Not Quite Right

I am updating this from the Gallery Room at Holy Trinity, Nailsea, my home computer having gone awol and my IT guru being a venture cook with his family this week (a good thing and more important than computers). By the way I love Gus' T-shirt slogan 'I read your email' on The IT Crowd last Friday.

I have spent a few happy hours in internet cafes getting used to the foibles of keyboards with dodgy keys. This feels a bit like that, the @ and " keys producing each other's symbols.

I am reminded of an office slogan from the early days of technology - to err is human but to really foul things up takes a computer. I may have misremembered 'foul.'

Had a lovely two days off last week followed by a quiet Saturday. Mrs Mustard (great new shoes) and I caught up with each other and enjoyed a wander round the excellent Bristol Harbourside Festival. It has to be one of the best free gigs in the country. It is very green, eco-friendly, carbon neutral, inclusive and if anyone is overweight you should chant 'Who ate all the lentils?'

Then the computer crashed. It doesn't half knock the lentil-based stuffing out of me when this happens. It crashed on the day I upgraded my phone but the new tariff with unlimited internet access doesn't come into operation until the next billing. Respect however to Sohail at the Cribbs Causeway Orange Shop for great customer service, patience and complimenting my wife on her lovely - phone. Meanwhile the home computer is no more than a stone.

So today, not a busy day in the diary, looks like being full of reading and tidying and writing long-hand. I may finish The End of the Party, Andrew Rawnsley's epic tome on New Labour. It's very well written even though one or two of the details may not be quite right. Possibly then Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography and Wolfe's little book on Epistemology.

Could squeeze in a movie perhaps or begin The Wire series 4.

My training incumbent Ian, on days of bad weather, would say, 'It's on days like this that I conclude the Lord has other things for us to do.' I think computer crashes are the same as adverse climate so I'll find other things to do, like getting my head straighter.

Thanks to those who have been praying for my knee. It has caused me far less trouble this last week than previously but, unless it gets completely healed, I intend to keep going down the specialist route. Nothing quite so annoying as taking a non-existent rattle to a mechanic though, is there?

Working in the church complex someone just brought me a coffee. That is a plus. I may stay. Just spotted last week's Collect on an old notice sheet:

Lord God, your Son left the riches of heaven and became poor for our sake: when we prosper save us from pride, when we are needy save us from despair, that we may trust in you alone; through Jesus Christ our lord. Amen.

Amen indeed.

I will eliminate despair from my enquiries.