HOLY WEEK

More Pubs

I had thought of saying something about the Truscott Arms, in Shirland Road, which closed some time ago, but now it has been pointed out to me (by a social-media enabled friend) that this is undergoing a refurbishment and looks to be going to reopen under the name of the Hero of Maida, which is great for the perpetuation of a historic pub name, but will be very confusing for people in the future.

It may be worth pointing out that the Royal Oak, after which the tube station is named, was the pub which is now called the Porchester, on the corner of Bishop's Bridge Road and Porchester Road. No idea why it was renamed. There was a pub right by the station, on the corner of the Harrow Road, of which old photos exist, but that was the Red Lion, curiously.


Meanwhile, on the Green

The works to install the new outdoor gym equipment are proceeding very slowly. Their contribution to the delight of our Easter weekend was to have blocked the storm drains on the path across the green, resulting in a puddle inches deep across the path and saturated grass beside the path producing ankle-deep mud. At least when going towards Royal Oak one could divert out onto the Green and go behind the contractors' fenced enclosure on the grass, which although a bit poached was still reasonably solid. If one was coming from Royal Oak unawares one would meet the puddle after walking for fifty yards between the contractors' fences, and have no unmuddy means of progressing.

More serious, though, is the contractors' cavalier attitude to safety. Their working site is to the east of the path, their compound, with storage containers, is to the west. Every morning they open the gate from Bourne Terrace and drive a van up onto the path, which they usually then park on the grass. During the day they manoeuvre a small digger and a small dumper truck across the path, often at speed, with no banksman or supervision of any kind. There are no signs warning that this might be taking place, and frankly no evidence of safety-consciousness at all. They seem to have embarked on this job on the basis that it was in a private place, whereas in fact it straddles an important pedestrian route (though that may have been the fault of the WCC Parks Department, who often close their eyes to important routes across their parks). What vexes me in particular is that we have insisted that our contractors employ two traffic marshals to look after the interaction of vehicles with pedestrians around our site, whereas these people working for the Council do nothing.


Holy Week

Our Holy Week services were not much curtailed by the building works. On Palm Sunday we always walk in procession from St Mary Mags to St Peter's, and we were able to start the procession from the Vestry just as well as from the main body of the church, so that was fine. We were a respectable number, but I never thought we would be so many as to make the Vestry uncomfortable, and we weren't. I forgot my biretta, but we had a good number of robed servers, so I think we put on a decent show. We also had incense, for the first time in months (since we were outside for all but two minutes).

Stations of the Cross was again a success in the Vestry, though in truth I think it was actually better when we did it over at St Peter's, so I think we shall have to do that again in future years.

On Maundy Thursday we always just have one service, which alternates between the churches, so this year we were at St Peter's, so the works made no difference to that. The only slight clumsiness was the Sufis arriving for their meditation session in the Hall well before we had finished, but everyone was sensitive to each other's needs, so that was fine. I then ran my churchwarden home as she was carrying loads of bags, and then got home to find that she had lost her handbag, so I cycled back up to the church and searched everywhere I could think of, and asked the Sufis, but all to no avail. Churchwarden walked back up to the church, asked the Sufis and was told, "Oh, yes, we found that when we started and put it in the cupboard." So she was fine; all was well. But why couldn't they tell me that?

Good Friday was slightly altered, as we didn't have the usual Children's Stations at St Mary Mags. It was just as well, since I had no assistance, and so had to do the 11 o'clock at St Peter's alone. Straight after that finished there was the Ecumenical Service at Maida Hill Market, which I was leading, and then the Liturgy at 2 o'clock at St Mary Mags (with no prostration, owing to the restricted floor space). The service at the Market still managed a crowd of fifty or so, despite the horrible weather, but the lashing rain decided us against using an electronic keyboard, and so the hymns were hard work. Frankly, leading without a microphone was hard work too. The nice little sheets for us to hold up, saying "Jesus is Lord" (prepared by one of my neighbours) sadly just became a soggy mess. Cloak and hat kept me relatively dry, but we were all pretty cold. The volunteer holding up the cross put a Sainsbury bag over his head at one point, but my churchwarden came and held an umbrella over him. There was only one market stall and hardly any shoppers, so I'm not sure how much impact our witness made. Someone managed to turn up an hour late for the Liturgy because of a confusion over times (but then someone came a week early for the Palm Sunday procession, and so arrived at the end of the Mass for Lent 5). Not really my fault, but I feel really bad about it, because I try quite hard to see it doesn't happen.

The one thing we didn't do this year was the Easter Vigil, on Holy Saturday (with its accompanying party in the Vicarage). It just seemed logistically impossible in the Vestry, while St Peter's is in use by a Brazilian Pentecostal church on Saturday evenings. The result was that I was able to take two confirmation candidates to the Cathedral, for the confirmation at their Easter Vigil. It was great for them, and I found myself somewhat moved. The full choir were there, singing Mozart, so that helped. Fr Graham Buckle (St Stephen's, Rochester Row) sat beside me. He was at St Peter's as his first incumbency, and it dawned on me that he had presented, on Easter Eve 2000, the mother of one of my candidates this time. He was very excited by this, and they met up afterwards.

Not doing the Vigil meant that we lit the Paschal Candle on Easter morning, in each place. I hadn't anticipated how dark the Vestry would be with the lights turned off (on a very overcast morning) so that was a bit more hamfisted than I had expected. I also sang the Exsultet for the first time in many years, not very well. The second time, at St Peter's, was better, but not by much. At the Cathedral I had heard a choirman do it properly, so I had had a recent reminder of how it's meant to sound, but that doesn't stop your voice doing things you can't control. A decent turnout in both places, and I take refuge in the certainty that very few of them have any idea of how the Exsultet is meant to sound (though some may suspect that it is at least meant to sound nice).

After I came home I went out on the bike for an hour or so just to wind down, and to disperse the adrenaline.