Our house in Wells (mid-April)

Just back now in Reading from my weekend in Wells. Alex was finishing up his week's holiday there and Adrian was enjoying his first week back from Canada and resting up his injured knee. Saturday was quiet: shopping in Tescos in the morning and then I reconstructed our filing system while everyone else moved the hinges on the fridge freezer so that the doors open the other way (don't ask - it makes perfect sense).

BTW, wasn't the first episode of ITV's remake of The Prisoner awful?

Alex and Adrian did the clever stuff with the hinges

Clare took a pose - in her own words - as a Greek Goddess

Today I accompanied Clare to Mass at 9 a.m. where we heard an apologia from the priest as regards the recent sins within the Catholic Church. Basically, he told us, it's a matter of a few bad apples. What do you expect in a congregation of 200 million?

His example of a bad apple was this guy (Marcial Maciel Degollado) and all we were told was that he had a habit of getting women pregnant, funding them by embezzling church funds and buying-off curious members of the Curia with brown envelopes stuffed with cash. No mention of his charming ways with the "apostolic schoolboys".

No institutional blame for the Catholic Church or Pope either. Instead the priest railed against attacks on the church from 'our enemies' (Jews, atheists, newspapers, the BBC ... you get the picture). So Clare got an even more irate rant than usual fom me at our post-Mass visit to the coffee shop.

Our back garden

Still, the back garden looks nice, doesn't it in the Spring sunshine (complete with the remains of last night's chicken).

Our front garden

The front garden is a riot of flowers.

Our sun-trap at the front door

And Shadow is in cat heaven in this front-door suntrap.

This afternoon we strolled in the woods near Priddy and then relaxed in the sunshine at The New Inn there. I still can't get over how beautiful the whole area is.