Worshipped at the shrine of St Esco this morning, along with most of Southampton's population. Man, if you could judge the success of a God by the numbers pulled along on a Sunday morning you would put you faith in Lord Tesco of Cheshunt. Good thing we can't judge God's success - God seems to have different ideas of what that is. Read a little bit in a book yesterday about Father Damien, who went to live on a leper coolony in Hawaii, and ended up dying of leprosy. But the thing was, he became one of them - he really lived like Jesus did - sharing in the pain (and the joy?) of life as a leper. I imagine Father D ticked the success box on God's assessment criteria.

Watched Braveheart last night - last watched it in 1997, in Sheffield with our youth group when we lived at Abbeydale Road, and we became more and more concerned that we were letting under 15s watch such gore. We had been to see it at the cinema, which has to be done for that film - an epic big screen watch. However, last night was on our TV which looks smaller and smaller as those around us get bigger and bigger ones! It's like one of those illusion tricks - it is still the same size, honest.

Anyhow, one thing I like about Braveheart, apart from Mel Gibson's fantastic Scottish accent and lion's mane hair cut, is that only two women who feature in the film (rest of it is all men, but then its all fighting and galloping around the countryside and in those days women didn't do that, so fair enough). Normally that would annoy me, but these two are enough described and developed to make me like them a lot - and they are essential to the plot and not just there to look good. I can't help but want to be part of the band of brothers, the crazy fighters who chase around with him, seem to be able to jog to York and back with barely a Ginsters sausage roll to sustain the lot of them. Having a leader who you want to follow - for whom you would risk everything for the greater gain - all that stuff of romance and freedom fighting - well, it seems attractive to me. Mind you, so does sitting in the garden drinking a raspberry smoothie, and you don't get the weather to do that much in the Glens, even if you have a garden that has not been taken over by the English.

My garden, though small and full of children's paraphernalia, gets the sun all day long, so we breakfasted there this morning. Bliss!