Took assembly at two of our local Church of England primary schools today. One after the other, so took the same assembly to each.
It’s Candelmas on February 2nd, so I reckoned that was near enough to choose as a topic for assembly. I took in a load of night lights and some bigger candles – a couple with medieval knights on the outside, one with medieval scenes etched into it, a scented candle in a glass and one shaped like a tortoise. Oh, and a box of long stemmed matches (most of which I managed to break without lighting a single candle.)
I lit the candles (eventually) and the children were mesmerised. One asked for the lights to be switched off, so we did that too.
I told them that around a hundred years ago, all lighting in churches was by candles, so on February 2nd every year, all the candles for the year were brought into church and blessed by the priest during a service of Holy Communion. (None of them knew what Holy Communion or Mass or The Lord’s Supper, was. They may be Church of England schools, but the level of ignorance aspires at least to the heights of the rest of the world.)
Then I blew some bubbles – well, didn’t exactly blow them. Used this wand thingy that our youngest daughter had given me for Christmas, whcih produced huge bubbles when I waved it around in the air. Mostly produced huge bubbles, actually. I wasn’t all that good at it. One of the kids suggested that they could probably do it better, but I wasn’t giving up my wand.
The purpose of the bubbles? They each contain a rainbow, so I reminded the children of the story of Noah’s Ark and the great flood, and that God put his sign in the sky when the waters subsided, a sign of a rainbow. So we know God is with us when we see rainbows. Hence we ‘attached’ our prayers to the bubbles.
So I waved these huge bubbles over the candles, knowing that hot air rises and therefore the bubbles would float up to the ceiling. Little mini-science lesson, there. I’m topic based, me. So I knew the bubbles would float upwards on the warm air from the candles.
Or not.
Mostly not. Mostly they popped on the flames.
When one did eventually float up, a great cheer erupted from the school and it took the teacher all her time to calm them down. I grinned to myself.
One little girl had a birthday today, so I had her blow out all the candles while we sang, ‘Happy Birthday’ to her.
It was quite fun. I enjoyed it, anyway.
Had a great lunch today at the Half Moon. Took the Rural Dean who is nearly recovered from his illness. I know yesterday produced the first green shoots of Spring, but like the economy, today was back to dreary, wet Winter. But we sat by a roaring log fire, had a good old mardle and an excellent meal of fish and chips followed by a pudding of sloe gin icecream in a sort of choclate basket and with cream and naturally packed full of calories. Well, that was mine. He, being a bloke, chose Spotted Dick and custard.
Then I had a meeting this afternoon followed immediately by a Governors’ meeting at the school, but you’ll be pleased to hear that I walked to both of those. Had to, after that pudding.
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Woke to a gorgeous, bright day today. Some low mist swirling over the fields making them look as though they belong in a Japanese landscape, but the sun burning through the mist leaving a blue sky and the birds singing.
For the first time this year, it felt like Spring. The birds were going demented.
I once heard the Dawn Chorus. No, not once, come to think about it, but three times on three successive mornings. I woke early, heard the first tentative tweet, quickly followed by every bird in the entire universe singing in harmony. It was magical. But that was years ago and I’ve never managed to wake up on the right mornings at the right time since, so have never heard it again.
Today I walked to the next village for Morning Prayers but got a lift back with Nigel the Curate. Just as well, since my neighbour’s car refused to start and he had to start it using jump leads attached to Nigel’s engine (his car’s engine, that is. Just to make it abundantly clear.) Apparently my car, which was standing on our drive, is too small to have enough juice to start a proper car. Or so they said. I let them get on with. Boys’ toys.
So this morning I thought Spring had finally sprung, although I confess this change in the seasons may not be permanent.
But just to cheer you all up, I finish with that well known rhyme:
Spring is sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where da birdies is?
Da little birds is on de wing.
But dat’s absurd.
De little wings is on da bird.
We had a special service today to recognise and admire local talent. No, not a Church karaoke competition or a ‘Miss World’ look alike, although either of those might be interesting.
We had ‘Open Churches Week’ back in August, and had a weekend where the church was filled with all sorts of craftspeople demonstrating all sort of crafts – printing, calligraphy, needlework (various), wine making, stone cutting, pottery, cane work etc. etc. It was fascinating. The wood turner made a beautiful oak book stand for our church and the pottery guy made a ‘gosh’ (well, it sounds like that. Pretty sure it’s not spelt like that!) for the bellringers, both of which were presented at today’s service.
What is a ‘gsoh’ (however it’s spelt) I hear you ask, as well you might. I had no idea until today. It’s a kind of large flagon with a handle on either side which apparently used to be filled with good English ale to refresh the bellringers during their practice.
So our bellringers now have one of their own. I look forward with immense interest to hearing the bellringing changes (get it?) that will be wrought by the addition of copious quantities of good English ale. The mind boggles.
Mary had indeed been sent someone else’s intimate financial details. Good job she’s eighty seven and honest. If all that stuff had fallen into the wrong hands, there could be yet another case of identity theft.
The Building Society were full of abject apologies and promised to send a stamped, addressed envelope, with instructions for Mary to place everything in the envelope and send it all back.
Then we got down to our Communion, but inevitably after that she wanted me to have coffee. Since I’d only just had one I refused, but her face fell six feet and she said, “They’re only small cups,” so of course, I was landed.
Half an hour and an empty cup later, her phone rang and I was able to escape. Thank you, God!Otherwise I might be there still (and it was two days ago.) Elderly people who live alone do tend to become Klingons (Cling-ons, get it?) which I guess isn’t surprising and I’ll probably be the same one day.
Went over to Fi’s today. Fi is our eldest daughter and lives about three quarters of an hour away. She gave Ed a Sat Nav for Christmas, but we’ve singularly failed to get the darn thing working, so took it over for advice.
She has the same device working perfectly, so we tried our SD card in her device – no joy – followed by her SD card in our device – worked perfectly! Ergo, something wrong with the SD card but not the hardware.
So Fi went on the website and discovered that you can reformat the SD card and reinstall the software from the CD Rom.
I’ve managed to do that (I think) and am now waiting for the device to charge up so that we can check it out.
Don’t you just LOVE electronics?