My dear Gnudren,

By the will of God we have come to another year. At midnight on New Year’s Eve Old Gnu had difficulty in finding his way to the bedroom. This happens to poor Old Gnu with monotonous regularity on the last day of each year. He couldn’t even find the remote control to turn the TV off. [Mercifully he stumbled into the bathroom later before it was too late.] But in the midst of this crisis there were compensations. His heart was greatly cheered when he witnessed a blast of La Marseillaise followed by the Beatles Song “All you need is love” blaring out at the ‘befireworked’ crowds gathered on the Embankment.

At first he thought his hearing aids were going badly wrong. But nay! It was verily so! Let this be a motto for the coming year. It’s almost in the Bible [1 Corinthians 13].

When Gnu used to take assemblies at Christ Church Clifton Primary School he used to get slightly upset when Mrs. Ball the headteacher always summed up with her own slant on what Gnu had said. Poor Gnu may have explained the finer points concept of the Pauline doctrine of Predestination, but Mrs. Ball would sum up the assembly with the words: So you see children, as we have just heard, we must be nice to each other in the playground.

Now with age and experience Old Gnu sees that she was quite right. Whatever we think or believe it all boils down to being nice to each other in the playground. My dear Gnudren let us take this to heart. Let us cherish one another for God cherishes all.

To chime in with the celebration of neighbourliness on the Embankment at midnight Old Gnu offers you a track recorded from the early 1980s. It was casually recorded on a Tandy “Realistic” cassette recorder, hence the very high quality. It happened when some of the Christ Church instrumentalists took a wrong turn and ended up worshipping with some Edith Piaf songs in some place designated Cafe Continentale. Where it was and how it happened I cannot tell. I thought the singer was singing in tongues, but apparently it’s French – something about being Under Paris Skies. There are living witnesses to this event. It’s not a fabrication. You see, with God all things are possible.

Vetus Pater Gnu
Academiae Musicorum et Theologia
Turris LA
IV Mensis Ianuarius MMXIX