Hums Ancient & Modern

Who says it’s not fun going to church?  Okay, about 97% of the population, but none of them were in my church this morning.  I attend an Anglican church but our building is old and we can’t get insurance for it so the local Methodist church kindly rents us space.  We have our services at different times but come together once a month for a united service.  It’s nice because we get a live organist instead of a dead cd.  You’d think.  Unfortunately, the dear old Methodist organist is just that, a seventy-year old dear with the reactions of a woman twice her age.  The first hymn was a nice up-tempo number that she played as a dirge; the next two were modern songs that she didn’t know, and I have the earache to prove it.  The fourth must have been a bit confusing for her because she was supposed to play each two-line verse twice but also played the four-line chorus twice after each verse, so the service was a tad longer than it needed to be – six choruses worth of longer.  She came up trumps on the final hymn but it was written in the Eighteenth Century, so she probably knew the author as a child.

I’m just having a bit of fun; I haven’t been able to stop giggling about it since this morning: I admire anyone who can play an instrument, especially a huge church organ mounted in the ceiling.  The best I can do is that bare knuckle thing on the black keys – Chopsticks?- though I did play the tambourine as a teenager. 

I have never had any pretensions to being cool; now you know why.

The guest minister had prepared an all-ages service; we must have been such a disappointment to him.  Our combined congregations can boast only four children, and none of them were there this morning.  The youngest of us was in her late thirties, and only four of those present were under fifty-eight.  It’s a good job one of the hymns wasn’t Nearer My God To Thee, or I’d have had a hysterical fit in the aisle.

Roll on next Sunday morning: I hear we’re having a guest performer on the harpsichord.