Every so often Capital One sends me a credit card application for MasterCard. Conveniently they include a postage-paid return envelope. I cut out my particulars and the bar codes, stuff all the papers back in the envelope and then mail it back to them. I wish could do this with spam. If the spammers had to pay even a few cents each time they would eventually stop.
The ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey are not too far from Christ Church University in Canterbury. Note that it has been so hot that some of the grass has turned brown. Doesn’t look English does it? The graves of some Saxon kings dating from the 12th century are found here.
It’s too bad Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and tore down many of the buildings. Excavation has revealed that the abbey was founded in 598 A.D.
The price of admission includes audio tour devices so we learned about life in Roman and Medieval times at this site.
I don’t know whether the flowers and plants grew here naturally or were planted but it’s a nice effect.
As music librarian for the Bell’Arte Singers, it becomes quite a challenge to locate some works. This season’s challenge is the Missa Solemnis by Franz Liszt. I had thought another big choir in Toronto had the work but it turned out there had been a mis-communication. Their librarian thought I was asking about the Beethoven version. After a little googling tonight I came across this concert notice. So, I polished up my French and sent email asking if they can rent the music to us. Otherwise it will set us back around 1,000 CAD to purchase it.
No UK and France trip images today—my wife needs the computer with the scanner and printer attached. I dislike wasps because they sting for no reason that I can see. I was walking home tonight and brushed something off my shoulder. Not only did it sting my shoulder but it also stung my finger. Perhaps the only reason the sting wasn’t so painful today is because I’m taken an antihistamine for my ragweed allergy. The antihistamine didn’t help tonight though when I emptied and cleaned the central vacuum canister. I’m also allergic to high concentrations of house dust, too. Oh well, at least the electrical energy shortage is over in Ontario so I could turn on the A/C tonight. I adjusted the thermostat so that it will only cool to 26°C during the day rather than the former 23°C setting. At least all this energy conservation will mean a lower bill at the end of the month.
→ You can see the central tower of the Christ Church Cathedral from anywhere in Canterbury. Here’s a sunset view I took from the chapel at Christ Church University. Here the Cathedral Singers had the infamous after supper rehearsals. After getting harangued by the conductor one evening my wife and I decided our time after evensong would be better spent quaffing a brew or two and having supper at the pub. It was so hot but the refectory (a.k.a cafeteria) still served hot meals (no beer either). Was it our imagination but did we hear that the rehearsals went much worse when we weren’t there?
← Here' the central tower of the Cathedral as viewed from the west. Later on I’ll show what the stained glass of the large window looks like from the inside.
→ Loose kingly lips can kill a priest. The king and Thomas á Beckett had some disagreements and the king latter muttered “will no-one rid me of this person?” Four noble knights took him at his word and murdered Thomas at this location in the Cathedral. You can the stylized swords and Saint Thomas' name on the floor. Just out the door is the Chapter House and cloisters where Thomas would have entered for a service.
← Perhaps Saint Thomas (before he was a saint of course) would have preached from this pulpit; though, I doubt it as it looks more baroque than gothic in style. On Sunday the Vice-Dean preached from here. However, due to the hot weather and full length cassock plus surplice I was wearing, I had great trouble staying awake at this point.
It seemed I was on the road all day yesterday: First to Port Dover for a funeral of a former colleague and friend, Paul Dandeno and then to Guelph to a 30th birthday party.
The service was a Catholic Funeral Mass. I felt like a rebel since the priest invited all people to partake but only Catholics would get the “bread of Christ;”others would receive a blessing. I went for the “bread.”My feeling is that communion should be open to all believers and followers of Jesus Christ—not just those who belong to a particular sect.
I don’t feel as sad anymore at funerals where people have died in their sleep of old age. It is a natural stage in the continuum of life from birth to death. The service itself is quite similar to the Anglican communion service I just did with the choir at Canterbury Cathedral. The tunes of the responses are different but the words and meanings are basically the same.
One thing, if you want lots of people at your funeral when you are old: either have a large family and may relatives or don’t move from where you lived most of your working life. Only three former colleagues represented the probable hundreds of former Ontario Hydro employees who knew Paul: myself, my former boss and Paul’s former secretary. I guess there were about thirty mourners at the service. Personal memories of Paul include him being my master’s thesis advisor and the two of us presenting a paper in Graz, Austria in 1990. This was the first time my wife and I had been to Europe since we were in high school. We have wonderful memories of that trip including visits to Munich, Graz, Vienna and Salzburg while we were there.
I also learned a couple of things from the priest’s homily: 1) the New Testament verses (Luke 10, 38-41) in the bible where Rudyard Kipling got his idea for the “Sons of Martha''. Engineers are oftened referred to as the sons (or daughters) of Martha. And 2) where the words for Healey Willan’s motet Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One come from: the Old Testament Song of Solomon 2:10.
The man celebrating his 30th birthday is the youngest of 11(?) siblings. He is very concerned about being thirty years {old}. Pah! He’s just a young’un. When I was thirty there many more interesting things to think about: my sons turned 1 and 4, I finished my Masters thesis, I left the first choir I joined when I moved to Mississauga, and so on. I don’t remember anything about the day I turned 30.
