Monday 3rd October

I am acknowledging - and would like it to be known - that I have 'memory issues'.   Tim called yesterday morning to give me a lift to church and I'd forgotten it was Sunday.  In future I will remind myself of the day of the week when I wake up.   In the meantime I am reassuring myself that Alzheimers  (sp?) isn't forgetting where the car keys are, it is forgetting what they are for.

I knew I lived in a posh neighbourhood here, but its 'poshness' was just brought home to me yesterday.  In Shawnee I crocheted afghans for the Senior Centre, Kate would raffle them and they were really appreciated, not so much for the little bit of money they raised but the seniors themselves would be really pleased to have one.    The church yesterday was advertising its Christmas Fair and I ventured to ask if they would like an afghan to raffle.   SHOCK! HORROR! "we don't do raffles" I was told rather frostily.  Feeling suitably squashed I wondered how much the postage would be if I sent them to Kate.  

I was then asked if I'd like to do anything at the Christmas Fair, but in my sour, childish way, I pretended not to hear.   If I'd been pushed - or in different circumstances - I might have mentioned that I am innumerate and therefore can't do anything tricky that involves counting out change.   When I was 14 I broke my ankle in the school playground, and it was made worse by the fact that the school made me walk to the hospital on it and the bone splintered, needing surgery.     In this day and age parents would pull out all the stops to make sure their child didn't get left behind academically, but mine left me to sit on the sofa until it mended, which was months.

When I got a degree in theology in my late middle age I felt, for the first time, that I was 'educated'.

Looking at the clergy in said church yesterday I registered the fact that they were all wearing surplices and stole - as is the practice with evangelical clergy - but none of them were wearing their academic hoods over them.   I wondered if it was just this church, or has the wearing of them been abolished in the Church of England, because I didn't see the going of them?

Well, it is a nice bright day and I am off to Oxford for a few things I need.