To Ross-on-Wye...

...on a glorious cool summer's day, with the countryside lush and green and achingly beautiful. To St Joseph's School to present a young pupil with her prize gained in the Association of Catholic Women's Schools RE Project. A group of children sang "Dona Nobis Pacem", the headmistress welcomed us all, prizes and certificates were distributed to warm applause, a retiring school governor spoke of the school's 75-year history, children played - to a high standard - some delightful musical pieces on, variously, a trombone and a trumpet and a piano, there was a most wonderful atmosphere of neighbourliness and goodwill... we finished with a short prayer and a blessing, after which the nice young parish priest showed me round the nearby St Frances church (some entrancing woodwork, recently beautifully restored with touches of gold). A happy afternoon.

I'd travelled there by train and taxi. The railway line from Birmingham through Worcester and on to Hereford passes theough some entrancing countryside. With a wonderful week at Maryvale behind me (lectures from, among others, a visiting professor from Rome's Gregorian University, lively evening discussions on all sorts of topics, morning and evening prayer in the lovely chapel) there was much to ponder.

Home via Birmingham, with thoughts somehow solemn as the train whirled through the darkening countryside...so beautiful a country, and a rather sad time in its history. More and more of our young soldiers being brought back in coffins from Afghanistan. Here at home the crime rate still steadily rising, and more and more cruel bureaucracy stifling old values and customs and traditions (the papers this week have the now-usual crop of summer stories of country fetes and fairs and shows cancelled due to new "health-and-safety" regulations, need for various licences and paperwork etc), and politicians and all public officials committed to a secularised worldview that is somehow so bleak and crude...