Wed Oct 4th

Getting into my stride for the day....plans for a launch of the Tamezin Young Writer Competition for 2007, at the Tamezin HQ at Chelsea Embankment, coffee and pastries and a chance to meet the team of journalists who run the project, plus music from a young singer, Sara Mellor. Sara is blind, and through my friendship with her I have learned to write Braille....while she was visiting us, we met a neighbour and got chatting. He lives two doors down, is a Catholic, and helps a group called the Church Blind Society (or something - may have got the name wrong) by storing their Braille machines in his flat. So he offered to lend me a machine and teach me Braille..... thanks to him I was in due course out the words of the "Ave Maria" and Pater Noster in Latin in Braille for Sara ......Braille is quite a noisy thing to write, as it involves punching through paper with a heavy machine. Incidentally, if anyone has any tape or DVD about saints - especially Saint Joan - could they send a comment to this blog as Sara is terribly keen to find out about St Joan and can't find any tape about her........imagine being blind and wanting information and every book in the world is just a set of blank pages.

For American readers of this blog: do you read the National Catholic Register? I have a couple of features coming up in it....Also, Jamie and I are speaking at the Coming Home Network conference in Columbus, Ohio.....brochures about this arrived today. I am looking forward to it, because of all those nice American breakfasts with pancakes and syrup and eggs and bacon all on the same plate (weird, but delicious if you eat them in the right order).

CONGRATULATIONS to the winner (in Ireland) of my Quiz....prize will be on its way by post. Two winners so far, and a couple more prizes available: remember, I can't comunicate with you unless you give me a NAME and POSTAL ADDRESS. Anonymous entries to the Quiz are a waste of time! Er....and I'm still looking for some British winners! Ireland and America re great, but what about the poor old UK???

A reader of this blog has sent in a most useful reminder: PLEASE DO TELL THE BBC that you are angry about the dishonesty and distortions in the recent Panorama programe which accused the Pope of using top-level tactics to cover up hideous cases of child abuse. SEND YOUR COMENTS NOW to the BBC: www.bbc.uk/complaints. It would also be useful to write to your MP: the BBC gets its money from public funds.

There is a LOT of useful information on this as various Catholic blogs have provided detailed material showing where the programe was dishonest and confused: look up "Cafeteria closed" and "Hermeneutic of Continuity" and "Joee Blogs".

PLEASE LET ME KNOW what response you get from the BBC.