Mothering Sunday

Today is mother’s day. The day where hallmark count their card driven share increase, Sunday school children cut up egg boxes painted yellow, stick them on a bit of card to pretend it’s a daffodil filled with eternal love and where the poor women that have squeezed a rather big thing, out of a much smaller thing, get to put their feet up.

I had remembered that this particular day was looming last week. I even managed to contribute to hallmark’s grossing revenue. Unfortunately, I promptly forgot about it soon afterwards and the card is still in my flat somewhere in one of those pink and white stripy bags that absolutely all greeting cards tend to be wrapped in after purchase.

My mother and I fell out last week because I had forgotten to send my Grandmother a birthday card. Apparently I will regret it when they are dead as I will wish I had been a lot less self centred and cared more about them. I hadn’t realised that folded pieces of card with someone else’s awful rhyming prose embossed on the front was the measure of how much someone cares, but apparently this is a well documented fact that I have somehow managed to overlook.

I was aware that after having this delightful telephone conversation with my mother, which I believe ended in her rather maturely putting the phone down on me, the fact that I had forgotten to post her card, was not going to go unnoticed.

My family are very religious and in wave of extreme cunning, I decided to wrap up the news that I went to church this morning in a little verbal bow, and gift it to my mother, over the telephone. I had hoped that news that I hadn’t been struck by ethereal lightning on entry to the church would disguise the fact that I hadn’t posted her card yet. This did actually work for about 5 minutes, until I accidentally let it slip that the reason I visited the house of God this morning was because my friend was having her marriage bans read. For those that are wondering if this is some sort of wedding protest poetry session, marriage bans are where the vicar of a church reads out the names of people due to be married and gives the congregation time to pipe up if they know why these marriages should not take place from a “legal” or “just cause” perspective.

Now I will point out, at this stage, that I am a Christian. This will probably surprise some of you as I’m not exactly text book. I certainly do not subscribe to the ludicrous Intelligent Design theory and there is a lot about organised religion that I do not agree with, but I do believe in God. The reason I wanted to clarify that I do believe in God and have Christian beliefs is because the next part of my blog may come across as a bit insulting.

I did not really get along with this flavour of church. Everyone is over 65, most of the women there look as if they would eat the face of a small child if they were given the opportunity, and it all seemed slightly pretentious.

The sermon started off talking about people’s shoes being an expression of who you are. He then followed this up with about 10 minutes of the inner workings of the trinny and suzanna show. This leapt, seams fully on show, into how parenthood is like clothing as it is an expression of what is within you. He did a call back to the shoes saying that we can’t see God’s shoes, but we can see his footprints in our lives. Even now I can’t work out for the life of me, how this disjointed rambling linked to either of the readings.

It was a communion service, and with any high Anglican church there was a little vicar dance at the front with the wafers and the cup, which I think would actually work very well on youtube, if it was speeded up and put to techno music. I am confirmed which means I’m entitled to partake in the cleansing of the body and soul through communion. Again, I have no objection to this, I think symbolism of what you believe in is important; however I got the most dirty look of the lady with the wine cup when I went to hold it for myself to take a swig. I spoke to my friend afterwards, as she as confirmed in this church, and apparently the etiquette is to just lightly touch the bottom of the chalice in order to tip it daintily into your face hole. I had obviously caused some hideous faux pas where I mistakenly thought I was a grown up enough to hold my own drinks. Looks like I’m back to the two handled plastic beakers and spill resistant lids then…

There was a moment at the very start of the service which nearly had me in tears. The vicar talked about some cake that would be available to after the service. After there was little response to this very exciting news, he requested that the microphone was turned up and he repeated his nugget of Sunday morning cake joy notice again. There was a ripple of muffled “woooooo’s” from the ladies in front which I thought was rather nice and good spirited. However, one old, gnarled looking hag had obviously decided that these ladies were having far too much fun in a religious environment, so turned round to the ladies and spat “they did that last year you know”. She would definitely have chewed on your child’s face if she had the chance. Miserable cow.

Anyway, that is my Sunday morning.

How has yours been?