Heartbeat.

I was sitting in peaceful, dim old Great St Mary's. GSM. The Grim. I love large empty spaces. Auditoria are great. I used to go and sit in the pitch pitch black of the Abbey Theatre, with even the exit signs switched off, and just drink in the silence. Warm and dark. Womblike, I suppose, though I never felt enclosed by it. I have always felt much more free and safe in the dark. I spent my teens walking about the dark streets where I lived, sometimes with a friend and sometimes not. I was often miserable, and I walked and cried and felt sorry for myself in a wonderfully teen-aged fashion. It really wasn't a very safe thing to do, as a young girl on reasonably dodgy roads chosen specifically because they were deserted and dark. But I felt a weight lift every time I did it. I could look up at the dark and the moon and remember that things were bigger than the here and now. It's not a feeling I get in ordinary daylight - the light has to be special if it's there, making the humdrum stranger. Bright summer sunlight through leaves, the perfect reflection in glass water, the dark light in a storm. These things do the same. Big, quiet, man-made spaces have a similar effect. They stand, bigger than their purpose, something beyond what they were created for. There is a permanence to them that does not exist in their creators. That church is not particularly old, or even that beautiful. There are beautiful things in it - the magistus above the altar is one of the more lovely of its type and though the lights weren't on it, the gold leaf gleamed in the dull of the winter twilight. It wasn't even that quiet in there, so central as it is and it still being fully afternoon. But it was peaceful, and I was alone. I do not have connections enough to it as a place to feel real affection for it - not like St Mary's in Ashwell, that is still on several levels the home of my heart, if that had to be somewhere physical. So many memories it holds, and such a feeling of being rooted, there. But GSM is important to me. I went there when Paddy died. I needed to feel as though I was doing something and the ritual of evensong was soothing. And there was music. There still is music. It was time for choir practice.

I was doing so well.

I'm shattered today. Partly as a result of last night, which was fantastic. I did feel very young though - lots of young marrieds. It reminded me how little I want that life. That probably changes, but I really don't want the wedding-photos-and-dinner-parties existence. Dinner parties I could deal with (cooking dinners for close friends is one of my favourite things to do, after all), but less of the sitting around the table sort. Large amounts of good, interesting food and lots of alcohol. Not too many people, and stuff everywhere. Nothing that involves having to swap places every course. The food was fantastic and the company seemed good (a group of friends I'm not part of, but lovely nonetheless), but I need bohemianism. The food needs to be incidental to the company, unless you're with a group of foodies, at which point it's like going to an art gallery and entirely different. I don't know. That all sounds a bit harsh - it was a perfect example of its type, it really was. Just the life it seems to lead to is one with which I don't particularly want to be involved.

I got up this morning and cleaned a lot of kitchen. I failed to go to the eucharist and matins, but my hangover was a little insistent at 9am - considering I left the party still going on downstairs at about 2. I made a cake for a choir member. That particular couple have been so wonderful to me over the last year (they all have, but those two are particular friends), and I find it hard to find ways of repaying some of their kindnesses. I hope a little of that went into the cake. He seemed pleased, anyway.

I'm mostly shattered because we started rehearsing at 3 and sang through, with a brief food break until the service at 6:30. Hard work. It went very well indeed. A little bit stressful, and I would have enjoyed it more if I'd been more awake, but it really was a lovely service. 'Bethlehem Down' was particularly successful, as was Leighton's 'Lully, Lulla' (I'm very jealous of the sop soloist, still. She did it very well, but I LOVE that solo). And there was even a pretty piece by a member of the choir which was worth singing. Blah. Shame. I would have liked to have been awake to really love it, but I was just too tired.

Erk. This has become a diary entry. I did want to stop writing those. I wanted to write about noticing the stars on the way home. My cycle through Chesterton takes me along the riverside for a bit. On the other side, there's fenland for a bit and no buildings for quite a distance. That means it stays quite dark, and it feels like the country. It's really warm at the moment, and I stopped at the river for a second to look at the sky. It's nearly always busy just there - boats and people fishing and things. I need to be there at 2 in the morning or something sometime. Perhaps I'll go walking. It's so peaceful, and I want that. I love being in big, dark places on my own. It's quite a good reason for being early to choir practice - I can go and sit in a pew in the quiet and listen to the sound of a large building empty and dim. I used to go and sit in the pitch black auditorium in the Abbey Theatre when I was early for rehearsals. Nobody there to see you, and space to be.