Monday, March 17, 2008

St Patrick's setback

I didn't ask for this. I'm overwhelmed by a nasty chesty cold, the same kind that Clare to two weeks to recover from before she flew off to the Rockies. Two services daily Monday-Thursday with the entire Three Hours to carry on Good Friday. It's really too late to start ringing around, or sign myself off and dump the stand-in recruitment problem on the Area Dean.

When you put a lot of effort along with the rest of the church welcome crew, keeping the place open daily for prayer and worship, even during interior redecoration, and the digging up of the streets outside to re-lay pavements in sparkling granite, cancelling services without warning is the last thing I'd want to do.

So it's a question of hunkering down, resting plenty and letting nature take its course, trusting that I won't lose my voice totally or end up too ill to cope. Not a bad exercise in restraint, really.

I noticed that despite the Church's transference of St Patrick's Day celebration away from Holy Week, the Irish pub opposite the church was holding forth openly in wind and rain this day, regardless.

Maybe nobody told them that even the Pope, if he observes this Celtic feast, will do so when the story-telling of Christ's passion is out of the way.

Would the Brewer's marketing team either know or care?

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