Road Trip, with added Loud Bang

870 miles in two days: Cambridge - Edinburgh - Manchester - London - Cambridge. A very long trip, but ms_cataclysm and I achieved our goals of:

- Get bulky items from bugshaw and my house to Edinbugh.
- Pick up ms_cataclysm's new furniture from Manchester.
- Pick up table from ms_cataclysm's SO's house in London.
- Deliver above to Cambridge.

The good bits were ms_cataclysm's care in finding nice pubs to stop at en route, and for sharing the driving; surliminal for cooking for us on arrival, and a nice morning wandering around Edinburgh.

The bad bit was the stone that shattered our hire van's windscreen on the A1 near Sedgefield, leaving a big stellated network of cracks, including one that started four inches long and was visibly growing. We pulled in to a garage, and spent half an hour on the phone to hire agency and then windscreen repair outfit, from which we gleaned that (1) we should be safe to proceed (the crack had stopped growing at about eight inches), and (2) that we would need to book an appointment to have the windscreen replaced in Edinburgh. This we did, and since the job took three hours it meant we had our enforced morning wandering around Old Town.

This morning, I got to return the van, and note that it was actually in better condition than when I'd rented it, as it now had a brand new windscreen.

ChurchWatch: Chuches Ban Child Yoga

[My new byline for posts highlighting particularly hypocritical, antisocial or just plain daft behaviour emerging from the Church.]

A yoga group for toddlers has been banned from two church halls by ministers who branded it a "sham" and "un-Christian"

Rev Tim Jones, the vicar of St James's, said: "Any alternative philosophies or beliefs are offering a sham - and at St James's church we want people to have the real thing.

"Yoga has its roots in Hinduism, and attempts to use exercises and relaxation techniques to put a person into a calm frame of mind - in touch with some kind of impersonal spiritual reality.

"The philosophy of yoga cannot be separated from the practice of it, and any teacher of yoga (even to toddlers) must subscribe to the philosophy.

"As Christians we believe that this philosophy is false and not something we wish to encourage. Yoga is encouraging people to think that there is a way to wholeness of body and mind through human techniques - whereas the only true way to wholeness is by faith in God through Jesus Christ."