It has got a lot colder. I am just back from a walk up in the Riverside area to drag my steps total up towards respectability. This was after completing my sermon this morning.

Dot meanwhile spent the night near Pangbourne in Berkshire, close to what I am assured by Phil Kerrison is a nice chalk stream. Her main reason for being there was P4C, however. After sleeping at Heron Farm, she and Barbara spent this morning delivering their training to 46 teachers at St Andrew’s private school. As I write, she is on the M25 and appears to be heading for the M11, which means she’ll be home in a couple of hours. There was a chance that she’d call in to see David, but the traffic is apparently not as bad as expected.

While she was tucking in to lasagne and chips at the local pub last night, I was at Howard’s for a DCC meeting, which again dragged on. I walked there and was given a lift home by Judy, who almost dropped me next to a prostitute on Rosary Road but thought better of it. It was 10.30pm. I went straight to bed. Earlier I had taken Dot’s car for a drive to the survey (where I dropped off my blood pressure chart) and Morrison’s.

The previous day the two of us made it out to North Walsham to see Jessie, who had been suffering from shingles, which was apparently so painful that she hardly noticed we hadn’t been to see her for a while. In fact both Dot and I were slightly less than 100% over Christmas, but thankfully not so bad that it marred our enjoyment of the family. While we were with Jessie, Roger and Debbie turned up, which was nice. I popped out for a few minutes to deliver a cheque for signing by Rob: Peter had left it very late to sign off the accounts, and letters and e-mails were flying backwards and forwards.

Back to New Year’s Day, where we woke fairly late. There was some uncertainty about when David, Oliver and Amy were going home (we originally thought it was after breakfast, but it turned out to be nearly 8pm); so there were a couple of rather makeshift meals which turned out to be nice. Amazingly, during the morning the 1000-word puzzle was completed, to much celebration. I was pretty impressed. During the rest of the day there was too much football on TV and radio for Amy’s liking. I could see her point.