On 12th August I became the proud owner of 2 titanium screws in my right leg, put there to to hold it all together. So now, I am plastered (I wish)and have to spend my days, for the first 6 weeks, with it "up" for 55 minutes in every hour. So I have been ensuring that I do not get bored and have spent my days in a variety of recumbent occupations.

I have for instance discovered that the Church of England website has a daily feed for prayer! No longer do we need to have prayer books, we can all take our laptops to church and log on!

CW Morning Prayer

Yesterday
http://daily.commonworship.com/daily.cgi?yesterday_mp=1
Today
http://daily.commonworship.com/daily.cgi?today_mp=1
Tomorrow
http://daily.commonworship.com/daily.cgi?tomorrow_mp=1

The mind quite boggles!

I have become an avid follower of "Codeword" in The Times and the Jumbo weekend crossword which more or less keeps me going all week! I am reading 3 books at the moment - the first by Ronald Blyth celebrating gardens: it has the most wonderful illustrations and black & white photograph - it is worth reading for the illustrations alone. Then "The Time Traveller's Wife" which is just out/coming out as a film. Excellent read, great fun. The third one is pulp fiction cannot

remember author or title but it is about a Scottish House in the 1830's: instantly forgettable but good at night if you need something to read!

The rest of my time is spent dealing with emails and the like, or playing computer golf or browsi ng the internet for the perfect last minute holiday deal for about next February when I am finally out of plaster and slightly mobile again - something to shorten winter. There are some amazing deals out there, but the one place I really want to go to - Madeira - remains hideously expensive. Warm, inexpensive (different from cheap!!), and fun, snd able preferably to fly from Stansted.

Monday 21st September is the 40th anniversary of my ordination as deacon in the Church of England. I was ordained priest a year later. My ordination as deacon was by the then Bishop of Barking (William Chadwick) in Waltham Abbey. He was a funny austere man who had not married and hav very little idea about parish life. His one word to me was to make sure that apart from my day off I had one more evening each week at home with my wife and children! Whenever we met in the ensuing time he would look quizz ickly at me and say "Who are you?....Where are you?.... It put one firmly in ones place. A very different kettle of bishop from the Bp of Colchester whern I moved into his area 2 1/2 years later. Every time he met me he remembered not only my name but also that of all the children as they came along in the coming years: indeed he became a close friend when Ihe invied me to become Rector of the parish in which he lived, and had, by then baptized at least one of them and confirmed 3 of them. Hopeless administrator, but wonderful person and support. This particular church was a shared building with the United Reformed Church. Bp. Roderic once adised me not to tell him too much about what was going on, because as a Bishop "I certainly could not sanction you doing many of the things you are doing, but someone has got to push the boundaries of the church..." What wonderful advice which has stayed with me ever since and really makes one want to challenge 95% of what bishops say and do. All of this nonsense about how we are to conduct ourselves in church while swine flu is around. Stuff and nonsense!

Cool down Chris

So on Sunday 20th I will be celebrating and preaching at the Eucharist with the regular 11 00 congregation at Great Waltham plus about 40 family and friends from the past 50 + years followed by a bite to eat. That has got to be good!