This photo pretty much encapsulates how I spent yesterday, my 'day off' or 'rest day', the day in the week when I do not have to be available to anyone, but can spend it in idleness, industry or anything in between!

Yesterday was mostly devoted to a sewing project that will find its way to an event in May.  As you can see, I had plenty of feline assistance from both Sophie (picutred) and Sasha.

I am trying to be more intentional about my free time - it's something that I might eventually get to grips with if I live to be 100!

It was a grand day off - and I feel the benefit today as I catch up on a gazillion emails!!

For around a year now, I've been part of a group of women ministers working on an anthology of worship material.  As of yesterday, it's gone off to the printer, and will go on sale in May.  To say we are excited is an understatement - a 300 page book of original material is a wonderful gift to the churches (well I reckon it is anyway!) and I'm proud and privileged to have been part of it.

Until it's published, some of the details are being kept under wraps, but I can tell you that with more than thirty contributors, all women in Baptist ministry in the UK, it's going to be something very special indeed.

In the words of my favourite podcast, 'well hello, faithful listener...' (Ok, so it's the only podcast I listen to regularly, and you are a reader, but hey...)

It has been pretty full on since I returned from my holiday, all of it in a good way, and beginning with three services (including a funeral) over the course of the weekend.  It was great to be back at 'my' church after three Sundays away.

Since then it's all manner of meetings (three each day, Tuesday and Wednesday) with all sorts of people, and all of them good stuff, mostly energising, and largely exciting.  But tiring! yesterday I woke up convinced it was Friday, thought, no it's Thursday - and only when I checked my diary realised it was Wednesday!  Must be getting old.

Two things in the diary today and two tomorrow, so it's slowing down a bit!

Looking forward to a bit of normality - and also excited to see how the Lent Craft Group which starts this evening will work out!

Just because Sasha's pose and expression make me smile!

They don't sit together on my lap for long, but when they do, it's very special.

Sometime in the coming week it will be exactly a decade since I moved into the manse after almost five months in temporary accommodation.  Unusually, I don't have a record of the exact day, but I have a vague sense that it was probably 22nd or 23rd, so today's 'near enough for colliery work' as the saying used to go.

I recently discovered that some of my neighbours are leaving to move to the south coast, and that I am now about the fourth longest served resident in this close.  That in itself is quite strange and quite sobering.

So much has happened in those ten years, so many people have come through my door, slept in my spare room, eaten at my kitchen table, watched my TV and much, much more.  I recently reflected that sometimes I am quite amazed that my house guests seem so very much at home when they stay here - and that's a good thing.

Last weekend I had a missionary stay one night and a placement student and her family the next... it is, as the missionary said, 'a busy manse'.

I love my home very much.  I still delight in the views across the city and in the 'magic' hills that appear or disappear according to the weather.  I love that peeople feel relaxed when they come here and I love that when I have the place to myself it is cosy and secure. I love that the kitties are able to wander safely amost anywhere, and that my neighbours can't count to 'one cat' any better than I can!

Ten years on, I can look back with much happiness and contentment, that we chose a good manse, and that it has been - and continues to be - a well-used manse.