We were Anglicans and we attended St James Church in Ladybrand when we moved there in 1957. The time came when our Vicar decided I would make a good server. One Charlie Reynolds was already in the job but was leaving and I was quickly “apprenticed” to him. For the uninitiated, serving consisted of donning a cassock and a surplice – the cassock being a long black “dress” and a surplice being a white tunic with big sleeves worn over the cassock. Duties centered mainly round the Mass service and the preparation of the “meal”. I also had to light altar candles and snuff them out before and after services.
All these things happened with plenty of genuflecting and slow, measured walking with lowered eyes. It all rather appealed to the theatrical show-off in me. A task I particularly relished was ringing the old bell before service – I would walk out grandly from the vestry in my full regalia, ignoring the stares of people still standing around outside and give the bell a few tugs to get it clanging. How utterly ridiculous it seems in retrospect, to have showed off like that!
During Evensong, we’d reach the point of singing a hymn before the sermon. The Vicar would walk down from the quire into the nave, where the pulpit was situated while I was supposed to switch on the pulpit light and douse the lights in the upper part of the church. Charlie showed me briefly what to do but I obviously didn’t take much notice because one of the lights which had to be turned off had a switch where the Vicar normally sat – switching it off on the main board also turned off the organ. Came the day when Charlie was absent and I had to do everything and I forgot all about the switch behind the Vicar and simply turned the whole flippin’ lot off.
WELL!! I came out of the vestry with measured tread and solemn mien and I was suddenly aware of something going badly wrong. I had switched off the organ in mid hymn! The congregation had begun to lose the key as the organ gasped its last few feeble notes and the singing, never much to write home about, was now a total shambles. Poor Mrs Maitin, the organist, was a tiny little lady who knew that the ancient organ still had its bellows despite having had an electric blower installed and when her frantic signs failed to galvanise me into switching her back on, she started working the foot pedals energetically. That old lady would have done the Tour de France proud, the way she was pedaling and back the old organ came, wheezing its way manfully back up the scale it had just descended. I threw all dignity to the winds, hitched up my skirts and ran back to the vestry where I switched the whole bloody lot back on again. No more guessing which was which for me. It was the only time I saw people openly laughing in church.
Oh dear, that made such a dent in my carefully crafted ecclesiastical image. That was definitely sent to cut me down to size and emphasize that my role was very humble and should not be a source of self aggrandizement. I was very subdued from then on, sitting quietly up there in the quire. I dared not look down at the congregation in case somebody might smile at me.
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