Last night Yvonne and I went out for a meal to celebrate her MA and then onto to see the new Harry Potter movie � I am not a fan but I enjoyed the picture. It didn�t finish til 12.30 am and so I was still quite sleepy when I had to get up at 8.00am.

I printed out some copies of Lynn�s latest letter � see www.kwase-kwaza.org - to give out at the church. I was on handing-out hymn books, collecting and something called intercessions. This is a really weird role � you speak into a microphone located towards the back of the congregation stuff which you write yourself and which is meant to shape people�s petitions. The text you speak is prompted by a kind of call and response couplet. It�s a kind of platform of course � a kind of spokesperson role. I am not the kind of person to be much intimidated by this role � and as a matter of brute fact if you make your syntax tortuous enough you could get away with all kinds of extremity � there is no editorial control. Generally if you get any feedback then its positive although I suppose in principle you might get negative feedback. It�s a bit like writing a newspaper leader because you are meant to work in contemporary themes and events. Well as its World AIDS Day and Lynn had asked for the event she and Bishop David organised yesterday in the Highveld to enlist more support from the male community � that was quite easy. I was also able to work in some stuff about the Government-Business commitment announced a few days ago to make medicines more affordable globally. It was also the first day of Advent and since I am in the middle of devising something to occur in three days time on this theme, that was also to hand. Finally as I have been working on leadership that was another theme to use.

I got the papers in the supermarket afterwards and also picked up the new Craig David album. The first few tracks are very impressive � I like the brass stabs on the first especially. To be frank the news is not good � the firefighters� dispute looks very entrenched and you can see that this is the fight that T Blair was itching to have. He is in the same mood as Thatcher and will use absolutely any of the rsources of the state to achieve his goal. The firefighters misread the resoluteness of their opponents and mistakenly thought that public sympathy would carry them through.

There is some quite good material in the Observer to support WAD � quite a strong emphasis on rates and demographics � how many people will be infected today and what their age and gender will be.

Elsewhere in the paper reviews of Wolff and Feldman performances at Huddersfield and also an extraordinary Pina Bausch ballet performed mainly by people over retirement age.

James and I discussed the desire in Russia to restore the name Stalingrad to the city on the Volga. I said I favoured it as the commemoration of an epic struggle and he said that he saw no reason to commemorate one the last century�s most brutal dictators. There is a real issue about whether Stalingrad means �Stalin�s city� or the place where the Soviet Union turned the tide against Nazism. I can remember that this issue is one where Richard Rorty � Bernard William�s opponent � made his name but I can�t remember how. My guess would be that his view was that the meaning of names can flex over time � possibly without anyone noticing how the anchors between language and the world are not firmly fixed. We decided to watch the Odessa File � which I thought gave a worthwhile view of West Germany in the 1960s � the middle-aged men looked so corrupt and evil. Then James and I disagreed on eg whether to watch H Hodgkinson � the brief hop we made reminded

I went online and loaded some News into www.kwase-kwaza.org - including an interview with a specialist who has been seconded to the Bill Gates Foundation.

Just before I left for Leamington I watched some of the programme about Rowan Williams � Kenneth Steveson had him to lecture to Gfd maybe 5 or 6 years ago and I bought one of his books then. He seemed just as impressive on TV. There was a female theologian from Cambridge on too � who taught Annie, and who has also been to preach at Gfd � and she made an interesting comment common views of god and godliness. That the prevailing idea of God is as an incompetent tyrant and that one of RW�s plus points was that he didn�t really fit with that image. Constantine was I would guess a competent tyrant.

I thought Robin�s stuff about Aix was fascinating.