DUM — da-da-da — DUM — da-da-da — DUM — da-da-da It was during our First Form music lesson with our teacher Edgar Brown that I first heard Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, played on the school’s only gramophone. I was captivated. However, in those far-off days, there was no easy way of listening to Ravel’s masterpiece. We didn’t have a record player and, even if we had, there was no way I could afford to buy the LP. This meant week after week of searching through the Radio Times’

Sadly, my days of running over ploughed fields are over. That’s the advice of my physiotherapist. This morning, as soon as I finish this blog, I’m off to see my long-suffering therapist once again. This time it’s a strained calf — I think my first injury to this particular muscle group. Over recent years, however, this has become a familiar routine. I do the exercises he prescribes, then resume running, slowly at first and over short distances. Gradually, I build things u

Clearly, I am a reunion fanatic! Today, no fewer than two. First, a reunion lunch for those who attended St Nicholas’ CofE Primary School and then, by sheer coincidence, our annual dinner at the Royal Hotel for those in my form at Waterloo Grammar School, 1960–1967. But that’s just the beginning. Next month there’s a reunion for those of us who studied Economics at my Cambridge college, Catz, from 1967 to 1970. All five of us, meeting in some distinguished location in London.

It’s remarkable how God can work through those times in our lives when we feel stuck, hemmed in by life. So here we are in central London to attend the launch of our daughter’s book. Actually, books—there are no fewer than five in Sharon’s Sowing Seeds series, published by SPCK. As her American publisher puts it: “Sowing Seeds aims to encourage participation, discipleship and leadership from children’s earliest years, using storytelling, singing, color, repetition, art and lo