Sunday 16th July 2017

We had a baptism at St Luke's this morning. The cute little girl was accompanied by an army of mainly young parents with their extremely "lively" babies and toddlers, who filled roughly a third of the pews at the front of the church. I have never in my life attended a baptism which was such chaotic pandemonium from start to finish. Children were screaming, running everywhere, kicking the ancient pews. And not a single member of the entire party, adults included, paid even the slightest attention to any of the service, except to get out their mobile phones and photograph/film 'their' bit of it which took place at the font. During the Peace, before the Sacrament of the Eucharist, Mum shook hands with one man and said "peace be with you", to which he replied "You an' all darlin'!". I hope the Lord will forgive me for some of my more uncharitable thoughts about this show of disrespect in a place of worship. All I shall ever remember about today's service will be my personal struggle between sincerely wishing to warmly welcome everyone into St Luke's and at the same time feeling really irked by their rowdy presence. This evening I'm still shaking my head about the whole experience.

Today's blipfoto is a really lazy one, as we watched the final day of Wimbledon on the telly for most of the afternoon. By the time Roger Federer had won back his beloved trophy and the last mixed doubles match had ended, the skies outside had darkened and the rain was falling - and I wasn't about to venture out for a better picture. Looks like Cedric the Bear, proudly modelling my reading-glasses-on-a-string, was blissfully unaware of tennis history being made behind him.