Under brilliant, glittering stars...

...we pitched our tent in a Somerset meadow, and relished a family holiday: I gathered sea-spinach and blackberries and there was cooking and jam-making, we watched barn-owls fly, wandered over ancient abbey ruins, ate pub lunches, walked across the moors and into deliciously cool woodlands, squeezed into a crowded church with a Sunday Mass congregation swollen with other holidaymakers, had long talkative family meals, and drove home late and slowly savouring the last bits of holiday by having a cheerful wayside supper while telling a detective story.

Didn't want to come home, really, but there is a great deal going on now and being plunged in to it has left small time for blogging. At Mass in the West Country we were all given copies of the special Magnificat produced for the Papal visit with the various liturgies in it. On Monday (Sept 6th) at 7.30pm in the Parish Room at the Sacred Heart Church, Edge Hill, London SW19 we're showing a new 60-minute DVD about the Pope - come and join us! Admission £3.00, proceeds to Maryvale. There'll be coffee and Bavarian chocolate cake (some of us spending much of this weekend baking, nice recipes involved melting coc. oranges, cream...)

We can expect a media onslaught on the Church, the H. Father, etc over the next days. Meanwhile, for thopse who want to use their brains intelligently, there is a fine article by George Weigel about the H. Father in Standpoint magazine, excellent feature about John Henry Newman by Conrad Black here.

Auntie has a feature in the current issue of AD2000 in Australia, and in Oremus, the magazine of Westminster Cathedral.