with couscous and gone four when I went out for an hour's walk as the sun was setting.

After supper I watched another episode of 'Blue Lights'. Set in the years after the Good Friday Agreement, the dialogue was pretty intense. Arguments and agonising over undercover policing decisions made which cost lives during the Troubles, still affecting policing operations against organised crime gangs years later. An outstanding TV drama series featuring the same characters through the early years of their experience as reponse police officers. It has the same high standard of dramatic story telling as 'Line of Duty', soon to return for a seventh series.