Just spent the weekend on a church retreat at Lee Abbey in North Devon. Fantastic location on the coast, good teaching ministry, and lovely weather. However I did feel as though I had accidentally booked on a Saga holiday. My whole Christian life seems to be spent with oldies (nothing against oldies of course, but sometimes it gets me down). Shared this with my friends Philippa and Anna over cream tea on Saturday afternoon. Bless them, they rescued me from the country dancing scheduled that evening and spirited me away to Lynton's new cinema. Which was amazing! It has just opened in a little room behind the town hall, it seats about 30 people, you buy your ticket at the box office, then show it to the guy on the door who was standing right next to you when you bought it! He carefully tears it in half. Sweets and drinks are bought from a trolley by the door, and the guy rummages in his pocket to give you your change. We watched "Bridget Jones's Diary" (again!) with Philippa joining in with all the songs, and half the staff of Lee Abbey there too, it was a cheering occasion. Thanks girls.

When packing for the weekend I was looking for a simple but interesting game to take along in case of bad weather. Ended up taking Cosmic Encounter which didn't get played of course, which was probably just as well. Might have been quite difficult explaining the rules to a bunch of people who are new to strategy games. I've been thinking about this a bit more today - perhaps there is a gap in my collection here, where there should be a few lightweight but interesting Euro games that might appeal to non-gamers. Also portable, to be stuffed in the suitcase just in case. Carcassone looks a good bet, a tile-laying game with a Settlers-like theme for only £15. But reading about that I followed a link to El Caballero, another £15-er with a similar mechanic, but sounding much deeper and more interesting. Hmm. Need to suppress my hard-core instincts here and go for the simpler one.....