After a straightforward morning mostly reading Bahai History and checking out some harmonica amplifiers on the Internet I went up to Durham City with Fiona and Clifford for a couple of hours of walking in the afternoon.

With a blue sky and some white wispy cirrus fibratus clouds straggling across the sky a healthy 30,000 feet up to stroll under we walked into a busy and very bustling Durham city centre. When we stopped for biscuit break inside Durham Cathedral there was a bat flitting around the quod as well as one having a nice afternoon nap halfway up a stone pillar. Absolutely brilliant and quite a surprise as was the other much larger bat around the corner. Why bats have started roosting in this part of Durham Cathedral I have no idea.

For the second time this century Fiona came up with a good idea which was that instead of striding our way back to the car we go and have a cup of coffee at one of the mobile coffee venues parked in the market. I hope she suggests this again sometime because it was the best cup of coffee I have had in years. Nice one Fiona! Walking around Durham Cathedral with the autumn light shining through the stained glass casting multicoloured patterns onto the stone pillars was really beautiful. I love this time of the year.

Miles was not with us today because he has a lot of University work to do and his course finishes at the end of October but his new courses for next year start in the middle of October so he is doing his finals, because Open University do finals every year whilst at the same time starting his new courses. Not only that, he is applying to do an MSc in mathematics and possibly a Ph.D. but in order to get onto the MSc course he has to do two weeks of fairly rigourous maths problems for Durham University Mathematics Department which I think is a great way to find out whether a young budding maths student has got what it takes. We have decided he is going to do Postgraduate Studies whether he gets funding or not in other words we will be funding it and if anybody wants a kidney I have one for sale at the moment. Just in case any of this falls apart he will also be applying to do Teacher Training to be a maths teacher.

When we got back home Fiona and I went and crashed out to have a listen to the new Bob Dylan CD and it was really good and I will listen to it a lot over the next few days. 71 and still writing great songs: good for him. For tea we had our usual meatballs, tomato sauce, fresh pasta, garlic bread followed by yoghurt and honey for Clifford and me, but the other half of the family had some sort of chemical chocolate concoction which looks as unhealthy as hell but they seem to enjoy it. As the Klingons say "Die well!" . We also watched a couple of episodes of "Fools and Horses" which was really funny. Another really nice day and even though Miles had a bad cold today he still did three hours of mathematics work God bless him. Good lad.