Sunday...

...and a delicious traditional breakfast in the comfortable family-run hotel  outside the country town where I am staying. Mass in the local church:  reverent liturgy beneath glorious glowing stained glass, a number of (mostly Indian) young families, an excellent sermon about Saints Peter and Paul and the places in Rome associated with them... alas,  a choir, sitting up near the front, who chatted to one another before, during, and after the Mass, sang some truly terrible songs to a piano. Since they seemed uninterested in the Mass - none knelt, as far as I could see, during the Canon although this may have been because several of them were quite elderly -  it would surely have been better if they had been placed in the choir gallery at the back of the church? And, if some one could play an organ, and some proper hymns were announced, and if we could be allowed to sing the parts of the Mass as Vatican II urges...then the music would match the liturgy and good things would flow...

There really is no excuse for getting a group to shriek "When I needed a neighbour, were you there, were you there?" during Mass. It has a value as a singalong with a cheery message but it has no - absolutely no - role in the liturgy at all.

The priest was v. kind and let me use the parish computer to tackle a couple of important items. Then I  enjoyed  a glass of cold wine in a local pub before catching the coach back to London. A long slow ride through stacked traffic - great crowds had been to the seaside over the weekend.  The lush green fields and mellow stone cottages looked so beautiful in the late afternoon sunshine.