TWENTY FIRST SUNDAY after PENTECOST

21 October 2012

Graphics and cartoons & liturgical material appear only in the printed version

INEBRIATED CUCKOO

At about three o clock in the morning Aloysius staggered through the door of his home just in time to hear the cuckoo clock cuckoo three times. A resourceful fellow even when full of VB he quickly came up with a plan, He cuckooed nine more times, hoping that his wife would think it was midnight. A clever ruse indeed. He was proud of himself. The next day, his wife asked him what time he got home, and he replied, "Midnight, just as I promised." She replied that was good, and then for some reason went on to say that they needed a new cuckoo clock. When he asked why, she answered, "Last night when it cuckooed midnight, it cuckooed three times, and said "Oh hell!", cuckooed four more times, belched unmusically, cuckooed three times, cleared its throat, cuckooed two more times and then started giggling."

THIS AND THAT (55)

Andrew Neaum

W.H.Auden once wrote a clever poem entitled "The Sabbath", it is all to do with the beastliness of mankind compared to all other beasts, and it ends:.....

A rifle's ringing crack

Split their Arcadia wide open, cut

Their Sabbath nonsense short.

For whom did they think they had been created?

That fellow was back,

More bloody-minded than they remembered,

More god-like than they thought.

Well, yes indeed, I am back. We are back. Hopefully not more bloody-minded than you remembered, and certainly not more god-like than you thought, but I wonder why that poem comes to mind as I sit down early on Thursday morning to knock off a quick article after arriving home all the way from Cape Town at about 9.00am last night.

It is a funny thing the mind. What it thinks is largely programmed by no more than word association. "I'm back" I thought to myself (with some pleasure). Straight away Auden's poem, not read for over twenty years I should think, came back to my mind with its phrase "more bloody-minded than they remembered".

Thank you

Many thanks indeed to Adrian and Christine Evans who graciously came to the airport to meet us in our car and drove us gently home. It is much appreciated, their company and conversation delighted us. The trip back from Cape Town was flawless, the interchanges at Johannesburg and Sydney speedy and efficient, the hours lost between the two continents not missed and hardly noticed. To be met so kindly and efficiently ended an easy journey perfectly.

It was lovely to be able to have a brief handover conversation with Fr John Southerden. His able hands appear to have coped most readily through very busy times. He loved you all and his time among you. As for me, what a joy to be able to leave the parish in such experienced and willing hands. His tribute to the help and assistance he has received from so many of you over the past few months is wholehearted and warm. Many, many thanks to him and to Robyn for their loving presence and good work among us.

Rest in Peace Peter Ross Edwards

One of the worst things about going away is learning of the deaths of folk who are close to you. I missed Peter Ross Edward's funeral by only a day, and regret that enormously.

I always felt that I shared a special bond with Peter due to us both having been the sons of Anglican priests, and proud to have been so. From the moment of my arrival in the parish he quietly took me under his wing, being particularly interested in our parish finances. Over a coffee or a beer he would give me thoughtful advice, always assuming a greater perspicacity in such matters than I in fact possess. Unlike so many current politicians he was noted not for vituperation, insult and calumny, but rather for gentleness, grace and politeness, though underneath all of that was courage and strength.

Until increasing immobility rendered it impossible he and Joy were stalwarts of the quiet little Saturday night Vigil Eucharists. He retained an interest in the parish right to the end and both he and Joy were very kind to Margaret and myself in Margaret's illness, offering us the use of their holiday home to our great benefit. May he rest in peace and may Joy and his whole family be aware of our sympathy and love.

I met up with Pat Gibson last night too. She had been dining Fr John and sat in her car while he had a chat to me. Her warm welcome and sense of fun, even after I had kept her too long in a cold car warmed my heart and made me glad indeed to be home. Mind you, there was an efficient little list of obligations waiting for me from her on my desk. I trust that by the time you read this she, in common with the rest of us, will be ecstatic after a highly successful Parish Fair.

Making the Faith sing

One of the joys of holidays is time to read more extensively. While away this time I read and enjoyed Philip Larkin's "Letters to Monica", AN Wilson's "The Elizabethans" , Leslie Mitchell's "Maurice Bowra: A life", K M Barrow's "Three Years in Tristan" Rowan Williams' "The Lion's World", Roger Scruton's "The Face of God", and Francis Spufford's "Unapologetic: Why Despite Everything Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense". The last one by Francis Spufford I found an exhilarating read, one of the best accounts of what the Christian Faith can be, ought to be and sometimes actually is that I have read since John Austin Baker's "The Foolishness of God" bowled me over and sorted my out in the 1970s. If any of you are wearied by the almost universal and usually ignorant condescension of your faithless fellows, you should read it. It has reinvigorated me. It is not for the prissy (it uses strong language) and it is not for biblical literalists (it throws hell on to the scrapheap with a great shout of joy), but it allows the Faith to sing.

