Today we've got to finalise our packing and also Lois wants to attend her church's Sunday Morning Meeting at Ashchurch Village Hall just outside Tewkesbury.
Before we go, we just check the local news for traffic jams, flooded roads and that kind of malarkey. Luckily it seems to be "all clear" so far for today. But we notice a rather annoying item about this year's pantomimes at the Swan Theatre in Worcester.
The Swan Theatre's Christmas panto "Jack and the Beanstalk",
with local actress Aimée Cupper (2nd from right) as Jill of 'Jack and Jill'
This story's a bit annoying for Lois and me, to be honest! We've recently had our tiny back garden "landscaped", with a new flower bed being put in on the property's eastern boundary, the one we share with our neighbour, young single guy Laurence.
flashback to earlier this month. Our landscaper, Adrian,
digs us out a curvy flower bed on the garden's eastern boundary
The landscapers showed us their pattern book, and pointed us to their "Panto Range", which offers special prices at this time of year. They asked us what shape we wanted for the flower-bed, and foolishly we decided to "splash out", and go for "The Hasnip", based on the curves of local panto actress Charlotte Hasnip, who's going to be starring in the panto, "Rapunzel" in 2024.
Now, however, having seen the publicity for the Christmas 2023 panto "Jack and the Beanstalk", we wish we'd saved a bit of money and ordered "The Cupper", based on the more conventional curves of local panto artist, Aimée Cupper (see photo).
Too late now !!!!! Damn !!!!!!
11:10 We drive over to Ashchurch Village Hall for the meeting. The congregation is much depleted today, because so many church-members are away from the area, visiting family etc for Christmas.
We arrive, as usual, during the lunch break between the "Bible Hour" and the breaking-of-bread service. We've brought a packed lunch each. However, on arrival we find that hot meals are being provided today, so we stash our packed lunches away in a bag - we can have those at tea-time, which will mean we won't have to do a meal tonight - makes sense to us!
a scrumptious hot meal awaits me - and there's
another one for Lois too, what a nice surprise!
Today's preacher, John, has called in sick, so Chief Elder Andy has to step in and do a hastily-assembled talk about the Second Coming - the 5 W's and the 1 H: the who, the what, the why, the where, the when, the how.... that kind of thing - you know.
Andy's slide for his talk
There's some talk about whether Jesus is already here but has kept quiet about it, as some believe, after Lois asks a question on behalf of Steve, our American brother-in-law. The consensus seems to be against this idea. Andy says it's ruled out because he believes the actual Second Coming will actually be a very noisy event - with masses of angels all playing very loudly on their special horns - 10,000 x 10,000 of them (myriad squared) to be exact.
My goodness!!! I've got a maths degree and I reckon that, if Andy's right, it means there must be 100 million angels up there all the time getting ready for the big day.
Andy talks about a possible 50-year-cycle in significant events presaging the Second Coming - the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Hamas uprising of 2023. But did anything much happen in 1923? I google it but don't find much, other than the British Mandate coming into force in Palestine, so the jury's still out on that one.
Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!
We're a bit disturbed by the little inset picture of John (screen, top right - see below), the scheduled preacher for today, who has called in sick and is joining the meeting on zoom. He's undoubtedly genuinely sick, but even so, if I were John, I would hate to have my image projected so prominently, inviting members of the congregation to "check me out" for signs of malingering etc. Well, we'll see - so far he's "kept up the mask", though, which is nice!
Poor John !!!!!! Get well soon!
14:00 We get home and there's time to go to bed for a bit, before the carol service from King's College starts this afternoon.
Unfortunately, it turns out to be another "trendy" service, with a few traditional carols, but far too many weird modern carols that don't have a tune, and make you want to switch off. We expect it's some "trendy" concert director trying to make a name for himself among his fellow trendy concert directors. I urge Lois to write a snotty letter to the Radio Times, signed "Disappointed of Malvern" - well, somebody should, shouldn't they! Don't they know it's Christmas?
20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch the last of the four Christmas Special editions of Only Connect, our favourite TV quiz, which tests lateral thinking.
Can YOU see the link between these 4 things?
Does anybody out there have an interest in music AND a chemistry degree? Well, if so, I'm sure you will have guessed the answer - yes, it's "repeated element signals in lyrics" - that old chestnut!
Lanthanum is "la" and there's a repeated "fa la la la la" in "Deck the Halls" [title not mentioned - why?]. A repeated "ba-ba-ba-ba" in the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann". A repeated "no no no" in the "There's No Limit" song by the group 2 Unlimited, and a repeated "na na na" in the Beatles' song Hey Jude. See?
What about the link in this one?
Yes, it's Christmassy things with a missing 'L'. If you put the 'L' in you get angel, sledge, Christmas elves and Gold etc. In other words No L = Noel. Geddit ? Haha, bet you didn't !
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