Le deluge ...

Once, when I was a sixth year student and a member of the school choir who'd been asked to provide the entertainment for a civic reception in the Glasgow City Chambers, the boy sitting next to me passed me a bit of paper bearing the words: "Après moi le déluge" = "The shower is after me". This reduced me to helpless giggles and my singing didn't quite recover that evening. I've never forgotten it.

Today I kept remembering this nonsense, 60 years later. It was raining steadily when we left the house to go to church, and lashing with considerable ferocity when we left the church to come home. I'd heard it on the roof on and off throughout the service, and that was to be the feature of the rest of the day until teatime. Everyone is looking so grim here these days, everyone is sick of it. It's no longer a joke. 

Actually I had a good morning, rain or no. I was preaching at church, and though I felt my basic thrust was distinctly theology-light, I also felt I had something to say that I really wanted to say. The best bit was peoples' reaction, and a visitor asked if I had a copy that she could take away with her. It's a huge privilege to do this thing, and if fair kept me going afterwards. In fact, it was a great service all round, with a real buzz and a good bunch of laity making up for the lack of a priest just now. 

We came home damp and exhausted, and fell on our (strong) coffee as if dying. And apart from changing out of the wet but civilised shoes, I stayed that way till after 3pm, eating lunch, reading the paper, falling asleep. When I roused myself I made some bread for tomorrow's lunch while Himself washed the bathroom floor. (I know. Don't ask.)

And then the rain stopped.

By this time it was after 5pm, but we piled into waterproofs and set off briskly to shake off the torpor. The West Bay beach was lined with a new carpet of seaweed - the fat brown ribbons - among which some fastidious-looking seagulls were pacing. There were suddenly people, dogs, children on little bikes - everyone coming out now that it was safe to do so - and people smiled at strangers, greeted them, talked to them about the weather, about how they'd just arrived for a wee holiday ...

And then home for a delayed dinner - and a surprise catch-up on Messenger with the widow of the rector of Holy Trinity who was really responsible for our moving here in 1974. I'd noticed her name in the church visitors' book and went burrowing in Facebook - and she messaged me as a result of a question I'd left on a local page. I've only met her once, briefly, when he was in Worcester Cathedral, so it was a pretty extraordinary conversation, in which I was able to tell her that Himself had written a Mass setting in her husband's memory. 

And that was that, really, except for watching The Planets from the Proms and falling asleep during the news. Again.

Photo illustrates the difficulties of worshipping in what is essentially a cave on a damp hillside - try cleaning a windowsill like this!