Busy busy busy... (part 4 of n)
Apr. 3rd, 2019 11:23 amPerhaps this getting caught up malarky will work better if I can manage to post more frequently.
Back in Yorkshire after my Cambridge weekend, I took advantage of the fact that I'm only a 20 minutes bus journey from Mirfield to go to the Lenten Evenings at the Community of the Resurrection. These are a series of talks on the overarching subject of Vocation, and the first one was about Baptism. It was a reasonably interesting talk, looking at various biblical discussions of baptism, and what that means for us as a church and as individual Christians, but I'm not very good at absorbing by listening so I may not have got as much out of it as some people. What I absolutely loved though, was getting to stay for Compline afterwards. It's probably my favourite office at the best of times, and the acoustic at Mirfield is just extraordinary.
On the Wednesday I went over to York to see Mark. One of the lovely things about being closer to him is getting to spend time just quietly together, cooking, watching Netflix, snuggling. Until recently most of when we've seen each other has been for events and holidays or exciting meals out or big social things, all of which are generally great fun, but don't leave much downtime for just low key being together, and I've really enjoyed finding this new and different type of intimacy.
On Thursday I went for dinner at my parents', now that they've returned from spending all of February on holiday in Spain. It sounds like they'd had a marvellous time, and despite some ongoing health problems for my Dad, they're generally filling their lives with good things. I feel very grateful to have such excellent parents, and to have such a good relationship with them, knowing how fraught it can be for a lot of people.
Back then to London for a moderately low-key weekend. I had an excellent Parkrun on the Saturday morning - I'd started doing some interval training during the week, so I thought it might be worth shooting for a PB, and slightly optimistically decided to aim for taking about 25-30 seconds off. This was about a minute behind![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
robert_jones's PB, and because he was planning on running 18 miles the next day he was quite happy to take it a little bit easy and help me pace. Having someone to run alongside clearly did help, and then I pushed a bit harder at the end and beat him for the first time, knocking a whopping 59 seconds off my previous best time!
Later that eveningbunnypip and cuddlyviking came to stay, as they were going to a matinee the next day. I cooked a french onion soup and bacon, broccoli and blue cheese risotto, neither of which came out quite as well as I'd hoped, but were pleasant enough. (And having troubleshot the risotto the next iteration was amazing). On Sunday morning Kaye very kindly came with me to help with the first rehearsal of St John's singers for our Holy Week services, which I think went pretty well. Sadly she had to disappear to the theatre after the rehearsal, but I stayed for Mass, and then we had the first meeting of our Lent discussion group, where we discussing Timothy Radcliffe's "Why Go to Church: The Drama of the Eucharist", which is excellent, and I shall write about at more length in is own post.
Later that afternoon, I was also going to the theatre, withthe_alchemist, to a slightly later matinee, specifically Six, a musical about the wives of Henry VIII, which was bloody brilliant. I was expecting it to be a lot of rather silly fun, which it was, but I was pleasantly surprised by the intertwining of that silliness with some serious commentary on the gendered lens we view history through. I was also very impressed with the quality of the music, the singing, the dancing, the costumes - just very high production values throughout. It might not be for absolutely everyone, but if you're interested in history and/or feminism, or a Spice Girls fan, then I'd recommend it very highly indeed.
Back in Yorkshire after my Cambridge weekend, I took advantage of the fact that I'm only a 20 minutes bus journey from Mirfield to go to the Lenten Evenings at the Community of the Resurrection. These are a series of talks on the overarching subject of Vocation, and the first one was about Baptism. It was a reasonably interesting talk, looking at various biblical discussions of baptism, and what that means for us as a church and as individual Christians, but I'm not very good at absorbing by listening so I may not have got as much out of it as some people. What I absolutely loved though, was getting to stay for Compline afterwards. It's probably my favourite office at the best of times, and the acoustic at Mirfield is just extraordinary.
On the Wednesday I went over to York to see Mark. One of the lovely things about being closer to him is getting to spend time just quietly together, cooking, watching Netflix, snuggling. Until recently most of when we've seen each other has been for events and holidays or exciting meals out or big social things, all of which are generally great fun, but don't leave much downtime for just low key being together, and I've really enjoyed finding this new and different type of intimacy.
On Thursday I went for dinner at my parents', now that they've returned from spending all of February on holiday in Spain. It sounds like they'd had a marvellous time, and despite some ongoing health problems for my Dad, they're generally filling their lives with good things. I feel very grateful to have such excellent parents, and to have such a good relationship with them, knowing how fraught it can be for a lot of people.
Back then to London for a moderately low-key weekend. I had an excellent Parkrun on the Saturday morning - I'd started doing some interval training during the week, so I thought it might be worth shooting for a PB, and slightly optimistically decided to aim for taking about 25-30 seconds off. This was about a minute behind
robert_jones's PB, and because he was planning on running 18 miles the next day he was quite happy to take it a little bit easy and help me pace. Having someone to run alongside clearly did help, and then I pushed a bit harder at the end and beat him for the first time, knocking a whopping 59 seconds off my previous best time!Later that evening
bunnypip and cuddlyviking came to stay, as they were going to a matinee the next day. I cooked a french onion soup and bacon, broccoli and blue cheese risotto, neither of which came out quite as well as I'd hoped, but were pleasant enough. (And having troubleshot the risotto the next iteration was amazing). On Sunday morning Kaye very kindly came with me to help with the first rehearsal of St John's singers for our Holy Week services, which I think went pretty well. Sadly she had to disappear to the theatre after the rehearsal, but I stayed for Mass, and then we had the first meeting of our Lent discussion group, where we discussing Timothy Radcliffe's "Why Go to Church: The Drama of the Eucharist", which is excellent, and I shall write about at more length in is own post.Later that afternoon, I was also going to the theatre, with
the_alchemist, to a slightly later matinee, specifically Six, a musical about the wives of Henry VIII, which was bloody brilliant. I was expecting it to be a lot of rather silly fun, which it was, but I was pleasantly surprised by the intertwining of that silliness with some serious commentary on the gendered lens we view history through. I was also very impressed with the quality of the music, the singing, the dancing, the costumes - just very high production values throughout. It might not be for absolutely everyone, but if you're interested in history and/or feminism, or a Spice Girls fan, then I'd recommend it very highly indeed.
