On Monday my sister and eldest nephew, Gareth, came to visit. He hasn't been very well recently so it was great to see him. We went out for a bite of lunch and later repaired to the Waterloo Gardens Tea House. I was pleased to find it still a good place. Scrummy cakes, and this time I indulged in ginger and apple. Mmmm, not that sort of slightly synthetic tasting ginger you get sometimes - a good genuine gingery taste mixed with the freshness of the apple. Fr M still approves!
Enough of that - it's Lent now!
We had good attendance at our three Masses on Ash Wednesday, especially evening Mass at Christ the King. Some priests report falling numbers at weekday Masses, but some of ours are growing. This morning at Saturday 9.30 here in St Brigid's I counted almost 40 (including, I'm told, some refugees from neighbouring parishes - shhhhh!). Life gets even more busy in Lent, with extra commitments like Stations of the Cross and my weekly Reflections.
To add to the mix, BBC Radio Wales have asked if we would like to record 2 editions of their Sunday morning "Celebration" service. One would be for the Ascension in mid May, and the recordings would be in the first week of May probably. It's good to be asked, of course - I've done three lots of such doublers before, in St Francis, in Penarth, and St Peter's where I preached a few years ago. However, there's quite a lot of work involved. I've got a few days to think about it...
Talking of St Peter's, I celebrated a Requiem there yesterday for Barbara Gelsomini (known as Wendy). A passing comment from her sons that her maiden name was Torjussen revealed that I am sort of related to them. Thanks to my family tree interest I know that one of my mother's cousins married a Torjussen - a very unusual name, from Kragero in Norway (as in the pic left). And it turns out that this chap was a cousin of Wendy's father. Small world eh? Someone suggested this week that I should charge as a genealogical consultant...
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