This is a strange piece of music that you may never have heard before. Unfortunately the only place I could find it on you tube it cuts out after a few bars for ads.
It’s by David Grant and the Community Gospel Choir with music by Mike Read and words by John Betjeman. It comes from a CD called Words/Music which has many poems of Betjeman’s set to music and sung by different artists. It was intended to become a musical of the life of John Betjeman but the CD was as far as it got.
I bought the CD in 2006 because on Radio 2 Terry Wogan began playing ‘Myfanwy’ sung by David Essex and I was a David Essex fan. I’ve never come across anyone else who has ever heard of the CD/Failed Musical.
The Conversion of St Paul, poem by Sir John Betjeman
What is conversion? Not at all
For me the experience of St Paul,
No blinding light, a fitful glow
Is all the light of faith I know
Which sometimes goes completely out
And leaves me plunging into doubt
Until I will myself to go
And worship in God’s house below —
My parish church — and even there
I find distractions everywhere.
What is Conversion? Turning round
To gaze upon a love profound.
For some of us see Jesus plain
And never once look back again,
And some of us have seen and known
And turned and gone away alone,
But most of us turn slow to see
The figure hanging on a tree
And stumble on and blindly grope
Upheld by intermittent hope.
God grant before we die we all
May see the light as did St Paul
I wrote about St Paul’s conversion and photographed the pages from the saints book HERE in 2021 so won’t repeat myself, but this is the weather rhyme that was once well known for this day – covering all eventualities!
If St. Paul’s Day be fair and clear,
It doth betide a happy year;
But if by chance it then should rain,
It will make dear all kinds of grain;
And if the clouds make dark the sky,
Then neate* and fowls this year shall die;
If blustering winds do blow aloft,
Then wars shall trouble the realm full oft.
* Neate is an old word for cattle
Back Tomorrow
Sue
