October 21st - Day 186

To Rough Trade East today, off Brick Lane, for a lunchtime in-store performance by "warm-voiced American troubadour" AA Bondy...who annoyingly hadn't done the same, because he'd come down with flu and cancelled the gig. He had another gig lined up this evening and the Rough Trade guy I spoke to expressed an interest in discovering whether Mr Bondy would be better by then.

So I hot-footed it back to Liverpool Street and St Botolph without Bishopsgate. As luck would have it, I'd clocked yesterday that there was a Choral Eucharist service at this ancient church at lunchtime and so three days after Sunday's near-miss with God, we ended up bump into each other after all. I arrived during the first Hymn, "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven". There were twenty souls in the congregation - City workers on the left and others on the right, oddly. Actually, the first thing I noticed upon shuffling into a pew at the back, was the smell of some kind of incense coming from the thurible (that is the metal urn-type thing attached to a chain and swung robustly to and fro by the Rector's accomplice). For some reason I decided it must have been a similar smell to the one plague doctors conjured up to keep noxious odours from going up their noses. I really don't know why.

The Kyrie eleison, Sanctus and Agnus Dei were sung beautifully by a very small choir, made up of two singers from Trinity College of Music (that's a duo isn't it?). Hearing the singing in its natural context within a Christian service rather than at a recital gave the music extra hallowed strength.

My fellow churchgoers and I muttered our way through two more hymns, everyone shook hands and nobody locked the doors. I think I should now endeavour to experience the music at religous services of other faiths.

botolph.org.uk