Sunday 10th November

We had decided, long ago, that this Sunday, we would take one for the team, and eat up an early morning Eucharistic service. We arrived at St Philips - Patton Street, at 7.30am, geared up to take on the world. Greeted warmly by one of our favourite Canons, Canon Coker, we sat down to enjoy the service. And enjoy......we did. 1 hour and 13 recorded minutes later, the shortest African service in the history of time had finished, we emerged, triumphant, cleansed, oh so happy, and free to spend the rest of the day as we wished; we set off for home. We arrived back at the lodge within 5 minutes, and still loudly singing Lionel Richie’s – Easy Like a Sunday Morning – (well, me singing, Parksy doing his best....) we settled down on the balcony, embraced by the cool sea breeze, to muse for a time what exactly to do with the unique, lengthy day. 1 hour passed......2 hours passed..........3 hours passed, and eventually, when we would usually be emerging from a church service, inspiration was consumed by laziness....we did nothing. We were expecting one of our Sierra Leonie brothers, Ansu, to arrive at 1pm as we were throwing a little birthday shindig for him, each of us wilfully intent on consuming Fatta’s prepared dish, maybe even dabbling in an Uno game or two, who knows!
Well, after we’d presented Ansu with his dirty dirty Liverpool shirt, and sung a quick happy birthday (that’s a bit of a lie, we’re both too manly to sing it man to man) we retired to the balcony again!
Some wine was consumed, and conversation was had before we turned to the more serious business of teaching the lad to play the sweet card game.......Ansu won......I lost......enough said.