Today seemed like a good day for the vigil. Well, I say 'vigil' but it was never going to compete with the kind of thing medieval people did. It's recorded that parishes had to find money to supply beer and bread and fire for the people who kept watch from Good Friday to Easter Sunday each year. But I was pleased to realise that as the date of Easter varies (the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox; um … how pagan is that?!) my vigil surely must have coincided with some of the medieval Easter Vigils.
In fact, I spent some of the time wandering around in the church taking photographs. Although I've been there lots of times with Trevor, it was actually the first time I'd been there alone. I found I could think there (and more to the point was getting ideas), which is good to know as I'll be spending time alone in the church when Festial begins 'for real'.
It was a lovely sunny afternoon and I started by walking around the graveyard, accompanied by a cacophony of cooing woodpigeons, loudly declaiming ducks and the constant 'caw caw' of rooks in their adjacent treetop rookopolis.
But inside, the church was COLD! Although it felt good to give myself time to listen to the mysteriously unidentifiable empty-church sounds and to watch the sunlight and shadows shifting, half an hour of sitting still was enough. I'm a bit worried – will I be hardy enough to spend extended periods of time 'just being there' in January??
