Last week, your organist was snuffling feverishly in Poland. Not a good time to go down with a cold. Whilst in Poland, I visited Majdanek, a concentration camp just outside Lublin. With snow on the ground and temperatures of minus 10 degrees Celsius, it was a bleak place. Imagine those huts with hundreds of malnourished, sick and weary souls - truly terrible. They weren't treated as human beings - and the perpetrators hardly deserve to be described as humans either. Such atrocities must NEVER be allowed to happen again.

Hilary Jones ably deputised in my absence. I returned on Tuesday, getting off the plane at Luton to discover that I was half-deaf. (In answer to questions as to which half, I can only say that you can say what you like behind my back - and I can hear low notes better than high ones!) It would be convenient to blame any mistakes on my temporary deafness, but in truth it was more likely my fingers that were to blame. I'm not over-impressed by Sudofed, recommended by my GP - I'm still half-deaf!

Before the service today, the good folk of Killermont heard 'Coronach' (Edgar Barratt), and two Burns' songs - 'My love is like a red, red rose' and 'Flow gently, sweet Afton'.

During the offering, you heard 'Lascia ch'io pianga' (Handel), and the outgoing voluntary - in deference to Alan's sermon - was 'The arrival of the Queen of Sheba'.