Lift Up Your Hearts

I am off to preach in Chapel tomorrow. My first Sunday since finishing in the parish after sixteen years as Vicar. It is strange to think that I no longer have a church - though I shall be all over everywhere in my new role.

Sermons these days are expected, by and large, to be ten to twelve minute homilies. The expansive evening  address hangs on in some places, and of course there are many parishes where sermon is more the focus than Sacrament. The pulpit in S Paul's cathedral has a clock set into the coving, close to the lecturn where one pplaces ones notes. It has a fourth hand - which is red - which the preacher sets to point to the time at which he aims to finish. I was told when I preached there once for evensong that I had better not over run my time or the choir would have to be paid for an extra hour. I think they meant it!

Brevity can aid clarity and no one wants to snooze throiugh waffle; but there is a problem about how to develop longer trains of thought and argument, and what is short is sometimes inadequate.

As an undergraduate I struggled once with an essay. My supervisor clarified things for me, and I exclaimed "it's simple really!" 'Yes,' she said, 'simple but not simplistic.' To write - and speak - simply but without falling into being simplistic. Now there is the art of the true preacher. Read again the sermon on the Mount in S Matthew or the sermon on the Plain in S Luke. Look at the parables. The Incarnate Word spoke so simply: but never simplistically.

Fives

Do gaiters - traditionally worn by Archdeacons - have any use today? They were riding gear, like the short 'apron cassock' worn with them, convenient for horseback. The Archdeacon had to travel about from parish to parish. That is still the case, but as I cannot afford a horse (nor the time and energy to look after it) cycling becomes the way to beat the London traffic over short-ish distances. So gaiters might have a use today, though I tuck my trousers into my socks. Note to self: find the cycle clips.

Fives courts at Highgate School

As it was I was cycling past Highgate School today and noticed some fine looking glass roofed courts in the grounds opposite the entrance to Kenwood House. A block of six Eton Fives courts.

Eton Fives

At Haileybury we played Rugby Fives. An Eton Fives court has a buttress on the left hand side, has no back wall and a step across the court at the half way point.

A Rugby Fives court is like a squash court - I think it may be marginally larger, and as in Squash the back wall is an important factor in the game.

Rugby Fives

Fives is fun. Unlike Squash it is often played as doubles; and of course there is no back hand - you have to be ambidextrous. It is also a game which - though fast and furious for the young and fit - can also be played at a more sedate pace by those who have great skill in placing the ball. As a VI former I remember playing in a IV with Colin Cobb when he must have been well into his 60s. His pair won because their skill with the ball was so great.

Doubles Fives 

Sadly the game faded at Haileybury in the last 20 years and the courts became store rooms. Two of them have now been turned properly into splendid changing rooms for visiting sides. The Council did the right thing in deciding that, but at the meeting which made the final decision George Staple - who was in the chair - at least marked the end of an era, and our sorrow at the demise of the game at Halieybury.

Rowing has come back. Maybe Fives one day!

School Notice

The quaint tradition of the school notice continues in fine fettle. Today there are notices about the new term  in both the Telegraph and the Times. Another one for the scrap book!

Years ago I went through a stage of reading Private Eye, and have never been able to read these announcements since without the recollection of St Cake's School whose parody of them was always spot on.