Has anyone heard of London Cheesecake, Bakers Oven used to sell it, but I think they must have stopped. So I is looking for a recipe...

Well, here we are again; I seemed to have found my quiet zone, for writing my letters from the patio doors; I’m at the Gymnasium again. I’ve been thinking a lot about how far my letters have come from, since I started writing them to just a few friends several years ago. It grew slowly, but within a short while I was emailing my letters to friends in Utah, Southern France, Nurnberg, Perth in Western Australia and Wellington in New Zealand and not forgetting good old England. I felt I had entered into a sort of agreement to writing a monthly letter.

The other day a very good friend who happened to be a work colleague contacted me; we had not spoken for at least four years and lost contact. But, in a short while we were talking as if it had only been yesterday. He is coming up to Rugby later on in November, and we will be going out for a meal and getting a chance to catch up on old times.

John has let me know that I have some homework to do prior to our getting together. Apparently, I have to think about things I would like to put into a “friendship contract”. Wow, I thought, this must be some sort of management exercise he has been through, but no, it was just something he had thought of to prevent us losing contact again.

I have been thinking about what I could offer to the contract, and heard a phrase on the radio, I think it must have been a financial advertisement, because it used the standard; “Minimum contract & terms apply”. Well, I think that is what, in a nut shell I would like to bring to a contract, minimum, in the sense that the little there is, the little there is to fail on, but the terms could be endless and seem somewhat less daunting than the contract.

I can definitely say that I can’t remember the contract or agreement my god parents entered into at my Baptism, but I don’t think they made a very bad job of it.

Of course, we all use this time of the year to look forward to the coming of the Christ child and I find Advent a very good time to take stock of the friendships I have made throughout the year, and whether or not I could ‘sign off’ the contract, If I can then my reward is to share in the glory of Christmastide.

But, after reading that last sentence, a friend said to me that it almost seemed that by signing my contract off, I was adding some finality to it, but I see it almost like the Peace we share at each Holy Communion service. For me the Peace is like a seal on our contract with God, we are all individuals, each offering something different to the contract, and we all share in the one Peace, which has no end, no finality.