I’m in the process of uploading an audio recording of my Learning Church talk on Saturday, which is the first in a planned sequence of four on Holy Communion. However, one of the things that I am feeling rather strongly is that I’m going to need to spend the first ten minutes or so of the next one unpicking part of what I said, in that I think it’s a mistake to use the language of ‘literal’ when talking about the bread being the body etc. (More on which next week!)

This is just one example of a number over the last few days where I feel my judgement has been slightly off. The most comical one came when taking the family off to a birthday party in the woods, and I went in completely the wrong direction, which caused various delays and mild panics. More serious is that I might have caused offence in certain quarters by writing something in preparation for an important meeting that got sent out in less-than-usually edited form, and that might have consequences.

The explanation is that the journey back from Wales normally takes 8 or 9 hours, most of which is driving at high speed on the motorway. We normally come back a day early from the holiday so that I have a day or so to recover and re-acclimatise. The trouble this time was that I was so wired about this meeting (which I hadn’t planned to take place so soon after my return from holiday, and which was highly ‘political’) that I woke up at 5am on the first morning back and spent a few hours writing up the paper; and then had a fairly full day doing all the mundane jobs of getting back into the saddle, like mowing the back lawn.

All of which means that after only a few days back I am once more feeling absolutely shattered! I’m sure it’s nothing that a few good nights sleep won’t sort out, but even so – it’s a bit worrying. I think I need to take these bodily limits more seriously when I’m planning things. I don’t want the misjudgements to escalate.