In their wisdom the powers-that-be down at Grosvenor Crescent have decided that the Scottish Episcopal Church needs car stickers. Most of the cars driving around these parts have some sort of sticker on them.

Give us car stickers or give us death!

When I first moved to Penicuik I figured that there was a very popular Scottish Liberal Democrat named Arnold Clark running for election. Turns out that this is only the car retailer after all and people seem willing to advertise their car salesman without demanding a discount which seems very un-Scottish.

Anyway - we in the SEC now have a bumper sticker and it's more or less what appears at the top of the page. I couldn't find an online copy of the original anywhere so I threw this together as a reasonable facsimile.

It's not a sterling demonstration of Evangelical mojo. No strong language here, that's for sure. Still, it's all true. If you show up we will, in fact, welcome you, your children, your weekly envelope, your helpfulness in helping to paint the church and, in a moment of weakness or stupidity, your willingness to serve as a lay representative to Diocesan Synod.

Is it the best we can do? How about this?

Or even these

last one - I promise

---drumroll---

Back in the saddle!

It's almost palpable.

The silence, I mean. It's almost palpable.

Caireen and I are just back from two weeks' honemoon in Cuba.

Before that we'd taken her 11 year old son and my 22 year old daughter to Eurodisney for a couple of days.

Before that was our wedding.

The days prior to the wedding were spent welcoming family members from the four corners of the world.

Before that was the whole process of moving Caireen and Stewart from their house in West Linton into the Rectory at Penicuik - boxes, skips and endless trips ferrying things back and forth.

Easter was in there too and Holy Week and the tail end of Lent!

I don't think there have been many spare moments in the last six weeks.

Until this morning. Caireen hopped on a bus and went to work. I took Stewart to school and then went to get the holiday photos put on a CD. I came home and then I plugged in the kettle and sat down.

Silence! The first multi-hour lonely silence (and I think I'm not exaggerating) in 6 weeks! There are plenty of calls to make and plans to hatch and meetings to organize for the next few days but a few hours of lonely quiet have been frankly marvellous!

An amazing collection of Canadians, Scots and Israelis. Not all those wearing kilts are Israelis. But all the Israeli men are wearing kilts.


Cuba was fab! It's strange coming back from a failed Communist state to one run by failed Communists!

We spent a few days in Havana in the old part of town hauling our luggage up four flights of stairs to a tremendous balcony with a great view. We'd arranged to rent a not terribly healthy Skoda for seven days, drove down to the Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron) for a couple of days and then pretty well the half the length of the island to a beach north of Holguin. We drove north of Holguin and about three hours along the worst road I've ever seen until we came to a little fishing village. We were trying to make it to a beach recommended by my sister. In this case, however, the engine light was on on the the rented Skoda so we stayed here and collected sea shells.


There are a zillion pics which aren't edited yet. Here's one.