Tradition and history, ...

.. and a sense of good  new things happening...

On Wednesday evening, a meeting of The Keys, the Catholic Writers Guild. Speaker: Jacon Rees-Mogg MP. An excellent evening,  Our Guild Church is St Mary Moorfields, and things begin with Mass, followed by drinks and much talk, and then a hearty Dinner, after which we gather round for the talk. This evening's topic centred on Britain's relationship with the European Community, our tradition of law, the tensions involved with other traditions...

Members of the Guild  can bring guests, and  this evening was particularly popular. J. and I had invited Patti Fordyce, of the Association of Catholic Women (and the Ladies Ordinariate Group)..Delia Gaze, secretary of the Guild, had invited Fr Christopher Pearson of the Ordinariate of OL of Walsingham.

The next day was an Ordinariate Day, big time. The Ordinaries from Australia and the USA are visiting Britain, and all the Ordinariate clergy were invited to a gathering at Westminster Cathedral Hall.  The Ladies Ordinariate Group (LOGS) had volunteered to organise the food. Patti (see para above) did a magnificent job with a delicious array of sandwiches, and I brought to the Cathedral Hall the large coffee-machine that we use at the annual TOWARDS ADVENT Festival.

People carry coffee-machines around on buses and Tubes all the time, don't they? I mean, it's perfectly normal to wrap one up in layers and layers of plastic bags and trundle it about, looking helpless at the bottom of stairs and escalators?

One feels awfully silly lugging the awkward thing about...for the final lap I hailed a cab. Worth every penny.

During the afternoon I broke away from the conference to lead a splendid group of nuns on a tour of Westminster Cathedral.It was their annual Day Out in London, and they were having a wonderful time: among the best bits was the sight of them all munching sandwiches on benches near the Cathedral, with people hurrying to take photographs...if you haven't experienced a Pilgrimage or some other event with this hilarious team of Dominicans, you ust make arrangements to do so as soon as possible...

Great good cheer when the Sisters met Fr Christopher (see above) who has worked with  them on pilgrimages etc...

Things were rounded off with tea (provided by LOGS) and photographs...I'll post one here in due course...

The Ordinariate gathering was excellent - it was actually rather moving to see all these priests together, and especially so in the evening when they walked in a great procession for a concelebrated Mass...

Later, exhausted, the LOGS team settled at a pub with glasses of wine. Most satisying.