Anecdotes

Something I like reading on other people's blogs are their everyday anecdotes. So here's one of mine.

I went to an Adult Education College in Central London in the Spring to play in an orchestra and whilst sitting in the canteen having a bite to eat (yes every post really does include a reference to food,) I overheard a conversation between a retired lady and a man in his thirties. They were both attending an Italian Course. He was explaining how he was going to move to either Guildford or Italy for work in the Autumn and if he went to Italy would need Italian. 'What one earth does he do for a living? Why doesn't he know where he's going? How weird, etc, ' thought I.

Of course he was going to try his vocation as a Priest. The lady then said that her son was training to be an Anglican Vicar of the part-time variety. The young man asked her if he had had to give up work to do this. 'Oh no,' she said, 'he's married with three children.' At which the young man's face fell. The conversation continued with the lady talking about herself and family.

I wish I had said something along the lines of 'Wow, fantastic, good for you, aren't we laity lucky etc,' but didn't. However, I was listening in to other people's conversation whilst ostensibly reading the paper and this is England. A few 'Hail Marys' went in his direction, but I remained an undercover Catholic.

So it's been great recently that there seems to be more publicity as to who our seminarians are and that hopefully the terminally slow like me will be able to show our appreciation a bit more.