Absent without leave

That was the family priest, we all decamped to Center Parcs for a very relaxing few days. Unfortunately we weren't able to get the most out of the experience, largely due to two things:1, my knee still won't let me ride a bike and 2, we are so disorganised that poor Tom didn't manage to do any of the things he wanted to as they were all full up by the time we got our collective finger out and tried to book him in. However, the weather was glorious and the swimming fun so a good time was generally had by all.

Unfortunately we were sadly missed at church. That's right, no one did the breakfast and because we weren't there all the other people who might have taken a leadership role in bclc decided that this was a good Sunday for them to miss as well. We did suspect that this would happen (in fact we knew, to be brutally honest) and we were going to warn people that it wasn't going to be on this week but guess what? We forgot. We just let it slip out of our heads. We didn't want to upset anyone, we didn't set out to make everyone's morning that much more miserable, heck we didn't even know that we'd be missed that much. But it turns out that we were wrong. We were missed, people "didn't know what was happening". They had turned up and there was no bclc for them (as oppose to the normal turn of events, i.e. they don't turn up but there is bclc for them). All those weeks and months of providing something a little different on a Sunday morning that no one ever asks us about, all those weeks and months of sending toasted teacakes into the big church from our breakfast; all count for nought because we let something slip from our minds, we forgot something.

It's a funny thing how you can be invisible when you are around and then when you disappear suddenly everyone sees the hole. Well that's bclc it would seem. I am genuinely sorry that we forgot something but, I'm afraid, it will happen again. Not because that's the 'type of guy I am' but because that's the type of people we all are and the sooner we get over it and start genuinely supporting one another instead of waiting until we fail and 'telling them so', the better.

Incidentally, Tom took his disappointment very well, we all had things that didn't go the way we wanted them to and were all a bit mardy-arsed about it. Tom knows his mum and dad will sometimes mess things up, Katy knows we will over react and shout at her when she is asserting her growing independence and Dylan knows we will occassionally let him down with our promises. But deep down they know that this is not our what we intend to do. They know that we are trying the best we can to make more of their lives together.

Ultimately, they will trust us in the hope we succeed and they will support us when we inevitably fail.

If only everyone else would do the same once in a while.