Thought for the Day

27 Tomorrow will be the first Sunday this year when we will be able to gather in a church building for worship. It will be good to be together again – even if we are 2m away from each other. The usual requirements for physical distancing, hand-sanitising, wearing face coverings and keeping the building ventilated […]

26 Today is the 650th anniversary of the coronation of Robert II, the first of the Stewart/Stuart kings of Scots. Did you already know that, or is it your ‘useless bit of information for the day’? Each day we encounter all sorts of new bits of information – from talking with people, by reading, by

25 I spotted a headline for a comment section in one newspaper this morning saying, ‘The PM shouldn’t be embarrassed to say greed is good’. I haven’t read the article, and so cannot comment on the arguments raised in it, but it maybe encourages us to think about values and value-systems in our 2020s world.

It is our intention to re-open the church buildings for worship on Palm Sunday, 28 March, at 10.30am. The service will be recorded in Riverside and streamed live to St Andrew’s and West Kirk, as well as the internet. Arrangements will be as in Autumn 2020 (face coverings, physical distancing, contact details, music but no

24 The Prime Minister reportedly said something in a private Zoom meeting, which he hurriedly retracted as being open to other interpretations, but somehow the story ‘got out’. How often have we said something that we wish we’d phrased differently, or not said at all? Years of hard work creating a relationship can be undone

23 It’s a whole year since the first national lockdown started. In some ways it seems like only a short time ago, and in other ways it seems like eternity since we could last live our lives without any of the current restrictions. Each of us has a mix of feelings and memories from the

22           World Water Day “World Water Day, held on 22 March every year since 1993, focuses on the importance of freshwater. World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water. It is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis. A core focus of

20 Vaccines have been much in the news this week. In the EU a number of countries stopped using the Astra Zeneca one over safety concerns, despite what the European Medicines Agency  and WHO said; there was talk of stopping exports of vaccines; meanwhile in some places take-up of vaccination is low while infection rates

19           Red Nose Day It is said that it takes more effort to frown than to smile. Smiling doesn’t just help us, it helps others too, though we don’t have to go round all day wearing a silly grin. It may be that because of our own particular circumstances, or those of someone we meet,

18           Global Recycling Day In 2018 the UN Industrial Development Organisation and the Bureau for International Recycling got the UN to recognise 18 March as an official UN Global Recycling Day. We’ve seen the David Attenborough television pictures, we’ve walked along the shore, we’ve seen what goes into some people’s black bins, and what just