April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
If you want to be really depressed go to http://everything2.com/index and read some personal explanations of what contributors thought T S Eliot might have meant. On the other hand, if you’re depressed already, or really enjoy April’s spring promise, perhaps you shouldn’t……..
Perhaps I should have begun with April showers bring forth May flowers – have you seen how many websites are devoted to that? More promising material was to be found on the subject of April Fool’s Day:-
“The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.” [Mark Twain] I’ve included some other findings on page 27 .
But enough of frivolity – April this year at least means Easter and you’ll find details of our services in the diary and on the back cover. There are other events to look forward to: Father Stephen is repeating his popular talk on Mozart, the Man, the Myth and the Music by special request because so many of us couldn’t get into Burgh House to hear him last time. The Revd Jim Cotter is coming on 28th April for a morning’s meditation to launch his new book. We hope you’ll all come – the morning starts at 10am and will finish at 12.30pm.
There are two annual meetings this month – the Annual Parochial Church Meeting will be held in the Moreland Hall [behind the Everyman Cinema] on Wednesday 25th at 8pm. If you filled in an Electoral Roll form during the revision in March you will be able to vote [you did, didn’t you?] the meeting isn’t long and always end with a drink and a chat. Then on 27th the Friends of the Drama are holding their Annual General Meeting in the Crypt room at 7.30pm – unlike the APCM they finish theirs with a bit of drama [although I suppose drama’s always possible at the APCM too….]
Did you bring back your volunteering survey enclosed with last month’s magazine? If for any reason you didn’t get one, or can’t now find your copy we do have more available – please take one and return it soon. We really need people for all sorts of jobs. Which leads me on to
The Coffee Rota
We all appreciate a cup of coffee after the 10.30am service on a Sunday but it’s an amenity that might cease if we don’t get more people for the rota. It requires 2 volunteers each Sunday to come in at about 10am to put the urn on and prepare the cups, biscuits etc [everything is provided by the church and left in the kitchen, you don’t have to buy anything]; then you can leave it all during the service, coming down in the last hymn to turn the urn up and be ready to greet customers. We use disposable cups so there isn’t the amount of washing up there used to be. It isn’t really a difficult task but it becomes a nuisance if you’re asked to be on every week, which is why we’re saying – if we can’t get more people some weeks there won’t be any. If you can offer the occasional Sunday don’t wait for your survey to be analysed, please contact Suzanne O’Connor now on 8455 8566.
Spring cleaning
Traditionally this was done in the fresh spring winds when houses really needed a good airing after the winter. Everything was scrubbed and polished to great the returning sun. It became a time for turning out cupboards, too, for disposing of the collected rubbish of the long winter months, for looking at last year’s clothes and deciding they won’t do another year. The Summer Fair [originally a Spring Fair] has always benefitted from this spring-time clear- out BUT it doesn’t benefit from having a lot of unusable items, I-can’t-bear-to-part-with-it-so-give-it-to-the-church items, I-don’t-know-how-to-dispose-of-this- so-the-church-can-do-it items. Honestly, we do get given some real old junk that no one could possibly want and in these days when rubbish is big business it’s unavoidable to think that people are avoiding the problem by dumping their rubbish on us. We have to pay just the same as anyone else, in fact after the Fair we pay quite a lot to have the rubbish taken away – which is a pity when we’ve spent the day raising money. So this year, please, please, only give us things you really think we can sell.
And on the subject of cleaning, Beryl Dowsett has much to say as she takes over from Gaynor Bassey. We are grateful to Gaynor who has cajoled us into cleaning the church for the last 11 years. Her motto was: “All service ranks the same with God. With God, whose puppets, best and worst, are we, there is no last or first.” Robert Browning may have said it first but Gaynor made it her own.
April
Judy East