Martha's Marvellous Munchies

I'm going to read the whole Bible. The question came up in my homegroup recently (have you ever...?) and even though large parts of the Bible are embedded in my brain, and even though I'm pretty sure I have read all of it at some point, I have never set out to read the whole thing. My friend Dave read through the Bible several times. He was one of the most Christian men I know, in all the best ways, and he died recently. So. This is for Dave, too. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I was going to start on December 1st, and I was going to do the obvious thing and start with Genesis, alongside the Psalms. Then I saw something that mentioned reading Luke in Advent (24 chapters: 24 days) and then I had some spare time today and thought why not? so here I am, a day ahead of myself already. Luke 1 is hardly a voyage into the unknown. In the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent by God,  the Magnificat and the Benedictus ... all woven tightly into the liturgies of the church. But ...

I should probably explain why I am pottering around Nottingham and its western suburbs, rather than roaming the Derbyshire countryside. It's not just the abundance of paved paths, although that certainly helps - I recently went on a country walk across a cow field and found myself tiptoeing gingerly across boggy mud cratered with six-inch deep hoof holes. Then I was confronted by a sign which said: Private Property, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. I congratulated myself on being on a public right of way, then, a few steps on, consulted the map and realised I wasn't. The path was across a completely different field. nice scenery, though I digress. Apart from the absence of cows and angry landowners, the reason I am walking around Nottingham is that it's the start of the Portway. There is a blog called The Old Roads of Derbyshire , written by a man named Stephen Bailey, who has also published a book of the same name. I can't remember now whether I came across the book fir...

Five churches, four bridges over the Trent, three stocking fillers, two pubs, one castle, and about ten million fallen leaves. It was a packed walk today. Queens Drive Park & Ride is officially for people getting the bus into town, but there's a little bit at the back marked "Overflow Parking" which had a handful of cars in, so I parked there and snuck out through the tunnel. Bridge number one was Clifton Bridge, again , in all its multicoloured glory. The River Trent was swooshing along after the recent rain, beautifully framed by autumn leaves under a grey but thankfully dry sky. The cycle path took an abrupt left to run alongside the road for a short stretch. Then I approached bridge number two, the Wilford toll bridge, also known as Halfpenny Bridge. Sir Robert Juckes Clifton, who built it, has his statue near the old toll house. He was surrounded by grazing geese. Wilford toll bridge Sir Robert and the toll house Next there was a long sweep of grass with a line o...