Exciting Day

An exciting day today.  I met with the vicar of the parish where I am hoping to do a few weeks on placement to help me with my theological reflection module and to help me further discern where God is calling me in my ministry. A very successful meeting and we made some arrangements and agreed dates when this could begin.  This will be fully announced to my present benefice at the end of the week.  Following that meeting I return home where I worked on a couple of cases until it was time for me to drive to Winchester to pick up Thom and drive us to Southampton to watch the Saints take on Arsenal.  Yet more rain tonight.  The traffic was extremely heavy going into Southampton and I decided that instead of following all the traffic along The Avenue, I would take the road into Portswood and enter the city that way.  The traffic wasn't much better either.  Eventually we arrived at our old car park in college Street where I was horrified to find that Southampton City Council are now charging for parking after 6 p.m. and I had to fork out £3 to park the car tonight.  As it was so cold and wet, and there were two hours to go before kick-off, I suggested to Thom that we walk the six hundred yards or so to Chiquito's for some warm Mexican food - which we did.  We found a number of other Saints' supporters in there.  We ordered two special burgers - chicken and pulled pork for Thom and chicken and chorizo for me.  Unfortunately, Thom's arrived with cheese which he had to scrape off - but it did give me an opportunity to try some of his. We were in the restaurant for about an hour and then walked to the ground.  The rain was light by then and we didn't get too wet - although it was very cold.  We enjoyed an excellent game of football from two great footballing sides.  The final score was 2-2 although Saints did score first and were trailing 1-2 for a short time; Southampton certainly played well and Wenger commented that he didn't think that Arsenal dropped two points - he acknowledged that Southampton are a good side.  With Liverpool beating Everton 4-0, there is little or no difference in the table tonight.  Southampton remain marooned between the top eight and the bottom eleven in ninth place - several points separating the upper and lower teams.