Life has been extremely busy of late, I have hardly had time to procrastinate never mind blog but there is light and a bit of space coming onto focus on the horizon. So what you may be wondering has been keeping me busy. Well it has on the whole been a times of the good and the bad.
Daughter finally managed to find a new flat and move in, had only just got used to her being around again and now have to go through the whole missing her being around again. The travelling to work and university was just too much so I suppose in the bigger picture the good outweighs the bad.
The 12 months snagging list has been drawn out for the re-development, yes it has really been over a year since the build was completed and handed over, however there are still things that have never been completed and still other things that haven’t been completed satisfactory. The good is that the list is slowly getting shorter, the bad is two fold, firstly that I don’t see any chance of the list being completed by the end of June as promised as secondly every time they fix something they either discover or create another thing to add to the list. I have long been waiting to post a picture of our lovely new glass doors, however they still haven’t completed the surrounding area so I am afraid if you want to see them then you will have to just come along – this Sunday services at 10:30am and 6:30pm.
I have also been spending a lot of time hanging around waiting for deliveries which should be good; not the hanging around but the actual item being delivered; only to discover that the wrong thing as yet again been sent.
Of course no run down of the last fortnight or so would be complete without mention of the F1 at Monaco. Lewis did well especially as it has since emerged that he had a puncture for the final two laps, the race for the drivers championship is wide open. I felt for Sutil would have loved to see him on the podium, hopefully his performance will mark more good races for him to come and a chance of a seat in one of the major teams in the future. The weather produced what, for me at least, as to be the race of the season so far.
Thursday evening of this week saw the annual trip over to St Ninian’s Polloksheilds for the pre-synod meeting. I used to know the congregation reasonably well as I started my ordained life in a next door parish, as soon as I stepped into the building I was taken by how light the sanctuary area now was, it has been cleaned to great effect recently, the walls were painted some time ago and the building is no longer a gloomy place to go into. The meeting however gave a glimpse that General Synod itself might get gloomy, there are several items which people hold varying views on, and it will be up to the person in the chair to stop Synod getting too gloomy. Kelvin on his blog has a run down on the items.
The Wednesday evening group have come to the end of their 4 Studies and a Party and I am happy to report that that has proved nothing but good, good, good. I did have apprehensions at the start but they were quickly proved to be unfounded and in a single voice those who attended the studies have been singing their praises and eager to take the next step. The next step however is the joint vestry day with St Paul and St John, Monklands, next Saturday, only after that can the two groups, the Wednesday group and St Mark’s Vestry, get together and cover the final items, identifying our Mission Field and deciding on an event to launch into it. This is not something that will happen over night, and it is hoped that before the blue touch paper is lit at least one other group will have travelled through the joys of 4 Studies and a Party. After all the stuff to do with the re-development which while necessary was not what I went forward for ordination for, it is good to finally be getting on with something that I was, of course the first thing we would have discovered had the work not been done was that we needed to do the work!
We did manage to get away for the Bank Holiday down to sunny Dumfrieshire, were according to at least one of the local hotels St John’s is the local English Episcopal Church! Photos will follow next week of two castles and an abbey once I have downloaded them, for now we are heading off to Edinburgh and the Taste of Festival, which we missed last year as I had just come out of hospital after my op, but BB and ‘K’ enjoyed in our place, so no doubt I you will hear about that at some point next week too.