Already I am moving on to my next page and it is to be a................?

Hiya Everyone!
I am back again..............and the answer to the title is.............."A Patronal Festival".  As I think I shared with you a few weeks ago, I had completely forgotten about the fact that I DID have a patronal festival back in 2004, not long after I set the site up.  The original idea for a patronal festival was something I ran past the now late Jan Craven, our dear and much missed friend.  She really enabled me to set it up because she sent me an appropriate collect as well as opening sentence and, I am sure, readings too.  I really HAD forgotten the readings until I found an archive copy of our website at that time when I rediscovered them.

You can see above a photo from the original page which has long been taken off the live site....it is of Tom reading one of the two lessons chosen.   Poor boy was too short and had to stand on a table which can be quite precarious knowing all these dolls are made of porcelain...

 I KNOW I showed you one from our old patronal festival page in a previous blog but couldnt' resist......  I actually took the picture from the outside - poking the camera lens through the gaps of the then open east window.  I loved the view.  However it is no longer possible now we have a proper stained glass window in it..........and some nice plain but attractive "glass" in all the other windows coutesy of Vic Newey.

The lectern has now been replaced by the brass eagle lectern made for us by John Cheal, a man of great talent who has also made us a processional cross, tea trolley, altar rail, paschal candle and pipe organ.  I think that is all...............so far!

 I am sure you all wonder WHY a tea trolley in a church?  Well there IS a story behind our tea trolley.  We used to attend Holy Trinity Church Coventry where Andrew was also the organist for nine years.  They had this most WONDERFUL tea trolley complete with urn and everything and it was wheeled out for refreshments when required at the end of services.  So it seemed the right and proper thing to do to have one in St. Hilary's too.  I hunted high and low for the "tea trolley of my dreams" and almost gave up my search.......you see the only one I could find was a very unrealistic wooden thing with handles and two wheels and NOT the genuine article at all.  It HAD to look like the one in Holy Trinity Coventry.  John Cheal came to my rescue and together we sat and designed it and then I left him to complete the job.

You all can see it here where we used it for the first time (I think - so don't hold me to that if you find a page that is plainly earlier!) to serve tea and coffees at the coffee morning the vicar arranged to raise funds for the new church extention.

Oh dear...I DO digress!  Before telling a little more of my current plans for the NEXT Patronal Festival I would love to share with you one more old photo from the first one......

I rather liked the idea of our two boys, Ben and Tom, singing a duet as above!  I can't quite remember WHAT duet they were singing though.  This is a slightly different view of course from the one included in the previous blog.

The first thing that always hits me when looking back at these old photos is........how poor they are...........the colour cast is ghastly too................................so in order to give you something a little more appealing to the eye.......as well as being a little bit of a tease.........I am including two photos taken only this evening using our daylight bulb.................these are to be included in our new Patronal Festival page........ DO click (right click  and open in new window if you don't want to lose this page)  on this photo below as it looks even better enlarged...........!

I won't give much away here but Robert Alexander is plainly having a conversation with baby Clarissa............wonder WHAT he is saying to her......and WHAT is she saying back?  I will give you a clue but it probably won't give you much idea really..........................it concerns Clarissa's lovely warm rug............Robert Alexander SO wants it.....but what for?  Notice that he has brought his pet dog, Georgie's dog bowl and food to church..............NOT sure that the vicar will be too happy when he sees that.........

Miss Enid has cause to call Ben over for a little chat too as you can see here.............wonder what she is saying to him? She is plainly just about to put her glasses on and Ben is holding a book....... Again.......you will all have to come back another time to find out......................  The actual day for St. Hilary of Poitiers patronal festival is 13th January..........as Jan told me those years ago.  I would LOVE to tell you what the readings are but if I do some of you who have been visiting the site regularly may work out why Robert Alexander is asking Clarissa for her rug........AND being rather naughty trying to tug it from under her.......poor baby!

Just as a matter of interest...................my photo shoot tonight involved taking THIRTYTHREE photos in order to have the two above that look reasonable. That doesn't account for those I deleted on the camera straight away when I knew immediately how bad they were.  HOW did we cope before digital photography?  Just to show you the results I more often have to put up with see this below............

I gave up with this one and even put my hand in the way....   In fact I virtually DID give up with the Robert Alexander ones.  EVERY time the camera would insist on blurring the foreground in favour of Miss End although even she is not really in much better focus..........arghhhhh  and THAT was with the face recognition feature activated.  Oh well.........guess that most digital cameras prefer full size real life faces so I am probably expecting a bit too much here but..........

 I do still have to say that the quality of my photos are so much better though than those taken with our old Kyocera which only had a max of 4 megapixels............whilst our latest one has 14!

Well that is all for now folks.............
Till lthe next time.....