After our first “official”evensong service at St. James Anglican Church in Stratford we, the Cathedral Singers of Ontario v2003, gathered for a photo op. in the rose garden. Yours truly and my wife are in the crowd of penguins pictured here. Roughly half of the group is represented in this shot. This thumbnail shot links to a full size image, by the way.
Is our small consulting outfit now a Fortune 500 company with our very own computer worm infection? Yesterday, about 2:40 p.m.*, our Intranet at work was hit with the W32/Nachi.worm. Supposedly it is a “good”worm in that it gets rid of the nasty W32/Lovsan.worm.a a.k.a MSBlaster. But the “good”worm floods the network with pings and tries to download patches to correct the vulnerability which allowed the worm to install itself in the first place. My particular box was immune as I keep up with lastest security patches. However, most of my colleagues have “stock”Windows OS installs so that this worm spread like wildfire. By 10:00 a.m. this morning our Internet connection was unusable. As several of the IT staff are on vacation, the few remaining individuals are incredibly busy now travelling around to each PC in order to install a patch to eliminate this RPC vulnerability.
* The firewall on my FreeBSD box showed a sudden flurry of pings at this time.
Our younger son has gone off to B.C. to visit a friend for a couple of weeks. Now our “nest”is empty, so to speak. The son will be back for a day or so and then we drive him off to residence for the Fall term. Can we handle this? I surely think so. All the dishes and glassware will be accounted for in the kitchen. Leftovers will be in the fridge or the kitchen garbage can — not mouldering in a waste basket somewhere or sitting underneath a bed.
We wonder whether our son and his residence roommate will be The Odd Couple, our son being Oscar of course. However, what if the roommate is an Oscar-type, too? Will our son like to live next to someone else’s mess? Both my wife and I grew up sharing rooms with our siblings: we know what it’s like; but, our son, the lucky guy, has had his own room for all of his life. He’ll have some adapting to do I imagine.
The Simple Simon’s pub, about a five minute walk away from Lanfrank house, a residence of the Canterbury Christ Church University College, became the “official”pub of the choir during our week long stay there. I guess it all started with Mr. Smith’s 64th birthday party. How did I remember his age? His wife handed out copies of the lyrics to the Beatles song ``When I’m sixty four.”We celebrated Olive’s birthday there a couple of days later. The lager was cold, the “extra-cold”Guinness was, too. We could also sample a large selection of local Kentish brews, too. My wife and I played hooky from one of those extra, post-evensong rehearsals and had an excellent pub meal there one evening. It was a fine Canterbury drinking establishment located in a 14th or 15th century house called St. Radigund’s Hall.
Apparently my body couldn’t survive the pace:
- We got up about 6:30 a.m Paris, France time on Friday.
- Travelled by Métro with luggage in order to catch the Air France airport shuttle near the
Arc de Triomphe . - Toronto flight delayed getting to Paris because of blackout. Flight out delayed because of difficulty getting clearance OK from Pearson Airport.
- Got to bed around 9:30 p.m. EDT or 3:30 a.m. the next day Paris (and my body) time.
- Awoke about 8:00 a.m. and felt OK.
- Went for a 10km run in the morning. Cut the lawn, unpacked, did chores, etc.
- Went to bed around 10:30 p.m. last night.
- Woke up about 8:00 a.m. this morning with a headache. Had breakfast, took pain reliever.
- At about 9:00 a.m. I crashed. I couldn’t stay awake and my head was still pounding, so I curled up on the couch.
- Slept 'til almost noon.
- Now I’m feeling fine; though, I’m not looking forward to getting up at 6:20 a.m. for work tomorrow.
If I had only been able to have a couple of hours of sound sleep on the plane I might have been better off. Oh well. At least my wife and I missed the worst of the blackout of '03.
And our house wasn’t burnt down from the candle my son had left burning on the kitchen counter underneath cupboards while he visited a friend. Those charred marks will be our “souvenir”of this blackout.
Well, I’m back from a week in Canterbury with the Catherdral Singers of Ontario where we sang at evensong services and Sunday communion. I had the opportunity to sing a short solo from the steps of the Canterbury Cathedral quire where the choir sat for the communion service on Sunday in the Nave.
- Weather
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It was hot. For the first time that I can remember not all the lawns were green in England. Daytime highs were in the 30’s and our accomodation (a Canterbury Christ Church University College residence) had no air conditioning. Fortunately my wife and I did bring ear plugs so we could leave the windows open at least.
The “coolest”concert was at the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge because it was slightly overcast and the warmest was at Notre Dame in Paris. The temperature in the morning was 32°C at 8:30 a.m. Probably the temperature went up to almost 40°C around concert time in the cathedral. Plus we had floodlights directed on us.
Despite the heat I think the choir performed well at all the locations.
I remember being cool once on the trip: while we waited for our spot on the Eurotunnel train to take our bus from Folkestone, England to Calais, France there was a cool breeze off the English Channel.