I can hardly believe that my sabbatical has now begun -- even though I still have to visit two churchwardens and two funeral directors before I finally depart on my travels.
At lunchtime I am going to visit my friend who lives in the Wye Valley as a first port of call -- it was he who built my model railway, and he is going to do some running repairs on two of the locomotives. He lives in a beautiful part of the world and I feel it quite appropriate to spend the first 24 hours of my sabbatical with him in order to unwind and get away from the busy parish.
Whilst I do feel very stressed, I know that I shall soon unwind and the underlying excitement of it all will take over.
On Sunday I travel to Belfast, having picked up the friend who is accompanying me on this trip, en route to Stranraer. So far I have arranged a tour of all the trouble spots in Belfast and Londonderry, and arranged meetings with a variety of people including some former para military people. Over the next 24 hours I want to prepare what questions I want to ask all these interesting people.
All that remains for me to do now is to change my answer machine so that everyone who rings here on church matters can be referred to Caroline. Personal messages can still be left on my answer machine.
Sue, who is not coming with me to Belfast, is busily making sure I get off on time -- not so that I can keep up with my schedule, but so that she can get some peace.
It is a very strange feeling not to have day to day parish involvement for the next 12 weeks, but it will be very good having so many different things to do, and getting so my thoughts down on paper, unlike two years ago at this time when I had 12 weeks off work through my illness, when I didn't feel like doing anything.
I'll add more later.
No comments:
Post a Comment