I conclude this ramble with an edited version of my diary at the very start of our trip abroad. I hope eventually to write a considered version of the Tristan experience but now is not the time. The pew sheet needs to be printed today, I cannot dally!

Tuesday 31 July, 2012 11.00am

I am back in Loubet Street in Tooting, London. The journey was uneventful except for one major mishap. In a moment of foolishness I decided to take my Kindle out of its case and keep it in my pocket for ease of access. I must have knocked its unprotected screen on an aeroplane arm rest getting in and out of my window seat and it appears to have ruined it. So as soon as I can get on line I will have to arrange a replacement. I cannot see it being fixable and anyway it would take too long to do so.

There were two striking little moments during the flight. The first was to observe so many little dams and rivers and stretches of water as we approached Sydney, they were all bright, white silver in appearance, but then as we began to pass them the reflection of the sun disappeared as our angle of viewing changed and so they all appeared to evaporate. In the twinkling of an eye they turned to the dun colour of the rest of the countryside, as if not there at all. The second was being able to view Lake Eyre. This was a surprise because I thought it would be too far south for us to pass over. It was spectacular even from such an altitude.

Wednesday 1 August, 2012 3.58am

A day of mixed fortunes. There is much in our little Loubet Street house that needs doing in preparation for new tenants. So the next few days are likely to be hectic. I can't even find my way on to my Kindle website account and the internet connection is weak and fragile. It comes by courtesy of kind friends Zubair and Hanna over the street, who have given us their WiFi code.

We have bought two sim cards for our mobile phones, only to find that mine is "protected" by Telstra and so it seemed that my ten pounds spent on the sim card was wasted. However, after four attempts to remedy the block and confound Telstra, I was passed on to some clever Sri Lankans who "unprotected" it for me for five pounds and it works.

We arrived at Heathrow with lots of time to spare, and in the early morning travelled by tube to Green Park and then on the Victoria Line to Stockwell and so to Tooting Broadway. It is good to be back in cosmopolitan Tooting. I have been in touch with Ray in Oxford who is coming down to London on Sunday to go to All Saints' Margaret Street for their High Mass with me...... I awoke early this morning before three and couldn't sleep. Worrying about this and that. Ho Hum. We are very much camping here. Hanna and Zubair gave us a lovely chicken curry for dinner, though they didn't eat with us. It is Ramadan for him and even after sunset he is on some sort of special diet. Hanna ate early with the kids. I kept falling asleep and eventually headed off to sort out the phone. We did get a lot of work done in the attic, tidying and clearing and cleaning. There is nothing to read with a dead Kindle, and so I can't read myself back to sleep.

Thursday 2 August, 2012 7.20am

From an Article by Dalrymple discussing Johnson's "Lives of the poets": Referring in his life of Thomas Gray to his subject's travels, Johnson says: "It is by studying at home that we must obtain the ability of travelling with intelligence and improvement." The uninstructed traveller gawps; the instructed one observes.....

Good news this morning. I have managed to order a second Kindle. I am reborn.

Last night we visited our South Indian restaurant and had a delicious meal. We went with Diana's sister Janet who has been helping out with cleaning up all that needs to be done in Loubet Street to prepare for a handover to new tenants on Saturday. This sort of work is fine unless you labour under an all consuming grief, like the loss on one's Kindle!

I did some painting and gouging out of rotting window frames in preparation for filling them and painting them, I dismantled a homemade bed with a thousand screws, went with Diana early in the morning to get stuff from her son Pula's attic, and so on and so on.

Our itinerary is crowded and complicated. The weather is warm but with the chance of showers. I feel something of a Londoner now, and certainly know Tooting well enough to seem at home. The Indian Restaurant opposite Sainsbury's car park was crowded and we were the only non Indians present. It was after eight when we got there. I had a masala dhosa with chips of onion and cashew in the actual pancake, the four dips were delicious. Most enjoyable. Diana had a similar masala dhosa but without the onions, and Janet had a biryani. We preceded it with a sort of vegetable roll, deep fried and crisp. Very good too.

Both Diana and I were still weary from travel and little sleep, but it was interesting to observe the clientele and the ceaseless parade of people outside the restaurant window near a bus stop.

We have twice seen a fox in the street and Diana, in doing the back garden, observed signs of their digging and activity everywhere. We were able to have a good look over the next door house as its owners have sold it and were in the process of moving out. It has been brightened up and improved, but not brilliantly or imaginatively. I have been head-achy since being here and still am. A mixture of tiredness and too little liquid I suspect. Certainly not booze. My first English beer has been canned from the supermarket. Four cans of Worthington, very good.

