Usually around this time of year I like to take a week off before the onslaught of the crazy-fun schedule of Advent and Christmas.

This year events have overtaken me and a holiday is not feasible, but I will be taking a week out from church (albeit one with at least two and probably three lots of hopsital visits) before a very scaled down but still fun Advent and Christmas.  I have a friend coming to stay for a couple of days and then I will be heading to the next 'floppy weekend' which coincides with a long scheduled 'free Sunday'.

All this means I am choosing not to post for the next few days as part of having a break.  So this corner of blogland will be silent but I will be back soon!

I watched the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance last night, something I've done pretty much annually as long as I can remember.  I remember the time I heard Raymond Baxter say that there was only one year since World War II in which a service man (as it then was) had died in active service; last night Huw Edwards said it again.  Since last year, he announced, another 111 service personnel had died - in Afghanistan.

As the poppy petals fall - they used to say one for each life lost - I am always saddened that each year there are more than the year before.  The sea of reddness a reminder of the military human cost of war.

Whether we choose red poppies, white poppies, both or neither, we do well to recall that still today there are young man and young women the world over risking their lives in the service of nation, cause or ideal.  And there are 'folk back home' anxiously waiting and wondering, grieving and mourning.

Today we are are using the BUGB DVD on the complex topic of Trident to centre our thoughts.  No easy answers, just a pause to think, and to remember.

Lest we forget we forget the old lie, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (Wilfred Owen)

Lest we fail to remember those who still give their lives in the service of others