New Saints Shirt has arrived (Liverpool FC?)

Having missed being given Communion by Andrew yesterday (he had given it on the opposite of the cathedral to where I had been and I had missed the service at Farley through being at the cricket in Southampton) I decided to go to the 8 a.m. Early morning Eucharist at St. John's where Andrew was to celebrate the Eucahrist.  I therefore got up early and went along the road to St. John's to find that Nils was taking the service and had given Andrew the morning off after all yesterday's excitement and emotion.  Sara took my place as sidesman at All Saints and I spent the morning working on the service I am to take this evening at Whiteparish. Tom and I ventured into Southampton this morning to buy our new Southampton Premier League shirts.  We parked the car in Brighton Road and walked along The Avenue and London Road to West Quay Shopping Centre to get our shirts from the Southampton FC shop.  Today there was a cycling fest going on with literally hundreds (if not thousands) or visibility tabard clad cyclists riding in every which way you could imagine and we needed to dodge them as we walked along.  Arriving at the Saint's shop we found and enormous queue stretching from the shop outside the shopping centre.  We were advised that there was a 2-hour wait.  Having come this far we decided to queue although I did start to worry that I would not be back in time to take tonight's service at Whiteparish. We started queuing at 1.20 p.m. and finally got served at 3.10 p.m. As soon as we had chosen our shirts we rushed back to the car, dodging the ubiquitous yellow clad cyclists who just seemed to be going round and round to annoy us or knock us down, and back to the car and back to Winterslow. Sara, bless her, had prinited off my order of service, sermon and intercessions and ironed my short ready for tonight.  In the end, I was back home with an hour to spare.  Not a big congregation tonight - only 10 of us with my support group missing. Jane D kindly acted as mentor and will give me a full report.  Seemed to go down okay.  I preached on Paul's message to obey authority (government) and contrasted this with the Holocaust and the cry of "I was only obeying orders".  A difficult piece of scripture (Romans 13:1-10).  Hopefully it provoked some reflection.  After a quick, but really good stir fry meal of pork and noodles tonight, I went down to the Lion's Head for a couple of pints with Klynn and watched Spain devastate Italy on the football pitch in the Euro 2012 Final (4-0). I dread to think what the score would have been if it had been a Spain v. England Final!