Tuesday, July 04, 2017

A reunion...

...with friends who studied with me at the Maryvale Institute.  One, like me, is now a lecturer there. We met at London Bridge for Mass and then walked back towards Southwark to find the cafe where we used to have lunch after our exams at the Amigo Hall. We couldn't find it, but settled for a pub nearby and had a long, talkative, utterly enjoyable lunch....

Afterwards, as we stood, still talking, on the street corner, Fr Chris Pearson from Precious Blood Church - where we'd been to Mass earlier - came up on his bike. He was amused to see us still chattering away...

He had been at Westminster Cathedral, where he does confession-duty. Crowds had been gathering there: the new Nuncio was being formally welcomed.

I walked on back towards the Tube, and found our cafe at once - we'd been looking so hard we missed it! next time...

In the evening, to an Evening of Faith organised by the FAITH Movement in the Challoner Room at Golden square, Piccadilly. Excellent talk exploring the Faith Movement in the context of the New Movements in the Church, 20th and 21st centuries....speaker Julie Mersey is writing a doctoral thesis on the subject... lively discussion over wine and pizza, and then some of us walked back across the river to Waterloo, in the warm summer night...down past the Duke of York's column, and on past the Foreign Office and the Guards monument,, talking history as we went. Just as we arrived in Parliament Square, Big Ben struck the hour.  There is scaffolding all along that side of the Houses of Parliament, as major repairs begin.  How odd it will feel when Big Ben goes silent - apparently the repairs may take up to six years...

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