Summer in church is never the quiet time we hope it will be. There’s always so much ‘catching up’ to do, so many things there hasn’t been time for during all the rest of the year, opportunities to be grabbed and ideas to be acted on. The demise of Church Row Nursery, whilst sad, has allowed us to reclaim the Thorns Room (named after Sarah Thorns, whose memorial stone is there although, as she died in 1790, she must originally have been buried outside the church and the building extended over her); it’s a delightful little room which will now be used for one of the Sunday School groups and which has potential for other small groups and one-to-one meetings as well. It took several of us several hours to restore it to its present condition, literally getting down on our knees to do it. Next time you go down for coffee have a look – it’s at the far end of the crypt, through the Allatson Room.
We turned out a lot of cupboards, scrubbed all the children’s chairs, re-ordered the rooms, cleaned the curtains and generally freshened the place up ready for our new groups – a Montessori playgroup (Binkyshampstead.co.uk) and Children’s music sessions (mini-mingles.co.uk). Keeping the rooms tidy inbetween sessions is proving challenging – if you’re using a room for anything please stack the chairs neatly so the cleaner can get at the floor!
Tidying in church has unearthed a lot of lost property which, if it isn’t claimed, will end up in a charity shop. How frustrated parents must be when their children lose their clothes (not sure how we ended up with three jumpers from St Anthony’s!), their phones, their earphones, their games equipment – why would you even bring a tennis racquet to church? – the list goes on and on.
Tidying in the gallery unearthed not only junk but things we didn’t know we had – Father Stephen’s snow picture postcard for instance of which we thought we’d sold the last some time ago.
One area where we never seem to catch up is the churchyard which, whilst the ABG is looking nicely cared for these days, is rapidly reverting to forest. I was deeply embarrassed recently to be unable to find a tomb I was asked to photograph because it was completely overgrown! If you could spare an hour or two to do some clearing please come on a Saturday morning (first Saturday of the month) or see me some other time and I’ll show you what needs doing. But every cloud has a silver lining and we do have a very good crop of blackberries!
The secular year begins in January, the church year in Advent but there’s something about September that shouts ‘new beginnings’ – to me anyway. Maybe after so many years tied to the academic timetable, as pupil, parent and grandparent, I haven’t quite shaken off the feeling of a new year in September. And there’s so much to look forward to in the autumn – in nature it’s so beautiful, in the church it means Harvest, All Saints, the Kingdom season, Advent and of course Christmas, but we won’t talk about that yet. Except, did you see, did I really see, that John Lewis opened their Christmas department in Oxford Street in time for the summer visitors?
Turning hurriedly back to Harvest – the date has been agreed for the last weekend in September (27/28) but plans are still being made so look out for more information in the pewsheets and weekly e-letter. There will be an afternoon barn dance at the Parochial School on Saturday 27th from 3-5pm and probably at some stage, if not throughout the weekend, a collection for Syria. Food will be shared between the Simon Community and the Foodbanks in Chalk Farm and CARIS Haringey. Please keep fresh food to a minimum – it looks lovely on display but the shortness of its ‘shelf-life’ makes it of limited use to the recipients. And please bear in mind that the people we are giving to need the essentials of life and two tins of stew are more useful than one exotic box of biscuits.
September
Judy East