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

Like a lot of people I know, I watch Strictly on a Saturday.

Every week Bruce Forsyth winds me up, but he did it big time tonight with his ridiculous 'ay up, ay up' attributed to Blackpool/Lancashire.

What can I say?  How to offend the North West of England and the East Midlands in one fell swoop.

Ay up - with m'duck on the end - is definitely an East Midlands expression.

I have yet to meet a Lancastrian, Mancunian or Cheshire resident who would use that expression.  Ay up?  'Eck as like!

Ah, the south-centric nature of UK-wide broadcasting.  Mutter, mutter, mutter...

This afternoon I have spent a little while starting to ponder the three M&M readings to begin to reflect on them from the perspective of Mary.  I copied out the verses that allude to her (part of the way I think by writing) and was struck by the fact that in each story she ends up by Jesus' feet...

Luke 10:39 'Mary sat at the Lord's feet....'

John 11: 32 '[Mary]... fell at his feet...'

John 12: 3 '[Mary] poured [the oil] on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair...'

I think there's a sermon possibility in there somewhere.

(and no, not one about Mary's foot fetish... that'd get me struck off) (sorry it's still Saturday and I'm still on the "silly settee")

Yesterday's consultation with the plastic surgeon went really, really well.  I liked the fact that I have really only one option for surgery if I choose (as I will) immediate reconstruction.  That made life much easier.  The advantage of a woman surgeon, too, was that she wasn't sweetly coy about the realities of my (self opined) Lara Croft physique... not enough fat/muscle to match the natural form but options for dealing with the implications of that later.

All of which reminded me of this daft joke...

A man walked into the lingerie department at M&S and shyly walked up to the woman at the till and said "I'd like to buy a bra for my wife"

"What type of bra?" the sales assistant asked.

"What type of bra...?  You mean there's more than one type?"

"Look around," she said, gesturing to the sea of bras in every colour, size, shape and fabric imaginable, "there are only four types... Catholic, Salvation Army, Presbyterian and Baptist."

More bewildered than ever the man asked the difference between the for types

The saleswoman responded, "It is all really quite simple...

"The Catholic type supports the masses,

"The Salvation Army type lifts the fallen,

"The Presbyterian type keeps them staunch and upright,

"And the Baptist type makes mountains out of molehills..."

It's Saturday, I'm sitting on the settee, I have to be silly.