Monday 6 Went to Ararat in Whitchurch yesterday. A large congregation in the morning with I thought a few more young people in both services than last time. They’d just installed their new computer and screens system./ They’d opted for about nine screens dotted around the auditorium rather than one screen and a projector. In fact, yesterday was their first experience and apart from one or two glitches it all went well.

All last week and perhaps even longer I’d been surprised to see people on TV wearing poppies. I’d thought it was much too early. But when I got to Cardiff, I thought – must get a poppy because everyone’s wearing them. Got one, lost it, got another. Butr when I got to church I was surprised again to see that I was in a small minority of people with the poppy. As I walked about Cardiff later on there were even fewer people wearing them. What does this say about the power of the media?

I preached in the morning about the Sunday sport issue and the Unbeataball solution. When I went to Tescos to pick up some lunch afterwards I could see what Thwaites calls the ‘Church as construct’ is up against. I often pop into Tescos when I’m teaching in Cardiff and it’s comfortably busy. Yesterday at about 12.30 you’d have sworn it was Christmas already or a bank holiday. It was hard to find a space in the car park at all. Much busier on a Sunday morning than in the week in other words.

Went to see Jonny Quick in Rookwood – my first visit there. He’s still having a lot of visits, I think.

Fri 10 Had a meeting last night about the Raglan Festival. We have a chance of a Wishbone Ash for next June. I say a Wishbone Ash because there are two – Martin Turner’s WA and Andy Powell’s WA. The former was the bass player an singer and the latter a guitarist. It was a nice evening in the Crown and we spent some time trying to work out how to continue with the Jonny Quick band until Jonny recovers enough to sing again.

Spent much of today trying to write some scripts for BBC Radio 2 ‘Pause for Thought’. I managed to write the two required and now only need to come up with something else for a Roy Noble Show Wednesday Word near the start of December and I’m laughing. I thought I’d be able to combine one of these three talks with the December Pastor’s PC but it hasn’t turned out like that but at least I’ve done the PC talk.

I’ e invited James Karran to talk about Pub Church in December at our joint fellowship meeting. He’s trying to do that in the Clwb Ivor Bach which is quite a well known venue for independent gigs so it would be good to get the chance to do something there with Frost at Midnight. New Frost at Midnight song called ‘Why should I care?’ at www.myspace.com/frostatmidnight I’ve sent it off to Adam Walton and Frank Hennessy but there’s no word on it yet.

Tue 14 Monday Night fever is an idea with a lot of potential. We had ten people along and had a spag bol at the start. The some of us went and did the discipleship course and others watched Johnny English.

Went to see Jonny Quick in Rookwood and he’s talking a lot more now and he seemed in quite good spirits. Talked to Gareth Whitcombe this evening about the visit of Blaenavon Male Voice Choir for the festival next June. Our music teacher at school swore blind that male voice choir is a tautology but of course you can have a trombone choir as well and if they were all men it would be a male trombone choir so a male voice choir is right I think.

Fri 17 Just come back from Birmingham after seeing Lisa in the Queen Elizabeth hospital with the other members of her support group. It’s quite a manageable journey – less than two hours because it’s well on this side of Birmingham

We had a mammoth listening session last night for the Raglan Festival. It was held in the very impressive studio up at the castle belonging to Geoff Downes – quite an array of silver, gold, platinum and multiplatinum etc discs in evidence. It was nice to see some original paintings by Roger Dean for albums by Yes and Asia. Anyway, there was a lot of rock music, some covers bands, some young emo types and some folkies so it was possible to pick out some outstanding contenders in each of those groups. The committee band, Rumble Strips, is going to have to perform at any Jonny Quick benefit that’s held and I suppose at the festival so it was good to meet Richard Griffiths and his wife who have just moved into the village. He’s enthusiastic about playing bass and singing when I move onto keyboards.

Sun 26 We had our first attempt with the new band line up last week. It all worked very well although it was quite hard to get the song structures without the singing going on. We think there’s going to be a benefit concert in the spring in favour of Jonny Quick and also a charity supported by Paul Danzinger. So we’ve got plenty of time to get something together. I manly played the Rhodes sound and one of the Hammonds and it was pretty good through a keyboard amp.

Had a false alarm for Lisa’s operation last night so we didn’t end up jetting up to Birmingham after the service this morning. Unbeataball continues to be a very satisfying meeting and the footballing imagery really does seem to light up Philippians for the kids. Long may that continue.

This morning I preached on ‘here O my Lord’ by Horatius Bonar and it seemed to help quite a few people. There’s quite a bit of worry and upset at the moment so I think a confident communion hymn like that was really needed.