Oh happy day – parliament have voted to ban all indoor smoking. At long last I’ll be able to go out to pubs and restauants without having my evening spoilt by second-hand smoke, and I can come home without my clothes and hair stinking of burnt tobacco. I have the tiniest slither of sympathy for […]

I actually love this time of year – yes it’s rainy and cold still, but every morning it’s just a little bit brighter in the morning, and you can’t help feeling the overall thrust the weather is taking is towards warmth and sunshine once more. This morning, as I walked to the station, I wouldn’t […]

I think I’ve found a good test of vocation/calling; You know you’ve found your vocation when you genuinely feel sad for people who can’t/won’t do that thing. So, take preaching, or even lecturing. I absolutely love doing it, and I do feel really sorry for people who say “oh I’d hate it.” I feel like […]

Witnessed a very humourous exchange between a project student and his supervisor yesterday… End of a 45 minute project meeting. Supervisor: So, do you think you ought to make some notes? Student: No, I’ll remember everything we talked about. Supervisor: Tell you what – you humour me by writing down what we agreed. Student: OK. […]

So the exciting news is that I’ve been recommended for training for ordination in the Church of England. It is probably possible to deduce this from the last few entries, but I didn’t want to come out with it until our friends, families and work-places had been told! If all goes to plan I’ll start […]

Well, it arrived – as I was halfway along the M42, as it happens! It was excellent news, which I am greatly looking forward to writing all about in the not too distant future. But not tonight.

I’m expecting an important phone call in the next 24 hours or so, but I don’t know exactly when it’s going to come. I’d forgotten what the anticipation of waiting for a phone call is like – I remember when A. and I were courting, and for about half an hour before the time we […]

One of those online quizzes has been doing the rounds at work – the ones with numbers and letters where each letter stands for a word, so you have 24 H in a D = 24 Hours in a Day Well, you get the picture. Anyway, there’s two parts to the quiz; the first part […]

I’ve been spending the last few days with some other church-y folk, and one of the things that we generally agreed upon was how important food is in the C of E. I have always found that eating together is one of the best ways to relax together and get to know people, and it’s […]

I’m very upset that so few people appeared to have watched Bleak House. Apart from being Dickens on the BBC (which makes it worth watching before considering anything else), it was actually really good. Star studded cast, great acting and directing (although I’m not at all sure about the whoosy cuts at the change of […]