Month: September 2025

Cold morning run this morning, but at a good pace and in a good time, one of my best times since returning from our holiday (and without pushing hard). Whereas when I was pushing intensely to improve my time back in the beginning of the year, I was averaging times below 18 minutes, my fastest time since restarting at a more casual pace is 18:36 (and I do remind myself that I’m 68 years old and only started exercising at all less than a decade ago). I’m thinking of alternating days running and walking…

Coffee, fruit, cleaned up, Morning Prayer, a quick shop, home to continue restoring my laptop, and so on…

(I see I’ve already used this title for a post. Oh, well.)

Morning run went more or less agreeably (as agreeable as possible, granted that it was 5° and I was running two miles); coffee, fruit, cleaned up then Morning Prayer, then public office hours at R&R. Home for lunch, then after lunch spent time working at restoring my MacBook’s lost history of my files — that, and working through a backlog of parish files that I hadn’t been able to access during the logic board replacement saga.

When is ‘light rain’ not light rain? This morning I set out on my run — determined not to miss two days in a row — in the midst of misty showers, on the Weather app’s promise that the showers would be ending soon, and would remain quiescent for about twenty minutes thereafter, the perfect interval for my run. The app did not, however, warn that before the showers ended, they would gather their forces to bestow a full-on rain, which meant that the first half of my run was pursued under raining skies, soaking my running gear and adding a kilogram or so to my weight. Nonetheless, I finished my run in a slightly better than average time, had a cup of coffee, finished various tasks preparatory to the day, cleaned up, packed my vestments for a service at St Nic’s, and headed to St Helen’s and the parish centre for tasks there. Now I’m ensconced in Java (R&R is full) and will in a few minutes cross the street to St Nic’s. After Communion I will hustle to the Parish Centre again, where Dr Adam will lead a Faith Forum on ‘Prayer’, and then we both will trundle home and collapse in exhausted heaps.

I had a bit of a lie-in this morning, so I got a late start on my run, with the effect that I had to navigate heavier traffic than usual. I tried to pause my run timer at the biggest problem intersection (Ock/Marcham with Drayton/Spring), but in the process stopped the timer altogether, and subsequent attempts to join up one run with another went awry, so after running a bit longer I just decided to give my legs a rest, walk my morning miles, and not record a time for the day. Got home, had some welcome hot coffee and a hot breakfast, and set about wrestling with restoring files to my MacBook, finishing today’s wedding homily, and preparing tomorrow’s sermon for St Nicolas’s.

Wedding homily sorted, mostly; Michaelmas sermon begun; time for me to clean up, dress for the wedding, and get to work.

Bit of a lie-in, two average miles, coffee and fruit, continued frustrating coping with Tahoe while also retrieving my files from previous Time Machine back-ups. On my way to Morning Prayer.

Leg muscles were stiff this morning (not as wood or steel, but just tired-stiff) but everything else was working right, and I got my run in at a slow-average pace. Hot breakfast today, cleaned up, Morning Prayer, then prepare the church for Wednesday Communion, then the service, then the midweek staff meeting (Fr Paul’s last Chapter Meeting with us), home for lunch, and now I’m imagining Saturday’s wedding service.

So how are you?

Back to the coal face: it’s a three-sermon week, my MacBook is still at the repair centre (they had the wrong email address for me) and will cost roughly half the price of a new MBA to resuscitate, and I have a variety of meetings and other obligations to negotiate. Whee!

This morning’s run was roughly the same pace as my better runs since the holiday, and I felt okay — if cold (4°) — throughout. Coffee, fruit, clean up, Morning Prayer, and the morning is not yet defined, though there’s a deanery chapter meeting at lunchtime. In the interstices, I’ll be working on homilies for tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday.

My legs and lungs felt better this morning, and my morning run came in at a time closer to pre-holiday paces. I’ve now recorded five runs since our return to Abingdon, and my rolling average bounced back upward to a rate more like June than the end of August. Still, it should settle back down as the days pass and temperatures drift downward.

Coffee, fruit, cleaning up, going to Morning Prayer, then back to the house to cover while Margaret has business in Oxford.

Still waiting for news on my laptop. It’s been in the tender hands of my local Apple affiliate since last Tuesday morning, with no estimate yet. There’s only so much I can do on this aging iPad…

I woke this morning with legs stiff as planks. Joints were fine, breathing was laboured but alright, but the muscles in my legs almost resisted running. No surprise, then, that after another day with a lot of walking, my morning time slipped back significantly; but we’ll see how things level out after I’ve had a steady week or two of running after my long holiday and my syncopated return home.

Today I’ll say the morning Mass at St Helen’s, then return thither for Evensong — but Linda is preaching at Mass, and there’s no homily for Evensong, so the day will pass without particular stress.

This morning, no part of my person (body, mind, or spirit) was ready to undertake my morning miles. I took some paracetamol, though, and by adopting the usual trick (‘Whoops! I’m out here running, might as well finish it’) I induced myself to run forward nonetheless, gasping and pressing all the way. My stiffness and torpor could be forgiven, as I walked an unusually high 8 miles yesterday. I checked the time when I got home, though, and my time was almost a full minute faster than yesterday’s.

Today’s wedding went sweetly, apart from a couple of times I lost my place (/eyeroll). The photographer and the wedding verger particularly liked the service; He said it was one of the best he’d worked, and she said she wished she could get married (again) so that I could take the service. Anyway, they’re married now, and I’m drowsy.

