A couple of options for people who'd like something to connect with for Holy Week...

The Passion Experience is an email/text journey through Holy Week in 'real time' (so turn your phone off or at least to silent during Sunday morning's services!).  Last year we were one of the pilot churches, this year it has gone 'global' with BUGB HMF funding it.  You have to register but it's free and you don't get bothered by endless emails after its over.

Journeying Through Easter is a Northumbria Community podcast series for Holy Week and can be accessed via the BUGB website.

Ideally, of course, we'd all get along to some real live services, but for busy people, people who have to work, people who have lots on their plates, these are valuable alternatives.  For those who can get along, they are useful extras.

One for all who have had enough before it begins, and especially the republicans among my readers... here

Round 3 with Rowan Williams tidying the Abbey is just the best!  It is so bad it's good.

Yeah!  Finally off the shore and onto the first stepping stone.

Kind of amusing as this was called the 'pre-verification scan'.  Nice tautology in the name methinks.

Very pleasant staff and not too long a wait.  I was glad to see that they take safety seriously and check who you are umpteen times on your way to the nuking chamber.  The last stage was a photo - face only - so that when I go back they can double check I am me and not someone pretending to be me, or someone who just happens to have the same name and DOB as me.  I guess with some names and ages it wouldn't be so impossible for there to be two of them.  Quite why anyone would choose to be irradiated like this is beyond me but hey...

So, more felt tip pen marks over the tattoos and in a few other places and no beauty products, not even deodorant, for five weeks... just as well this isn't a scented blog!  Baby soap at the ready along with with gentle clothing for when the skin gets sore, and lots of bottled water.

Tomorrow then, the first real zaps - three lots of about a minute each - and I leave the shore behind and head towards open water.

So, someone has shifted another stepping stone - only by an hour this time, but it still annoys me that yet again the notice was minimal.  I am determined not to shoot the messengers, but I am practising my best scowl for the consultants.

Maybe my myopia is such that I am not so good at distinguishing basking turtles from stepping stones?  Just as I approach they sense I'm coming and swim away.

I'll just have to learn to walk on water...!  (Adrian Plass offers views on how that was/is done in A Year at St Yoricks)

A lovely weekend, glorious weather, great company, tasty food... altogether good fun.  Just a shame my visitors took the sun back south with them!  At least the rain means the reservoirs stay full.

Our guest preacher once again delivered.  In that way that defied explanation or comprehension, she had chosen to preach on Psalm 23 and Romans 8, and the love of God from which nothing can separate us, not even death or disaster, in a week when a loved friend of the church had died suddenly.  She will be a real blessing to the church with the wisdom to call her.

I am now, slowly, starting to crank myself back into gear for my return to work at Easter.  My spare room is full of props for Easter Sunday worship (the arrival of Home Bargains at the nearby retail park means a new source of ideal tat!  Am I the only minister who mourns the passing of Woollies in this respect?).  I am really, really looking forward to being back 'where I belong' and what better day to be there than Resurrection Day?

I woke up this morning realising that I had not come up with service titles for the first month back, indeed I had not even given more than the most cursory thought to it.  Fortunately a few ideas gelled and I now have a set of suitably vague titles!!  Will we be the only city church marking Rogation Sunday I wonder?!

Today is, for the second week of asking, my 'last day of freedom' before radiotherapy.  If they don't start it this week, or if they mess me about, they will see that I can get cross.  Last week in conversation with a very old friend, who has once or twice seen me angry, I said that I had been practising my scowls... something which will evidently scare anyone!  Stepping stones, here I come.