Yesterday one of my dinner guests gave me a helpful hint for Holly grooming... and it works!

Holly tolerates being brushed but hates being combed.  My guest asked if I had tried the 'marigold method'... put on a pair of washing up gloves and stroke the cat normally.  It works!  The slight abrasion of the gloves coupled with static electric effects seem to successfully drag out the dead/loose fur and leave Holly looking even more lovely.  To have her purring as she's groomed is a definite bonus!

And here's another tip I was given by a vet for my last cat more than a decade ago... to get them to take pills.  Crush the pill, mix it with some squeezy cheese spread and smear it on the cat's paw or mouth area... it will then lick it off and consume the pill with minimal stress to cat or owner.

Simples, as the meerkat would express it.

Another couple of days of professional coffee drinking ahead... it probably sounds idyllic, but it is often emotionally/mentally quite demanding.  Privilege and responsibility are constant companions, along with the fear that my best endeavours are never quite good enough... that and a whole heap of Advent stuff to start preparing and a mountain of administrative bits and bobs to work my way through.

Hey ho.  Maybe I'll make some more tea before I go any further!!

Since commenting is its usual unpredictable self on this blog platform, and isn't letting me comment at the moment, here are my own recent replies to comments!

Re: Music Books

Tim, thank you, that's a kind offer; I have bought the copy Pam spotted on Ebay, so just waiting for it to arrive.  I still haven't located a Carol Praise music book, despite it having been published twice over.

Re: Frankincense

Radical and Stewart, thanks for the suggestions.  I know a lot of the posters we have at church come from the Paulist bookshop (as do our advent candles usually) - series I really like that used to be sold in St Denys Anglican bookshop & suppliers in Manchester, which doubled as our college bookshop.

Apologies to anyone else whose comments have vanished into cyberspace... I'm too stingy to move to a pay-to-blog platform (I've been on here so long I still have the free tariff) plus not all platforms would allow me to import 6 years worth of posts and I wouldn't want to lose them (even though Blogspirit don't seem ever to remove 'dead' blogs).

Just been doing some online research for an upcoming service broadly titled 'Frankincense' and, on the basis that a couplple of years ago I threw away the tiny box of it I had and had never used, looking to buy some.

In the end I ordered a small Tibetan incense burner which includes a little pack of frankincense and some indoor charcoal (way easier than trying to find a thurible secondhand or making one out of baked bean tin) as well as some scented cones.  I did look at packs of frankincense ranging from 50g to 5kg - but studying the images and imaginging trying to explain to the Glasgow constabulary if the package split open before it reached me, I decided not.  I think a trip to the local RC suppliers may be called for...

(I have myrrh, which I'm offering to lend to my colleague who's doing that week... we reckon the mutual colleague who landed gold ought to provide his own...)

On Sunday I mislaid/lost one of my mobile phones.  That sounds uber posey, to have two phones that is, not to lose/mislay one.  As it happens both are very inexpensive pay-as-you-go, one of which I keep for church use and one of which is for family/friends.  It was the latter I could not find.  I had been using it at the start of the service on Sunday to discretely keep a check on the time ahead of the 2 minute silence, so it was in 'silent' mode; phoning it to find out where it was wouldn't help!   After I got home from church I realised I did not have it, and have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time searching for it in church, at home and in my car.  I even asked in the coffee shop in case it had been handed in there.

So, this morining I came to church thinking I'd have one last look before giving it up as lost.  The most likely place for it to be was on my desk (which I'd already searched twice) so I decided there was nothing for it but to remove everything from the desk (it's VERY cluttered) to see if it was, afterall, hidden there.  The first thing I picked up was a box of tissues... which felt unusally heavy... and lo, hidden in the folds of paper was one mobile phone.

Thinking back, I would have carried the box of tissue back to the vestry along with the phone, my Bible and a whole heap of other stuff.  Clearly the phone had slipped into the box an dout of my consciousness.

Anyway, y'know that story about the women who lost the coin ... I kind of know how she felt.  If you're passing and want a celebratory coffee do drop in!  I managed to avoid slipping into 'Our Lady of the Parking Place' type prayers before I found it, but I sure as anything said a big thank you one afterwards.