Today saw the last two Jubilee weekend events for Thorpe Acre, both hosted by Thorpe Acre church, and both of which I was involved in.

The first was our regular all-age service, which sidestepped our current theme (“sensing God”) to celebrate both the Jubilee and Pentecost. I got to speak at that one as well as lead worship and managed to find a link between the two parts by considering them as events involving anointing for service and, of course, looking at Jesus, the anointed one (Christ, from Greek roots, or Messiah, from Hebrew roots) and King of kings and queens.

Second was the Big Jubilee Lunch. Although a lot of events today had to be cancelled due to the weather, we were able to carry on by pressing the main church building into use alongside the hall. I was set up in the hall with a jazz trio (me on double bass plus keys and drums) and we did a couple of sets as background music while people were eating. The schtick was that all the songs could have been known to jazz fans by the time of the coronation in 1953 – we went chronologically from ‘All of Me’ (1931) to ‘My One and Only Love’ (1953).

I would also have been playing with the concert band at Queen’s Park in town later in the afternoon but that was one of the casualties of the rain so I’ll have to wait for another opportunity to try the battery powered amp that I borrowed.