Wherever wells are dressed they are also blessed. Pleasure fairs are usually blessed before they start their not-so-holy week in town. Blessing the Sea to encourage good catches, and to remember fishermen drowned in storms, is not uncommon around our coasts - and is particularly well known at Hastings. More specifically, in Blidworth the most recently baptised boy baby in the parish is blessed while his cradle is rocked on the Sunday nearest to Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary (2 February). They do not Bless the Salmon Nets at Norham at midnight on St Valentine’s Day any more because the anglers of the River Tweed offered much gold, in about 1990, to persuade these centuries-old professional fishermen go away. Blessing the Nuptial Bed may also be obsolete – and we will pass on speculation as to why both the bride and groom appear to be female. St Blaize is the patron saint of people suffering from sore throats so on 3 February in St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place, in London they remember him by Blessing the Throats. In Cawston, Norfolk, they Bless the Plough in readiness for the start of the farming year on ‘Plough Monday’, the first after 6 January. On ‘Horseman’s Sunday’ in September it is the horses and riders who use Hyde Park that get blessed – followed by an impressive cavalcade.
