This morning we had a combined Holy Communion and Harvest Thanksgiving service in the sitting room of our residential home for the elderly. Seven of our ladies were communicating, plus myself. The ladies had all had their perms reinflated the night before. Collectively, as we waited for the vicar to arrive, we reminded me of a candy floss stall.
Because of the rationalisation-if that's the word-of the Church of England, Ron, our vicar, now runs three country parish churches single-handedly. When he bounded into the room at one minute past eleven, his sparse hair had come unfurled from his shiny pate and was fluttering in his wake. He was panting heavily. There was a wild look in his eye. And there was an accordion tucked under his arm.
That accordion looked ominous. Unless Ron intended drawing us nearer to the Lord with a couple of rollicking sea-shanties, its appearance meant that we were going to have to sing a hymn or two. Normally we don't do singing. If we want singing we go to a pantomime at the village hall. Normally we just have the unadorned Anglican "Rite B" Holy Communion service, and we sit there like gonks while Ron mediates between heaven and earth on our behalf.
Still panting, and with theatrical flourish, Ron produced a stole and a snow white cotter from his battered briefcase and put them on. Then he told us a heartless little joke involving Margaret Thatcher and a mental hospital, and sat down. Then he stood up, and before any of us could object, he had unstrapped his accordion and was launched into the opening verse of We Plough the Fields and Scatter.
None of us had song sheets, but we kept up with him as best we could. Hunting slightly ahead of the rest of the pack, I managed to rejoin him briefly, at "...and soft, refreshing rain," but lost the scent again during the run for home. At the end of the first verse, a sudden, prolonged, and rather surprising final chord signified that this hymn was now over and done with for another year, and the accordion was flung aside.
Then Ron whipped out a basket of fruit and veg, put it on the coffee table in front of us, and knelt down beside it. Rummaging through the contents, he pulled out a small potato and held it aloft for all to see.
"A potato," said Ron.
The ladies leaned forward and peered closely at it-some of them, perhaps, half-expecting to be further entertained with some conjuring trick. After the potato, Ron held up in turn a carrot, a tomato, a beetroot and an onion.
"I grew all these in my garden," he said proudly. "And last Saturday I entered these and others in the 122nd Stoke Fleming Horticultural and Sports Society annual exhibition. You may have heard of it. And because, altogether, my entries were awarded the most points in classes 88-92 (for cottagers only), I came away with the coveted Reg Elliot memorial salver." He leaned back on his heels, half-closed his eyes and raised his palms skywards in order to bask in the warmth of our congratulations, although none were actually forthcoming.
I hadn't realised at this point that Ron was preaching a sermon. I simply thought he'd brought along all this fruit and veg in order to boast to us about his recent success at a horticultural show. But, sadly, there was an unexpected d?nouement when Ron suddenly confessed that in actual fact he hadn't deserved to win a prize at all. It was Almighty God (of course), not Ron, who should have been awarded the Reg Elliot memorial salver, because it is He who causeth everything to grow.
Sermon over, it was quickly on to the Holy Communion. "Almighty God," said Ron. This was our cue to begin the responses. "Almighty God," we mumbled raggedly into our laminated, large-print service sheets, relieved to be back on terra firma, "Unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may more perfectly love thee..."
A few moments later I noticed a sentence-"But thou art the same Lord..."-beginning with the word "but." I hadn't noticed this before and it set my thoughts wandering.
(The last time I was under the drill, my dentist was complaining to me about the decline of the English sentence, and how even reputable journalists nowadays begin sentences with "and" and "but." I thought this was superstitious nonsense at the time, but I could not say much because he had several fingers in my mouth. I had a good mind to ring the twat straight up after the service and tell him that even The Book of Common Prayer-a text that purists claim to be the flower of the English language-begins sentences with the word "but.")
I snapped out of my reverie and saw Ron on his feet giving out the wafers. Time to meditate on my relationship with God rather than my reactionary dentist: I closed my eyes and put my tongue out, and Ron placed a wafer on the exact centre of it, as if he were putting a first-class stamp on an envelope.
When he came round to administer the cup, the lady next to me, Iris, still had her tongue out, and the wafer was still stuck on the end of it. I gently reminded her to withdraw her tongue so that Ron could give her the wine; but sometimes poor Iris has mental blocks about the silliest things, and this morning she had forgotten how to put her tongue back in. She became quite distressed about it.
I offered to push it back in for her, but she started wailing, so we urged her to spit the wafer out, which she did, after several messy misfires, and it landed on Ron's shoe.
