How was it for you?

It was great. I need to say that right away. After - as I found out today - 28 weeks in our own particular wilderness of worshipping on a badminton court, the joy of being back in the church was almost worth the wait. Yes, there is a heap of stuff still to be done - floorboards to replace grey chipboard, paintwork to be de-scabbed (you can see where - look at the sedilia), lighting to be tinkered with - but for heaven's sake, this is our lovely church, returned to us with a wonderful acoustic (not a carpet in sight) and the layout of the original conception uncluttered by the accretions of years of tinkering.

I had to laugh, though - laugh because losing the heid wouldn't have accomplished anything. I laughed at the person who informed me that the new kneeler-boards were dangerously large and caught her legs - laughed and told her it was better to be a short-arse like me. I laughed at the person who complained at the unfinished aisle. It was possible to laugh because I felt so relieved at the completion of the journey, and because I know there is still so much to be done. It was possible to laugh because we are no longer in danger of falling through the floor or being wiped out by the condemned electric circuits. It was possible to laugh because from the very first phrase of the very first hymn I knew that the acoustics were a dream, making singing a joy and speech wonderfully audible.

And it was possible to laugh because the prayers of the faithful from the past 160 years still saturate this building, because when we sang "O Lord, hear my prayer" after communion it no longer felt like singing in the wilderness, where the notes would be swept away in the wind. Truly, God is in this place - but if we forget to listen, if we can't hear God for the sound of our own voices, there is no point in any of it.

Importunate widows, spiders - they were all there with one message today. The gospel, the sermon, the hymns - they all said it. I for one found it exciting.

Cheers!

Restoration, in more ways than one.

I've recently discovered Rose Tremain - I'm still in that lovely place when you realise that someone whose writing you enjoy has written loads of novels, all waiting out there for another foray - and I thought until a moment ago that I had reviewed The Road Home, which I read in the autumn. This is an entirely modern story, the story of an economic migrant from Eastern Europe whose experience of London gives a new perspective that I - mere country bumpkin that I have become - found not unfamiliar. I triumphed and suffered with Lev, and was eager to repeat the experience.

Restoration was an entirely different experience, except as regards the skill of the writer. Where I had felt sympathy for the Lev, the economic migrant, I began with nothing but distaste for the physically unattractive, bumptious, facetious Merivel, whose infatuation with King Charles II and irrepressible appetite for food, colour and sex seemed to make him a typically Restoration figure. But as I persisted with his story, Merivel's journey towards his own restoration took hold, and the book had won.

Merivel tells his own story, speaking as it were directly and self-consciously to the reader, and Tremain's language throughout is such that I could believe in the historicity of the characters - if there were anachronisms and anomalies I wasn't aware of them. The life of the Restoration period comes alive in all its colour and contradictions, and left me feeling once again how lucky I am to live now. Merivel's original calling is that of physician. As such he is aware of the dreadful variety of ailments that can carry people off, the threat of plague, the fragility of life. The cures he has access to are horrific, and as for childbirth ...

The Restoration of the title is historical, personal and metaphorical. It's a great book. I'm looking forward to the other title I got for Christmas, but I shall save it for a bit. Joy.