I'm writing this from the Windmill Farm Conference Centre in Clanfield, Oxfordshire. I'm on a five day residential course laid on by the Diocese of London for its new incumbents (or, in my case, other priests leading churches).
I'm not bad at making time to get away and gain some perspective. But already, on just the first day, I've gained new insights and done some fresh thinking about my work.
On the way up I spent an hour or so in Blackwells in Oxford, one of my favourite places on the planet. Inevitably I bought rather more than I'd planned: Daniel Dennett's ‘Breaking the Spell’; the original French text of Irène Némirovsky's ‘Suite française’; ‘The End of Memory’ by Miroslav Volf; ‘The Conflict of Interpretations’ by Paul Ricoeur; and ‘Enlightenment Contested’ by Jonathan I. Israel.
I'd already brought with me Graham Swift's latest novel, ‘Tomorrow’, Carys's present for our 21st wedding anniversary last Thursday. And now I'm here, I've started dipping into - and just ordered online - ‘The Vicar's Guide: Life and Ministry in the parish’, edited by David Ison.
So I'm not going to be short of reading material over the coming months.
It's getting late and I should really be in bed. But this time is a luxury: the chance late at night to be quiet, have time for reflection in solitude. As I write this I'm listening to ‘Blue in Green’ from Miles Davis's ‘Kind of Blue’ album and sipping Balvanie single malt whiskey. So I want to savour the moment.
Just discovered a website which looks great but which I won't be able to understand for some time: Cicero. I plan fairly soon to sign up for a German course starting in the autumn at the Goethe Institute. I've felt much more confident over the last few weeks with my French, which makes me feel more secure in making a start with German.
This weekend has been a remarkably rich and memorable one for me. On Friday afternoon Carys and I went to see the ‘Hogarth’ exhibition at Tate Britain, then on to our local restaurant, ‘Chez Patrick’ to celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary (which was actually on Thursday, but we had our Annual Parochial Church Meeting on Thursday evening).
Yesterday was one of those remarkable days which remind me what a gift it is to be a parish priest. Late morning I had a meeting with Sunday School leaders in which for the first time I began to get a vision of what St Philip's could aspire to provide for its children. Which is to enable them, just as much as other members of the church, to discover their own distinctive spiritual path: to recognise where God is in their lives.
Later I visited Billie Green, a splendid woman from St Mary Abbots, on her 100th birthday. It was the first time I'd seen one of the famous telegrams from the Queen.
Later I drafted a letter of support for a family of Iranian asylum seekers who belong to St Philip's and who are trying to organise their daughter's education.
In the evening Carys and I were taken out to dinner by the Chairman of one of the world's largest banks and his wife. Which meant I still had to finish preparing for St Philip's Patronal Festival today; and preparing my sermon for this morning at St Mary Abbots.
Today, the sermon at St Mary Abbots seemed to go down well, as did the lunch we shared at St Philip's following the Patronal Festival. Later in the afternoon we completely reorganised the seating at St Philip's for next week's all-age service with communion and baptism: yet another new configuration, designed to give equal prominence to font and altar. And then I preached again at St Mary Abbots: a rather demanding sermon intellectually. But it's good to stretch them sometimes. A rich few days, full of memories.
I've just discovered Le Monde's podcast site. Some good election material here. Today of course I made sure I got a copy of Le Monde to read their election coverage. Today also my copy of Le Nouvel Observateur turned up - published, of course, before the elections. So I can smile when I read an article explaining how Le Pen is stronger than ever.
I've been watching - on TV5 - the results of yesterday's first round of the French Presidential elections. The results from French living abroad have been analysed by someone from Vivre à l'etranger, which has sent me towards their website.
Carys and I have been trying to get rather better organised on our financial planning. A few months ago we each installed the same financial software package and then I created some 'shared' data files sitting on my laptop, which Carys could access over our wireless internet connection. Fine until my laptop was turned off and Carys wanted to add some more information.
So now I'm wondering about keeping the information online and I think Microsoft Money allows us to do this. So here begins my exploration of Microsoft Money. The website is here.
An interesting article on the BBC's website for its technology programme Click, talks about the growing number of websites offering services which till now have sat on individual computers.
For me, the most promising site mentioned is Remember the Milk, a task management tool. But it's also time I explored Google Docs & Spreadsheets. And here's another interesting looking set of tools: Web Office.
At the age of 45, Carys has just discovered she has chickenpox. I realise I know very little about it, though I remember having it as a child: it was a rather strange period in my family's life when we decamped to East Anglia for a few months.
My silence for the past few weeks is because Holy Week - the week before Easter - was so very busy. My resolution for next year is that our Holy Week services are planned and fully prepared by the end of this October. November is when I take my annual leave. December is a write-off so far as doing anything unrelated to Christmas. January is often spent recovering from Christmas. And next year, Lent starts almost as soon as February begins. So October it is.
What's with me right now is the fallout from our week away after Easter in the French village of Oinville-sur-Montcient. On the journey home yesterday, we got stuck on a 7 mile stretch of the M20 for five and a half hours. This wasn't due to some accident or unforeseen event, but the entirely predictable result of engineering work at Junction 10 of the motorway. Why weren't we told beforehand?
I've just phoned the Highways Agency, who unsurprisingly have told me they've had a rather large number of calls today about this. It's completely understandable that the work has to happen. The issue is why there weren't adequate warnings about it, especially when so many of us were sitting in our cars under the Channel for half an hour, hardly a difficult audience to reach with a message.
A report published by TEAR Fund on churchgoing in the UK. There's a copy here on the BBC News website.