'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

What's this, a real life post?

Today was a trip to the dentist - which in my family is an actual outing since we go to one all the way up in Sutton. We used to do this as a complete family visit as well though since Covid my sister and I have ended up making separate appointments to mummy and daddy - though hilariously we've independently managed to book the hygienist on two successive days this week (so just missing each other)!

It's a fairly straightforward trip up the A3 through the Hindhead Tunnel which has always felt like a strangely creepy tunnel. It's something about the lighting inside, the completely black tunnel roof, and the fact that on the first drive I did to Sutton we entered the tunnel from a sunny morning and exited the other side to discover fog creeping over the trees at the side of the road. It was no less creepy today - the drive north had mixed bands of glorious sunshine and light fog, and as we reached the southern portal the top of the hill was shrouded in fog with the tunnel entrance looking like some giant maw swallowing up the unwary traffic!

The return journey had our by-now traditional stop at Petersfield for a late lunch, though we didn't do the walk around Petersfield Pond this time but instead wandered into St Peter's Church. Entering the church I was struck by just how quiet it was - as soon as the door closed all the noise of the traffic outside just disappeared. For a church in the middle of a busy town it was amazing how peaceful it was inside.

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!


This has been something of a strange Easter. It's the first year I've not gone back to Horsham (which was already going to be different before all this went down, as they've ended the annual Italian festival), and the first year I've not been to some combination of Easter services.

But today I did manage my own little Easter celebration - somehow, I woke up before dawn, and in the absence of an actual dawn service somewhere I simply stood out on my balcony and watched the sun rise...

( Easter sunrise )

St John's Fareham did manage an actual Easter celebration as well - the vicar hosted a "simple sharing of bread and wine" on Zoom, based on a passage from 1 Corinthians. As with all teleconferences it started with the ritual "can you hear me? I can hear you!", but eventually we got audio mostly sorted. Trying to say the responses in sync with everyone else is quite tricky due to the latency involved!

Over on FB, a friend is running a Lent photography challenge/group/thing wherein she's posting a daily piece of scripture from Mark's Gospel and challenging the group members to reply with a relevant photo (ideally taken that day). It looks interesting and I do mean to post more, so I'm having a go at it. Let's see if I managed to keep it up!

I baptise you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit
Mark 1:8

The baptismal font and etched glass windows of St John's Fareham, taken at the Ash Wednesday service.

It is cold out there - there was actually snow on top of Devil's Dyke last night!

I was late to housegroup tonight and turned up near the end of the bible study - housegroup clashed with music practice. I don't actually play any instruments or sing in the band at church, but I'm on the A/V team and so I like to turn up to music practice when it's my turn on the rota. I find it helps a lot when running projection if I've sung the songs beforehand and know how they flow (is there a pause between the verse and chorus or not? Are the band likely to repeat the last few lines? Will they launch straight into this song without an intro?).

As well as projection I'm starting to get involved with sound again, so far mainly for Messy Church where the sound is simultaneously easy and complicated. Easy in that the sound is generally a radio mic and a laptop (and rarely, a keyboard as well), complicated in that it's in the hall and so has to be set up from scratch using a portable mixer/amp along with some pieces borrowed from the main church. There's mutterings about adding some A/V infrastructure to the hall which would help - we may be getting some dedicated radio mics, assuming we can find channels that don't clash with the church mics. Radio mics have more range than most people expect, as St Mark's in Horsham discovered when the pub across the road had their quiz night ("And the Lord said *kkkssshhht* which football team won the 2005 world cup *kkkssshhht*").

We did another different sort of prayer at housegroup tonight: prayer bananagrams! Ca. dug out a set of Bananagram tiles and we turned them into a scrabble-like grid of things to be thankful for...

At housegroup we're currently going through a series on aspects of Christianity through the ages, and tonight's (well, last week given that I'm actually typing this on the 9th) topic was Celtic Christianity and its focus on the natural world.

Ca was leading and asked us all to bring something that reminds us of our favourite part of the natural world - I was trying to work out what to bring, but ended up digging out a couple of sunset photos (taken on actual film, to much amusement) as I find when out and about with the camera I take an awful lot of landscape photos, in particularly of landscapes with interesting skies. A quote from Goodnight Mister Tom comes to mind - "I could never tire of painting the sky for it is constantly changing". It turns out quite a few of us had the same idea and had found similar photos of sky and fields.

Later the topic moved on to thin places - this also comes out of Celtic Christianity, and means places where the physical and spiritual worlds seem particularly close. One I found many years ago is this spot:



Hidden to the side of a path between Titchfield Common and the Chilling cliffs are steps leading down to a boardwalk through the trees, along and above a tiny stream. I just find it an incredibly peaceful spot to pause at on a sunny day, listening to the stream burbling along and birds chattering in the trees. The boardwalk has an inscription carved in it - "as time passes slowly by this place, pause awhile, then so must we".

Another one is St Mary's church at Hook-with-Warsash:



I've walked past it several times, but the other day I was attempting some geocaches around Warsash Common and thought I'd give the church micro a try. And having walked into the churchyard and found the necessary clue, I had some time and so decided to explore some more. Doing so turned out to be well worth it and I spent much longer looking around than I'd intended to (abandoning the geocaches due to lack of time) - as with the boardwalk above it was just so very peaceful, and also despite it being a grey overcast day inside the building was very bright and airy thanks to a large pair of clear windows at the rear of the church. Some churches have a particularly spiritual feel, and this is one of those.

Happy Zombie Jesus Day!