As you can tell...

it has been a hard, hard week!

Well, in point of fact, since I took myself and all the assorted actual and potential transitions of my life away with me, I did work quite hard, and have rarely journalled with such intensity.

As predicted, I drank in heaps of wisdom and insight from our retreat conductor, and read a seriously wonderful book, about which I'll try to blog shortly.

I also spent a long time wandering along cliff tops, sat in the sun listening to waves and sky-larks, to Dunstable and U2 , enjoyed some excellent supper-time conversations (encouraged by equally excellent wine) and generally wondered at the beauty of it all.


Huge thanks are due to A, who welcomed us all to her home with grace and generosity, to D for providing the sort of inspiration you can never have too much of, and to my other companions, who might well be on the way to becoming friends.

But mostly (if it doesn't sound too pi) to God for such a wonderful place.

In other news

One thing that priests, and everyone else indisputably needs is time off with people they love in places that speak to them.

HG had had a rather stressful start to this term, what with exams and the inevitable switch-backs of student life, and I've known easier months myself, so yesterday was decreed a holiday for both. Atypically, I actually left Ch Kings bright and early,- only to be thwarted in my progress by cataclysmic traffic chaos around Gloucester, with a stretch of the ring-road closed altogether, and diversions sending us all off into the countryside. I was only marginally fussed by this, until I realised that the diversion I was following had led me back into the chaos a few miles further on, this time heading in the wrong direction, with no possibility of a turn-around.
So it was that 2 hours after leaving home I found myself only 4 miles from Cheltenham, driving away from my goal...
Is this, I wonder, in any way a paradigm of life??

If so,- there's hope for recovery!
I did eventually get to Cardiff and HG and I decamped to the nearest stretch of real coast...at Barry. In the summer, I fear that the assorted tourist attractions will make this a Very Unpleasant Experience, but on the last day of January it was just perfect. We were one of 3 cars in the carpark, and apart from a couple of distant dogs and their owners, we had the whole beach to ourselves. It was really fun to walk across the tidal harbour, nearly up to the boats that are "moored" there. Hard to believe that they'll float off at high water, but the wet sea-weed on the harbour wall was proof that they would. Not really beached high and dry, no matter how it might appear.

When things get too much for me, please someone remind me that what I really need is a day by the sea.