Fourth parkrun

Much better weather than last week and an improved result: I knocked just shy of a minute off my PB, finishing in 20:41.

Make me to know mine end...

Via my parents, a reminder that it is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry and the destruction of the old cathedral. I suppose this should probably be Britten's War Requiem but on a day like today Johannes Brahms' setting of Psalm 39 from A German Requiem feels more appropriate.

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.
Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.
Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.
And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee.

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them.

Here is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, matchless and authoritative as the baritone soloist, accompanied by Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia in Kingsway Hall in 1961.