Church on television

I rather liked the Easter service from St Albans that the BBC showed and it seems a lovely cathedral, not that I'll ever afford to live in the area. For the most important days the BBC usually shows something reasonable but for regular weekly services I typically have to resort to some amateurish webcam like that from St Mary of the Angels in Worthing. In the US it was far easier to find services on television.

At St Albans the sung parts, with responses, weren't to the tunes I am used to. I have wondered where to find the music for tunes I grew up with for lines like, Glory to God in the highest, We lift them to the Lord, Christ will come again, God of power and might, etc. The tunes do seem quite widespread, as I heard the same in Ohio, but perhaps have since been changed in the Church of England.

Songs of Praise isn't really what I want. These days they jump from place to place during the show and interview all manner of people and have celebrity singers and whatnot. I instead seek something more like a straight church service.

Miranda's US passport renewal

Today we all took the day off to visit the US Consulate in Edinburgh: Miranda's passport expired and for renewals the child must attend in person with both parents. In the UK adults may renew passports by courier to the US Embassy in London; in the US one sends passport applications in a special kind of in-person interaction at certain post offices. Anyhow, we took the direct train from Perth and it was my first time crossing the Forth Bridge. It was cool and sunny and everything went quite smoothly. On our way back out we picked up some sushi in the Princes Mall Shopping Centre which seems a nice indoor mall to have near the railway station; it even has a proper post office, rather than consisting only of one of these counters at the back of WHSmith.

There were quite a few families at the consulate: for not only passport renewals but also registrations of births of US citizens abroad, that kind of thing. There was an entertaining moment outside when a family ahead of us included a daughter who realized that she'd accidentally brought a penknife. I was surprised that perimeter security was provided by G4S but I suppose that it is fairly usual for US consulates to use local private security.