Three months further on

So, three months ago, I wrote

Working... in a parish thirty-five miles drive from home sometimes feels a foolhardy endeavour, especially when any particular request threatens to tip me beyond the ‘half-time’ limits set.  But actually the only real casualties so far has been the habit of blogging and any diligence in house cleaning. 

Which remains true.  

I’m not quite sure why the discipline of shaping and preserving an idea by making it a blog post length reflection and making an often-enough gesture towards a less dusty environment should be the things which feel most days like taking a step-too-far, but there it still is.

It may, of course, be age.  It was in 2019 that I was first offered a seat on a crowded train (between Naples and Pompeii); I wasn’t even 60.  It was in 2021 than I realised I’d lost the energy to work full time and look after a large house and garden; it was time to retire early.

My report is that last week, sitting in a back-row stall during Cathedral Evensong, I heard the opening of the second reading, and woke for the Gloria at the end of the Nunc Dimittis.  Only a brief doze, but another first.

Meanwhile, here is a picture taken after Matins in Grimsby Minster last week too.

Use of half-times

 

Working for the last eleven weeks half-time in a parish thirty-five miles drive from home sometimes feels a foolhardy endeavour, especially when any particular request threatens to tip me beyond the ‘half-time’ limits set.  But actually the only real casualties so far has been the habit of blogging and any diligence in house cleaning. 

The retirement focus I had discovered (on random bits of research and sharing) has survived, squeezed into the corners of my remaining half-time, culminating on a single recent extended weekend when I found myself both checking proofs for an article (not something I’d ever done before) for Brontë Studies and leading my assessed tour to qualify as a Cathedral Guide.

So here are poor photos of objects newly displayed at the Lincoln Museum and the Usher Gallery next door to each other and a short walk from my home.  The Roman dodecahedron, excavated not far away at Norton Disney, has been a national sensation.  Local student Nimra Qayyum’s Echoes of Exodus, Loss and Longing is rooted in the 1947 Indo-Pak separation, and deserves equal attention.

Community trusting the church

 

I was a little wary of some wellbeing provision locally.  How could I tell if it was mainstream or wacky?  Especially as it didn’t display on its website any badges of affiliation to any respectable professional organisation.  As it happens, its counsellors were all so trained and affiliated.

It turned out they were more suspicious of me, and of the church I was representing.  How could they know I wasn’t going to, say, promote gay conversion therapy, or subvert its nonjudgmental commitment to its clients in some other way?  After all, I had no initials after my name indicating my membership of a suitable professional body, and there are no badges on the church’s website which would indicate we are safe to be around.

Meanwhile, I saw a fresh plank of oak in the Cathedral’s workshop the other day, being told it was destined to extend the desk in front of the new Canon Missioner’s stall.  In no time it appeared unstained, carved exactly to match the desk in front of the neighbouring stall.  And yesterday, although there is no third picture to show it, it was stained so that it now nobody would think it wasn’t always there.

The dozen predictions

 

Turnout will be lower even than the average of 39% at the last three by-elections held in October.

Wrong.  The turn out was 39.7%, so the political debacle around this election didn’t actually put additional people off voting.

There will be almost no comment about the democratic deficit of the clear winner being the over 60% who didn’t vote.

Correct.  I did hear one brief reference to this on the radio but the discussion didn’t pick it up.  The Prime Minister’s speech about the democratic problems with the result didn’t reference this at all.

Of the dozen candidates, perhaps half will receive a derisorily low level of support even from those who do turn out.

Correct (although I’d miscounted the candidates – there were eleven not twelve).  Five candidates each polled under 1.75% of the votes cast.

If the remaining votes cast are distributed evenly between the other six, each would receive the direct support of just 6% or so of the registered electors.

Correct.  The top six candidates attracted the support on average of 6.2% of registered electors.

Actually one of them will pull ahead with the support of twice as many, but still possibly nor more than one in eight of the registered voters.

Wrong.  The winner did better than attracting the support of 12.4% of registered electors – he attracted 15.8%.  The point remains that, seen like this, his election is legally secure but his popular support is much smaller than people realise.