Sunday 5 August, 2012 5.20am

I lie in bed at Janet's pad in Streatham. The holiday at last begins, though a peculiar holiday for we are going to be hugely peripatetic. Tonight will probably be spent in the house of Diana and Janet's deceased aunt Hilda which needs cleaning and clearing up. I had a strange dream last night to do with going to the funeral of some distant relative of theirs, a bit of an oddity. It ended as a nightmare for we were walking back somewhere of other and Diana suddenly tripped headlong, did a somersault and then appeared to have a kind of seizure or something. That reminded me of a nasty little verse in Larkin's Letters to Monica:

Ring a ring of roses

Coronary thrombosis

A seizure, a seizure

We all fall down.

We worked ceaselessly, right to the bitter end at Loubet Street sorting out and cleaning the place up. All sorts of minor faults and some major having to be seen to and dealt with. The replacement of the sink bench top to be organised, for example. We also went up into Pula and Olga's attic to sort out and transport stuff of Diana's back to Loubet St attic which is locked and not available to tenants. A strenuous chore indeed and one we had done in reverse on our last visit. These dusty attics are accessed by way of pull down aluminium ladders, we then had to lift down and then up boxes of this and that, and that and this. We accomplished this in only two tightly packed carloads with the major help of a systematic Pula and the minor hindrance of his two lovely little girls Mariana and Zoe. On the first of the two evenings we ate dinner with the family and I played at length with the little girls in the garden, hiding a bouncing egg for them to find. They had returned from holidaying with Olga's family in Greece the night they first fed us, Thursday. Olga is highly organised and a fine cook. On that night two very good ouzo's on the rocks with a splash of water, plus a shared bottle of wine I thought might take me to the edge of a hangover. The next day was my first since the flight without the suspicion of a headache. High quality ouzo.

It really is lovely to be back and resident, albeit briefly in vibrant, pullulating Tooting. You suspect that in all such areas of a great city like London there is no sense of community, as I get to know this one I sense a suspicion of one. We actually saw a fox in daylight (which goes on a long time here in summer of course). It trotted in its lean and mangy fashion as if perfectly at home, even with people about.

The only really English foodstuffs enjoyed so far have been a good slab of Stilton, which I consider the very finest of all cheeses, and fresh strawberries which do taste superior here.

Our new tenants are a pair of teachers. We have only met one of them, a striking, articulate female deputy principal of some new and large community school near to Tulse Hill. Her origins lie in the Indian sub-continent one supposes, and the school she works at appears to have been planned and set up by people largely from well-heeled Dulwich. She told us that it draws pupils as much if not more from Brixton, emphatically less than well-heeled.

New tenants, or rather owners, moved in next door the day before, a seemingly delightful young couple, she an accountant and he something else of some standing. These houses would be considered cramped and mean in Australia, though I suppose the ironwork- decorated verandah terraced houses of inner Melbourne would have a similar flavour to them. Diana cleaned up the tiny back garden in the morning attempting to fox proof it. We fixed up a trellis with roses on one fence, a hindrance to even the most agile of foxes we hope. We had breakfast outside in the sun there, a most pleasing and secluded little spot.

BIRTHDAYS

Deb Bagley                      21 Oct

ALL SOULS

All Soul's Day this year is on Friday (the 2nd of November) and so we will celebrate a Requiem Eucharist at 8.00am and at 5.30pm on that day. The departed buried from this parish during the past year will be remembered by name from our burial register. Please put any other names for remembrance on the list in the Narthex.

WELCOME

We welcome today by way of Baptism, Dakota Whitten, and her family and friends.

GARDEN WORKING BEE

Saturday October 27th

Come along and join this enthusiastic group who make our church gardens so beautiful

HAVE YOU EVER.....?

- wondered what the readings in church mean?

- questioned something in the sermon?

- asked why we do what we do in the service?

- wanted to relate your experience

   to what the bible says?

- needed to rejuvenate your ministry, your

  spirituality or your relationship with God?

If you answer ‘yes' to any of these questions or are just curious about your faith, then EfM could hold some of the answers. In a supportive learning community we discuss all the above questions – and we have a lot of fun doing it. Have a chat to Helen or another of the group members if you think you might like to join our EfM group next year.

FOR THE DIARY

Oct 27 Sat                       Murchison Car Boot Sale

Nov 2 Fri                       All Soul's Day

Nov 3 Sat                       Women's Breakfast

Nov 24 Sat                       Parish Quiet Day

Nov 27 Tue                      "Moving On" Dinner Meeting

Feb 03 Sun                      Cologne Chamber Orchestra

Feb 13 Wed                    Ash Wednesday & AGM

REQUESTS FOR PRAYER

At the beginning of each month this list is cleared. Names need putting down again on the list in the narthex and signed in. No names to be listed without permission.

