Yesterday morning, Clare and I attended the blessing of the Royal British Legion Garden of Remembrance at Saint John's, sitting in the congregation for the first time. As I'm still Chaplain of the Cardiff and Vale branch of the Legion, it gave me a good opportunity to connect with many members who were present for the ceremony. Most of those present were as old if not older than I, and maybe for that reason alone they seemed pleased to see a familiar face there with them the usual place even if the service was being taken by a newcomer to them. RBL members ask very little of their Chaplain. While I was wondering what else I could offer to do Syd Nash, one of the event organisers approached me and asked if I'd help arrange a ceremony to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Legion next February in Llandaff Cathedral. That made me feel a lot better. I have a very high regard for all that the Legion does.
Afterwards, we lunched at Pipi's Greek restaurant in Caroline Street, with an authentic menu that'll take a few more visits to explore properly. I sipped my first proper Greek coffee since we holidayed in Corfu five years ago, awakening memories that go back four decades. Mediterranean food and places have figured greatly in our days of adventure throughout our married life together. We then made an effort to get started early with Christmas present shopping in John Lewis', but it was so crowded we soon ran out of energy and headed for home, to an evening without sermon preparation for a change. Tomorrow we go to St John's to listen to one of my tutor group students preach her first sermon.
I took advantage and stayed up late to watch the first two thirds of 'Vengeance' a popular cult movie about the overthrow of a nazi style dictatorship in Britain, which first featured the now ubiquitous-at-protest-events Guy Fawkes mask. I'd seen the last third of it before and made little sense of its end, so seeing the beginning was a reasonable effort to make on an idle evening. It resembles other movies, like Superman, Batman and Spiderman, deriving inspiration from strip cartoon novels, embodying narrative in which much is unexplained, so everything is barely credible or only just adds up. Storylines consist of an elementary argument forged from untested generalisation. The Guy Fawkes mask has become a trendy symbol for protests against the dominant western world social and economic order. It just doesn't add up to my mind. It's a triumph of style over substance for a media image obsessed generation. The season of Remembrance-tide always reminds us of how complex as well as costly the struggle for freedom and democracy will always be.
