Yesterday morning I took part in a charity bike ride, I did the shorter route (34 miles) so I wasn't away from the family for too much of Sunday ... and hence was back in Newbury by the late morning. I took a quick shower (Ok, that detail was a little bit akin to the dullest blog in the world) and went down to church to meet my family and a good friend) for our Sunday ritual of moving on from Church to the Temple of the Sacred Coffee Bean.
Thus at midday when the service normally ends I was sitting on the wall outside Church in the sunshine. As it happended though, in a move that breaks all the tennets of Anglicanism, the service didn't finish at the end of the requisite hour (as St Paul himself surely commanded) and went on in a Guiness Book of Records attemp stylee.
But the wall outside our Church is along an arterial path into town and I found myself in a series of wonderful conversations with people heading into Town (or some escaping the prolonged (un-Pauline) service.
Highlights included:
An old couple who were strolling out together and stopped for a natter with me about Spring, life and the cost of coffee.
Bumping into the Mum of a guy who used to be in my youth group who I was able to address as Granny Staunton as her son and daughter in law had just had their first child two days before (she was amazed I already knew, good old Face Book).
Talking with one of the teenagers who arrived at Church directly from a 20k D-of-E expedition walk.
A chat with a wonderful German lady from our church (and in fact married to one of the readers of this blog) who was telling me about her young son's delight with the building site in their road and his love of the big yellow digger. What made this laugh-out-loud (and I did) though was that because she always talks to him in German it's not 'Digger' that is his favourite (and oft said) word, it's the German equivalent ..... "bagger" which in German sounds more like it rhymes with Rugger :-)
I thought this anecdote into the potential embarrassing dangers of bi-lingualism was wonderful.
So, all in all a good morning AND did eventually make it to Cafe Nero.
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