Saturday 15 February 2014

St. Davids



Crow Black Bible Black Saint Davids

We spent a wonderful weekend in St. David’s with some Canadian friends.  They had some business in Cardiff and will have some more in three weeks’ time so they rented a cottage in St David’s.  St David’s is a city of under two thousand population with a huge cathedral in the middle of town.  For that reason the population increases at least tenfold in the summer months.  In the winter it is just we few extras.

Getting there and getting home were half the fun.  The train took us to Haverfordwest and we had to wait an hour (in a pub of course) for the, unfortunately dark, rollercoaster bus ride to St David’s.  It was very dark, rainy and windy when we got off the bus.  Fortunately drive (the official welsh name for all bus drivers) and a passenger gave us directions to the cottage – Ty Nancy and, just when we became disoriented in a dark alley we heard our hostess calling from an upstairs window.  

We saw some of the sights:  the cathedral, the Bishops palace and St Nun’s church.  The original St Nun’s church stands where she gave birth to St David.  We visited that and took the curative waters from the well that sprang up when she gave birth to the Welsh saint over 1500 years ago.  Another attraction is the surfing which we declined to try at this time of year.

Because of bus and train times we were unable to attend the main church service much to our host’s disappointment.  When he was young he went to Eton on a choir scholarship and is intimately familiar with the music used in high church services.  He attends every service. The choir that we missed is one of the few professional church choirs in the UK (although they are paid it is more an act of charity).  The Llandaff choir in Cardiff got the sack just before Christmas.  

We did go to the 9:30 Cymun Bendigaid which was in English.  I have been to a couple of high church services and generally find more ceremonial than worshipful but this one was different.  Yes it was very ceremonial and I had to look to my host for cues and the steward lady came over and helped me as well but the priest, in all his finery, carried a spirit about him.  He looked about him and smiled at people.  Before the communion part he walked among the whole congregation and greeted everyone.  When he shook hands with me he shifted my right hand to his left and held it while he greeted Carolene.  He asked where we came from and I told him Cardiff so he replied in a voice loud enough for the whole cathedral “well with an accent like that you must come from Splott” (a rather rough part of Cardiff).

After the service while I was explaining to the priest where I really came from Carolene met one of the higher ranking lay people.  I joined their conversation in time to hear him saying “when I became a Christian…” a phrase one doesn’t hear in a Cathedral very often and when we said we sensed the Holy Spirit in a big way in the service he agreed and pointed out that that was a phrase not heard often in that church.  Turns out the priest, Dorrien, and our new friend, Mad Johnathan” are both spirit filled Christians with a number of confederates in the congregation.  Perhaps the next Welsh Revival (the one I came here to observe) will come out of St. David’s.

Rage RAGE against the dying of the light

On Saturday night we went to dinner at one of the local pubs.  It was Dydd Santes Dwynwen the Welsh version of Valentine’s Day and I planned on taking Carolene out before our invitation.  The storm coming in from the Atlantic was so bad that the lights went out before our dinner came but the ovens were still hot and we got our food.  Everyone was happy and the beer was dispensed manually so I was happy too.  On the way home through the dark streets my host accused me of bringing this on with my obsession with bible black nights.

Since there is no bus service on Sundays we had a 40 minute taxi ride to the rail head with a very informative driver.  The driver knows everyone, of course, and he, like everyone else in town, has several jobs.  He is a singer, teaches music at a local school and gives private guitar lessons.  His wife speaks welsh, his son is learning it and he has not in the ten years he has lived there.  He knows everyone in town and filled us in on the priests humour when he is a bingo caller – sorry I cannot repeat the jokes here.

We are already thinking of returning to St. David’s perhaps for half term some time and take Mad Johnathan the surfer up on his invitation to fellowship with his group on Whitesands beach.
The following BBC comic catches the general tone of the City during the off season:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q9w0n