Simon Says ...

@RupertMyers has this fantastic, and not entirely untrue, account of how to write a Thought for the Day.  Not how I ever approached it (though I only reached the dizzying heights of BBC Radio Bristol), but it has made me thing about how I did go about it!

Five centimeters of snow here and all has come to a halt. The kids are not at nursery, both today's scheduled meetings are cancelled and I've called off this evening's service. Instead, we've been out and had fun. Footprint patterns, snow angels, a snowman and a snow-dalek now grace our garden. Snowballs have been thrown. All in all lots of fun. Ah, well. Suppose I'd better get on with things...

Advent started on Sunday, the season of preparation for Christmas. There then follows a struggle for most clergy (and especially for any working here) to keep any sort of Advent in the midst of all the Christmas stuff. It's already started: 1. First Nativity Play. This was on Sunday afternoon. It was very good (performed by Bristol Old Vic Theatre School). 2. First Christmas Card. Received yesterday. 3. First Carol Service. The Women's Institute this afternoon. 4. First Easter Egg. In front of me on my desk. Happy Advent. UPDATE - Wednesday evening First Turkey sandwich as well.

Things to do on the penultimate day of September: 1. unwrap the last Christmas present (prolonging the pleasure, or just disorganised? You decide) 2. make an application for the boy to go to school next year (aka parental-not-really-much-choice-at-all) 3. finish summer holiday

It was the Sunday School picnic today, and one of the things we did was to make an ark out of junk. It revealed a great deal of talent (not least amongst the adults present!) and was a lot of fun. On our ark at least, elephants were classified as clean animals - there were nearly seven pairs of them! But the fun with our junk ark threw light onto two other arks. The first was this, which appears to claim that the Biblical story was originally in miniature: And the second was this, the ark in our Family Worship Area (ne Children's Corner). It would perhaps be at home in the Diocese of New Hampshire: Two by two indeed.

Well, new phone as well so change was enforced. My phone now has the dulcet tones of Lennon and McCartney's 'Here comes the sun' - call it a new year's resolution or just optimism in the cold of winter. And someone may yet be assigned the Imperial March from Star Wars as their own personal tone!