60 days off work! I can't remember what it's like anymore. In recent years I have had the same number of COVID lockdowns as everyone else, followed by a 13 week sabbatical. Now I have so far had 60 days off. I am looking, not at the whole New Year thing, but at the countdown of time. In 30 days it will be my birthday. That means 3 years until I can claim my State Pension. I never thought that day would come - it hasn't yet, but 3 years is close. What I have to ask myself i

I'm not big on New Year. I find the concept strange. I read a brief thing by the evangelist J. John where he wrote that the New Year is like a blank page. I may be off work for the first month, but there are no blank pages for me. There are re-runs of the same things as in 2025. That's one of the things putting me off going back - the same old stuff. It wasn't successful stuff. It was just stuff. The idea of a Happy New Year sounds good. Tomorrow the old calendars come down

Shortly after I wrote yesterday's entry I had a letter in the post from the hospital. Well, if it had been a letter it would have been easier to interpret. It was a form. If it had been accompanied by a letter, it would have been easier to interpret. But it was a form! I am being asked to book a blood test because of " villous atrophy of hg to r/o ceol ." The translation, provided by my good friends at Google, is: " Villous atrophy on histology/hindgut, to rule out coeli

My nose has stopped running. I am trying to think what exercise I should take up to replace that! A bad joke to start the day. I am not in much pain today at the moment. There is always hope, but there is expectation as well. I expect it to to get worse as the day goes on. Yesterday evening I endured an ongoing bad headache with sore eyes to add to my other pains. My feet are still OK. My general feelings are OK at the moment. I am feeling fairly positive, until I think a

This has to be about sleep today. I used to have no problem with sleep. I could fall asleep at night and be awakened by the alarm clock. When I was an apprentice at ICI, in my final year I used to go the canteen for my daily sausage, egg and beans, then go back to our workshop and sleep for 10 minutes before the afternoon started. I have been able to stay up all night without sleep, with no after effects. I had no problem sleeping in Belfast, despite the noise. But since I

I wrote this late because I was waiting till after I had my CT Scan. That was a new one for me. It was painless until she went to take the canula out and the sticky tape was stuck to the hairs on my arm. Results will follow and this is my last option. There is nothing else they can do to discover what is wrong, so I’m hoping they find something! Anyway, the usual pains and sickness today. And still people are hoping I’m feeling better. Me too, but it’s not helping!

I took yesterday off! That is the sickest Christmas I have had. I wrote the Christmas Eve entry early in the day, but having slept very little the night before, I was exhausted all day. I also have a cold with sore throat and headache. I'm writing this at 5:40am so I'm not discussing Boxing Day till tomorrow. In the evening of Christmas Eve I went to lie on the bed to see if I could sleep - I couldn't. After an hour I was back downstairs with the family. There were 4 of us

Back to health issues today because last night was bad. I didn't get to sleep until 2:30am and then I was awake around 5am. The pains were very bad. Anyway, I was going to write about this even if I had slept, because I read the Gastroscopy Report again last night. This is the camera down the throat one! I saw something I hadn't seen on it before. It says: " Duodenal tract appeared flattened ". That concerned me because in 1998 that is what they found when they diagnosed

Today I thought I would be completely liturgically incorrect and look at the wise men who visited Jesus. They had something in common with the shepherds. They were outsiders. they were Gentiles. They were not us. But they saw his star in the East when He was born, and they set out for Israel. From? The east! That's like saying, "Up north". But we can guess somewhere like Babylon, where wise men lived. I checked Google Maps again, and from Baghdad

Today I am looking at the shepherds of Bethlehem - the first people invited to see the newborn Jesus. Shepherds are found throughout the Bible, and the image of shepherds is used in the Old Testament and the New Testament for leaders of God's people. Abraham was a city-dweller until God took him out and turned him into a nomad. Nomads were very low down the food chain in the ancient world. His grandson Jacob is a shepherd and when Joseph invites his family to go and live

I'm going to write about family again, but this it's Jesus' family I'm writing about. It's Christmas (apologies to those liturgical people who think it's not, but take a look around and notice all the Carol Services this weekend). At Christmas we like to put Jesus into an imaginary family and have him born in a fairy tale. When it comes to Easter we will be declaring that Jesus really died: the Romans knew how to kill people; the water and the blood are evidence that He was

If yesterday sounded bad I will continue today. I am a great believer in The Fall, found in Genesis 3 . I believe that everything was affected: the universe, the galaxies, the earth, and human nature. I also believe in the work of Jesus to restore all things to how they were at the beginning. And I believe we live between the times. The Holy Spirit makes a difference, but the effects of The Fall are all around us, so we get sick and we die. And there are all those relationshi

I said I would write about attachment. No one ever asks me why my website and my book are called " Accepted at last ". That is partly 2 Bible phrases and partly a hint at my problem with attachments. People who haven't been adopted don't understand the issues that come with being adopted. I have had it said to me that it is better than being raised in a children's home, better than being in an abusive family, better than.... But the people who say this don't know what they

I finished that book and I realised I'm not a sociopath, but there was a section on attachment disorder and I'll write about that tomorrow. Another event from my childhood popped into my memory that was very significant, but that's tomorrow. Today I want to talk about Advent and Christmas. Someone who was talking to me at my door yesterday said he thought I had my Christmas jumper on too early. It was the 17th December yesterday! It's 8 days until Christmas Day. I had a sup

Going back to what I said a couple of days ago about reading Theology. I also read books on Psychology. I am doing a Psychology degree at the moment, as I also said. I'm on a break until the 19th January, when I start my dissertation. But I read psychology books and I have read several on the history of madness, insanity, psychological problems, and what we unwittingly call "Mental Illness" today. I'm reading a book at the moment called " The Sociopath Next Door ". I like t

The last couple of days have been particularly painful. I sent in a request for a new prescription a couple of days ago and yesterday I had a text from the medical centre telling me that my prescription will be ready in a few days and asking me to make an appointment to go in and talk about my ongoing condition. They added a link, but there's nothing available until after Christmas and they have restricted me to seeing the doctor I saw last time. I've decided not to make the

This is an early morning entry because I realised that yesterday's entry was a bit one-sided. People seem to think I like gardening. That is probably my fault! I have often told the story about when I transferred into the Methodist ministry and I was asked at one interview what I like to do in my spare time; on my day off; to relax. I said I like to read; they asked what I read; I said Theology; they told me that's not allowed! I had to invent a hobby; interest; pastime, tha

When we were in Lockdown in 2020 I bought a camcorder and started preaching to the camera. I did a couple of talks in my Barton church and then I did the rest in my greenhouse. You can find them all if you scroll down far enough. Every weekend I would talk either once or twice - Saturday and Sunday. I used themes and talked without preparation. I went through the whole of Ecclesiastes among other things. Then I had a sabbatical - 13 weeks off. And I preached 8 times in an i

Today I started off feeling quite well. I woke up around 4:30 and got up an hour later. Then as the day went on I felt like I had been kicked severely. I’ve never been kicked, but I’m guessing this is how it feels. Just when I feel like maybe I’m getting better it goes back to the start. For all the visits to the doctor and hospital I have been given no treatment for the abdominal pain. But the prostate pain is bad as well. I have been out doing things, because I still

Forty days! How biblical! Moses was 40 days up Mount Sinai, Jesus was 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. And I’ve been off sick for 40 days. In the Bible it’s not meant to be an exact figure. 40 is just a round number, like the 40 years wandering in the wilderness that the children of Israel did. But at the moment it is 40 days exactly for me. I just had a phone conversation with my chair 🪑 of district and she told me to stay off until the end of January