Partygate reported

I went to the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. There were nine of us present. Mother Frances told us about the life of St Bede and his importance to people in the North East of England. She showed us pictures of pages in the Lindisfarne Gospels, which date from Bede's time, and over coffee afterwards revealed that her PhD study had been on these Gospel books.

When I got back I prepared the text for next week's Morning Prayer, ready for recording, and then cooked lunch. After eating I wrote a reflection on the Gerasene demoniac, remembering as I wrote, the trip Clare and I made to Jerash with Frank Dall back in 1998. 

Then I went and collected this week's grocery order from Beanfreaks, and made a separate trip to buy our weekly food bank donation and leave it at St John's. Jobs done, I went for a walk in the park listening to the five o'clock news on my phone. Finally the Sue Gray report investigating goings on in the offices at 10 Downing Street has been released today, strongly criticising the behaviour of politicians and government staff for ignoring lockdown rules. 

Boris Johnson ate humble pie before Parliament again, but shows no sign of resigning. It remains to be seen if the Tory party decide whether or not to believe that he misled Parliament and remove him. A cross party standards committee is also considering the same issue, and if it decided against him and the Tories didn't, that could further damage their prospects of re-election.

This evening, I watched 'The Repair Shop' again, and then there was a lovely documentary on BBC Four about a hermit who lives beside Loch Treig in highland Scotland. Perhaps he's the last of his kind in Britain. He's lived completely off grid for nearly forty years, foraging, fishing and catching rabbits for food. He makes a day's walk into Fort William for other supplies as there's no road to the lake for anything to be delivered. He keeps a detailed journal of every aspect of his life, having got into the habit of writing as a child, and corresponds with people he's met throughout his life and earlier travels. He also takes beautiful landscape and nature photos using a vintage Zenith SLR. 

He was persuaded to have a satellite linked alarm for emergencies, and when he had a stroke he had to be helicoptered to hospital. Since recovering he returned to his log cabin and now checks in weekly, but wonder if he will be able to live out the rest of his days in the wilderness he loves. He's even been visited by a priest whom he requested to come and bless the piece of ground where he wants to be laid to rest. From what he said about his early life, I reckon he's the same age as us.  An amazing story.