RateTheRef

A marvellous window, Microscopist, but I missed the louse, which was originally seen in church, was it not?

Today's offering from Alloway features, in the tailpiece, part of my favourite window.

https://youtu.be/7S4Z_9njl7o

This window is a tribute of a husband, William Houldsworth, to his wife, Sara Abercromby.  In the clip her qualities are related to various women from the Old & New Testament.  A further attraction to the window comes higher up the window where there are two enigmatic quatrefoils each figuring eleven characters, some of which can be deciphered but many seem out of place in a Presbyterian Church in 1891.
But this window also forms a link to my home village (as was) of Reddish.  The cousin of the Alloway William Houldsworth, also called William Houldsworth, was a mill owner in Reddish and his name is still attached to numerous places in Reddish and on his retiral he moved to Coodham, near Symington.  Whilst my mother as young women worked in one of the other mills (Gregs) in later life when the Houldsworth Mill had become a mail order distribution centre she did work there. So whenever I look at this window it reminds me of Reddish.

Meanwhile my BLFG is now in receipt of a letter requiring her to stay at home for the next twelve weeks, "shielding"!  Ah well, at least we should be able to get priority for supermarket deliveries although we have been quite fortunate so far and we do have a little bit of wilderness garden.  I do really feel for those in flats, especially those with young children.

On a different note I did have a recent birthday and my daughter sent me a framed black and white photograph signed by Dennis Law.  It shows him in City strip looking a bit distraught and with Mike Summerbee putting a comforting arm round his shoulder whilst a couple of "fans" appear to be abusing him.  A few years ago City invited fans to contribute their favourite City moments to a booklet called "Keeping the Faith".  My contribution was selected for publication and if I recall correctly came next to a contribution from Don Revie, and it described this moment.

Oh, and a louse? In Alloway, surely not?

Thank you JCFC, the hymns have been taken from Alloway services recorded between 2013 and 2017.  For part of that time hymn words were printed on the Intimations sheet and the poor souls who had to put the words up on the screen had to wait until the intimations sheet was prepared before knowing which words would be used.  The words on the intimations sheet did not always follow those in the two main hymn books, I think being copied from the internet.  Consequently for a number of hymns (and particularly carols) there is a database with several different versions which sometimes differ by only one word, as in this case.  Consequently matching the words now can be a bit difficult,  The other hymn today also did not use our hymn book words but was sufficiently different from early on in the first verse as to allow the correct version to be found.  In the case of "Crown Him with many crowns" CH4 459 uses the word "matchless" whilst Mission Praise uses the word "chosen", I'm not sure where "blessed" came from but obviously that was put up on the screen at the time..

This last weekend offered two windows - they will be running out soon. Sadly I failed to spot any bees, though i did spy a couple of butterflies.

No wonder I didn't see any bees - I should have been counting ladybirds!

Thanks once again for your efforts in providing this.

I am old enough to recall when the Clyde steamers called at Innellan, though never disembarked there, and was familiar with the story of George Matheson. Indeed, I chose that particular hymn to be played while waiting for the commital at the crematorium following my mother's funeral in Church - partly because the tune is St Margaret, and that was her first name. She would not have claimed to be a saint, but to my mind got as near as most folks can.

I must say that I do like your minister's delivery: clear and unpretentious seems an ideal recipe and he follows it perfectly.

My laptop has been assiduous in reminding me that today is the day I was supposed to be flying to Hamburg. The Book of Proverbs informs us that "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick" but in fact it can be seen to extend the period of pleasurable anticipation - possibly for another twelve months.

On a smaller scale the current lockdown suggests that deferring pleasure has much to commend it. The highlight of the week is the brief trip to the supermarket, but Old Codgers' Hour sees one home by 9am, with bedtime a long way off and the week stretching ahead. I have therefore taken to going after 9pm, leaving something to look forward to all day. As a further refinement, I have this evening decided not to go, so will be able to enjoy the anticipation all day tomorrow as well. So "Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow" will be my motto, but then it possibly always was.

A German article talking of how the restart will be handled for match officials

http://www.fussball.de/newsdetail/bundesliga-restart-vorkehrungen-im-schiedsrichter-bereich/-/article-id/215382#!/