Saturday

Long day today. Managed to get some work done - clearing the in-pile slightly faster than the work coming in...

Good evening though - went to see the Toomeys for a Chinese takeaway - yum!

Sunday

I did the 9:30am service at St Mary's this morning and consciously went fishing. I talked about church membership, confirmation and baptism and invited people to talk to me after the service if they were interested in exploring any of these possibilities. I may have one taker for confirmation...

At 11:00am we had the baptism for Alex. We decided to drop the Gospel reading since a story about the beheading of John the baptist didn't seem appropriate at a baptism with John as the father...

The afternoon was spent with Becky and co at her 40th birthday party in Grange Farm. Good party! All tired...

Saturday - Not quite the last fete day...

June is a rather busy month with multiple fetes on every Saturday - particularly if you're involved in lots of different groups and organisations. We had the music centre fete in the morning, followed by the St Mary's fete in the afternoon...

The evening was fun with an informal barbecue with the Solloways and Rowcroft-James's...

Sunny Day in Lyme Regis

We had a lovely day (after a good night's sleep) on the beach at Lyme Regis. After lunch (crab sandwiches) we wandered along to the foot of the cliffs where we found some wonderful huge ammonites.

The drive home was fine and we stopped for pizza at Solstice Services- which sounds like it should be in Milton Keynes...

Off to Dorset

Off we go with Jane, Emily and Daniel to Monkton Wyld in Dorset for a wonderful break.
Whether sunny today. Went to Lyme Regis and enjoyed the beach.
Got colder during the night...

Tobogganing

We did a session of Tobogganing at Xscape before spending an afternoon with Rozi...

Bank Holiday

Afternoon with the Solloways - including a mammoth game of Catan with Seafarers, Knights and a big scenario...

Baby Group - Tenth Anniversary

We had a great gathering this afternoon as a few members of the Slough baby group descended on us in Milton Keynes. Becky and Gareth came at 2:30 with Ben and Jo, and we had time for a walk to the play park before Elaine and Daren arrived with Charlie, Hattie and Bertie at 5:00.

It was good to see everyone again and we had a splendid time catching up. Must do it again sometime...

Another Snow Day...

Another Snow Day. Fresh Expressions Key Leader Vision Day cancelled. Girls did some maths. Went into my office and did some work.

Spent afternoon and evening at Solloway's. We played a massive game of Catan with two sets plus Knights and Seafarers... Duncan won.

La Befana in Milton Keynes

Our friends Dave and James visited us today for a late new year celebration. We went for a walk and climbed a tree - we chose one that had been in the old vicarage orchard so I felt justified.

Dave gave the girls presents from Italy (where his dad lives) including a very fine La Befana each. For those who don't know about this Italian tradition here's what Wikipedia says:

La Befana is a character in Italian folklore who delivers presents to children throughout Italy, in a similar way to Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. The character may have originated in Rome, then spread as a tradition to the rest of Italy.

In popular folklore Befana visits all the children of Italy on the eve of the 6th of January to fill their socks with candy and presents if they are good or a lump of coal or dark candy if they are bad. Being a good housekeeper, many say she will sweep the floor before she leaves. The child's family typically leaves a small glass of wine and a plate with a few morsels of food, often regional or local, for the Befana.

She is usually portrayed as an old lady riding a broomstick through the air wearing a black shawl and is covered in soot because she enters the children's houses through the chimney. She is often smiling and carries a bag or hamper filled with candy, gifts, or both.

Christian legend has it that La Befana was approached by the magi (the biblical three kings) a few days before Christ's birth. They asked for directions to where the baby Jesus was, but she did not know. She provided them with shelter for a night, as she was considered the best housekeeper in the village with the most pleasant home. They invited her to join them on the journey to find the baby Jesus, but she declined, stating she was too busy with her housework. Later, La Befana had a change of heart, and tried to search out the astrologers and Jesus. That night she was not able to find them, so to this day, La Befana is searching for the baby Jesus. She leaves all the good children toys and candy, while the bad children get coal or bags of ashes.

Another Christian legend takes a slightly darker tone as La Befana was an ordinary woman with a child whom she greatly loved. However, her child died, and her resulting grief maddened her. Upon hearing news of Jesus being born, she set out to see him, delusional that he was her son. She eventually met Jesus and presented him with gifts to make him happy. The infant Jesus was delighted, and he gave La Befana a gift in return; she would be the mother of every child in Italy.

Also, popular tradition avers that if one sees La Befana one will receive a thump from her broomstick, as she doesn't wish to be seen. This aspect of the tradition may be designed to keep children in their beds while parents are distributing candy (or coal) and sweeping the floor on Epiphany Eve.

Many people believe that the name Befana is derived from the Italians' mispronunciation of the Greek word epifania or epiphaneia (Greek, επιφάνεια = appearance, surface, English: epiphany).

(Wikipedia 11/1/09)

Zechariah?

This was my first attempt to book a final weekend off in 2008. It didn't work because I didn't remember this fact when I said yes to an evensong at St Giles...

Even so, I managed a gentler Sunday than normal which included a quiet morning with the family and walk in the rain with Dave and James up to the North Bucks Way and back...

There were a few phone calls which I had to deal with and then evensong - at which I preached about Zechariah. It was the last evensong of the year so became an opportunity to round off their season on the prphets with an overview and a conclussion...

At the end of the day, I do feel a bit better, but still fragile and tired. After three tough weeks I'm ready for some serious therapy - but another tough week at work will have to do...

...and Doctor Who is 45 today.

Friday

We had a good day off today. We popped into Borders to buy a baptism present for Sunday and bumped into one of our relatives and had a good chat - then we popped into Shenley to post a parcel (the post office was closed) and bumped into Janet Nelsey - who was trying to get rid of an old bike - which was perfect for Iona - recycling and happiness all round.


The day finished with a quiz night at which we came third - if only we had not confused Nick Clegg with Daniel O'Donnel - and could recognise Jo Biden on a dark night! I was pleased, however, that I remembered the Pinta!

Catan

We had a great afternoon today with our friends, Jane, Duncan, Emily and Daniel.
The main plan was to give the kids some time to plan some fancy dress costumes, but this slid into a walk and a game of "Settlers of Catan" - Here are the rules for those who haven't experienced this particular pleasure yet...

The instructions say you can finish it in 90 minutes. It always seems to take longer. Here's how it should be played - in three minutes flat!:

Power Walking...

Now that summer is here (!) it seemed like a good idea to get out in the sun and enjoy the great outdoors a bit. With our friends, the Solloways, we decided to go for an adventurous circular walk. Our chosen walk (see guide) took us on a 4 1/2 mile circuit from the medieval Thornborough Bridge across the fields and back again.

It is interesting to note how different these walks are in different parts of the country. In tourist country (Dorset, etc...) you can usually expect fairly good paths and often encounter other walkers. Even in South Bucks you feel that there is a path to follow. When we go for a walk up here in North Bucks we often suspect we are the only people to do the route this year.

This walk had such a feel. The paths were overgrown. The fields had bulls in them. We passed some anglers on a river who looked suprised to see us.

Having said this, the path was well marked, so we headed off into the wilds of North Bucks (about five miles from where we live) to explore...

It struck me that energy use could be seen throughout our walk. Twice we passed beneath huge pylons which hummed with the electrical energy now feeding Milton Keynes. This energy is, of course, largely dependent on our oil based economy, but we saw signes of earlier ages...

The Buckingham Branch of the Grand Union Canal cuts through this land and we spent some time walking along its former route. The greatest monument to this is the remains of an old lock which is being restored - although presumably not for actual use.

The creation of the canal network enabled more ecomomical transport of goods and fuel across Britain, powering the industrial revelution and driving the development of modern society.

The Buckingham Branch was opened in 1801 but was already in decline by the 1850s as the railways began to take over. The last comercial traffic was in 1932 and it was abandoned in 1964.

Here in a little-known corner of Buckinghamsire stands a monument to our industrial past. Canals were superseded by railways, which were superseded by roads as we become more effecient in the way we used our fossil fuels...

But this walk also gave us a chance to see relics of an even earlier age.

Long before the canals and the railways helped kick-start the industrial revolution the country was littered with windmills. There were thousands of them, pumping water or grinding grain - using the "free" power of wind.

We saw at least one old windmill on this walk, but there would probably have been many more at one point - not that long ago. It seems strange that there are so many objections to the "view pollution" caused by modern windmills given how common they once were...

The reality, of course, is that we are rapidly coming full circle as the cheap energy of the industrial revolution rapidly disappears. It will not be long before we are forced to depend on sustainable sources of power whether we like it or not - and this will cause a change in our society as dramatic as the industrial revolution was in the nineteenth century.

So it was good to see that Thornborough Mill (mentioned in the Doomesday Book) is slowly being brought back into service. It's now turning nicely and the owners hope to use it to power four local properties.

Although this walk seemed to take us off the beaten track it actually took us through the development of western society over the past two centuries. We could see human resourcefulness and our use of energy past, present and future. I wonder what relics people will spot in fifty years time...

And here's a couple of photos to show that our walk also involved the history of transport:

Friday

Lunch with Rozi.
Izzy returns from her first residential...

A Great Evening!

We had a wonderful evening tonight with Jane and Duncan Solloway. As always, Jane cooked the most wonderful food - yum! It was a late night but a good one.

Birthday Celebrations

We had a visit from our friends Al and Jo who came over for lunch. It was good to see them. Especially since they are soon off to Devon for a Al's new job. He will undoubtedly put more about this on his blog: New Kid on the Blog.