Wednesday 8 April 2020

PASCHAL FULL MOON

We'll Meet Again

As Her Majesty said on Sunday, we will meet again. Her generation display remarkable stoicism, as witness my hundred-year-old aunt. We received our first delivery of mail for a fortnight yesterday, and on top of the pile was an Easter card from Aunt June. I suspect that this may be the only one we shall receive, from the only centenarian I know. Extraordinary that she is sufficiently organised to have bought Easter cards and sent them to her dozy nephews. She included a note apologising for not having had us over for lunch, but she had had a couple of problems, "AND NOW THIS!" So, hats off to Aunt June, and her generation.


Chapeau

And hats off as well to the caterers ("chapeau" is what bike racers say). I had worried that our efforts to feed people would be starved of supplies, but I was wrong. Last week the Felix Project asked if we could take more than usual, and when the delivery arrived it was full  of useful stuff, like ready meals and roasting chickens. Much of this came from the restaurant empire of Richard Caring, so our clients were eating The Ivy's famous shepherd's pie (complete with beautifully-piped potato on top), and chili from Sexy Fish (in Berkeley Square) and pea and watercress soup from Bill's. The chickens, and kale and asparagus, were not branded, but I suspect they had come from Caring's suppliers, as they seemed very good quality. There was also a mountain of little chocolate things from "Deliciously Ella". I see that Richard Caring has a charitable foundation, and clearly he is keeping some of his catering staff busy with producing these excellent ready meals for charitable purposes in this crisis, which seems to me to be a brilliant example for people to follow. I notice that Urban Caprice, the outside catering arm of Le Caprice, are working in their kitchen (just round the corner) again, so I imagine they are part of the effort, because they too are part of his empire. So, credit where it's due. It is very pleasing to think of some of our vulnerable, troubled, and damaged denizens of the Harrow Road dining on The Ivy shepherd's pie.


No More Rebellion

I have bowed the knee. We have been specifically instructed by the Bishop of London not to stream from church, as apparently some people have interpreted that as encouraging people to want to be in church, and to travel in spite of regulations. It is said that some people are using the streaming of services as an argument that churches should be reopened. We are accused of cynically ignoring the archbishops' guidelines or of pushing their boundaries, which doesn't seem entirely fair. I don't think anyone is acting cynically in this, but I do think the leadership of the Church of England have a very inflated idea of how much notice everybody else pays to what we do. So, I am currently trying to make my dining room look as churchy as possible (which does involve moving a lot of bottles). Ironically, while the conservation works were going on in church, and the whole building was technically a building site, most of the more fragile contents of the building migrated to my house, and most of them were in the dining room, but it didn't look like a church, more like an antique shop. So yesterday's Mass came from the Vicarage, and I am now working out how to do the Triduum Sacrum without moving from one spot so as to remain in camera shot.


Resurrection

When we came across from church with arms full of the necessities for the service yesterday teatime we were astonished to find a parakeet lying on its back in our drive. The more astonished since we had only been in church for about three minutes, and it hadn't been there when we set out. It looked dead, but we noticed its little chest was heaving, so we assumed it was mortally injured. "Poor thing," we both said, and left it. It made no reaction to our presence. I did another journey back and forth, with vestments, and though it was still alive, I thought its chest was moving more weakly, and its eyes were shut. About ten minutes later, Fiona came with me to get a last load of stuff, and as she came out of the front door the parakeet suddenly rolled over and flew away.

This was immensely cheering, because it was horrible to see a beautiful creature apparently dying outside your own front door, but it was also utterly mystifying. I think it had probably flown into our bathroom window, fooled by reflections, and been stunned, though how it came to fall where it did, in the middle of the drive, rather than on the flat roof under the window, I can't fathom. The added strangeness is that we hardly ever see parakeets on the Green, despite their being very common in the Park and elsewhere locally. If it had remained (apparently unconscious) on the drive much longer it would surely have been found either by the crows who have taken up residence on the Green, or by Bad Cat (Casimir's enemy) and I wouldn't have fancied its chances, but perhaps our comings and goings kept other things away, so it had time to recover, which it emphatically did. After that it seemed right to go out and admire the Paschal full moon later on.    


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