Skip to main content

Merry Christmas!

And a happy new year!

Toby as a snowflake for his first nativity play, refusing to pull any kind of sensible face!

Or Happy Twelfth Night, or Happy Epiphany, if Christmas and New Year seem like an aeon ago already.  Here, January 6th coincided nicely with Graham going back to work and Toby going back to preschool.  At least, I thought it did until I turned up at the village hall to find no one else there, and discovered I had missed a letter saying there was an inset day today.  Once I'd got over my initial panic that maybe he didn't start till next Monday, it was actually quite nice to have him around for an extra day.  He had to come to the doctor's with me, but he thought that was fantastic because there's a train set in the waiting room, and I was only getting a flu jab so it didn't take long.

I'm really glad so many of you enjoyed the Advent postings!  Your appreciative comments certainly kept me going.  I'm going to tell you now, though:  I am not a daily blogger!  I made it through, but only by reducing housework and many other things to bare subsistence levels, which is not a recipe for happiness in the long term.  And it takes up a lot of brain space, too!

Interestingly, it was probably more useful for those of you who read it than it was for me.  I was always thinking a day or two ahead, working out when to fit in the writing time, and focusing on how the different entries balanced each other.  Some of the actual writing was very satisfying (the Desiring poem was a highlight for me), some was fun (Thirsting, for example) and some was just hard slog (I think Travailing got re-written about three times).  So the experience for me was akin to hosting a party; I was too busy greeting people, topping up their drinks and making sure the sausage rolls were hot to completely relax and enjoy myself.  But it was generally enjoyable and I'm happy that everyone else had a good time!

Well, consider that to be the "making of" documentary on the Advent DVD.  And a bit of a kick-start so that I don't still have the Christmas Day post topping my blog at the end of January!  Having said that daily blogging is far too much, I really would like to manage once or twice weekly, so watch this space and feel free to nag me on Facebook if nothing has happened for a while.

And finally, something I didn't know: traditionally the upcoming moveable feasts of the church year were proclaimed on Epiphany.  So here you go - your handy guide to when Easter falls in 2014.

Epiphany Proclamation

(Seriously, we don't get Pancake Day till March?  What's that all about?)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Supercars and Selfies on the South Coast

We drove south on a wet, wet Saturday in August. The windscreen wipers swished endlessly back and forth, as we debated whether it was worth stopping anywhere except for the overcrowded motorway services. By the time we reached Winchester, the wipers had subsided to an occasional flick across the screen. We decided to stop. Of course, as soon as we left the car park there was a brief shower, but we ducked into the City Mill, now a National Trust property. There was a large room full of the usual kind of displays about flour milling; a recently renovated garden; and downstairs, the mill race running at full tilt. The mill is built right across the River Itchen. Winchester City Mill garden The mill race Water wheel (awaiting renovation) We stayed dry as we explored further into Winchester. There was even some blue sky for our selfie by the cathedral! But as we walked back to the car the rain hit us like a hose on full blast. An overhanging building provided some slight shelter, but the wa
Post a Comment
Read more

National Forest Way: Calke Abbey to Ashby de la Zouch

All the best walking blogs have maps on. I finally figured out how to add a route map to mine. If I get time, I'll add them to the previous posts as well, so you can see where I went. So, here are the two walks which made up the next stretch of the NFW. Walk 1  I started from the National Trust property and walked along by the lake, up the hill by the deer park, and down to Staunton Harold reservoir - all very familiar. Calke village postbox featured a highland cow on top. Lake at Calke Abbey Herd of deer   A short stretch on the road took me to Dimminsdale, which was new to me. There are records of mining at the site from the 13th century until the end of the 19th century. It's incredible to think that people worked there for so many hundreds of years. Now it is a secluded landscape of still pools and shaggy trees. Dimminsdale   I crossed a small section of the Staunton Harold estate, then went up a private lane with some rather nice houses. My turning point was where the Nati
Post a Comment
Read more

Reading for Spiritual Formation 2023-24

I wasn't sure whether to read another set of theology books this year. Could the time I spend on it be better spent on something else? At what point does it become reading for the sake of it, without having much impact on my wider life? It's difficult to tell. However, as usual, I had a growing list of books I wanted to read. I do need to think about what I'm doing as well as what I'm reading, and I don't expect to continue this specific discipline indefinitely. But I decided there was space for at least one more year of Reading for Spiritual Formation. So, without further soul-searching: The Books. Three Mile an Hour God Kosuke Koyama Japanese theologians are few and far between; Christianity is still very much a niche religion in Japan. Kosuke Koyama was Japanese and appears to be both influential and accessible. Not every theologian is both! So I'm excited to read his recently republished book Three Mile an Hour God. It was originally written in 1979, and is
Post a Comment
Read more