Down the road and round the corner is a church. A Catholic church.
It sits by a roundabout on a road that has two roundabouts at either end.
Most Sundays, if you want to go out, you manage to do so before church services as there will be cars parked on the road which makes it difficult to drive along it. Most Sundays, there are two-three services going on at various times throughout the day. Most Sundays, the car park is full to overflowing, the road they double park on.
Yesterday, I had to pop to the shops. Forgetting what day of the week it was I started to go down the road when I saw that not only were the many churchgoers double parking but unusually the cars were parked from one roundabout to the other which makes it dangerous for so many reasons - you couldn't see round the parked cars being one.
I contemplated on the reason for there being such an increase of cars parked there. Could it be that even more people had fallen out with the priest at another parish church that they have changed churches? Was there a christening going on? but then I remembered the time of year and understood the reason for the amount of cars parked there.
We are coming up to the end of the school year. Those that have children in year 5, at the local Catholic primary school, will be thinking ahead to those forms that come out in the next academic year, that will make you choose the high school you want your little darling to go to. those people who wish their children to go to the oversubscribed Catholic high school, that not only serves this borough but other local boroughs as well, will be having to go to church to get their forms signed. The priests got wise to this. So now they get their parishioners to sign in every time they go to church. When they get the form that they have to sign to say that yes they see these people in church every week, they look down the lists to see how often you have attended church. Only if you have been going a certain % of the time will they sign the sheet and hand it back to the local authority who now has overall control as to if your child attends that school. THey are still bound by the rules of the school though - only churchgoers allowed.
Fairly straight forward isn't it?
Except that at this time of year, those people who want their child to go to this school, have probably rarely set foot inside the church before since getting their child baptised. They will now be attending religiously every week until they get that acceptance form telling them that their offspring has been successful and have got a place in the Catholic High school. Then they will breath a sigh of relief and stop going altogether. They have done their bit. The congregation will decrease once more once the beginning of March arrives, we will have two weeks of congestion for first communions in April/May then it will all start aging from end of June/July onwards.
Very hypocritical isn't it. But then again most people are aren't they?
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In other news, My reason for going out yesterday and getting caught up in the church traffic was to visit the local supermarket yesterday as I decided on a late breakfast. That was also packed, had to drive round the car park twice before I found a parking space which resulted in an argument with some stupid woman who tried to drive into it as I was reversing. I won!
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18 years ago I married a wonderful man, my soulmate. Happy Anniversary Darling, looking forward to dinner later
Right better go and get ready for work, no point in sitting here waffling on
Have a good day
hugs xxx
