Well, I’m hoping it’s going to be easier than last week’s blog. I’m talking about my Mac, so very slow last Friday. Writing my blog probably took twice as long as normal – so very frustrating, watching the Apple spinning wheel of death as my screen froze yet again. Later I did contact Apple support, but again such was the sluggishness of my Mac that we effectively ran out of time. The truth is that I’m not sure my ancient MacMini (now seven years old) can handle the la

Today is Friday, 19 November while on the other side of the English channel it is Vendredi 19 Novembre. Which tells you a lot about our respective histories. November/Novembre bears witness to our common Roman heritage – from the Latin for ‘nine’, novem. (How our 11th month is named from the number nine is another story!). However, when it comes to the days of the week, we go our separate ways. Over there, Vendredi is named after the Roman goddess Venus while over here

So we were having our coffees in the bright morning sunshine, facing the historic market hall at Covent Garden, when we realised that it would soon be 11.00 am. This was yesterday, 11 November. So daughter Jennie googled and discovered there was a war memorial just on the other side, the entrance facing St Paul’s Church. We assumed that there would be some form of ceremony. There was, but very low key. No clergy, no civic dignitaries, no military presence, no one (as I co

We don’t know her name, we don’t know what happened to her but we do know she had been seized from her home and trafficked to become a domestic slave. But remarkably this young child played a pivotal part in God blessing an entire nation. This week, three times on the one day in fact, I encountered the plight of girls forced into servitude - through a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, through a prayer diary and through my daily Bible reading. And when such coincidences happe