I love it when I'm watching a film that I haven't seen for a while and a short and fairly insignificant line of dialogue jumps out and makes me laugh. The following is a great example:

Poor girl. Always straying to greener pastures and finding spinach.

(Mince pies will be awarded to anyone correctly identifying the film.)

If there's no snow and you're all frustrated... why not build an online snowman?

When a friend of mine gets married or gets into a relationship with somebody, I try to get to know their partner. It's not always easy, or practical, but my view and hope is that given that we both have a love for my friend in common, we have a good chance of being friends too. It doesn't always work out: sometimes my friends prefer to keep the different aspects of their lives separate, or sometimes the partners prefer to do their own thing while my friend is seeing me. But it's nice when it does work out. I think the best example of this is my friendship with Kirsty.

When the situation is reversed, then, I am especially touched by friends who obviously share this attitude. I can think of four very close friends - one a cousin, actually - who have taken my family on board. They have made a real effort to become friends with Dragon Dada, and have got onto very good terms with our two Dragonets as well. Not all of these friends of mine are necessarily family people, or people who want children themselves at the moment, but because these are my children, they care about them. I find this really touching - that somebody loves me so much that they automatically want to love the people I love. It's a very special feeling.

I was extremely fortunate last night to have one of those people visit me. He's one of my oldest friends and for years I under-estimated his friendship - thinking he was someone whose company I enjoyed very much but not necessarily ranking him as a confidant. Now, I'd say that he's one of my very dearest and closest friends, and this was proved by the fact that by the time he had left I was, for the first time in months, completely relaxed and on a real high.

As well as being very caring, he's a lot of fun and extremely interesting to talk to. He's heavily involved in politics and that's something I know little about, and mainly from an activists' viewpoint, in that I campaign on various issues on behalf of a few select charities. It's very interesting, therefore, to get the inside view on some of the issues from someone who's really thought about the practicalities of each issue and the ramifications of different changes.

Thank you, Simon, for a lovely evening.

A belated Happy Third Wedding Anniversary to Peter and Kirsty. I didn't forget the date, nor have I missed it, but I suspect that for them in Perth, the day is already over. I beg apologies, stress that I was thinking of them but haven't had the chance to sit down and write a blog entry until now. I hope the day was great, and not too full of jet-lag!

I had drafted out a long post, just now, on why I've not been blogging for a while, but the reasons that stopped me blogging before have stopped me again. Suffice to say that I'm going through a bad time at the moment and I don't want to share it with the world. What I will say is that I am feeling particularly fragile at the moment, so any digs at me, whether in humour or otherwise, are likely to go down the wrong way. Unless you're intending to get me angry or upset. In which case they'll have the desired effect.

Many thanks to those who joined me in prayer for the priest who married us recently in his last days. I am sorry to report now that he died yesterday morning at 5:20am. Sorry for myself and those who knew him, but of course not sorry for Canon Frank, who will be rejoicing in the arms of Christ right now.

Canon Frank was a wonderful man who could bridge the differences between people, and who lived his Ministry as a visible example of God's love. He made our wedding day a very special moment and I'll also remember him for the years as my parish priest before I left for university. I consider myself blessed to have known him.