Christmas at Blogstead

Well, yes indeed, since you ask – we had a lovely Christmas – two of the children with us and my uncle too.  Simon was spending Christmas on a beach somewhere south of the other Perth.  Poppy particularly enjoys the constant presence of attentive friends and a real fire.  Blogstead, as you would expect, is a place where the ‘wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat .. ‘ – so the presence of a Christmas Eve shooting party just across the fence resplendent in their House of Bruar tweeds was a bit of a shock.  We tried to do justice to the hallowed Blogstead traditions – the carols round the brazier in the courtyard, the Chaplains’ Boxing Day Croquet Match – but the weather was a little sharp.  People keep saying that more and more people come to church at Christmas and so it proved to be both at Midnight Eucharist in the Cathedral and at St Andrew’s, St Andrews on Christmas morning.  I wish I knew why but it’s almost certainly a good thing that I don’t.  The sermon [at midnight] was like this.