Third of Three

The Mayor’s Civic Service, the SCP, and yesterday the Air Cadets for their enrolment ceremony: three special events piling up in the same week in just the way I would rather they didn’t. Last time we tried using the church for the enrolment we started ridiculously early; I should have insisted we wait a bit to make sure people arrived, as one parent turned up bang on time to watch their proud offspring, only to find they had entered a parallel universe in which they were already late. On this occasion it went perfectly, the boys and girls had a chance to parade outside, I remembered to scribble down the names of the cadets being enrolled so I could use them, and the only mistake was that two of the cadets who were supposed to be there weren’t and two who weren’t were, so that, while they all got a certificate, it wasn’t necessarily their certificate. All of the right teenagers, then, but not all of them in the right order. There were refreshments for the relatives in the hall afterwards. One parent was the Clerk of Governors to the Infants School, while another had come to see a son make his promises who was baptised at the church thirteen years ago (I thought I recognised the name, and checked in the register); she has a daughter she’d been saving up for a baptism for a while, she told me. It’s beguiling, this business of being a priest of a parish church. It makes it seem as though you have friends. Perhaps you do.