Submerged

Humber water is hard

Dear Reader! I am still here, but you probably are not! Been so busy lately, submerged once could say, working on the psalms project, and a wedding coming up in a few days - son no.2 - and what with the garden growing, and grandchildren visited, and London explored..... so now with the wedding a few days away, I have applied myself to Housework. The tiles really were in one helluva state; this Humber water really is hard. I gather they grew some grass on something unusual and imported it to York Minster recently for a special event. Well, I usually get there first.

See: York Minster turf

Mr Fell, son of Henry of Horkstow.

I was gratified that after my recent rant about evensong, the Tablet's editorial mentioned the great contribution made by the Anglican choral tradition, and it spoke of 'the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty - a very Catholic idea.'

Lovely vicarage tiles, with Harpic

So I decided that we needed a beautiful bathroom, insofar as the parsonages committee provides us with the raw materials for this - our tiles are very naff and 1980s; but I never look at them, as I'm mostly in there with my eyes shut (a good idea anyway when you get older).

So it seemed to me that strong measures were needed, and so I doused them with Harpic in the hope of something thorough and fast, and the effect was very good. That is the tried and tested (once) household hint for today! (Don't worry about me - I made sure I didn't have a bath until after t'owd man had used it for a shower after the Harpic event.)

Abraham moment

Ps 89 dark cloud submerged

Dark cloud, surfacing

Now I have just under two weeks to get the house and garden sorted out fit for viewing, and an outfit to make for myself, and a talk to write and deliver tomorrow. I like to leave not much time, and then you can't overdo it can you? Recent psalms work has taken up most of my time, and I diverted from my usual style for these pieces by doing something not in the form of applique, where one can be cautious and test each piece first to see if it looks right. So I have done psalm 88 as a whole-mood piece, and being unsatisfied with it was about to cut it up and use it for applique, but like Abraham in Genesis 22, my hand was stayed by a revelation - the piece suddenly improved after I gave it an iron prior to cutting it up, and I decided to keep it as it was, and the new piece needed to go somewhere, preferably not the bin, and so it became Ps 89 which is almost as dark as Ps 88, but has a very royal edge. And so there were two pieces in the end, Ps 88 and Ps 89, and both involved a bit of submerging.

Psalm 88, St Albans' Psalter

Since I am really busy, and there has been the jubilee in amongst all of this, not to mention trying and testing the new bike, I will have to end with just a part of Ps 89. I can explain everything - but not here, not now!

Psalm 89, Viv