Not really the organiser ..

Regular visitors to this journal will know that it is my habit of a morning to sit in bed drinking tea (darjeeling, with lemon) while perusing my phone. Sometimes I do my morning Italian session, depending on how awake I feel and how crowded the morning will be. Today I was actually too busy catching up with an admin matter to do with what one might in other ecclesiastical circles call "pulpit supply", which is always more pressing for the laity during a vacancy. It was a conundrum involving a long-standing but confused arrangement, two charges and one visiting priest who happens to be out of the country on holiday ... and I got involved because he and I chat on Facebook. Fatal. 

Later that morning, after breakfast, Italian, bread-making (machine), washing/hanging out, washing up and coffee, I started work on a sermon for Sunday. It wasn't easy; I didn't have much to say when I started except that the people of about 700 BC seemed very similar in their attitudes to their neighbours to those of today ... and two hours later, when the first draft was on paper, I reflected that even with difficult passages to talk about it's more up my alley than creating a working rota...

Also more up my alley is going for walks in this fantastic autumn. Today we managed to escape a chilly wind by walking up Glen Massan, where we've not been for a while. The road passes the side of Benmore Gardens, where the hillside round the Victorian fernery is an amazing collection of colours at this time of year. The main photo above was taken through the fence as we passed, while the extra is of the River Massan where it passes behind the village. It's very low just now, which made us wonder how a flood further up the road had come into being - we could see no reason for it.

We've just been watching the news about Florida as it waits for the hurricane to arrive - a former pupil of mine and his wife are in Florida on holiday, so we're following his updates with some interest. And I'm delighted to say that we can watch the election process of a new Tory leader with much less interest these days. What a shower!

Early start in the morning to catch a ferry ... happily no weather events here to disturb the timetable.