... for a few days as, along with countless other ministers and students of theology, I am off to a conference.  This week I have a friend learning Greek from scratch in Nottingham, most of my Manchester peers are at a summer school in Bristol and I am heading to Prague to give a conference paper which has given me more headaches than enough!  I'm trying to work out why it was never this hard work preparing to deliver to a load of engineers and scientists!  (I have some thoughts on that one but they are too dull to share) Anyway, I'm sure it'll be fun with some interesting people to meet and/or catch up with - and a little quieter in blogworld.

This afternoon I went out to dismantle the sign outside our defunct building - afterall if it sells this Friday (please...) then this needs to happen.  I'd had a look, noted the rusted state of the nuts and their varying shapes and sizes (typical chapel bodge job) so got out a nice big adjustable wrench, a hammer to whack it with, and psyched myself up for some fun.

Adjusting my trusty wrench to fit the first nut, I decided to check how hard it was going to be to loosen it - and it was barely hand tight!  In under five minutes, with no hammering needed, I had the job done and simply had to 'walk' the offending article (which was too heavy for me to lift) along the side of the building where I abandoned it behind locked gates.  I'm glad the job proved feasible, but I'd have like the sign to put up just a little bit of resistance!  Why is it 5 minutes jobs takes several hours and those that ought to be a good challenge are trivial?

I'm not sorry the sign is down - the weeds next door as as tall as, if not taller than, I am - not quite the image we want to give of the church...