20 January, 8:35pm

Too many nights up past midnight at my computer, too many early mornings with wet feet - even my new running shoes haven't coped with the floods - they can hardly be blamed when the water is well above my ankles at times.

But Kathryn is sitting, bouncing and moving around in her baby walker. She also astonished us by [having rejected almost all vegetables out of a jar] eating a whole load of home made Broccoli and Stilton Soup. I still haven't found any shop soup that I prefer to my own stuff.

And at St Francis we've had some of the biggest congregations that we've ever had on Sunday mornings - it feels good.

I'm in the middle of William Hague's biography of William Wilberforce - another book that I'd recommend - although at £25 it isn't exactly cheap. I got it on a VERY wet day in Bath. I'd wandered into Waterstones and faced with categories on world history, British history, European history, history of politics, history of religion, and half a dozen more and having no idea where it would come I resorted to the easiest of options and asked. One of the [many] things that I like about Waterstones is that, unlike Borders, the staff seem to know something about the books that they sell, and I was led straight to the right place.

Also from that wet day in Bath, 'The slug and lettuce' apart from having a great name is a good place to eat. There's one in Cirencester, although I haven't explored it yet. But I'm going to run a mile [something I guess I do frequently] before I drive into Bath again. It was my first visit in a car in 10 years and I never thought that I'd say this, but Bath traffic is worse than ever.

8 January, 10:48pm

There are so many things that I think about posting on this blog, and then I get to the lap-top and kind of dry up. But here are some reviews from Christmas:

I used a Christmas Book Token to buy a Michael Morpurgo novel - 'Alone on a wide wide sea'. I had a whole list of books I was looking for when I went into Waterstones and none of them were by Morpurgo. He's a former Children's Laureate and a brilliant writer and 'Alone on a wide wide sea' is great. Read it. And I'm in the middle of 'In God we doubt' by John Humphrys. So far, its one of the best and most accessible of summaries of the discussions for and against the existence of God that I've read.

On films, 'The Bourne Ultimatum' is a stunning end to the trilogy - all three are some of the best thrillers made in recent years. On the other hand Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is terrible - even worse [if possible] than all of the rest of the HP films - No 2 [Chamber of Secrets] was the only half decent one. The rest only even begin to work as stories if you've read the books - but have none of the drama, fun or anything else really.

And my new running shoes - no idea what make etc. etc. mean that I have just about dry feet, even across the soaking fields, although they'll be challenged tomorrow after tonight's rain.

6 January, 10:41pm

The ironing hasn't even been started tonight - and I'm still [to state the obvious] at my laptop, but Kathryn has learnt to clap today and is still in training for London 2012 for the vastly underestimated and indeed totally unrecognised sport of raspberry blowing - she's an expert!

And now we're back, facing once again the round of work and school and everything else. And its been back to work with a vengeance - services, sermons, PCC papers, rotas, assemblies, monthly leaflets, a big lunch and we've only been back 30 hours!

But before we got back we were down on Exmoor - and as anyone who knows anything about me knows, there are few things that refresh me more than being blown around on the longest ever route from Watersmeet to Countisbury [ask Jane] where the Blue Ball Inn is as good as the Sandpiper ever was with great beer and food. Or, just as good, running up to Selworthy Beacon in below zero temperatures and all the wind-chill of a 50mph winds, and then running down with the wind behind me - its great, at least until I turned my ankle at the top of Hurlstone combe and had to limp back the rest of the way! Or a 17 minute dash from the top of Woodcombe, down to the village and then along to Minehead. It does in your body and revives your mind and soul. And the names, they are so simple, but have such memories.

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BLOGGERS NOTE
You'll notice in this blog that I use clauses and sub clauses and square brackets and lots of other grammatical aberrations! Also that I can't spell. Jane sometimes compares my sentence structure to St Paul, going on and on and on... I'm afraid that you're going to have to live with it. I try to edit it all out when I'm writing for print, but I'm going to indulge myself here.