Candles in the Wind

So I brought Dublin's cold weather back with me (along with a copy of ProCycling and a nice season calendar hurray)--it's been quite a busy and frigid day here in London. Went down to Canary Wharf with Sergey to do a test run of the commute for tomorrow's big day (orientation). The Citigroup building is magnificent...and we have a VIP entrance out of the Tube! There's a wonderful little ritzy mall with one of the best groceries in the city underneath, as well as numerous affordable places to do lunch and some nice shopping boutiques (Thomas Pink anyone?). Outside, there's a nice little plaza surrounded by some rather snazzy skyscrapers, Citigroup's not least amongst them. Very Manhattan--but that's the intention, half the people here (or more) are expats from somewhere and they're not looking for a typical "British" experience. London's an international place, and so all the new development in the Docklands Area, and Canary Wharf specifically, are designed to mirror existing realms of commerce.

From there it was off to Waterloo Station (1 stop away and in the direction I was headed) and the South Bank area for dinner with my friend Sarah pre-mass and possibly grocery shopping. Dinner was decent, but terribly overpriced and it took way too long to get served. A minimal tip was in order (by British standards too!)--lovely conversation at least.

The only church in London that I could find that had evening masses past 6 (although many don't offer any evening masses at all) was the Westminster Cathedral. Now, I'm completely puzzled, because the only Westminster Cathedral I know is Westminster Abbey and that's ANGLICAN. Anyway, get off the Tube at Parliament and the Abbey and start wandering. Don't find anything, break out my street map and spot "RC Cathedral" in what loosely could still be called Westminster, up near Victoria Station. So I start trudging up that way, in the dark at around 8PM. Thankfully I'm practically on the border with Mayfair (ritzy ala Upper East Side) at this point and on mostly busy roads, so my safety wasn't too compromised. Probably a good two mile walk but I made it--but only after mass was suppossed to be over. I get to the plaza--and I'm greeted by a hord of singing priests, nuns, and lay people with candles.

I'm baffled. It's not any holy day I know of, and I still have a little time until Lent starts, I think. Turns out a monastery and a nunnery completely emptied out from somewhere in Italy and came over to celebrate a week praying for the unification of the faiths. So I hop on to the line, albeit sans candle and programme. Later find out they'd been going at it since 7:30 (it lasted until 10, followed by a reception and display of the monk's/nun's handicrafts) and had walked all the way from Westminster Abbey as part of their pilgrimage--well so had I, but clearly by a different route. Some had even started at St. Paul's, allegedly. The Cardinal presided, and it ended up being a bilingual Liturgy of the Word with a few extra songs and prayers thrown in. Interesting and quite powerful, as we were absolutely filling this huge, magnificent cathedral with song and praise.

I'll try to give you a little bit more of the picture. Take half a good size cathedral's worth of people (somewhere in the hundreds). Give them all a candle and a voice. Have them led by numerous ordained types....with lots of incense. After a lot of song in the plaza on the steps of the cathedral, we processed in, into a dimly lit vast expense literally steaming with the heavy scent of incense--I felt like I was walking in to a cloud, rolled across the whole of the church. Then the procedure went as described above. Magnificent.

Skipped out of their at the end to pick up some groceries at a late night Sainsbury's, so the chaps'll have some grub when they come home tomorrow. Picked up quite a decent amount for my £13--about 8 small chicken breasts, 2 packs of hot cross buns, 2 bottles of juice...but no one wants to hear my grocery list.

Finally got to start the laundry, and as I'm sitting here typing, I've just discovered I managed to wash my wallet with all my cards in it--one or two of which are rather damanged...