LOW WEEK

Easter Break

My colleague Toby Gale, who is the Director of the development project, has gone off for several weeks' break, to Indonesia and Australia (he has gone all the way to Australia not to go to the Commonwealth Games, which, to be fair, are happening a thousand miles away from where he's staying). This causes us all some anxiety, as he is the person who pulls all the various aspects of the project together (and so there are lots of things he would normally do that the rest of us are trying to keep on top of and feeling very inadequate about), and he's very keen for us not to make particular decisions without him. In the meantime, everyone keeps copying him in to emails, and so every so often he responds to something, which is not the idea at all. You are on holiday! Ignore it all!

The trouble is that it is really hard to do that. Last summer in France I used to check mail but only actually read a few things that looked both urgent and important, but the result of that was that I came home to a backlog of a hundred messages, but still hadn't switched off properly from work. Working through the backlog was the first thing to do on return, and absorbed a whole day, and there were loads of time-limited messages that were pointless by then. It was all fine in the past, when we weren't available anywhere in the world, so why do we have to remain connected now? Why do we feel obliged to do so?

It's not just Toby who is away. We had a "Family" Mass on Sunday with hardly any families present, so my preacher reverted to the adult sermon she had just preached at St Mary Mags. With most schools still on holiday, London remains quieter than usual, and I can lie in, not being disturbed by noise from the school breakfast club, and not having to do things to fit into the school timetable.

The second Sunday of Eastertide is traditionally called "Low Sunday", despite the insistence of liturgists that it is the end of the Octave of Easter, and should be celebrated like Easter Day, as a truly "high" day. In the Roman observance the title "Divine Mercy Sunday" is being encouraged, but I've never heard anyone actually call it that. The Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference traditionally meets this week, and it's always referred to as their Low Week meeting! General Synod meetings happen according to the months of the year. not the ecclesiastical calendar.


Works on the Green

The installation of the gym equipment is still not finished. One day recently they had three vans, three pieces of motorized plant and a full-size lorry all parked on the Green, and last Saturday morning they were once again driving vehicles across the path, with fences removed and no regard at all for pedestrians. I hope it's worth it. The equipment all looks very large, designed for adults, and large adults at that. We shall see.


Can I ask Whether we can Count on your Vote?

I was asked this outside Waitrose a couple of Saturdays ago, to which I responded, "Of course you can ask, but I couldn't possibly comment." It seems that the recent YouGov poll putting Labour ahead in Westminster has energized campaigning for the local elections. The Sunday Times ran a scare story saying that Jeremy Corbyn was on course to run Wandsworth, Barnet and K & C as well as Westminster, which should put the wind up complacent Conservatives (though I seriously doubt whether he will have any input himself, never having run anything, as far as I can see). I notice that efforts are going on to get EU nationals to register to vote, as they are entitled to do in local elections, which surely cannot be good news for the Conservatives, who seem to have embraced the xenophobic line rather too enthusiastically.


When in Leeds

Let me recommend Akbar's restaurant in the centre of Leeds (Eastgate). Open all hours, a vast menu, and (to this Londoner's eyes) jolly cheap. It was also excellent food. They brought an extraordinary metal hatstand sort of affair to the table, on which they then hung your naan, which was a novelty to me. We had dinner after the ballet with Javier Torres of Northern Ballet and his family, Javier having just danced in "Las Hermanas". I'd never seen it before, but studied "La Casa de Bernarda Alba", on which it is based, for A level, so knew what was coming. Fairly standard Kenneth Macmillan themes (sex and death) but all very compressed. They carried it off well, but it's not a particularly enjoyable piece, unlike "Gloria" which they also danced, which is quite upbeat despite being Macmillan's evocation of the Great War. Javier apparently goes regularly to Akbar's.