Monthly Archives: July 2006

Church, Music

Organ Restoration Photoset

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Playing the Refurbished Organ

Over the six months or so that the organ has been out of action, I’ve been periodically adding shots to the set of pictures, showing how things have changed.

This weekend marked the return to service of the original organ, although the restoration is not quite finished. The original trumpet rank was beyond repair, so a new one was ordered, however when it arrived at the organ workshop it was found to have been damaged in transit. As a result the last rank, and another rank of pipes that has to be put into the organ casing after the trumpet rank are yet to be installed.

Today I have added one last picture to the set which shows one of a number of special guests at the service on Sunday morning. The gentleman at the console is a former Director of Music at St James. Now in his nineties, he can remember the Compton organ when it was originally put in the Church back in the 1930’s, and also the hand pumped organ that it replaced.

Church, Pictures

Tower Opening Pictures

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I’ve uploaded a batch of pictures that I took at the last part of the very successful Festival Weekend that we held at St James over the past few days. The pictures are all taken during the annual opening of the Church Tower that took place yesterday afternoon. Highlights of the photo set include shots of Rev Richard and the local Mayor having been roped in to take part in some Morris Dancing…

Church, Movies & TV

Alternative Church Fundraising

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ChurchPic.jpg

If you are an Eastenders fan I’m sure you will have been glued to the show on Friday night, to see the second attempt by Billy and Honey to get married. It was also a good example of one of the other ways that churches are raising money for repairs, as rather than being a Church in Walford – like many of the locations on the show that aren’t permanent sets on the back-lot at the studio – it is actually a Church in Watford. In this case it is the Church my parents attend, St Andrews, one of a number that have been used by the show over the years.

The last appearance of the building in the programme was a while back, when it was the location for Dot and Jim’s wedding, and also used for the christening of Louise, daughter of Lisa and Phil. The more recent church events have been held at another local Church, however the BBC came back to St Andrews for the recent programmes. This time you also got to see a bit more of the Church, including a nice shot looking down the length of the aisle, and also use was made of part of their vestry that has a nice rose window. There were also a couple of external shots too.

Having the BBC has it’s benefits too. The local crematorium apparently now has a nice set of artificial flowers thanks to regular visits from Eastenders. However it also has it’s hassles. St Andrews church hall is actually in the former north aisle of the Church – the door of which was hidden behind a curtain on the programme on Friday night. However during term time there is a nursery school that uses the hall, and of course they are not allowed to be around when Eastenders take over the building. Luckily for this batch of filming, the school could make alternative arrangements. There is also the disruption to places used for filming. For example it wasn’t until Friday that Mum discovered why she hadn’t been able to find anything in the vestry recently!!!

Having said that, for Churches struggling with limited finances, it is a great way to earn a little extra income, and also makes use of a building that will be largely unused during much of the week. Although current policy in St Albans Diocese require that all scripts are approved by the Archdeacon. This is partly because the scripts for programmes like Eastenders have previously had to be corrected to accurately reflect Church practice (for the Christening episode the crew turned up with the writers having written their own baptism service – on that occasion the Archdeacon was on site and asked that they used the proper service instead), however the full approval policy came in following an incident at another Church in the Diocese where the building was booked by a film company, and it later transpired that they were using the building to make a porn film…

Incidentally, if you saw the programme on Friday, you’ll have seen that the wedding itself didn’t actually take place, so there should be a return visit to St Andrews in the not to distant future.

Church, General

Race for Life 2006

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Beth with her Medal

I’ve just uploaded the pictures I took of Beth and a number of other women from St James taking part in the 2006 Race for Life, held in Prospect Park, Reading, in aid of Cancer Research. As some of the people in the St James team were from the Youth Group and Junior Choir, the team shots that include them aren’t generally available, however there are some general views of the scenes in the park, and also a shot of Beth finishing and getting her medal.

As you no doubt will have realised it, it probably wasn’t the ideal day to run a race, as although the event started at 7:30pm, when it was starting to cool, with the record breaking temperatures earlier in the day, it was still pretty warm at the start.

We had a large contingent of people from St James, many running and walking in memory of Rev Sheila, our former priest-in-charge who died as a result of breast cancer. Having said that, as an indication of quite how many lives the disease touches, almost everybody was running for a number of other people too.

The race was divided into two, runners and walkers. At the front were the more serious runners, the fastest of which completed the 5km course in just over 20 minutes. The fastest of the St James participants came in not too long after that, with many of our team coming in between 30 and 60 minutes. Beth came in at 55 minutes, which was just over her target of 50 minutes, partly because she ended up quite a long way back in the walkers at the start.

For such a hot day, there were relatively few problems that I saw – most people drinking lots of water as they went around the course. The organisers also relented over not giving out free water at the finish. Certainly all our participants seemed to have got around without too many problems.

In terms of the money raised, a quick total up amongst about half the team before the race came to about £2000 – a really superb total. I’m sure Beth will be posting a full description of what it was like to participate over the next couple of days.

Incidentally, if at this point you are thinking that it is slightly sexist, only allowing women to enter – it is possible for men to get into the race – with a little bit of deviousness. We spotted a couple of men, with valid numbers, in this years race in fairly obvious drag – complete with handbags… 😀 Whether they managed to enter themselves, or whether somebody else entered for them we don’t know. Having said that, the officials didn’t seem to make a fuss over it, and they added to the entertainment on the night.

General

Feeling the Heat

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Heatwave

So today, the temperature is potentially going to break the all time record for July. The BBC are predicting a temperature of 35°C, with the possibility of it going higher locally. The weather forecasters are describing this as exceptional – the average temperature for this week in July is usually 21°C to 23°C – although it is worth bearing in mind that this is the third time this year that the temperature has exceeded 30°C, and the second time that the Met Office has issued a heat wave warning.

Of course, bearing in mind our usual temperature range, the UK is not overly well set up for this level of heat, hence why the heat wave warning always includes contact details for the NHS health advice line. We have air conditioning in the office, however typically we don’t have the instructions for the hieroglyphics on the control panel – good thing we’ve got the Internet though…

At home, like most UK houses we don’t have any air conditioning, so instead we’re getting quite well practiced in where to put fans, which windows and curtains to open and close at which times and so on. Upstairs is usually rather too warm most of the time; however we can usually keep the living room cool enough that we keep the patio door closed as inside is cooler than outside. The other useful trick is to remember that modern houses especially have loads of insulation. In terms of the roof, this tends to be above the ceiling, of the top floor, rather than directly beneath the roof. This means that as the house warms up, all the heat gets trapped by the insulation in the loft, however opening the loft hatch releases that heat past the insulation, so is a great way to dissipate heat. However the loft itself also gets very hot when the sun is beating down on the roof, so equally we tend to keep the hatch closed during the day, so as not to try to add too much to the heat.

If your interest in the weather extends further, I’ve recently added a new plug-in to the today screen of my PDA – SPB Weather. Although out of the box it retrieves its weather data from a site in Russia, the forums on their website include a template and instructions to enable the use of the local BBC weather forecasts from their website as the source of the data. Looking at the predictions for the next few days, the temperature is going to settle back down a bit, with some cloud and rain predicted. However it still not to the seasonal average, and looks like it may still be nudging 30°C.