daytime

Sunday, 25 October 2020

25^th October 2020

Dear All,

So, clocks have gone back and Christmas 2 months from today – winter draws on! It has been a good week financially for CEEM as I finally managed to sort the Stewardship anonymous donation of £1000 and the chapel harvest offering for Moldova came to £1,803.

As part of the chapel web site upgrade the Deacons have all been photographed by Maya our Bulgarian professional camera lady and Kate and I had additional glamour shots gazing into each other’s eyes!

We had an email from Malcolm Firth in Latvia, their Covid death score is still only in double figures with fairly severe lockdown restrictions.

The U3A “Origins of Christianity” course is covering the OT so far with critical assessments of the authorship and dating of most of the books. The “Biographies” subject this week was “Princess Alice of Battenberg” mother of Prince Philip and great granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She had a very colourful life having been born deaf she married Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, had four daughters the Philip. The daughters all married Germans she had four sons-in-law fighting for Germany and Philip in the English navy. She sheltered a Jewish family during the war. She stood out at the Coronation wearing a nun’s habit amongst all the glamourous outfits. She suffered from schizophrenia and was confined to a sanitorium in Switzerland. Later she founded a Greek Orthodox nursing order and ended her days in Buckingham Palace.

Princess Alice of Battenberg

Our “socially distanced” walk this week started at Little Walden near Saffron Walden. The plan was to walk to Great Chesterford but we encountered a “Private No Entry” stretch so diverted to Ashdon. It was a pleasant day with no rain, some sunshine and excellent views. We saw the first fieldfares of the season and several skylarks eventually coving nearly 10 miles.