Masterchef

Great evening yesterday with David Green from the Hoxton Grill.


This is what it’s all about!

More pictures

Spring arrives at Little Hampden

Just a few pictures from the last few days...

Worcester Cathedral altar and ecclesiastical colours

 

I’ve been asked about the altar cloth at Worcester. There’s virtually nothing about it on the web. The adjacent notice gives a brief description:

Finding a reference to the ecclesiastical colours was tricky till I found an old news item about the vicar of South Brent and Rattray who died his hair to match the colours as a fundraising stunt a few years ago. The colours are:

• Epiphany: green, for life
• Easter: gold and white, for celebration
• Pentecost: red, fire of the Holy Spirit
• Trinity: green, for lushness
• Advent/Lent, purple for power, coming of the King

The Love Life Live Lent website gives a slightly different interpretation of the colour of Lent: The colour for Lent is purple, which means both sorrow because we do wrong, and royalty. Another Lenten fact from LLLL: Some churches decorate their church with grey banners and cloths for the whole season of Lent as a reminder of the grey ashes of Ash Wednesday.

Worcester

Great weekend in Worcester with friends. Worcester is a fascinating city with lots of interest. The cathedral, of course, dominates the city.

There’s also an array of secular architecture including one disused Church which is now a Slug and Lettuce.

The Guildhall has a beautiful victorian assembly room. It’s interesting that the tradesmens’ guilds built this as a meeting place for the city and became the leaders of the municipality. Is this an early example of the Big Society?

The corporation fire buckets are still on display - presumably if your house caught fire you ran down to the Guildhall and grabbed one.

The Berkeley almshouses were donated to the city in 1705. They accommodated 12 men and only one woman!

There’s a large new development to the south of the city with a new cable-stayed bridge across the Severn.

Spring in Worcester

More tomorrow!

Lent is coming

Lent starts in just over four weeks. Shrove Tuesday is 8th March. I’m going to try to follow Love Life Live Lent this year. This is a set of activities - one per day - to encourage people to make a difference. Have a look at the web site www.livelent.net.

There are lots of other Lent activities available. The Christian Aid one has daily activities that make one think about one’s blessings compared with the rest of the world. The website of the Woodlands Junior School in Kent always comes near the top of the list when I Google festivals like Advent and Lent although they haven’t yet updated their page since last year. The have some interesting facts about lent including the significance of the number 40 in the bible:

• The rain lasted for 40 days in the mighty flood - Noah
• Moses stayed on the Mount Sinai forty days (Ex 24:18)
• Jonah gave the people of Ninevah forty days to repent (Jon 3:4)
• Jesus, before starting his ministry, spent forty days in the desert in prayer and fasting (Matt 4:2)

The Live Life Live Lent site also has some facts about Lent: The word ‘Lent’ appears to have its beginnings in Anglo-Saxon, where the word means to lengthen, indicating that days are getting longer and spring is coming.