Gripping finale

We sat together in the congregation again at St Catherine's Parish Eucharist today. It's quite a relief not to be officiating or preaching at the moment, as mornings are when I have most discomfort and pain from my 'thorn in the flesh'. Emma presided and we had a visiting priest called Mary to preach who'd officiated here yesterday at the wedding of two parishioners one of whom she'd known since childhood. It was nice to sing the 'Salisbury' setting again, as this was what we sang at the St John's Sunday Eucharist in Montreux. Happy memories.

After lunch, I revived and walked down to Blackweir bridge for the first time since returning. It was sunny, bright and breezy. The river was a little swollen due to last week's rain, and I got photos of a pair of cormorants drying their wings. They like to hang around here when the solitary heron isn't about. A fellow birdwater stopped to chat and told me about a pair of dippers nesting in the opening of the salmon ladder the other side of the river. I must look up this species in order to have a chance of recognising them next time.

Like eleven million others, we watched the finale of 'Bodyguard' on BBC One. The tension in the last twenty minutes really made me hold my breath, waiting for the catastrophe which never came. The final unravelling of the plot in the confession made by suicide bomber, master bomb maker and electronic engineer cum artificer Nadiya, who failed to complete her mission in episode one, was a real sinister surprise. It also stretched credibility somewhat, taken at a pace, overshadowing detail of the wider criminal political conspiracy which overlapped with it. We still don't know how the bomb which killed the Home Secretary was planted under the stage or whether the senior Met Commander was in on the plot. Still, it was worth a watch from start to finish, and demonstrated that an old style cliffhanger of a serial format is still competitive in the age of bulk episode downloads on catch up. 

Best of all, a brief trailer for the fifth series of 'Line of Duty', to be rolled out in the New Year. This too had that 'unmissable' quality for a TV programme. Funny how police and political corruption are themes which play out often in modern drama - as they do in real life, in fact.