Although it was a warm and generally sunny afternoon, I turned down an invitation to a strawberry and cream tea party, to stay in and listen to the first part of a new dramatisation of Le Carré's 'The spy who came in from the cold', which I remember as a marvellous black and white movie starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom in the year I graduated.
It was a marvellous adaptation for the sound stage. Not only was it beautifully engineered to listen to, but able to evoke images of time and place belonging to my youth - overshadowed as it was by the Cold War, and the popular anxieties it generated. I was overjoyed to witness the death throes of that era in person, when I took part in a parish twinning visit to Leipzig during the fateful October demonstrations of 1990, which hastened the end of the Berlin Wall and the DDR. I hope I shall live long enough to witness the end of the wall that divides the Holy Land between Israelis and Palestinians as well.
After Evensong we had a PCC, in which we managed to get through quite a lot of business in record time. One of the key items of business was the agree to ask for a Faculty to permit a change of use to the empty gardener's hut in the south churchyard garden. There's interest in opening it up as a kiosk to sell fresh fruit and soft drinks during opening hours. That would certainly be beneficial to users, and possibly to the church as well, receiving a modest rental for the privilege. We shall see if the idea matures according to plan.
It was a marvellous adaptation for the sound stage. Not only was it beautifully engineered to listen to, but able to evoke images of time and place belonging to my youth - overshadowed as it was by the Cold War, and the popular anxieties it generated. I was overjoyed to witness the death throes of that era in person, when I took part in a parish twinning visit to Leipzig during the fateful October demonstrations of 1990, which hastened the end of the Berlin Wall and the DDR. I hope I shall live long enough to witness the end of the wall that divides the Holy Land between Israelis and Palestinians as well.
After Evensong we had a PCC, in which we managed to get through quite a lot of business in record time. One of the key items of business was the agree to ask for a Faculty to permit a change of use to the empty gardener's hut in the south churchyard garden. There's interest in opening it up as a kiosk to sell fresh fruit and soft drinks during opening hours. That would certainly be beneficial to users, and possibly to the church as well, receiving a modest rental for the privilege. We shall see if the idea matures according to plan.
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