Well, it’s been a very tiring week in Lake Woebegone, I’m afraid.
Monday was Deanery Synod. We always have a good turnout, but it seems that it’s getting more and more difficult to do the administrative stuff that you need to do to keep Synod going well. We discussed the regeneration that is happening in our Deanery–great gobs of construction work are happening right under our noses, people are being displaced, and no one knows much if anything about it. We had two of our Deanery clergy as well as a former leader of Southwark Council (who is now a postulant for Holy Orders and is scheduled to be ordained a deacon in June). We all enjoyed it and found out things from a politician’s perspective that we hadn’t known about before.
The difficulty is that our secretary, who does not use computers, decided to retire at this meeting, so we need someone to take the minutes and, we hope, write them up and do the things that secretaries usually do. I took the minutes at this meeting, but one can’t preside and take minutes at the same time without going slightly buggy.
Getting to the venue (St. Paul’s Lorrimore Square) was an interesting walk through areas of the Deanery through which I had never walked.
Tuesday was Lodge of Instruction, and we rehearsed the Third degree we’ll be conferring in February. I am the lynch-pin of this degree, as in the Second degree, as I have to tow the candidate around and generally choreograph most of the ceremony. I was told that I did OK, but I’m still a bit nervous. I must study more! The candidate will only undergo this degree once, and just like a wedding, he deserves the best we can do for him. The Master Mason degree is very impressive when properly done, and can leave memories in the candidate’s mind that will last for a lifetime. I hope that I will be able to contribute to good memories, and not embarrassed ones.
Wednesday was yoga. Kym has told me that I’m doing better; I sometimes wonder (not that I think he’s fibbing, but I feel tired and achy and don’t seem to be able to do most of the exercises very well). I am limited in that I have little or no feeling in the bottom of my feet, so some exercises that require balance flummox me. But I do try.
Thursday wasn’t busy at all, and Friday wasn’t supposed to be. HWMBO gave notice at his job last week, to take another one with a not-for-profit organisation doing consumer research. They tried to dissuade him, but he stuck it out. On Friday he said he would be going out with co-workers and that he’d be home around 7. Seven PM arrived, as did 8. No sign of him. I called him, and he said he’d be home within a half-hour. It was more than an hour when he finally got home. On his instructions I went ahead to the restaurant, but by 9 pm I was absolutely ravenous.
Saturday was yoga again, and nothing else. Sunday we went to the Sex exhibition at the Barbican, which had (to my mind) a lot of the predictable things you might find in such an exhibition. Indian, Chinese, and Japanese erotica, so posed as to hardly be comprehensible. Warhol’s Blowjob and Kiss, both of which I’ve seen before. Roman erotica, some of which I’ve seen and some of which was really interesting. Hardly any Greek stuff though (except for a few jars and pots), and nothing from between around 400 AD and 1500 AD. Other predictable stuff included Mapplethorpe (with a warning outside the room but I’d seen it all before) and Picasso. There was a movie consisting of a woman’s head and neck while she was undergoing (their word) oral sex, but with an operatic accompaniment. There was also a set of slides of various families and groupings with background music of Bjork singing Tavener’s “Prayer of the Heart”. The contrast of the pedestrian slides (some nudity, including several of one couple’s young son) with the ethereal music was really interesting.
But, yet again, the early closing of supermarkets flummoxed us. By the time we got out of the exhibition Waitrose behind Barbican was closed. Drat! We had to go to Sainsbury on Borough High Street, and by the time I got home I was so tired I didn’t really want to eat.
So today I’ve made my hotel reservations: I’ll be staying at the Holiday Inn on West 29th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues–very close to my old haunts. Perhaps I’ll go to Holy Apostles on Sunday to see what’s going on there.
I will be taking my work laptop with me rather than my contractor’s laptop, as I can access my email and LJ on it, while the contractor’s laptop doesn’t allow connection with email or blogging sites. So I will blog, I promise, and I may even take pictures.