Weekends of grace

The boy and I trudged off to the North again last weekend, destination Newcastle RC Cathedral, for the ordination of a former housemate. Given that this housemate had a long and arduous journey even to be accepted as a candidate for priesthood, before we consider the last six years spent in college (again), it was great to see this landmark moment reached. And he looked so happy. The boy, in consequence, kept grinning inanely all weekend, because it had been so good to see a happy ending/beginning. We finished the weekend off with a stop off at Mount Grace Priory, literally (and death-defyingly) just off the A1. This had been recommended to us as a good stop when we visited Durham at Easter and had been watching 'Into Great Silence'. At Mount Grace you get a better sense of the largely individual lives that the Carthusian monks lived. I'd pass on the recommendation, especially if you don't have long - we spent an hour there and weren't rushed - but you do take your life in your hands getting back onto the A1. Slip-roads guys, slip-roads.

Conferences are bad for you...

...because you are

• under-exercised
• over-fed
• and full of rage at the laziness of those conference attendees for whom the courtesy of bothering to shape (and time) a paper so that it can be tolerably listened to is a step too far

Good weekends, bad weekends

Over the past month contributions to redeeming weekends have included:

1. pancakes for breakfast, courtesy of the husband





a walk down memory lane (here a shot from the undercroft, the Norman chapel, of Durham castle)





taking time to smell the roses (at Anglesey Abbey)

These have had to compete against

1. catching a summer cold from one's godson


2. sunburning oneself to within an inch of flayed whilst coxing


3. witnessing the near disaster of a crockery-bearing shelf give way, and the hoover giving up the ghost

But in the long-run the good points outlast the bad.