Saturday's Ordination

Meh. Am really rather weary to write now, but will have a go. If I leave things too long, they fade away. It's scary to think of all those buried memories I'll never uncover if nothing reminds me of them. Still, it's fun when one does arise out of the mist - especially childhood ones. A smell, a sound - and suddenly you remember other smells, other sounds, that you'd forgotten.

I digress. As always.

On Saturday we went to Keith's ordination service - I used to work for him when I was 'Assistant Administrator' of the Association. Beryl came with us, but the Saturday traffic was bad and we were only just in time. It wouldn't have been a problem, if there'd been enough seating! So we had to ferry into a room at the back, behind the main sanctuary area (rather embarrassing, as we had to process up the aisle in front of everyone before the service started). Keith mouthed an enthusiastic 'hello' before we crept into the chairs. We were the only ones in there except for one lady and the three people doing the catering, who had positioned their chairs so they could glimpse goings on through the open door. We were in the middle and had to rely on listening to the speaker. Rather strange, I didn't quite know what to look at. We looked down at our programmes, mainly. I looked at the flower arrangement in front of me and tried to guess what was going on by the various clicks and bumps in between speakers.

The funny thing was the singing - only seven of us in the room and three of us in the middle, and of course everyone sang ultra quietly. You could hear the congregation singing with great gusto - but removed. I was determined to sing, however, although this did result in being able to hear me, and Andy beside me, but no one else. It was rather like standing in a room singing all by ourselves, which was rather amusing. You felt you had to sing well, and properly, so when Andy lost his way at one point I had the most horrendous urge to giggle and had to stand in a very obvious silence while I made a supreme effort to contain myself, and then proceeded to sing once more. Well, somebody had to! So my husband and I stood in this little room with a huge flower arrangement and five other ladies, and sang cheerfully.

Stayed for tea, since it was nearly my rest stop anyway, and I'd already missed it. I felt it though, and as soon as it turned 4:30 I was struggling. So we left before 5, but still it was nice to see people in the part where I did have the energy.