Categories: uncategorized
Date: 11 May 2003 20:30:00
I think that the rest of the family are watching Heartbeat, which gives me an opportunity to encapsulate the weekend in a wiblog entry.
Our washing machine is, according to Scottish Gas, not economical to repair (well, it is 8 years old). So, they've offered us £49.99 towards purchasing a new one from Comet. On Saturday morning we had an outing to our local retail park, and chose which model we'd like.
In the afternoon, we went to visit a lady who, as it happens, knew each of my wife and me separately before we met. We've lost touch with her, but last week phoned up, and were invited over. She isn't well, and, in fact, sent us an email to say that she didn't think that she could cope, but we didn't see it, so arrived on her doorstep. I think that everyone enjoyed the afternoon, during which we all went to a park, where daughter and son had a good time in a play area (which had a Noah's Ark theme). In the course of the conversation, we heard, in greater detail than ever before, the story of a sad sequence of events which led to the minister who married us leaving that congregation. I was impressed by her recounting of how the minister who was appointed to lead the congregation in the absence of their own minister told the people that they had to start talking to each other again, or they would lose their church. But the events have had repercussions, and they don't reflect well on how the Christian church occasionally conducts itself.
I was, perhaps, still thinking over what had been said when, this morning, I was trying to summon up enough energy to go to church. The problem is that son isn't happy to be left in the creche, so I usually end up spending the greater part of the service playing with him in the creche, and then when we rejoin the main congregation, I have to be thinking primarily of making sure that he behaves himself, and doesn't bother anyone. I don't think that I have benefited personally from a church service for a long time.
The compromise solution we arrived at this morning was for wife and daughter to catch the bus to church, and then son and I would drive there in time to take them home. This worked reasonably well, particularly as son fell asleep in the car, and didn't wake up until we were strapping him in for the homeward journey.
This afternoon, we did a little work in the garden (there remains much to be done).