Rev dear Rev: Is there any opportunity for parish singing in your parishes nowadays, since our local cleric said he received some insurance directives from his diocese and he then announced no singing and shut up shop and went on a cruise to the Gulf?

Actually this is quite an amusing tale of a parish in a small Midlands diocese. The local cleric said he had received some instructions from the diocesan punkha wallahs regarding insurances, announced there would be no singing, chiefly because of the aerosols involved, and then shut up shop on the Sunday and went on a cruise to the Barents and then the St Petersburg Gulf of Bothnia on the Monday. So lots of bemused but unhappy parishioners.

They are referring of course to a study undertaken last year in a synagogue in London of the aerosols produced while singing when analysing the voices during singing of a synagogue cantor and the choir, in which the slow motion photographic study spotted the number of aerosols produced by standard singing in services by choirs and cantors and the like, and concluded that aerosols are produced in some numbers. Hence the insurance directive of the diocesan wallahs. Some singing allowed in the galleries for the most part, but not everything can be insured against indemnification. The cleric simply announced this, and shut up shop, and escaped to the Gulf of St Petersburg!!