A futile trip
Drove to the Cathedral yesterday morning, for a College of Canons meeting. As it was my last meeting with the exalted status of Canon (no, not the sort you park on the front lawn. The churchy kind) I particularly wanted to be there.
Arrived in good time to robe ready for the Eucharist, only to find I was alone. No-one else was there.
‘Uh-oh,’ I thought (being the quick-witted type), ‘perhaps I’ve got the time wrong.’
But on checking my diary I found that I hadn’t got the time wrong, just the day! The meeting is next Tuesday. So I drove home feeling somewhat peeved with myself, a peevishness which increased dramatically when the car radio refused to switch on, however much I bashed it. (When Ed tried it this morning it responded first time. Doesn’t that make you want to spit?)
Did two Home Communions in the afternoon and was delighted that 97-year-old Mollie is again feeling well enough to make the tea. The tea ritual at the end of the short service is vital, you understand. Either she was feeling better, or the tea I made was so awful she couldn’t stand it any longer…
Had a baptism visit in the evening, but had to ring from the car on my mobile phone to find out where this young family lived. You’d think in a village with one street that even I could find ‘Hall Bungalow’, but no. I was stumped.
“Oh,” she said (laughing), “you go through the big iron gates marked ‘Private – keep out’, drive for about a mile until you reach the big hall, then turn left. Our bungalow is the last one there.”
It also turned out to be the only one there, some twenty minutes later.
Got home eventually to receive another telephone call from a couple whose child I’m baptising on Sunday week.
“We had a meeting tonight,” they said, “but you didn’t come…”
Oh well. Put it all down to jet lag, mental aberrations or senility. Not necessarily in that order.
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