• Off sick

    Have had an extraordinarily quiet time over the last couple of weeks, unable to really enjoy being on holiday as I was still trying to get over a bronchial infection which has gone on for weeks and weeks.

    Back to work for half a day yesterday showed me that I’m still a long way from being fit and certainly not fit to work. The doctor has signed me off today for 2 weeks.

    I can get to local shops, can drive and am not housebound and I’ll shout for anything I need. However it is the quiet life for me for a bit longer.

    My thanks to colleagues for covering all bases whilst I’m under the weather. If you are waiting for responses from me about anything, my apologies, I’ll deal with them when I get back to work. In the mean time, please contact the Cathedral Office about anything that seems urgent.

    I don’t know whether I will be posting much on the blog. (I’ve got one or two articles written but unposted).

    This is what comes of not doing the blessing of the throats for St Blaise’s Day…

5 responses to “Evensong for Advent Three”

  1. annie t Avatar
    annie t

    Couldn’t agree with you more about ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’. It was sung, at his own request, at the great Michael Mayne’s Funeral in Salisbury Cathedral and the preacher on that occasion said the following: ‘And perhaps most of all, those strands of simplicity and humility that are the harbingers of gratitude and grace caught in three musical choices with which we celebrate Michael’s life today. Elizabeth Postern’s ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’ – if she never wrote another piece (and I know nothing else by her), this wonderful essay in simplicity would earn her reputation.’ I’d like it sung at my own.

  2. emma Avatar
    emma

    Evensong is wonderful. Compline is almost as good…. “Brethren, be sober, be vigilant……”.

  3. fr dougal Avatar
    fr dougal

    I remember the then Provost of St Andrew’s Cathedral Aberdeen Donald Howard describing Evensong as being “like a relaxing soak in a hot bath after a busy Sunday”. He had a point.

  4. Martin Ritchie Avatar
    Martin Ritchie

    When I lived in Glasgow I travelled from the darkest southside to St Mary’s for evensong most weeks. Now, I’ve been to many stunning evensongs in grand cathedrals and college chapels over the years but St Mary’s Glasgow is hard to beat for the intimacy of the experience and the absence of pretension – as well as the high musical standards! Keep up the good work.

    With you on Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. Great text. I’ve recently used a setting in the Oxford Book of Flexible Anthems which uses a traditional folk melody to stunning effect – even simpler than the Poston, but just as effective!

  5. Harry Monroe Avatar

    Our little choir, Angelus Singers, was formed, and still exists, to sing Evensong in churches where no choir exists.

    In my write-up about the value of Evensong, I said that..’You cannot go away angry, after Evensong’, and I still believe that.

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