Saturday, Sunday…

Hmm, actually I spent most of Saturday buried under a duvet with my laptop so Bob was in charge while I got a service together ready for Sunday.
Music school happened for 4 out of 5 children. I think the 5th was planning a lie-in, but I’m afraid I thwarted that by getting him up to do some English course work, which was due in the afternoon and had been promised all week. Sigh.
Perhaps Bob can add what else happened? You never know… :frog:

On Sunday K should have been singing at Eucharist, but since I was preaching at exactly the same time but in the opposite direction we decided life was going to be much easier if he came with us instead, especially as the afternoon and evening were to be full of choir stuff anyway. The service went well, then we were offered the chance to climb the bell tower – who could resist? The Methodist church in the village is now a private house and the Methodist and Anglican congregations share the parish church, which is an old traditional one (and cold with it!) complete with bells and spire 🙂 As we went up the churchwarden pointed out to us the parts of the tower and spire which were held up with wooden scaffolding in the late 19th century while the stonework below was repaired. It must have been an incredibly tricky operation! We didn’t go right to the very top, as the stairs were getting more and more worn as we got further away from the new, repaired part, but we did go high enough to see the bells from above, which was very cool, and we had a good view of the surrounding countryside.

One advantage of an early service is that we were back in time for the church council meeting at our home church. More importantly for the children we were back in time for tea and biscuits, having already had round at the church where I was preaching 😆 Our church is having large amounts of refurbishment done, in the course of which it became clear that there was structural damage (caused largely by pigeons!) to the tune of nearly £50000. We’ve been having lots of meetings (actually technically one long meeting, frequently adjourned, in order to avoid having to give lengthy notice periods for each one) to discuss what to do next and keep up to date with emergency repairs as they happen. The older children decided to walk home rather than wait through the meeting (they’d had their biscuits by then, after all!) so they set off while Bob and Afish chatted to other church members also waiting for the council meeting to be finished.

Once we’d made it home and had lunch there was not long before choristers and I had to head off again, ready for choir photos, all choirs evensong and then the choir bring and share party. Photos were about as painful as could be expected, but I had a secret weapon against boredom in the form of some books K said I needed to read – his new favourite series (Fabled Beast series; Wolf notes and other musical mishaps kept me busy for a while 🙂 ). Evensong was beautiful and included one of my favourite anthems: Todd’s Call of Wisdom. Then we gathered at the back of the church for a feast of random food items 😉 It was easy to see I was a Methodist at an Anglican party – I was gasping for a cup of tea while all that was offered was a choice of wine with or without fizz. I had to go to the children’s drinks table and make do with orangeade, but a cup of tea was definitely what was needed!