In some ways, it's my own fault. First up, we cocked up the planning for the Equinox trip to the Rollright Stones. Should have been yesterday, had we worked it out properly. Instead of which, we trusted to Marston Moretaine's planning skills and he booked the coach for the wrong day.
You see, had I asked Burton to plan it, he would have chosen the right date. He's nerdy like that. He would have identified that the Equinox was 20 March, not today as one might imagine. And Hnaef likes things just right, so we'd messed it up.
And it's Cranmer Day. Fancy going to an ancient pagan circle on the feast day of a famous evangelical, said Hnaef. Cranmer wouldn't like it.
And Cranmer was a Cambridge man who was burnt at Oxford. Apparently my wearing my Brasenose College scarf all day was tactless. Cranmer wouldn't like it.
But after getting home, and pointing out that Cranmer wouldn't like being remembered on a special day anyway, I thought it was time we placated Hnaef. So we printed off some copies off Cranmer's 1549 BCP Evensong, and used that as the preface to Filling-up of Beakers.
As I said to Hnaef, it was lovely to use that old Evensong. The use of the Reformation-era English - so beautiful, so sonorous and so hard to understand - it's nice just to let the words roll over us, enjoying the tone rather than the meaning.
Bit of a mistake, that. Turns out Cranmer wouldn't like that, either.
You just can't win, can you!
ReplyDeletewhat do you fill your beakers with? My Oma always went for gin and pep, but gin makes me depressed.
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