This is out of order, and Katy will probably have more to say, but this is before I forget and another way of putting off doing some work I didn’t do on Friday…
Katy was preaching today where we used to live. She had asked to be let off this quarter, but they especially asked for her to do an all-age Christingle service. We all went (including M), and it went well. It was a proper all-age service, rather than one just for the children - while the children were mass-producing Christingles for everyone, she did a short sermon for the adults about getting rid of clutter to make way for Jesus. (Red insulation tape is a much easier alternative to a red ribbon held on with a pin.) Unfortunately A has a bad cough (maybe even croup) and so she and Katy were awake much of last night. Despite this, Katy did a very good job.
After that we had lunch with A’s godparents, who live nearby. A very nice time, but cut short for the menfolk (including A’s godfather and son) as we all went off to the Cavendish lab for an astronomy afternoon. The main attraction was Lucy Hawking giving a talk based on her George books. Her father happened to be in the audience too, and it was nice to see how proud she was of him. At the end she had time for questions, and after a while J asked “Is there anything too big to go into a black hole?” which I thought was quite a good one. She said “I’ll refer that one to the black hole expert” (i.e. her father) and while he tapped away she carried on with other questions. Then at the end, Prof. Hawking answered: no, some black holes are very big so there’s nothing too big to fit in. It’s not every day that a member of the family gets to ask a Lucasian professor a question on their specialist subject.
After the talk there was more stuff - the CHAOS crew doing some nice demonstrations and experiments, an R2D2 and Dalek, a full-size prototype of a Mars rover due to go there in a year or two and so on. It was all much more pleasant than the scrum that often happens in March at similar events. Then back to the godparents for tea and Wii, before we headed home.