Just a few words - I am pleasantly weary from five days of walking.  Mostly the weather was dry - and very warm - and for a flat walk there are a couple of significant uphill stretches, notably on the final day when you have to do 18/19 miles (depending which guide you believe) of which at least four are a single uphill climb.  It was fun and we enjoyed stunning scenery along the way as well as a little time in Fort Augustus, Invermorriston and Drumnadrochit.

So, for your amusement a few of the photos...

I am not a lover of mobile phones, rarely send text messages and fail to understand the almost surgical attachment some people have to their phones.  Despite this, I own two pay-as-you-go phones and occasionally cause amusement by having one in each hand as I switch them off.  Two hands, two phones, what's the problem?  I have two because a long time ago when I ordered the first, online, the supplier sent me an email saying it was no longer available so I ordered another from a different supplier and on a different network.  When both arrived I decided to keep them, assigning one to 'work' and the other to 'personal'.  This actually works quite well: the 'work' number is on the church noticeboard and only family and friends have the other number.

Trouble is, the 'personal' phone has never been very good - it eats battery charge like it's going out of fashion and gets very poor reception even with a good signal.  It was time to swap it.  So, off to the O2 store where a very helpful young man called Ross helped me select a suitable replacement - half the price and twice the whizzy gadgets of the old one.  He managed to avoid patronising this middle-aged idiot (at least where phones are concerned) and I now have a shiny new phone that should do the job for a while, and by the magic of SIM, still my old number and all my contacts.  Whilst I was there he sold me a 'half price special offer' pay and go mobile broadband dongle - so I now have three ISPs (ostensibly, I think they are all owned by the same parent) one way and another, ah well.

As I drove home I was trying to deduce whether my risk assessor self or Jewish heredity self was more comforted by the degree of redundancy and diversity I now have in my phones and internet connections.  On the one hand I can pretty much always get connected, on the other there's nowhere to hide!  Yup, definitely a judaistic risk assessor.

And despite all the above I will offline and not answering my phones for a full week from Monday!

I have a vague recollection of the little book called Milliganimals in which Spike Milligan poems described a whole range of weird hybrid animals.  Here is the said poem:

Such a beast is the Hipporhinostricow
How it got so mixed up we'll never know how
It sleeps all day and whistles all night
And it wears yellow socks which are far too tight.

If you laugh at the Hipporhinostricow
You're bound to get into an awful row
The creature is protected you see
From Silly people like you and me

This has nothing to do with what I've been thinking about but it came to mind when I was thinking of a title for this post!

In a few weeks we begin our 'Animally Theme' set of services, which will be a mix of approaches, some using some of the animal metaphors which abound in the Bible and some that look at ethics.  The first one will focus on creation and will be an exciting experiment as it'll be the first time we try a new approach to church whereby I start the service then leave with the Sunday School and someone else takes over the adult part.  After my holiday we will planning this service, but inevitably ideas swim around my subconscious and now and then float into consciousness.

Genesis is a much misunderstood part of the Bible and it seems a lot of commentators get rather defensive in their approach to its early chapters.  The two creation stories - chapters 1 and 2 -  seem to cause a lot of squirming as people try to make one coherent whole rather than delighting in the differences.  I'm not about to get into a J/E/P debate but it was a concept I found freeing when I first discovered it.

Anyway, this is rambling even by my standards. Genesis 2 is the story that floated into my mind in a way I find rather fascinating.  In this account God makes a lovely garden then fashions a man out of clay to live in it.  God then goes on creating, making from the clay all sorts of land creatures and then brings them to the man to give them names. I was really struck by this - the creator hands over this power and responsibility to the created.  God could have said 'look here's a hipporhinostracow' but God brought the creature to the man who said 'giraffe'; God could have said 'here is stripy creature like a horse' but man said 'zebra.'  Somehow the significance of this had never really struck me before (I can be slow sometimes)... in this amazing role reversal the creator brings new creations to the created, if not for approval, then at least in humility.

In Genesis 1 we see a God who makes things and says 'wow, that's pretty amazing, I'm pleased with that.'  Now in Genesis 2 we see a God who, maybe even a little tentatively, comes to man with his new life-form and says 'look, I've made with this, what will you call it?'  I need to do a whole load more thinking (and non-thinking) about this before my ethics sermon scheduled for September but for now I will enjoy my image of a delighted God running up to Adam and saying 'look what I've made...'

Yesterday, in a rare moment of something or other, I decided that the church kitchen really needed tidying up, and if someone ought to do it, then why not me?  After all, I am the one person in the church who is paid not to go to work...  Inspired, I then moved on to the hymnbook cupboard before deciding that now I really did need to write a sermon and plan a couple of services.  As is the way of these things, the ideas then flowed freely and I achieved a lot.

This morning I walked into my office/study/vestry and thought, I really ought to clean this out too.  We have a very friendly and helpful professional cleaner at church, so the carpet is hoovered and so on but (probably because I've never asked her to) nothing gets dusted and I could leave messages to myself in the dust.  That plus the fact that I am a very untidy person, meant the desk was buried under my heap system which had spread to the chairs and even the floor.  In part this is because people bring me 'interesting things' they have found when clearing cupboards at home and I don't have the heart to chuck them until I've looked at them properly.  In part it's the "I'll just put it here for now" habit that seems to permeate every church I know: we fully intend to clear away properly but somehow months later things can be in the place we left them temporarily.

So, I have spent about three hours so far (see, I'm very messy) sorting, chucking, shredding, dusting, rearranging and so forth.  In the process I have uncovered things I'd forgotten I had which may prove useful, as well as being reminded of many of the things we've done together since I arrived last autumn.  Once the task is complete I will have a nice, sparkly workspace for a day or two before normality returns.  More important, I think, is the personal benefit it brings in sorting and sifting stuff internally.  Stuff to chuck out, stuff to file, stuff to rearrange.  It is surprisingly therapeutic.

The new academic year starts up here in mid-August so it is good to clear the decks before then.  And it will be a treat after my week off to come back to a gleaming desk and a clear (well, almost) work space.

Now, where did I put that duster...

It will be a little quieter around these parts next week because I will be walking from Fort William to Inverness, as one does.  I am hoping for a little less rain - I think it's England's turn next week - but not too hot either.

At a mere 73 miles this is one of the shorter rotues I've done and also one of the flatter ones.  My tally is now two traverses of England (W-E and E-W at different latitudes), one length of Wales (S-N) and one part way up the side of Scotland (S-N).  A Scotland traverse (SW-NE) feels like a good addition!

Should be fun and I'm looking forward to spending some time with my very loyal walking friend from that jewel of the NW of England called Warrington.