The organist librarian

Tuesday's swim was shorter as I was late getting up and took the car down as I needed it in the evening. To Catenian council meeting at Jim's new home in Sanderstead. A useful meeting. Wednesday had a lie-in and to Coulsdon to see Vickie. Hymns now chosen up to the end of August. To St Michael's for Riccardo Bonci's recital and Liz joined me there. he played transcriptions of Grieg, Dvorak, Vivaldi by Bach, Rossini. It was a fun programme apart from Liszt's Arcadelt Ave Maria which I thought was far too slow. The extraordinary piece from 19th century Italy based on Aida must have wowed them at Mass! We had a toasted sandwich and cappuccino at Marks and Liz got some lovely jewellery for her wedding outfit. To Allders and luggage shop looking at rucksacks and to Debenhams for china. We ended up at Ikea where we got 2 good rucksacks for £15 each, photo frames and artificial apple blossom for the library. Watched Julie Walters in "Filth; the Mary Whitehouse story...

And so the greatest week of the year begins! We spent Saturday rehearsing for the Holy Week ceremonies at the cathedral. We began with an excellent talk by Father Slawomir aimed at the youngsters about the Triduum liturgy. After a shared lunch, Deacon Peter gave a fine talk about our role aimed more at the adults. See Peter Simpson's excellent blog http://revprs.blogspot.com for some fine stations of the Cross. There was quite a lot of waiting around and I felt that the day started too early and was too long for some people. Also there was a missed opportunity to go through some general aspects of our serving like processing, acting together on stands and sits, and clarification of some aspects. An obvious point is where to sit on the sanctuary. I find it much better to sit in the stalls as I can hear there and I am not on top of the heating ducts which can be like a sauna at times! The 6 p.m. Palm Sunday Mass is shown on the cathedral blog. See http://westminstercathedral.blogspot...

Last night I had a life changing experience. Brad Sherrill gave a dramatised performance of St John's Gospel which has long been my favourite gospel. It was an astonishing feat to remember and relate the whole of a gospel. I'm told there were more present this year than heard him dramatise St Mark's gospel last year. At first it was hard to relate to the American pronunciation of words like "Gaad" and the different translation but his intensity and the way he involved us by getting us to join hands (illustrating the vine) or lifting my hand to demonstrate flesh. Certain moments sent a thrill down my spine - the raising of Lazarus, the paralytic standing, the man born blind, the simple pouring of water. In fact it was images like water, stones, the table, the cross which hit home. I had not thought how much of the gospel is teaching and a great deal about testimony and testifying to the truth. And how much humour Brad brought to it! And what is missing is as impor...