Saturday 9 May:

Another beautiful morning. Up early and walked into town before dawn. Didn’t have a specific route plan in mind but ended up at Bristol Bridge (via Gaol Ferry Steps/Prince Street Bridge/Queen Square). Walked home via St Nick’s market/Corn Street/Watershed/harbourside/Amphitheatre… Eerily quiet. Absolutely no one about.

Back home for poached egg+toast+coffee breakfast.

Started to draft out an email to Lee (a sort of combined response regarding the potential single-parish benefice/querying the justification of operating two church communities/expressing doubts about the viability+enthusiasm for re-ordering Saint Stephen’s/indicating that I’ve probably come to the end of leading re-ordering group - once H+C had reported back to PCC/my own spiritual wilderness)… I think it could several days!!

We had another Urban Sketching ‘virtual’ sketchmeet today – this time in Sintra, Portugal (courtesy of Marta). Stunning location and spoilt for choice in terms of things to sketch. Very enjoyable session ‘attended’ by 19 people, I think. Ironically, while it was a beautiful sunny day in the UK, it was raining in Portugal!

Read some more of my “Gift” book (I’m still struggling!) in the garden.

I also started to draft out an email to Lee about my feelings about Saint Stephen’s church building (re-ordering proposals, its future and the church community’s future)… but I wasn’t happen with it and decided to leave it for a day or so and review.

Somewhat ironically, this was followed by an email from Mary Orna (copied to Lee) – apologising if she’d expressed herself unreasonably at Thursday’s PCC meeting (I think she had somewhat – basically because she didn’t know the full background… but hey). I duly responded… reassuringly.

Watched another episode of ‘Wolf Hall’ before bed and more reading.

Image: Merchant’s Quay at dawn this morning.