“I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening
To Silence.” – Thomas Hood
It is definitely autumn now. September was an inbetween month – we didn’t have the balmy days we might have thought we deserved after dreary August – though there were a few goods days – it just drifted along rather uncertainly as if it couldn’t quite make up its mind. But look around and the leaves are turning and falling and it is truly autumn.
Rilke wrote sadly of ‘restlessly perambulating’ in autumn days [see page 32] but I rather like them. For one thing it contains my favourite observance – Dedication which we celebrate this year on the 3rd , as near to the actual date of the dedication of our building on 8th October 1747 as we can get. And then moving swiftly on we have Harvest Festival on 10th – food and flowers, a glorious thanksgiving jumble of gifts and plenty. And as always we will be delivering the food for the Simon Community to distribute to their hostels and on their nightly soup-runs. [They appreciate toiletries as well as food.] If you’re a parent at the Parochial School or Church Row Nursery you’ll be asked to bring gifts on other days – the school have their harvest festival on 5th, the nursery on 12th – anyone else please bring your gifts on the weekend of 9/10. We’ll be decorating the church on 9th and some gifts in advance are helpful to add to our arrangements – particularly fruit and vegetables. The pumpkin season should be well under way though I suppose we might be a bit late for marrows? So on 10th October I’d rather “give gladness with bowed heads, rejoice upon bended knee” [Sylvia Read, page 22] as we share our Harvest Thanksgiving .
You’ll see that it’s very nearly shoe box time – so do start looking for toys, toiletries etc now. But please read Rosemary Loyd’s article further on in this issue first. Last year we had to take out some second-hand and unsuitable items before sending the boxes. Toys MUST be new and there are restrictions – if we don’t get it right sorters at the main depots will reject them. [If you have shoeboxes but don’t want to fill them please bring them to church for people who don’t have any.] The deadline for completed boxes is 7th November – don’t delay!
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the work in the Additional Burial Ground will be finished in the next week or so but the contractors have run into problems with the fence between the Columbarium and the School playground so I’m not counting on it. When it is do have walk round and see how good it all looks. The contractors have become our friends over the summer months and it will seem to strange when they’re gone – they’ve done a good job, been pleasant and friendly, accommodating to the vagaries of the church diary and done little extra jobs like the paving in front of the church and the step down to the vicarage end of Church Row.
Of course the building work is only a small part of the whole project and the tomb trails, nature walks and educational visits from schools will continue. And eventually there will be a sound trail, downloadable to ipod.
In the next few weeks you may see people selling CDs of Mozart’s Requiem originally intended to raise money for the Tsunami Appeal in 2005. These came to light during the clear-out of the choir vestry and it seemed a shame to waste them. We have permission from the Disasters Emergency Committee and the church where the recording was done. As they are quite old we’re offering them for £5. I bought one at the time mainly because David Gostick, one of our former organists, played the organ for it. If you missed it in 2005 now’s your chance. The money will go to the Pakistan Flood Appeal.