How I Learned to Stop Fidgeting and Love the 'Song

For reasons to do with the organisation of my job (I did have one once) and personal life (ditto), over the last few years I have been to a lot of Evensong services. I think your average lay clerk and most clergy have probably not sat through as many Mags and Nuncs as I have done since 2003, or perhaps it just feels that way. I was never much of an enthusiast for these particular offices, to be honest, and could quite often be found sitting in the car outside the church listening to the Archer's Omnibus and reading the Observer Magazine. This is particularly strange given that the music is, for me, What It's All About.
I have just discovered that this aversion is the fault of English churches. It really is no wonder that I was itching to get out of Evensong when they'd have fully three hymns (why?) in addition to the psalm and then ply us with a homily on top of that. And my word, the prayers went on forever, including having the Lord's prayer twice in ten minutes for reasons I could never understand. (Perhaps the weirdo blog commentator who left the message saying "All Masses are the same as each other" - which they aren't - will make himself useful and write and explain.) Stanford in C is all very well but at that level of dilution I used to start reading the hymnbook for something to do. Good stuff in there. Full marks to As Pants The Hart for getting the word "pants" into a church service, and to Gladly My Cross I'd Bear for most vivid and confusing homophone.
Anyway, I went to a cracking Evensong tonight at St Thomas', or "Smoky Tom's" as I heard it called at a dinner party last night. All sung (Murrill in E, Holman "The Strain Upraise", for anyone to whom that might mean anything), prayer book, no mucking about, no preaching, one hymn, devotions and then home, all in sixty minutes and never a dull moment. I noticed with some wist that I'd missed Howells Coll. Reg. at Mass, but I mustn't let the virile Edwardian appeal of St T's repertoire start me cheating on beautiful Mary Mags, which is prettier and their choir is better and sings older and even nicer music. Quite why there should be two screamingly High Anglican churches within a couple of blocks of each other I don't know, but if Oxford doesn't have to justify a concentration that practically provides a chapel each per parishioner then nor does Toronto, I suppose.
Inside the church was toasty and bright and full of incense, and outside it was crisp and dark and there were damp multi-coloured leaves underfoot: very autumnal, very lovely, and it put me in the mood for cello music, which Mr Haydn is now providing. It could only be a Sunday night.