On this Patronal Festival day of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, we were delighted to welcome the Grangetown Corps Salvation Army Band to share in the musical accompaniment of our Eucharist. A fine way to celebrate the completion of the internal re-decoration. We were joined by Don Stokes, the head of the decorating company that did the job, and our architect Martin Killick.
We were also joined by an intoxicated man who behaved in a bizarre fashion, walking up to the front just as we'd started, but he sat quietly, right through the sermon until the last few sentences, when he got up quietly and left. I'm amazed he lasted so long actually, and relieved he didn't interrupt, as happens from time to time.
The presence of the band almost double the congregation, which was good. It's quite hard to get a number of our regulars to come out in the evenings, even on light summer nights. Uncertainties of gianing access by car, with all the work that's going on around is, must be a deterrent.
A good two thirds of the paving in Working Street, St John's Street and Trinity Street is now complete, and work moves on at a pace. Some of the trickiest portions remain to be tackled - in front of the Market and the Church, with consequent tight restrictions to traffic flow, let alone parking. None of this is made any easier by the work being done to restore O'Neill's pub opposite the churchyard, although that work seems to be progressing very quickly indeed.
The new lamp posts have now been installed and wired around the north side of the church. Oddly, only one of the old lamp posts was removed when the paving was being done around there, so old and new stand there side by side in two locations at the moment. Not such a good idea really as old and new can be directly compared. Frankly the new are not nearly an enhancement to the area around the church as were the old iron Victorian replica posts. But there is apparently no consultation about this through the usual planning process, since this is maintained furniture in the public realm - so presumably, if they don't work, or get hated enough the new stainless steel lamp posts will change again. All very strange really.
We were also joined by an intoxicated man who behaved in a bizarre fashion, walking up to the front just as we'd started, but he sat quietly, right through the sermon until the last few sentences, when he got up quietly and left. I'm amazed he lasted so long actually, and relieved he didn't interrupt, as happens from time to time.
The presence of the band almost double the congregation, which was good. It's quite hard to get a number of our regulars to come out in the evenings, even on light summer nights. Uncertainties of gianing access by car, with all the work that's going on around is, must be a deterrent.
A good two thirds of the paving in Working Street, St John's Street and Trinity Street is now complete, and work moves on at a pace. Some of the trickiest portions remain to be tackled - in front of the Market and the Church, with consequent tight restrictions to traffic flow, let alone parking. None of this is made any easier by the work being done to restore O'Neill's pub opposite the churchyard, although that work seems to be progressing very quickly indeed.
The new lamp posts have now been installed and wired around the north side of the church. Oddly, only one of the old lamp posts was removed when the paving was being done around there, so old and new stand there side by side in two locations at the moment. Not such a good idea really as old and new can be directly compared. Frankly the new are not nearly an enhancement to the area around the church as were the old iron Victorian replica posts. But there is apparently no consultation about this through the usual planning process, since this is maintained furniture in the public realm - so presumably, if they don't work, or get hated enough the new stainless steel lamp posts will change again. All very strange really.
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