Yesterday morning I woke up just outside Waverley Station in Edinburgh, aboard the Caledonian Sleeper. That’s an experience I endorse emphatically, especially if you get the lower berth. I’d always deferred to Margaret in choice of berths (and I still will), but I am here to tell you that the lower berth is a whole different experience, vastly superior to taking the upper berth. I slept deeply, woke up in Scotland, and it was (I think) less costly than rail fare + overnight accommodations. Win, win, win.

I was in Edinburgh at the invitation of the Revd Fiona Reynolds, for a teaching day for Edinburgh clergy (Scottish Episcopal Church) on ‘Scriptural Christology After Supersessionism’. We overcame my digressive tendencies to have worthwhile discussions of the value of thinking through the question of what Jesus’s contemporaries thought of him, what traces we can see of pre-Christian imagination of a prophet, a king, an Anointed One, a lord/Lord, a Son of God, and various other topics. We wrapped up after prayers between 15:00 and 15:30, and I hopped on the LNER to Kings Cross. Everything went smooth as silk, except that there was an electrical fault affecting the tracks out of Paddington, and I had to squeeze onto an already crowded, earlier but delayed train toward Bristol Temple Mead (I disembarked, gratefully, at Didcot Parkway where I caught the X2 that delivered me safely at Ladygrove Paddock, late and exhausted and basking in the delight of a short return to Scotland, a visit with Fiona, and the chance to talk with earnestly interested colleagues in ministry.

Ran a slow 2 miles this morning, breakfasted on fruit and coffee, cleaned up for Morning Prayer, held public office hours outside R&R, came home and worked on the homily for tomorrow’s wedding, and will shortly head to St Michael’s for the rehearsal, thence to Brendan and Rosie’s new home to see them and Edith Wren. That’s a day for you.

Where have I been? In Florence, mostly, with stops in Milan. And tonight I’ll go to Edinburgh. I will give more details soon, but my MacBook Air’s USB ports pooped out in Italy, and you can’t charge an MBA without USB ports, so I’ve been limping along, Internet-wise.

Ran this morning in light rain, decent time considering it’s been more than two weeks…

1) Killing people is wrong, no matter how horrible they are.

2) People who say and do horrible things cannot simply assume that law and convention protect them; by stepping outside the boundaries of a tacit social contract, one forfeits the prerogative of appealing to that contract.

3) ‘Free speech for me, but not for thee’ is not free speech in a free society; advocates for freedom to say what one party wants, but penalties for saying what another party wants, are simply not talking about ‘free speech’ in the relevant sense. If they pretend that they are defending free speech, they may be cynical or self-deluded, but serious discourse should pay no attention to them.

4) But not kill them.

5) In general, public discourse should attend a great deal more to evidence and warrants and qualifications than on speculation and defamation and groundless shouting.

6) But still not kill people.

7) Inciting violence — affirming in public discourse that violence, deadly force, is justified when directed against certain others runs the predictable risk of provoking retribution under colour of self-protection. Those who incite violence forfeit the protection due to peacemakers.

8) But that still doesn’t make it right to kill people.

The story of the day has two foci: Santa Maria Novella, and the Duomo. We struck out early to be sure to get into S. Maria Novella in good time to have a lunch before proceeding to the Duomo, and our timings were perfect. What we had not prepared for was the extent to which Santa Maria Novella bulged at the seams with Dominicana. During our day in Milan, Margaret had indulged my wish to visit St Eustorgio’s, where the Portinari Chapel shelt4ers the relics of St Peter of Verona a/k/a Peter of Milan a/k/a Peter Martyr, a saint to whom I have a particular devotion; I thought I’d completed my Peter Martyr quest line there, but I was taken aback to see Peter prominently featured in several areas of St Maria Novella, too, including some familiar images. Add in a lot of Thomas Aquinas and the obligatory Dominic images, and I was positively overwhelmed with Dominican sentiment.

We had a light lunch in the shadow of Santa Maria, then trundled off to the Duomo, where we were edified if not spellbound by the excavated fragmentary recovery of Santa Reparata below the main floor of the Duomo. Then we ascended to the main floor, but were only permitted access to the central aisle, which was somewhat disappointing. The exterior, though, is breathtaking, and it’s free with no time limits, so we made the most of that. We also visited the baptistery (mostly closed for restoration) and the Museo (amazing, but by then we were lagging).

Crossed the Ponte Vacchio, looked at the exterior of St Mark’s English Church, and drifted home.

Yesterday we went to the Uffizi, and checked in at the Mercato Centrale on our way home. Today, church at St James, then brunch, then I took a stroll while everyone else rested, then pizza for dinner.

It’s good.

Benvenuti a Firenze! Everything went smoothly despite the strike (our train was evidently on a ‘guaranteed’ list), so we arrived right on schedule and had a glorious afternoon and evening with Richard and Dave. Much to think about, if not necessarily to blog about, but we’re here, we’re happy and comfortable, and we are not taking any trains tomorrow, for the first time in four days.

Greetings from Zürich! It’s been a very long day (I left my room at BNTC in Manchester at 5:00 and we arrive in Zürich at 20:28, so we’ve been working (reading, writing, napping) on the railroad for fifteen hours or so. We peered out of the cabin as the train paused in Basel, to see whether we could detect any of the holiness that Barth’s ministry must have imparted to the city, but apart from a ‘Trust Lust’ graffito of exceptional size, we saw nothing out of the ordinary.

August according to last.fm:

1 Elvis Costello & The Attractions 13 scrobbles
2 The Beatles 10
3 Belle and Sebastian 8
4 Juliana Hatfield 6
5 Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers 6
6 Beyoncé 5
7 k.d. lang 5
8 Lloyd Cole 5
9 Michelle Shocked 5
10 Sinéad O’Connor 5

(As always, I exclude the Mountain Goats so as to make room for other artists.)