Swimming and Showers

Not sure really which way round to put that heading though the shower in the locker room was so much warmer than the one on my way home. Coming out of swimming today I got a few feet down the road when the heavens opened big time... 

View down the road toward Vauxhall Bridge on my way home 

It would be the day when I had left by waterproof top at home... getting soggy wasn't the worse thing nor was it that the washing was on the line doh!!!!!!! 

Sat on the coffee table is my cell phone hopefully drying out.. Maybe now is the perfect excuse to get the iphone at last.

Now the suns out gain 

When I moved to Lambeth one of the things that I decided to challenge myself to do was to make morning parish prayers at 9am and midweek Eucharist at 10am, and to get fit physically. 


Over the summer this time last year I got a job working in a cardboard factory which was a fantastic time and worked with some of the best guys you can meet. 


To get to work meant either catching the bus at silly o'clock am and getting in late, the other option was to cycle from Leigh-on-sea to Benfleet doing this July to October started as real hard work ( not to mention being back in a factory after 10 years of working for the church and being in college)and to begin with pain. 


yet as time went by the ride became easier an a time to pray, for the day, the guys, the company.. and much quicker it started by taking 45-60min and pushing the bike up something called bread and cheese hill by the time I left to come to Lambeth I could cycle all the way up the hill and was home in 20-30 mins 

The hill rises on a 10% incline(about 1.5km in road distance) That’s a long hill!!  and  yeah it seems much further an way steeper than that :( !!!. though going down it when your hot from the cycle in was always worth it on sunny days, agin not so good on wet one's. Why bread and cheese well as with many place name in England it was a practical name, coming about in the Edwardian era when motorcars on the way to Southend-on-Sea would boil over by the time they reached the brow of the hill.  Chauffeurs would eat their bread and cheese lunch while the engines cooled. It was not long before a public house (there is still a pub there with the same name  ) was opened to take advantage of the trade.


I missed the ride, the prayer time when I moved,   there is for me a link between spiritual health and physical health. When one starts to go off track it isn’t all that long before the other wanders too.

Swimming twice or three times a week has been a great start to the day, (though its been afternoons recently, and going with a friend) then prayers, then into the rest of the day. Cycling the mile each way..