Little technical details ...

I find I can barely believe it's Thursday again. Yesterday I foolishly suggested that as there were no absolute huvtaes today we should try to take things easy; as a result I seem to have been chasing my tail all day. The weather forecast had me doing another washing first thing, hanging it out to dry more or less successfully. This segued seamlessly into tackling the mess on the dining room window sill, which features in several photos without really giving away its true state. 

I took everything off it for a start. There was candle wax everywhere. I removed the stubs of last night's candles from the candlesticks, and used the knife that was part of a set given to me when I was about three and learning to use cutlery to scrape the waxicles (our name) from them. (The knife is (a)very blunt and (b) very straight, so doesn't damage things). I then put them in some very hot water in a bowl to melt the remaining crumbs of wax. I made my fingers filthy cleaning the sooty brass candle snuffer and polishing it, making the interesting discovery that Duraglit wadding works equally well on the unknown metal of the Ikea candlesticks. I even managed to get the wax off the wood of the windowsill, and polished it ...

And then I escaped. Walked up to the church - takes about 14 minutes - to make the usual hymn recordings for Sunday and do a bit of rehearsal of the lovely piece I'm singing at Communion. But the digital recorder appeared to be broken, and the phone caused us all sorts of bother, so I reckon we'll be redoing the recordings some time tomorrow. Frustrating, but a good distraction from a conversation on Twitter that I foolishly commented on. Basically, it consisted of Church of England clergy trying to say that shutting the churches again meant that everyone who wanted to worship was back on a level playing field and wasn't this desirable? After all, they said, you don't need to be in church to worship God. Now, I know England is back in lockdown, but this is plain silly - not to say patronising. I get so tired of the old "Father knows best" posturing, especially as it now seems to be embraced by several women as well, when they try to lump all old people together in a group labelled "vulnerable" and start talking at each other about how they should cater for this group.

I merely pointed out that the people they were discussing might have their own ideas ...

Anyway. Doesn't my church look lovely in the photo? Taken as I walked up to it at midday, up the steep hill that our last bishop called "impossible" to the special space among its huge old trees.

And as another day ends with American ballots still being counted, one more exhortation: Come on, America ...