Dear Prime Time member,
This time yesterday I was at home, sat on the sofa with my laptop in front of me and along with many Prime Time members was singing along with our Music & Worship Pastor Lisa to a medley of familiar Christmas carols and songs. It was a lovely way to spend an hour and really got me feeling quite festive. Invariably I come away from Prime Time events having added to my general knowledge – there is always information to be gleaned and yesterday was no exception. Thanks to our Sing-A-Long carols session, I learnt from Lisa a little of the background to the song ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’. I’m familiar with the Frank Sinatra version but I had no idea that the song was originally from the 1944 film ‘Meet Me in St Louis’ and was first recorded by the film’s star, Judy Garland. In the film, the song has quite a melancholy feel which didn’t suit the mood Frank Sinatra was looking for, so the words in his later version are subtly different and a little more upbeat. However, as Lisa pointed out yesterday – the words of the original Judy Garland version seem to reflect this year’s Covid-restricted Christmas perfectly. In fact, on reflection, it’s quite astonishing that the music industry has not picked up on this and re-released this song as the ‘Song of Christmas 2020’.
In case I’ve got you wondering, I’ve attached the words to ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ to this email so that you have the opportunity to consider them yourself at your leisure. And if you’d like a trip down memory lane, here is a link to the song from the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CreWsnhQwzY Wouldn’t it be comforting to be able to say with certainty that ‘next year all our troubles will be out of sight’ and that our ‘friends will be near to us once more’? I really hope that before too long I can say in one of these emails, ‘someday soon, we all will be together’ but for the time being as the song says ‘we’ll have to muddle through somehow’.
I would have to admit, ‘muddling through’ is how I might describe my life over the past few months. There is no handbook to life in Lock Down, we are all learning how to get through this together and yes, there have been times when I’ve felt that I’ve been doing little more than ‘muddling through’. If that’s how you feel too, then I hope that’s a little comfort to know that I really don’t have it sussed. Like you I am just trying to do what I can to get through this period in my life and make the best of the situation. I know I don’t get it right all of the time; I do make mistakes and take the wrong course sometimes. But I am also an incorrigible optimist and I pray that when I start singing Christmas carols and songs this time next year ‘all our troubles will be far away’ – well, the Covid-related ones anyway!
To help you ‘muddle through’ this next week, we have a few more activities to help occupy an hour or two.
The big event this week is our annual Afternoon Carol Service which goes live on our YouTube channel next Friday, December 18th at 3pm. The direct link to this is not available yet, and may not be until Friday morning next week. As soon as it becomes available, I will email it out to you – although my colleagues have said that they will try and make the service as easy to access as possible and therefore even without the direct link, next Friday you should see it on the Home Page of our website: www.bhcgodalming.org and it also should feature prominently on our You Tube Channel itself: https://www.youtube.com/bhcgodalmingonline So there are a few ways that you can access the service – keep them all to hand and see which works best for you at 3pm next Friday! The service is totally pre-recorded with contributions from 2 local schools and with readings by a number of Prime Time members. Do tune in and see which of your friends had their arms twisted to take part! The service will last approximately 45 minutes, which just gives you time for a comfort break and the opportunity to grab your mulled wine and mince pies before settling back down in front of your computer at 4pm and joining your Prime Time Team for a catch up and chat on Zoom. We’ll be using the BHC Public Zoom Room for this, which is the one that we used for our recent quiz and also the carol singing session – so the details remain the same as those I’ve given in the last couple of emails.
https://zoom.us/j/9463914833
Password for the meeting: 2020
And if next Friday seems a long way away, our friends at Prior’s Field School have made their recent Colour Cabaret Evening available for us to watch. This was an eclectic mix of music and prose from Shirley Bassey to Cold Play and William Shakespeare to Just William! But all pieces with a link to a colour of the rainbow. It was a cleverly put together performance and as we have come to expect from the Prior’s Field Team, very professionally executed. To watch Colour Cabaret, just click on the colourful image below and it will take you to Prior’s Field’s Virtual Theatre page. Scroll down past the titles and you will see the same image feature again. Click on that, settle back and enjoy. As a Prior’s Field staff member said, “it’s ideal viewing with a cup of tea and a mince pie” and as the weather forecast for next week looks rather soggy – Colour Cabaret, a cup of tea and a mince pie might be a welcome excuse for an afternoon in!
The Comfort & Joy exhibitions are still running in both churches. You are welcome to pop in at any time to view all the masterpieces and fabulous creations. Booking is not required, but please do observe social distancing guidelines if you find yourself not alone when viewing the exhibition! And of course the Busbridge Advent Walk trail continues to have a new house added each day, so there’s always something new to see with that activity! Further details and our Advent Walk map can be viewed on our website: https://www.bhcgodalming.org/walking-advent-calendar
Phew – I think I’ve made it to the end of the list and hopefully I haven’t forgotten anything! I hope that these suggestions help fill the days over the coming week and I look forward to catching up with many of you over a (virtual) mulled wine and mince pie on Zoom following Friday afternoon’s service.
You can be sure I’ll be ‘muddling through’ this week along with you.
Penny x
Penny Naylor
Primetime Befriending Co-ordinator
