At the Hazard of Life and Limb

Now that Il Rettore and Mrs Rettore have retired and moved to Hornington to be next to their daughter and her family, Swanvale Halt has become their church of choice. Of course it has, where else is there to go? Yesterday we baptised their grandchildren. One godparent uncle stood proxy for another who is in the United States, just like the Royals. Unlike them, said absent uncle watched the proceedings via a phone.

All was well until, in fact, the service was over. Then suddenly, as I was still standing next to the font and talking to one of the party a small girl pushed the Paschal Candle stand a bit too forcefully and propelled a spurt of molten wax off the top: I caught it just before it tipped more than a few degrees off the upright. She seemed pretty unaffected, to be fair, until her parents began trying to get it out of her hair and that was the cue for some very vocal objection on her part. The parents were fine about it, possibly being more used than I am to the mishaps small children can experience, but (as we discussed a few days ago) crying infants are never a good look.

The towering Paschal Candle does have to be there, doing its job of symbolising the light of Christ within the church, and ready to light the small candles given to the newly-baptised members of the Body of Christ; a fortnight ago I was baptising four cousins at once, so you can write for yourself the joke I told about the number of candles we needed. But ours could perhaps do with a more stable stand than the one provided for it by Reg (whose traumatic death long-term readers may remember). I always try to push it right against the font making it much harder to topple but Rick the verger hadn't done that. We could put it at the back of the church, and I could make a point of warning parents about the potential hazard. None of these expedients is foolproof, though, or childproof!