|
Salisbury & V.Rev. Michael Mayne September/October 2006
We could not have our usual overnight stay with relatives in the West Country on our way to the Poly Evacuees Reunion in Minehead because they were on holiday. We were invited to come at any other time and we chose the weekend of 27/29 October so that we could combine it with a visit to nearby Salisbury Cathedral where another relative was singing in a visiting choir. The visit of the choir had been arranged months beforehand. The programme of our stay was confirmed at the end of September. On Wednesday 25th October The Times carried an obituary of Very Rev Michael Mayne, former Dean of Westminster, who had died on Sunday 22nd, aged 77. We had known him when he lived in Harpenden. He assisted at Services in the Parish while working for the BBC and most importantly he had spoken in the same session as myself at the 1972 Stewardship Conference. The linking of that session with Edward Carpenter, his predecessor as Dean of Westminster, and the Edward Carpenter who featured in the Speak Up Harold Beck! programme has been fully explored in:- On Sunday 29th October 2006 we attended Mattins at Salisbury Cathedral and heard the visiting choir. It was then that we learned that Michael Mayne had retired to Salisbury and had died there. He had given me his e-mail address when he had visited St. Nicholas Church, Harpenden, on Sunday 8th December 2003 (not long after I had circulated paper copies of The Coventry Miracle to a handful of people) but I had no idea of his whereabouts. My direct association with Michael Mayne was not great but indirectly he was of enormous significance in my life. It it is strange that of all places I should be in Salisbury a week after he died there and, as I discovered a few days later, the day before his funeral service at the Cathedral. |
|||
|
9b |
|||