Betty Adam, Hilary & Alan Akers, Joyce Auldrige, Margaret Bakker, Heather Baker, Nancee Beck, Liam Bognar, Nola Brewer, Betty Bush, Michael Egan, Pat & John Griffin, Frank and Joan Harder, Victoria Heenan, Bruce Hodgson & family, Katherine Holt, Nancy Fennell, Edward Johnson, Joan Kitto, Elsie Lieschke, Colin McKenzie, Lyn Morcom, Olive Paez, Sean Pleming, Denise Read, Peter Swindells, Patricia Sparkes, Heather Steen, Faye Warren, Joyce & Ray, Tom & Val, David, Suzanne & Jake, Cheryl & Simon, Father Peter.

Rest in Peace: Peter Ross-Edwards, Nadine Murphy        

Anniversaries: Doug Coleman, Philip McLean, Marjorie Canobie (22 Oct),Greg Connor (23 Oct), Leslie Ramage (24 Oct), Wendy Reid, Tracy Stevens (25 Oct), Laurence Sweet (26 Oct),Edison Condon, Jean Anselmi, Bessie Bourke, Stella Still (27 Oct).

READINGS NEXT SUNDAY

Job 421-6,10-17 Psalm 341-8 Hebrews 721-28

Duties for Sunday 21 October

Readers                 8.30           John Griffin, Heather Pearson

Intercessor              8.30           Bev Condon

Servers                   8.30           Beth, John Griffin, Siobahn

Euc. Assts              8.30           Joe Pearson, Barbara Schier

Sidespeople           8.30           Di & Gavin

Welcomer              8.30           Anita Saville, Bev Reither

Welcome Table      8.30           Dorothy Cook, Bev Condon

Tea                        8.30           Gwyn Cowland

Readers                  10.30         Aaron Bhat, Ryan Bhat

Intercessor             10.30           None

Servers                  10.30           Jenny, Olivia, Oscar

Euc. Assts              10.30           Deacon Grace, Linda Prosser

Sidespeople           10.30           John Pleming, Mitch Macheda

Welcomers            10.30           Rob Gilbert, Yasmin Bhat

Welcome Table     10.30           Dorothy Cook

Projector                10.30           Charlotte Brewer

Children's Church                      Diana Neaum

Mowing                                     none this week

Altar Linen - October                Gwenda Betson

Monday Office 22 Oct               Joyce Oxley, Bob Galt

Duties for Sunday 28 October

Readers                  8.30           Gwyn Cowland, Jeanette Smith

Intercessor              8.30           Jeanette Smith

Servers                   8.30           Beth, Siobahn,Michelle

Euc. Assts               8.30           John Horder, Deacon Grace

Sidespeople            8.30           Norm Mitchelmore, Trevor Batey

Welcomer               8.30           Eileen, Quaife, Shirley Dean

Welcome Table      8.30           Dorothy Cook

Tea                         8.30           Val Bambrook

Readers                  10.30          Peter Martin, Andrea Fisher

Intercessor             10.30           Christine Jones

Servers                  10.30           Rick, Sam & Maddie Coates

Euc. Assts              10.30           Joe Fernandez

Sidespeople           10.30           Volunteer Please

Welcomers            10.30           Beryl Black, Irene Crawford

Welcome Table     10.30           Dorothy Cook

Projector                10.30           Black Family

Children's Church                      Deacon Grace

Mowing 3 Nov                           Norm Mitchelmore, Alan Jeffery

Altar Linen - October                Gwenda Betson

Monday Office                           Rosemary Moore, Jeanette Smith

THIS WEEK IN THE PARISH

Sunday 21st October

  5.30pm           Evening Prayer- Lady Chapel

Monday 22nd October

                              Rector's day off

  7.45am            Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel

  5.00pm           Evening Prayer- Lady Chapel

Tuesday 23rd October

  7.45am            Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel

10-12pm          Play Group - All abilities playground

  5.00pm           Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel

Wednesday 24th October

  7.45am            Mattins - Lady Chapel

10.00am           Eucharist - St Augustine's

   5.00pm          Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel

   6.00pm          EfM

Thursday 25th October

  7.45am            Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel

10.15am           Eucharist - Grutzner

11.00am           Eucharist - Ave Maria

11.00am           Devotion - Harmony

  5.00pm           Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel

  5.30pm           Choir Practice

Friday 26th October

  7.45am            Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel 

  5.00pm           Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel

Saturday 27th October

 7.45am             Mattins & Eucharist

 9.00am             Gardening Working Bee

 3.00am             Wedding

 6.00pm            Vigil Eucharist

Sunday 28 October 22nd after Pentecost

  8.30am            Sung Eucharist - St Augustine's

10.30am           Eucharist - St Augustine's & Children's Church

 9.00am             Rushworth- Local

11.00am           Murchison- Local

  8.45am            Eucharist - St Luke's Dookie

11.00am           Eucharist - St. Mary's Katandra

 5.30pm            Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel