Had intended to spend some time in London over the weekend, but received a phone call on Friday to say David C was ill, so we had some time at home instead. This was disappointing, but it did give us some extra time to play with – particularly useful as Dot was doing an inspection at Swaffham all day Friday, and we had been intending to travel down to Leyton directly afterwards, returning late on Saturday because I had to preach a sermon yesterday morning. Not the most relaxed of schedules. Instead I managed to start clearing out my filing cabinet, and this took longer than I had thought, mainly because of the amount of paper that needed to be shredded. My minuscule shredder was unable to deal with it, and I spent about as much time digging compacted paper out of that as I did on the filing cabinet itself, eventually ending up with a sackload of shredded paper late on Sunday afternoon. I also have a shredder that needs dismantling. And that’s just the first of four drawers – six if I decide to tackle the small cabinet as well. At least the other drawers don’t contain much paper that will need shredding.

Really good morning service – even the sermon wasn’t too bad – and the Ambient Wonder event in the evening was nothing if not ambitious, consisting largely of an enormous white womb space that people sat in. Theme: you guessed it – the Annunciation and pregnancy of Mary. Some quite inventive stuff. My Mary monologue was dusted off, and Dot played an angel. More type-casting.

Other than Christmas-card writing (mainly me) and present-wrapping (mainly Dot) we also managed to fit in a Thursday evening meal with two couples from church: the Kerrisons and the Roberts. There was a vegetarian among us, so Dot did a nut loaf which was the best veggie meal I’ve ever tasted.  Great evening altogether.