Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

The tiny and ancient Cornish church of St Mylor down by the harbour was packed this evening for the annual Christingle service. Anchor man for the service and narrator of the Christmas story was Jonathan Eastburn (Pe A, 2005- ) and present among the congregation were Sir Michael Tims (Ma B, 42-47), Nick Tims (Mid A 82-??) as well as myself. The four of us sang the carols with great feeling including Away in a Manger which was sung in a darkened church lit only by scores of candles held by lots and lots of little children and their parents. No angels' wings caught fire neither did any little boy manage to incinerate his sisters' locks.

There was only one old Blue at St Matthew's for the Crib Service... me...

Great Plum wrote:There was only one old Blue at St Matthew's for the Crib Service... me...

I was told by some friends who live near C.H. that there is a midnight service in the Chapel on Christmas Eve.

Do you know if that's true?

Richard Ruck wrote:

Great Plum wrote:There was only one old Blue at St Matthew's for the Crib Service... me...

I was told by some friends who live near C.H. that there is a midnight service in the Chapel on Christmas Eve.

Do you know if that's true?

Yes, there's a crib service at 4pm (mainly for the children of the staff on site), a midnight service (interesting when you have walked back from the Bax! ) and a service at 11am on Christmas day.

Well, I never knew that - sounds nice.

No choir present, I suppose. Just organ accompaniment?

Actually, I did walk up to to the Bax for a few on Christmas Eve. Booked a taxi back to Horsham, though.

Richard Ruck wrote:Well, I never knew that - sounds nice.

No choir present, I suppose. Just organ accompaniment?

Actually, I did walk up to to the Bax for a few on Christmas Eve. Booked a taxi back to Horsham, though.

No choir but organ usually there...

Wasn't at the Bax this year but chances are you would have seen my sister..

More Old Blues are coming to St Mylor!

Great Plum is to read the lesson at a wedding in our Parish Church on Saturday and I understand he (and others) will attend Parish Communion on Sunday.

Last Sunday was our Patronal Festival - you may remember that St Mylor came over from Brittany on a millstone and founded our church in 411 AD. We of course sang our patronal hymn which (as I have said elsewhere) is shamelessly plagiarised from one well-known to us all. We sang it, of course, to the tune Middleton which is now (possibly uniquely for a small parish church) well-known to our parishioners. Though I blush to present it here, I am fulfilling an earlier promise and what follows may cause a semblance of a smile among some of you. Incidentally verse 3 contains our mission statement which is:

To Worship God
To know Christ better
And to make Him better known.

St Mylor Patronal Hymn

Praise the lord for our foundation
Here in Mylor's hallowed ground.
Praise Him for the saint's migration
And His teaching here around.
Praise Him for this ancient dwelling
Set 'midst woods and waters fair.
Wind and storm and sun forthtelling
All His word in earth and air.

Praise Him for th'unbroken story
Linking present with the past.
Misty legend, ancient glory
Christian witness newly cast.
Prosper, Lord, with heavenly blessing
Lives of those who love your peace;
And with love their hearts possessing,
Make their number to increase.

Let us join in praise together,
Witnessing to Christ our Lord;
Sing and worship Him for ever,
Hear the Gospel, spread the word;
So that we may know Him better.
Seek to make Him better known
Heed the spirit and the letter
Of the Gospel seed here sown.

So may we with righteous living
Let our grateful thanks be paid.
Lifting up with hearts forgiving
Holy prayer in duty made;
Praise we thus the God of Heaven,
Christ our Saviour and our Host,
With the Lord of Spirits Seven
Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

We are rather fond of our Celtic saints in this part too. I didn't know of St Mylor, we have St Beuno's (sadly closed now) and St Cyngar's in our parish, nearby is St Twrog's amongst many others.

Don't know where the nearest OB is, there is at least one at University in Bangor.

Alas and alack, due to stupid stupid phone I was unable to liase with DBTS (email on its way) - due to Cornwall's somewhat idosyncratic coverage of telephone networks combined with the stubborn refusal of my phone to have a battery life of more than 6 hours (guess who left his charger at home!)

However, I can confirm that St Mylor's is quite beautiful (and would have been even more beautiful had it not been drizzling all day!

Great Plum wrote:Alas and alack, due to stupid stupid phone I was unable to liase with DBTS (email on its way) - due to Cornwall's somewhat idosyncratic coverage of telephone networks combined with the stubborn refusal of my phone to have a battery life of more than 6 hours (guess who left his charger at home!)

However, I can confirm that St Mylor's is quite beautiful (and would have been even more beautiful had it not been drizzling all day!

I have it on good authority they hope to up-grade from smoke-signals in the early part of next year to semaphore poles sited on all the high ground !

Those residing out of the line of sight of the semaphore will continue with fire and blanket.

J.R. wrote:I have it on good authority they hope to up-grade from smoke-signals in the early part of next year to semaphore poles sited on all the high ground !

We have these poles already, JR, on all our high ground. They have wavy things on top that go round and round and make the lights come on in our houses and give fire to our cookers. One day we will learn the methods used elsewhere which I believe requires digging holes in the ground, drilling deep expensive wells in the North Sea and creating lots of lovely black smoke to make noisy things go round and round so that you can have light etc. Perhaps you should come and teach us how we too may make loud noise, smelly smoke so that we can see how much better your way is.

Will you also ban all large fibreglass trailers that wobble about the place and tell everyone to leave them in Plymouth which should only be used for the destruction of aforementioned objects...

Great Plum wrote:Will you also ban all large fibreglass trailers that wobble about the place and tell everyone to leave them in Plymouth which should only be used for the destruction of aforementioned objects...

Plymoyth Gin is rather tasty, though !

Yes, you have found the other use for Plymouth...

Great Plum wrote:Will you also ban all large fibreglass trailers that wobble about the place and tell everyone to leave them in Plymouth which should only be used for the destruction of aforementioned objects...

We have our own means of slowing traffic down to sensible speeds. God gave us some three score years and ten so a few extra minutes behind a wobbly trailer is not going to make a lot of difference and may encourage you to admire the beautiful rhodedendrons that grow wild along the hedgerows.

In our village (which has a very narrow main street) some bright spark from the council decided that we needed double yellow lines. Of course, they up-country lunatics started whizzing along at about 20 miles an hour causing danger to life and limb and nearly running down a few kids in the process. Needless to say, we got out the black paint so that cars could park freely through the village thereby reducing the maximum speed to 5mph at a single stroke. Funny thing though, the Council never tried putting them yellow lines back again in our village.