I apologise to those who have been looking here for my latest blog. I have been completely absorbed with my own personal housing crisis, encouraging and cajoling my builder to finish renovating our home, which we should have moved into three months ago, and working my socks off to help by doing any physical job I can and organising those subcontractors that seem to have fallen by the wayside. Meanwhile the Diocese of Oxford, in whose house we currently live, become increasingly agitated perhaps fearing that I am going to become a squatter.

Some Job's Comforters tell me that it's good to have a complete break and to do something totally different. The College Principal told me yesterday I have lost weight - not surprising since I have been mixing loads of cement in temperatures of 30 degrees - and look better for it.

Meanwhile, I think my brain is atrophying. I didn't write the blog I intended on the nature of democracy after the referendum debacle, although Anatole Kaletsky did a great job in 'Prospect' this month. And I didn't write about how the idea of 'significant variation' - a phrase gleaned from literary criticism - might help us to understand the sparking points of theology, when the synapses of the brain are suddenly lip up. Oh that that could happen more often. My idea is that theological insight comes not from systematic theology but significant variations from the norm, the unusual, the heretical, the exploratory...more anon.