On with the motley

The best-known wearers of motley were jesters of harlequins and the patchwork costume became their standard style of stage dress. The first recorded use of 'on with the motley' is in Pagliacci, an opera by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, 1892. The text was translated into English in 1893 by F. E. Weatherly:

Thou art not a man, thou’rt but a jester!
On with the motley, and the paint, and the powder!
The people pay thee, and want their laugh, you know!
If Harlequin thy Columbine has stolen, laugh Punchinello!
The world will cry, "Bravo!"

Nowadays the phrase is used to mean "Let's continue", and so we do. One of the villages is holding a Coffee Morning, and so I shall traipse along to that, and then return home to start putting together my annual Tax Return.

Friday was a good day however. Two friends came down from Stoke-on-Trent and took me out to lunch at a nearby hostelry. Very nice to be on the receiving end for once.

Sunday I am celebrating but not preaching. Very occasionally I double-up with one of our Readers, and she is preaching for me at both morning Communions. So, no sermon to prepare this week, which has been a bonus.

I've also had a go at booking some holiday time in the diary. It's fine putting lines through the weeks, but I still have to find cover for the Sunday services, and that is not at all easy. Still, there's time to sort that out.

Wonderful April showers pelted us with hail through the afternoon, and I followed a rainbow all the way back from the Evening Office. That, and 3 episodes from the 2nd series of "Battlestar Galactica" as the evening's entertainment, and I retire quite relaxed.