Mass in a nightclub....

...has been (sort of ) fun for the past few weeks...but it will be good to be back in church again.

The parish of the Most Precious Blood moved across the street to The Sidings, a nightclub created in, well, the sidings of the great railway network that  is gathered at London Bridge where lines meet from across Kent and South East London. Beneath the great solid railway arches there are cavernous rooms that are now packed with people and  talk and laughter and drink and food in the evenings...and packed even more tightly by Catholics on Sunday mornings as the parishioners seek to squeeze into every corner as Father C celebrates Mass at a makeshift altar.

Meanwhile, in our fine Victorian church, workmen have been labouring to create the new marble floor which will welcome us back again this Sunday.

We've all been peering in to see how things have been going. It now looks superb. A line of red marble leads up the aisle from the font (brand-new, an exact relica of the original design, and due to be blessed and consecrated shortly, with all of us renewing our baptismal vows)  to the sanctuary, where a pattern of further red mingles with  shining silver-grey and creamy white.

Choir stalls have been installed for the children's choir in the choir-loft. For the main part of the church, all pews have been removed for cleaning - at present the church looks like a great Roman basilica - and they will be back once the floor is ready for them. The new altar-rails won't be in place for a while, and work on the Lady Altar and the Newman shrine will wait for a while, too....first comes a massive cleaning operation because of all the dust created by the creation of the marble floor.

It's going to be superb, and the project has been/is being a sort of shared adventure with a feeling that we are all seeing the writing of a new chapter of local history. Watch this Blog for news of further developments, celebratory  events etc.