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Something different. Watched Carols From St Paul's, this year's crop of 15 or so unbroken voices warbling high above the congregation singing O Come All Ye Faithful and so on. None of them can be above 12, and they're the best young musos in the land, always worth the watch, so skillful, so well, whatever they are. (One year might be fulla cheeky young showoffs, well aware they're the best and charming me right outa my britches; though not this year, matter-of-fact, get-the-job-done types, high point when they each took two hand bells and rang their way through a damn hard piece).

But jolt one came when the service read out the text where Jacob sleeps and dreams of a ladder from Heaven with angels ascending and descending, and the head angel tells him the land is promised him and his issue by God, forever. Political. Couldn't get more so. You heard it right from St Paul's.

And jolt two came at service end. The 'cantor', after all the tuneful hymns, sings a goodbye message, peace of the world and so forth, almost all on one high note but with a little wobble to end each sentence, effect medieval, as it should be (music hadn't been invented then). Medieval? Why yes. Elizabeth 1, when she took up her reign and her Privy Council was all for abolishing Catholicism, wanted a 'middle way', and on her own authority, as Head of the new Anglican Church, inserted her own chosen relics of the old faith (idea being to keep the peace between factions, no burnings at the stake in HER realm thanks). The weird vestments we now see are the direct result, holdovers from the (Roman) mists of time; no bishops in business suits within the English church, for us. And this cantors' mode is another. The jolt? This year the cantor's a woman.

It was odd in Elizabeth, who never married and told her Parliaments and Privy Council the realm would have "one mistress and no master!" (and who they found at death kept a midfinger ring with a miniature of Anne Boleyn under the stone), she would keep THIS badge of sex-supremacy alive. The chance was right up to change it then and there. But no, she stuck with tradition, and so 450 years after the camera now wanders from startled or wondering female face to female face, catching the different reactions, to this reclamation from being a class of liturgical nulls. Sex-supremacy in the Anglican Church is dying if not dead. You heard it right from St Paul's.

A good turn-of-year to you, right back!

For years now I've let the calendars change imperceptibly. This year I just muted a delayed replay of Sydney's midnite show while actually listening to the rattle and boom of the local city-fireworks north, funneling down the chimney back of me. They quit well ahead of the Sydney spectacular might add, this is still a little city, if money-rich.

Never all means much, but I let a preview of how easy it would be to clean up some accumulated messes pass in review. And today after a sleep, I've forgotten every one, honest! Business as usual!