A Sunday at Summer's end

Wake at five coughing, go to the toilet, drink half a glass of water and then sleep until seven thirty. The catarrh has progressed to a cough, Annie has also come down with a chest infection, she may have passed the bug onto me when we went to the cinema. Hopefully I may shake it off. Norman and I have aour full English breakfast,but unfortunately there is no time to take him out before Mass, so I leave the Garden Room door open a little, in case he needs to relieve himself whilst I am out. I manage to park directly outside Saint John's, someone was driving off just as I arrived, and I am in my usual pew a few minutes before nine. The church seems small, warm, familiar and comfortable after the cold oppressive grandeur of the Minster. Such buildings, which are undeniably beautiful, are much more about the expression of human power and ambition, than a place of contact with the ineffable. Father Roy perhaps has a similar feeling, his sermon includes a section about the dangers for the clergy of believing they hold an absolute truth on their own account, rather than a partial one to be share by everyone. Human understanding and consciousness is based upon the principles of pattern recognition, but no pattern may contain within itself a pattern more complex than itself. It follows that God is unknowable to us but that we are knowable to him/her/it. Belief in God is less of a problem when you cease to think of Him as human. It comforts me, this realisation of the limits of human knowledge and that the world cannot be reduced to mere rationality. Nietzsche and Max Weber made the same point. The realisation of the possibility of mystery in the function of the world, is like a return to Christmas before being told there is no Santa Claus. Childishly or (childlikely), reassuring. Wouldn't it be awful to live in a World without surprises, where everything was rational and orderly. After Mass, I collect Leslie, his leg is better, so we resume our visits to Caffe Nero. I order coffee and a pain au raisin, whilst Leslie finds a table. I am abstaining from cakes until my chest is clear, I had another bout of coughing in church. We swap our news and I am surprised that Leslie didn't know about the Mass at the Minster, he is an official guide for the place, but there again, he has been laid up for ten days with a bad leg. The old boy is in good form and returns Graham's book on "Currency Wars", his view like mine, was that it had some really interesting points, but lacked a good editor. I take him home, then call at Tesco's for some milk and bread and a few other bits, before driving home for Noon. Norman is wagging his tail waiting for me and he watches me unpack the shopping in the kitchen. It is cold again outside and so we are going to have a nice warming spaghetti Bolognese for dinner. I knock up a sauce in the frying pan and then transfer it to the slow cooker, before taking Normy for his walk. We make our way down to the little bridge and then turn West into "Almost Straight Wood", which is still boggy from all the rain for the first twenty feet, so I carry him until we reach drier ground. The weather is dry today but there is a gusty Westerly wind and quite a lot of cloud, rain is forecast by tea time. Norman walks slowly and I can feel the dampness in my hips, it takes us over an hour and a half to walk the two or three miles round the loop. When we get in I give him a drink and a few biscuits, then sit in the armchair in the Garden Room with the dog on my knee, stroking him while we watch the clouds roll by. After ten minutes or so, I put him in his dog bed and then do some more housework. Washing the outside door, the bathroom floor and running the vac through the house, before making a pot of tea and eating a couple of oaties. It is nearly time to put my shorts and summer gear away and get my heavy sweaters, coats and trousers out of their boxes in the garage. I browse eBay and order a pair of olive green, heavy, winter corduroy trousers. I wanted tan ones, but couldn't find any in my size, the tan Daks cords, that I have had for twenty years, finally gave out on me, the new ones are to replace them. I don't feel warm enough with jeans in the winter. We have dinner around six, Norman has his tin with Bolognaise sauce and I mine with whole meal pasta and Parmesan. After dinner I do a couple of puzzles until eight when Sarah phones to ask if I can take Alice to the orthodontists for two and then collect Louis from school at a quarter past three and take him for his swimming lessons again later. Afterwards I read a few more chapters of "The Seige", which gets better and better, and then turn in for ten.