An Afternoon In The Town Centre

[poliphilo]

 I did as I said I'd do and wheeled Ailz into Our Lady of Ransom- then escaped to Camilla's. Camilla was singing to her front of house parrot whose name is Archie and Archie was joining in. Camilla has a clear sweet singing voice, Archie less so. The songs were old show tunes with "Archie"and "parrot" substituted for keywords in the original texts.

I grubbed around in the stacks for an hour and bought a couple of Buchans.

When I picked Ailz up from the church she was seething. "Smug" and "White" and "Middle-class" were some of the words she used. We'd been given to understand the service would be multi-faith and it wasn't. Instead the scripted text named Jesus at every turn. It's just as well I'd stayed away and hadn't been there to amplify the disturbance in the Force.

There are a couple of things I like about Catholic Churches. Firstly the way they smell. Secondly all the statues of The Goddess Mary.

We skipped the tea and cakes in the church hall and went- with Keith, a Quaker friend- to the Dickens Cafe across the road- where we ate non-vegan things which gave us indigestion and serve us right. The Dickens cafe has every inch of wall covered with Dickensian prints and plates. I coveted the big contemporary photo lithograph of Dickens as an old man. If I came across its like in my browsing I'd be prepared to pay more than charity shop prices for it.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Mind you, the one thing about Quakers that has always bothered me is the tendency towards whiteness.

There was one Asian lass, Happy, at Ealing Meeting but she was the only person of colour I have ever met at Meeting.

[poliphilo]

I'm told that Quakerism is strong in parts of Africa- but that doesn't seem to be reflected in our congregations over here.