Singing All of the Wrong Notes

Weston House is the other care home in the parish, as well as Widelake at its other end. In fact it isn't quite in the parish, but just within the Hornington boundary. However many Swanvale Halt people find their way there, and it's in the area that doesn't really feel like Hornington, being just north of the meadows that delineate the northern edge of the town. There used to be monthly communion services at Weston, led by one of the Hornington pastoral assistants, in which Paula, one of ours, participated: they used reserved sacrament from Hornington church. Naturally all that stopped in the pandemic and, just as we recently started going into Widelake again, the staff at Weston asked if we might be able to hold a service there before Christmas. Canon Jim who is looking after Hornington was extremely content for us to take it on, so we did. In fact Paula - despite now being a local councillor at three different levels! - said it was one of the things she missed most from the pandemic time and would be very happy to lead a service on her own once we'd relaid the ground, so yesterday we went in to do a complete communion service.

I wanted to have an Advent carol and then a Christmas one. I inherited a list of about thirty hymns used at the remote services, mostly copied from the New English Hymnal. Arthur used to come and play the piano for us at Widelake, but again that arrangement has come to an end, so now I have a CD bodged from recordings lifted from Youtube. As far as Advent songs go, the thirty include 'Lo he comes with clouds descending', and 'The Lord will come and will not be slow'. I am always a bit wary of the former because of the bit about gazing on Jesus's glorious scars which I think is somewhat strong meat for those not used to it, so yesterday I went for 'The Lord will come'. Barely anyone in our pretty elderly congregation knew it. I have sometimes wondered how long it will be before what are pretty familiar hymns to anyone who has much to do with ordinary English church life drop out of general knowledge and we're left with 'The Lord is my shepherd' and 'Away in a manger'. There might be some other Advent hymns that would work - 'Long ago prophets knew' is pretty easy to pick up even if you aren't that familiar with it - but there's no time to make the change before we go back to Widelake tomorrow. At least they ought to know 'O little town of Bethlehem'!