Candles, Dinners and Common Worship (Or the Lack of It).

I had hoped to bring you a picture of our new votive candle stand in situ today, but Hayes and Finch telephone from their Huddersfield depot to tell me that all of yesterday's and today's deliveries have been cancelled due to adverse weather on that side of the Pennines. I am moderately surprised, having crossed the Pennines myself yesterday, but I suppose things never seem so bad on the motorway due to the heavy, hot traffic constantly pounding up and down. I am told that from Huddersfield down, though, things are bad - buses cancelled and shops closed. So, because I did not take my camera with me yesterday as I had my trousers with one dead pocket on and therefore had no space to carry it, here is another picture of last Sunday's High Mass.

The snow is coming down here in Manchester as well as I write. At Six this morning it was a clear day, with a light dusting of frost on the roads and roof,s but within an hour it was quite different to yesterday's clement weather, indeed by the afternoon all traces of snow had gone. I hope it gets no worse, or I will start to become convinced that our Parish Dinners at Bury Catering College are cursed, for the last time we had one we had to begin late and still a few people short due to a combination of an overturned lorry on the motorway causing chaos in the rush hour and torrential rain. This evening, about sixty of us are going to the College for dinner, cooked and served by the students. I understand that we are having minestrone soup, salmon, chicken and creme brulee, which sounds lavish for a Thursday evening in February, but most enjoyable. The charming thing is the age difference and difference in skills between the students, for each young lad dropping bread rolls on your lap there will be another one spooning soup from a tureen with the skill of a life long ladler. Their head lecturer teaches them with consummate skill and really, the food and service are often better than you find in anywhere else in the local area. We have a foodie tradition here at Saint Hilda's though, some churches have Actors Chapels, or Clown services or Judge's Masses, we have a lamp by St Therese, burning in memory of the first chef in Manchester to be awarded a Michelin star.

Anyhow, I am trying to pass the half way mark in my thesis today, which concerns the bi-ritualism of the BCP and Common Worship on the one hand, and the 'Tridentine Rite' and Novus Ordo on the other. I am just getting past the famous 'Agatha Christie Indult' and progressing onto the Apostolic Administration of Saint John Vianney. It's all downhill though, because the next part looks at the Church of England and Common Worship, with which I am unfamiliar. Common Worship, that is, before anyone raises an eyebrow.