Cleanse and Purify

I should have taken a photograph of the church when the nave was cleared of its furniture over the Bank Holiday weekend, rather than just the aisle, as you can see above. The occasion was our office manager and bookkeeper offering to clean and polish the floor, which they did in three stages. They hired the machines and bought the varnish: of course the church paid them - nobody expected them to be that self-sacrificing - but it saved some of the eyewatering sum it would have cost to employ a company to do the job. It's the cost that's put us off having it done year after year since the floor was put down in 2012, and despite earnest efforts with brooms and me (it's usually me) scrubbing up particularly offensive spillages or blots of mud traipsed in from the world outside, it has got awfully grubby over those seven years. Now it presents the picture of a shining oaken sea, all the more dramatic when the furniture is removed.

Except in the entrance area, where assistant verger Ross managed to walk across the floor before the varnish had set, oblivious to the damage, and to the wrath of Carrie the bookkeeper who'd done the polishing. I thought I could just buff out the footprints with a cloth, but no, they're there until it's done again!