Sunday morning...

...with headlines noting the anniversary of the ghastly terrorist attacks against the USA in September 2001. Mass, and a sense of parish life getting busy again after the summer break, with announcements about First Communion clsses and youth groups and so on. Autumn sunshine. The horse-chestnut trees all across England are turning brown - but not with healthy Autumnal glow, instead there is some horrid disease which is affecting them with rust and slowly killing them. Sad echoes of the disease that struck our lovely elm trees back in the 1970s. To lose the horse-chesnut trees with their gleaming conkers and their thick, reassurring spreading branches, is to lose something precious. Ruper Brooke wrote in his poem about Grantchester "Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand, still guardians of that holy land?" and alas, they don't. Now it seems that the glorious chestnut trees won't either...