He will immediately stand at a microphone and say things which are simply untrue about how his elections proves his political position is, and will now be even more, widely supported.

Correct.  He said no less than there had been a shift in our electoral tectonic plates.

He will not be the MP nine months later.

Too soon to say.

Whatever the result, it will not affect the shameful way many Jewish citizens of the United Kingdom feel less safe than they did a year ago.

We can probably call this ‘Correct’ already.

Nor it will be affect the desperation of those citizens of the United Kingdom who have been predicting famine and epidemic in Gaza.

We can probably call this ‘Correct’ already.

Conservative supporters might well be refining a new plan to hold back some things they might find out about some Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidates until after the deadlines have passed for printing ballot papers for the next General Election.

Too soon to say.

Meanwhile, the diameter of Gaia and of the Dean's Eye Window behind it are approximatly the same.

Ash Wednesday variety

 

The boundary between Shrove Tuesday and Lent is mentally very crowded. 

Initial communication and arrangements with the Grimsby Minster parish flow, and inevitably form a particular non-Lenten focus.

There is a coincidental sudden intensity in being part of the Cathedral Tour Guide training.  Of the Cathedral Library’s manuscripts we were shown yesterday the most Lenten was a book of Penitential Psalms, with a glorious frontispiece picture of a turbaned David at prayer. 

My initial experiment in guiding a mentor round some imaginative possibilities elicited an understandable reaction that something ‘less detailed and more mundane’ would be needed for the average visitor. 

And we have a tour of the Works Department today, masons, glaziers and more; unusual to have such a treat on Ash Wednesday .

I have also begun to experiment with Matins not read from my own increasingly tattered set of books, listening to the Church of England’s Daily Prayer App through headphones.

I find it quite unlike praying on my own, or with colleagues in church, or being present at Cathedral Choral Evensong.  More like being on retreat at the back of the chapel in a monastic community.

And I return to my obsession with what is rarely said about the dynamic in by-elections.  Impatient to know what sort of knock on effect the Rochdale controversy will have on tomorrow’s votes in Kingswood and Wellingborough.  Switching on my computer chiefly to capture my assumptions about what will now happen at Rochdale at the end of the month.

We know that uniquely both the Green and Labour candidates have been disowned by their party, which throws some old election assumptions out.

I expect the turnout will be lower even than the average of 39% at the last three by-elections held in October.

There will be almost no comment about the democratic deficit of the clear winner being the over 60% who unite to say a combination of ‘I am not interested’ (simply disconnected), ‘A plague on all their houses’ (now disconnecting) and ‘None of the above’ (connected by angrily rejecting participation).

Of the dozen candidates, perhaps half will receive a derisorily low level of support even from those who do turn out.

If the remaining votes cast are distributed evenly between the other six, each would receive the direct support of just 6% or so of the registered electors.

Actually one of them will pull ahead with the support of twice as many, but still possibly nor more than one in eight of the registered voters.

He (sic – none of the twelve candidates are women) will immediately stand at a microphone and say things which are simply untrue about how his elections proves his political position is, and will now be even more, widely supported.

He will not be the MP nine months later.

Sadly, whatever the result, it will not affect the shameful way many Jewish citizens of the United Kingdom feel less safe than they did a year ago; that damage is already done.

Equally sadly, nor it will be affect the desperation of those citizens of the United Kingdom who have been predicting famine and epidemic in Gaza; that outcome may already be in front of us.

Sufficient numbers of Conservative supporters with power in the media (to be clear – this isn’t code for the vile untrue anti-Semitic trope that there is a Jewish group – this is simply a guess about Conservative election strategy) might well be refining a new plan to hold back some things they might find out about some Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidates until after the deadlines have passed for printing ballot papers for the next General Election.

Obviously, none of the last four predictions will in fact be provable or disprovable on 1^st March, unlike the first half dozen.

Meanwhile, the picture is of St Mary Magdalene’s church between Lincoln Castle and Cathedral.  I hope to be there this evening, half imaginative and half mundane.  I shall miss being there more than occasionally during my Grimsby assignment.