Who can I share this with but you?
Yesterday I was at Southwark Cathedral for a meeting. As we milled around the meeting rooms over lunchtime we noticed there was a school group visiting the cathedral: a private secondary school, to judge by the elaborate blazers. They moved around the courtyard and passage below the meeting rooms, looking perfectly innocuous.
Suddenly everyone became aware they were singing – lined up in the courtyard where visitors were having lunch, being conducted in something I couldn’t at first identify. And then suddenly it became clear what it was: it was ‘Wade in the Water’. Wade in the bloody water. It swooped up and down around the old stones (and the newer ones).
I’ve no idea why they were breaking into song, especially not this. Considering ‘River Anacostia’ had been in my headphones on the train to London, it was as strange as it was unexpected, coming from these twenty-or-so teenagers. I couldn’t start weeping in front of everybody, could I? So I wiped my eyes, bit away the tears, and when they’d finished applauded louder than anyone else, and carried on with the mundane business of the day feeling very peculiar indeed.
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