Palm Sunday: Matters Spiritual

To Mass. It opened with the children, the Sisters and the Clergy coming in an walking around the church singing and waving palms and olive branches. The altar was decorated with palms. Seeing the bishop with his staff and mitre, looking dignified without pomposity, reminded me that this IS a see, and that St Francis' is a cathedral, even though the congregation is less than half the size of our parish church back home.

The Mass was half and half English and Italian again. I'm getting the hang of it now. A wee nun next to me pointed out the responses in the Italian sections. The creed was in Italian only, but I was able to follow it by saying it in English, the two languages jogging along happily together on the tongue, and in the ear.

Afterwards, Tarik the taxi driver was outside the church. We were both unaccountably chuffed at the fact that his prayers at the mosque had finished precisely in time for him to pick me up after mine.

Then I went with Tarik to get a the trousers on my new suit taken up, and to get some self igniting charcoal for my shisha pipe, and a few cans of Crown no-alcohol beer to go with it. I'd agreed to get some strawberry flavoured tobacco for Colin, my fellow shisha addict, but the seems to be a dearth of it. At least I found out the Arabic name for strawberry: frau-la.

In Tarik's taxi, on the way to Mass and on the way home, I realised how unexpectedly fond of this City I've become.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there
Read more

LTPTP XXV: We Shall Overcome

Image
We shall indeed.  It's a lovely wee tune to learn.  I've almost memorized it this morning, the idea being, when I encounter a piano, I want something to sit down and play on the bugger.  I've a feeling that my keyboard's keys are lighter than a proper piano's, and there'll be a bit of effort transferring the skills I've gotten so far.  Probably, at some point this year, I'll be in workplace with a piano.  I'll print off some simple music and scales, and work at it, but it's likely to be in a public place so I want something to avoid making a twat of myself initially. It feels right that this should be the first tune I learn by heart.
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more