We did a house opening and dedication on Saturday. Blogstead Episcopi was looking its best. The combine harvester had just dealt with the barley field out the back. We invited some of the brave people who have invited not just us but, in many cases, entire congregations to lunch when we have visited. That tells you something both about the size of our congregations and the size of their houses. +Bruce, in the first major act of his retirement, did the dedication – may its effect permeate sideways through Marybelle’s house to his own at No 2.

And so life moves on. There are the big issues of sexuality, secularisation and sectarianism – to name but a few. But life seems to come down, as always, to the problems of dealing with the house, dealing with the office, sorting out the finances, laying to rest difficult history. And the kingdom, I suspect, is to be found somewhere in between the two.

Another encounter with the [very polite] Tayside police in Perth late last night. 36 mph and the right headlight not working on dipped beam. The classic Northern Ireland response is, ‘Why don’t you boys go and catch some terrorists?’ – but it’s wiser not. I watched them check the tax and the tyres – over 25000 miles since I got a complete set in Macon last summer so it’s nearly time – and I went on my way rejoicing. Pity the church doesn’t do guilt-inducement convincingly any more – it’s heady stuff. By the way, in case you ever need to know, the French for wheel-balancing is equilibrage.

I gave a lift to a young student from the Czech Republic on the way into Perth this moming. He had enough English to tell me that he had been working very hard and that he had earned what was in his terms a lot of money. If I heard him right, he had earned £400 in 20 days working 12 hours a day. I hope that isn’t what he said. Out at Blogstead, we like our strawberries fresh, succulent … and cheap.  Churches have an increasing focus on rural issues and the needs of the rural community – I wonder if this is in there?

Advert in this week’s Church of Ireland Gazette:

‘Postal tuition in solo singing’

Suggestions for other subjects which might appear on the curriculum?

It’s been what they would call in Ireland ‘a real soft day’ Almost forgotten what rain was like. And the harvest is just about to begin out here at Blogstead Episcopi. The reaper and binder is sitting outside my study window. And Kilvert’s fresh-faced country maids are all poised to do what fresh-faced country maids do around harvest time. But nothing is happening and it’s all gone soggy. Once it starts, we’ll have to keep Poppy in for a while …. don’t ask.

TFTD 2.8.06.doc

Got my carbon pawprint down to a fairly light tread today. The secret is the fact that Megabus calls at the Park and Ride at the Broxden Roundabout on the outskirts of Perth – free parking, no messing with traffic and £6 return to Edinburgh. All went well on the outward journey. I unfurled the Brompton and was in the Office just over an hour after leaving Perth. On the way back, there was a major accident on the road out of Edinburgh – everything was diverted down the back road to Cramond – and it took 3 hours to get from Edinburgh to Perth. The charm was, of course, in the way in which a random group of people stuck on a bus began to become a community. The delightful 74 year old lady beside me – she doesn’t do Soduku, by the way, and I thought she looked young for her age – told me all about how she used to go to church and why she left and how she misses it. I hope she’ll come back. Behind us was a guy who was a psychiatric nurse in Dundee and across the aisle was a girl from Shetland with her young daughter who was bursting to go to the loo but the bus didn’t have one and neither did the one in front so she just had to cross her legs and pray hard. It was great – I wouldn’t have missed it.

A great pleasure to be in church today with children marking the end of their Holiday Club – and with a group of enthusiastic leaders. I know that many of our congregations are in places where there are very few children and young families – but I experience the small numbers of children around our churches as a real loss. Children bring life and spontaneity in a way which it is hard to replace. My parish had a sort of tidal wave of small children during the last ten years – Ian Paisley is reputed to have said that ‘The battle for Protestant Ulster would be won in the beds of Protestant Ulster’. Maybe in Portadown but not, I think, elsewhere. Anyway, this week also sees the first of two weeks of programme for teenagers at Glenaaaalmond – well-established and very successful. I look forward to visiting next Sunday.

Another summer – another drugs scandal in the Tour de France – this time Floyd Landis, the eventual winner, is under suspicion of taking drugs.  How else to explain his moribund performance in Stage 16 followed by an astonishing solo dash uphill in Stage 17.  It’s sad stuff and it marks another etape in the slow decline of the Tour as a major sporting event.  We were on our way to Dollar last Sunday and met a local cycle club all dressed like bumble bees in lycra – I immediately got one of those urges just to get into the middle of the peloton and fly far, far away – exchange my alb for the Benesto padded cycling shorts.  I tried to explain to Alison that it must be a bit like flying in the middle of a big flock of birds but it was too late.

Just back from over-nighting with friends from ‘Norn Irn’ who were cruising on the Clyde – this is big boat stuff not the ‘bum in the waves’ sailing which I did in my youth.  Picked up at Largs, we headed for Arran.  I slept through last night’s thunder storms but woke up when the wake from the morning Calmac ferry reached us.  We visited Holy Island today – got soaked on the way but it’s a place of great serenity when you arrive.  It felt a bit like Corrymeela for Bhuddists.  We dropped in on the Mandala Garden – which somebody described as ‘It felt as if I was weeding my soul.’  I shall never reach those spiritual heights and lawn-mowing doesn’t seem to be part of it.  I was interested too in the idea that one might achieve ‘mastery of contentment’ – when I kind of hoped it might creep up on me one day while I wasn’t looking.  As always, it is amazing that such unspoilt beauty exists so close to Glasgow.  And if you want some further spiritual exercises … part of the fascination of that kind of sailing is the extent to which it is governed by wind and tide and not by what you want to do next.  We are so used to being captain of our own ship

Another sign of changing times.  Tiger Woods exercises iron [sic] control over 72 holes and then dissolves into tears as he experiences grief for his lost father – and commiserates with the runner-up on the death of his mother.  Particularly strange when he is surrounded by the de-humanising entourage which accompanies the super-star wherever he goes.  I suppose it tells us two things.  It’s no longer taken as read that ‘big boys don’t cry’ – and there is a holistic understanding which recognises that everything affects everything else.  So it’s too simple just to say, ‘Get out there and do the job’