Heavenly Skies

Another really cold and frosty start today - more ice scraping from the car windows.  It really is bitterly cold at the moment.  Another really fantastic sunrise - again I feel it necessary to publish the photo I took of it here.  Much more spectacular than yesterday's so it deserves to be published.  Not a particularly interesting day today - one spent at Sarum College putting together my portfolio for my theological reflection module.  I had a two hour break and went for a coffee and a chat with Sophie in the Cathedral's refectory.  Head back down to studying in the afternoon until around 6 p.m.  My lovely Accurist watch stopped a couple of days ago and I thought that the battery had stopped - a simple job to get it replaced.  I left it with the watch repairer in New Canal whilst I went to the bank to deposit another £100 (actually £96.50) of Calendar money.  When I returned he gave me the bad news that the mechanism which makes the hands move round was not working and that a repair could be as much as £120 - better to buy a new watch.  As it was a present from Sara I am rather sorry to let it go.  The original watch was stolen when we were on holiday in Greece and Sara replaced it for a birthday present in September 2000 when we holidayed in a 5-Star hotel in the Lake District (a replacement for our booked holiday to China).  We had planned to go to China that Autumn - trips to Beijing, Shanghai and Xian and had planned to walk the Great Wall of China.  In the end we had to settle for Hadrian's Wall as Sara was, by Autumn, heavily pregnant with Mary and a flight to China was simply not possible.  It really is amazing how the loss of a watch can invoke so many memories!   I remember promising Sara in our early days together that we would, one day, hold hands together at the Temple of Heaven at Beijing (where Heaven and Earth were believed to meet in Imperial Chinese Days and where the Emperor would intercede with Heaven for his people).  That promise I still intend to keep!