Hearing is Believing

Once a year, the church I used to worship at in Chatham was graced by the presence of the Guild of the Servants of the Sanctuary ('Oooh, the Serpents!' I can hear Father Barkley declaring) who held an elaborate mass at which something always went ludicrously wrong. One year, it was the thurifer banging the thurible into the pulpit to the accompaniment of sparks and scattered charcoal; and another, it was music coming mysteriously over the sound system because it had somehow connected with the radio. In my memory I have turned this into the theme tune from The Archers but sadly I think this is a false recollection. That would have been even funnier.

I have had to battle with audio systems too. At Lamford I was always getting nasty crackling interference: Il Rettore maintained it was due to my insistence on wearing a trad cassock-and-alb, too many layers mucking up the signal, while Dr Bones argued it was the Devil trying to stop my sermons being heard. I was not completely sold on either explanation, I must admit.

Here in Swanvale Halt we sometimes get a horrendous rasping buzz which comes out of the speakers at the worst possible moment in a service and makes everyone gasp: it's a wonder nobody has ever gone into cardiac arrest (at least, not because of that). The company who installed our sound system can never identify any cause, of course: my car mechanic Dad always said the words any engineer dreaded most were 'intermittent fault', and I suppose sound technicians are no different. But it only seems to happen on weekdays, leading to the suspicion that somewhere nearby in a shop or something is a bit of kit that interferes with our system, which on Sundays is turned safely off. 

This Sunday the sound wasn't working at all. I flicked the mute switch on my mic set on and off, checked the little set of lights stationed high up in the rafters, and during the Gloria at the 8am nipped back into the Vestry to cast an eye quickly over the audio system, but nothing happened. For some reason any problem with the sound system makes me unspeakably anxious, and I find myself concentrating less on what I'm saying in the Mass than the way I am saying it, having to project and enunciate to maximise the chances of people hearing. It's massively distracting, and I am not really sure why I find it so distracting. It turned out that a crucial switch obscured by the edge of the cupboard holding all the kit in the vestry had been turned off when the PAT testing was done this week. 

Another little aspect of church life that you don't get warned about at theological college!