Chester Cathedral

We didn't go through Chester Cathedral on Wednesday because, even though I was richer that day than I'd been before, I was still hacked off at paying four or five pounds to see an old church, and I still didn't have much money.

But when we got to the ticket lady she asked us, in a lovely local-accent version of what your kindergarten teacher or librarian probably called an Inside Voice, "Have you come to worship?" This excited me; I'd had a vague longing to go ever since I'd seen the sign outside that said there was a service or two scheduled. I didn't think we were there at the right time of day for this, though, and thought no more of it until the question was asked.

Seth, good little heathen that he is, quickly shook his head and said no, we were there to tour. But, probably catching my (also vague) disappointment as we stepped away, he then said we could ask about me going in for a minute to look around. It was only fair, he said, since he went in some kind of cathedral in London.

Some old ladies came up to buy their tickets ("it's only three pounds for us seniors!" one of them announced in a decidedly-not-Inside Voice before the ticket lady could say much of anything), and I wandered around looking at the stained glass.

But then Seth called my name and pointed inside, and with a little smile for the nice lady I slipped past them and into the cathedral, with the old ladies and their church-hearing-aid boxes and wires right behind me. They rustled to a halt somewhere behind me as I tried to put down my paper bag from Lush without making so much noise.

The place was huge and beautiful, but I didn't do much more than glance; having so many years of experience telling me not to gawk, I was completely incapable of it.

A voice was coming from somewhere I couldn't immediately identify. After a bit of neck-craning I finally spotted him, hiding behind two more old people sitting several rows in front of me. I don't remember what he was saying at first, but soon he stopped and said, "I will close now with the Lord's Prayer. And I would like you all to join in, in whatever language you are most used to saying it."

(I find it cool that they expect tourists who don't speak English. The lady handing out pamphlets when we first got there looked at us and said, "You'll be wanting English, right?" and when we smiled and confirmed this, she added, "Sometimes it's hard to tell." I can imagine; I wouldn't like a job guessing the nationalities, or at least the preferred language, of passersby.)

So I said the Lord's Prayer, for the first time since, um, Easter actually. I was pleased to notice that, as we got to the end, I started in on the "for thine is the kingdom" bit without having to consciously think about it like I used to--a couple of years of sporadic-Lutheranness and much sleeping-in-on-Sundays already cancelling out the effects of a forced upbringing in Catholicism? let's hope--and I was also pleased that everyone else was saying that bit too so I didn't look too silly.

I guess I'm just used to such ornate churches being Catholic, and some of the "gifts" in the gift shop were of that heavy-handed religious-artefact sort that I'm used to associating with Catholicness, or at least with my Catholic grandma. But I knew better, of course; Andrew had just explained to Seth and I a few days before that what would otherwise be old Catholic churches are here Anglican churches, even though the churches are older than Anglicanism.

After the Amen the service was over, and I went up some stairs and outside to where Seth was waiting for me, his orange shirt making sure I couldn't miss him.