WINTER SPORTS

Public Sessions

On Friday I conducted a confirmation preparation session in Costa Coffee, which seems rather trendy. It was not solely done with safeguarding in mind, but that was a major factor. It's really not sensible to have one-to-one sessions in an otherwise empty house, even with young adults (as in this case). We have to proceed with care, so a public venue was a good idea. I remember when I was a Curate, the Archdeacon of Exeter telling us in his Visitation Charge that we should be careful to keep a coffee table between us and anyone we were counselling,(he meant adults of the opposite gender in those days) so being careful about these things is not new. It's just a good thing that today's young people are a great deal more relaxed about speaking of matters of faith in public than I would have been.


In The Snow

We had two days of closed schools, and then on Saturday the snow was melting. It's nice and quiet for me when the Primary School next door is closed, but the trouble was that with no traffic the road was completely snowed over; a delivery driver battled through and so I had to take a package in for the school, but that was all. The result was that I had to wheel my bike through the snow before I could start cycling. The roads on the estate were never gritted, but apart from Rowington Close, there was enough traffic just to keep them, passable. The Harrow Road, meanwhile, was absolutely fine, having been repeatedly gritted. It was pretty cold and uncomfortable for cycling, but I got around safely. The main problem was having to take longer routes, because the two normal routes off the estate are on paths through the park, and I knew from experience that these would never be cleared of snow. The last time we had snow it remained safer to walk on the grass than the paths for several days after the last snowfall because the Parks Department didn't touch them. I'm not sure what Westminster's park keepers do when it snows, but they certainly don't clear paths, which might not matter if the parks were only places of casual resort, but does matter when they contain important thoroughfares, as here. In striking contrast are the Westminster street-sweepers, employed by Veolia, who were issued with grit in their little carts and were out in the snow gritting pavements. Well done!

By Sunday afternoon you would hardly know there had been any snow. I went for a ride and found I was able to try really hard; I hadn't really worked out that I was being inhibited by the cold for the last couple of weeks, but that was how it had been. I saw a quote from Greg Van Avermaet (pro cyclist) after Saturday's Strade Bianche race in Tuscany (which was cold and very muddy) in which he said that his body hadn't allowed him to dig deep. Not a remotely similar case, but I understand what he meant.


Heating

Bizarrely, someone has been turning the radiators off in St Peter's Church. I came in to say Mass last Tuesday, and found the place cold, radiators off. I cursed and turned them all on again. Then it was the same for the Women's World Day of Prayer on Friday, according to my (female) churchwarden. This evening I am leading Stations of the Cross, so I just went down to check, and it had happened again. This is very odd, and more than a bit frustrating, as we have only just got working radiators after years of them noisily blowing out cold air. Our landlords, Genesis Housing, announced that they were renewing the boilers in the block and as a consequence would be able to send out accurate heating bills; we responded that we were disinclined to pay heating bills until we had radiators that actually produced heat. There then followed many months of nothing much happening, while various contractors and surveyors came in, looked, sucked their teeth and went away again. Then, finally, we suddenly got a result. An engineer came and changed all our radiators, so all of a sudden we had warmth. The old radiators dated from the mid 1970s, so it was hardly surprising that they weren't working well, but it was handy to have said goodbye to them at just the right time.   


TV Drama

I've started watching "Call The Midwife" again, which Helen and I used to watch together. It often makes me cry, but last night's was really difficult as they killed off the Curate's wife. I just bawled and bawled. You think you're okay, and then something comes along and opens the wound again.