Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Half Term

.
Clare and I had fair mild weather for a good long weekend away in a Suffolk village with Clare's brother and his wife. It was my last Sunday off for the year, spent catching up on sleep and news of children and grandchildren, dining out, walking at Aldeburgh, Woodbridge, and in ancient forest, not far from Sutton Hoo whose visitor centre was disappointingly closed. Last week was half-term over there for them, and the low season hibernation had just started. The same seemed true for some of the country pubs as well, in an area receiving many more visitors in summer. The variety of autumnal colours has been quite spectacular this year, with more than usual shades of fading green to add to the yellows reds and bronzes we're used to.

We avoided the M25 / M4 rat-race coming home, travelling on less frantic roads at a more leisurely pace, via Cambridge and the Cotswolds, with the home run from Gloucester down the A48 along Severn estuary to Chepstow - a refreshing change. Not long after we arrived, Ian dropped in to get a signature for his passport, and deliver a cutting from the Saturday edition of the Western Mail. Following last Thursday's meeting with Martin Shipton there a whole page length single column article in Saturday's edition, which I think did justice to what we wanted to put across. None of the photographs which were taken appeared, and of course we'd have liked it to have seen the article under a bigger headline, but that's a sub-editor's decision to make, not a journalist's.

There were no fewer than four phone messages on the answering machine from the BBC asking me to come and be interviewed about the Spiritual Capital project on Good Morning Wales, first thing on Monday morning. Well, I wasn't there to respond, and I can't say I'm sorry, because normally, after a full Sunday, I'm at my worst, if I'm conscious at seven o'clock on Mondays, which is when the Beeb would have sent a taxi to collect me. A missed opportunity unfortunately, but I guess if they're interested, they'll come back later in the week/month - the project isn't going to go away suddenly, and just might get more interesting as time goes on.

Well, at least for tonight, I feel laid back about it all.


No comments: