We make our song ...

What a strange, intense day. In a grey morning, so unlike yesterday's, we went to church as usual, the car park already with more cars than our normal quota on Sunday, and embarked on a service filled with emotions grounded in the situation but enhanced by words and music - the things that church can do so well. It was a lay-led service - the Rector's week for being in Rothesay - but we have two formidable Lay Readers and today both rose superbly to the occasion. The opening organ voluntary used the Kiev Melody, a choral piece with amazing words which I first encountered at the funeral of a friend more than 50 years ago, and at the communion I sang this, which often accompanies the departure of the coffin at the end of a funeral. The prayers, the flowers, the fact that some people had dressed differently - it all added up to something more than the sum of its parts without any conferring having taken place. And at the very end, when people were in the back of the church having coffee, the flower-arranger found a little visitor, which you can see in the bottom photo on the right: a toad, blinking at us from somewhere near the altar. 

It was all downhill after that, really - the rain came on with a vengeance in mid-afternoon and fell vertically in the windless air. And what did we do? Well, I spent some time reading the papers - there's a lot of stuff in the Sundays today - but couldn't bear the chilly stiffness brought on by sitting still, so as the torrents continued to fall we went for a walk. There wasn't another living soul on the whole of the West Bay, though a shapely diver ( perhaps a Great Northern? It looked the right size) was gliding over the grey glass of the sea until I drew Himself's attention to it, when it dived as if to prove me correct. We were completely soaked (again) when we got home; my so-called warterproof trainers are still in the hall with boot bananas in them.

My younger granddaughter was with a friend  in the crowd lining the pavements outside her school as the Queen's cortège passed on its way to Holyrood. She'll probably remember it in the same way as I remember being seven in Buchanan Street to wave at the newly-crowned queen as she passed me. You'll be glad to know the rain hadn't reached Edinburgh at the time ...

PS: Links to music referred to, if you're interested - I'm delighted to have found a really good performance of the first one, and the second is the original sound-track.