Beautiful Day

There is one thing more likely to erode than a chalk cliff face in Sussex. It is more flexible than the spine of a liturgical dancer (you know, the ones who fling ribbons around). It is often more displaced than a farm full of travellers ...

...the Vicar's day off. 

Today is my first ever Vicar's Day off, which to be sure is manifestly different to Curate's Days Off and only begins to aspire to becoming a Rector's Days Off. Today is that day, ladies and gentlemen, and it is a truly beautiful day. The picture that you see is of my to-be-tamed back yard, soon to be in the full adornment of autumn russets and burnished golds. The Sun she shines in motes of light that dance in the soft-swaying leaves, the planes they fly like planes, the birds they squawk (they are parakeets after all) and the light breeze sends the leaves in little eddies around my to-be-mown grass (as distinct from Paul Eddys - he is a very different animal, and a nice bloke too). Do you get the idea? Can you hear the sound of Dvorak's New World Symphony in the background? Good, me too. 

Well, The Twins Aculae are at school, the wife occupied with the things that Vicar's Wives do (don't ask, or I would have to tell you, then kill you) and the doors and windows have been cast wide to let the scene flood in. Today was the day I was going to do what I had promised myself for the last couple of weeks. So do it I did. I flopped on the settee, and watched You Tube clips on my new very large (very very large) TV. I will be tending the Glebe this afternoon, before you cast aspersions about my wasting a beautiful day. 

I didn't feel guilty about frittering a couple of hours knocking back coffee and surfing through Rock Metal clips on the Large Telly. I work hard, I do all (read 'most') of the cooking, I deserved it. I thought I might feel bad, and indeed I can name ten things that I could usefully do today, but they would be 'work' and I am trying to start as I mean to go on. Every once in a while, a lazy morning is OK. I appear not to have shuffled off my mortal coil, and there have been no calls from the Court of Arches asking me to atone for my sin. I haven't even brushed my hair - that is how slovenly I have been today. 

Well, this was only ever going to be a post about how beautiful today is. Sometimes it really does pay to talk about the weather because in about eight or nine metric seconds it will be Christmas Eve and a foot deep in snow, like every Christmas. Mark my words. 

I hope that having read this (and good luck to you, a Counselling Pack is in the post), that you will have as nice a day as I am having so far. What a beautiful world we inhabit. 

...and for your edification (Paul Eddyfication? Is a theme developing? Should I have gone out today to seek the unchurched testosterone carriers?), a wonderful fusion of two of my favourite songs. It is a remarkable thing ... 

Dream Thievery and Good Coffee

The Vernacular Curate is now back to normal service levels. Hold on to your hat, your hair and your extremities.

Many of you, like me, are barely alive until the fourth or fifth litre of coffee has landed mouth-side. To be honest, I can't even aspire to the vertical until after the third full mug. I would have an intravenous drip fitted, but it would mean re-working the cuffs on my cassock, and that just won't do. 

Despite my very youthful age (have I ever mentioned that I am rather young), I can still remember a world without the Golden-Arch Corporation. Yes, kids, I can still see a picture of a McDonald's free world where fast food was offered simply by Wimpy on beige plates. Life was good, simple, and sepia back then. Then Ronald McDonald exploded over the entire world and we now all eat too fast out of paper and polystyrene. But then something else happened, after that.

Almost by stealth, in the dark of a November night, every former Spar shop (or Londis if you are from that part of the world) turned into the nut-grinding empire of a highly trained and eminently skilled barista. Everywhere you turn, you will see a coffee-shop. Try going out of doors to buy a darning mushroom or a fish-knife these days, and you will surely fail. Need a sewing machine or a cravat? Pah. Not a chance, mate. For ye shall rejoice with coffee, my friend. In fact, so bad has this become, that I toddle back into a Macky-Dees just for a little nostalgia, a view of life in the halogen days of yore. 

But, dear readers, there is a price. This socio-caffeinated development has an insidious side, oh yes it does. You want aluminium-table java emporia? There is a price to pay. 

Last week, I noticed how much more I had been dreaming in my sleep (as distinct from during my awakedness, for they are different dreams). Every night, I had had nice fluffy dreams that I could remember in the morning. It was like being alive again, not just a blinded hitchhiker through the dark of night in my flabby body. Then I discovered the awful truth. The wife, none other than the fragrant Mrs Acular, had replaced our normal ground coffee with (and I can barely type it without falling into spasm) decaffeinated ground coffee. N'ere a drop of life-giver passed my lips for a whole stinking week, for I had been unwittingly detoxificated.

I can disclose, therefore, that full-fat full power coffee robs you of your dreams. You heard it here first.