I've been in town for aaaaaaages - 4.5 hours. I spent a lot of it going back and forth because my shopping style consists of thinking of one thing I want, trying to comparison shop for it, then forgetting the differences between the various things, then giving up and buying it from the nearest one. The purchase of my new cheap and nasty walkman would be a case in point. It's tanking along admirably. Huzzah.

There are basically two Christian bookshops in Exeter, Wesley Owen and the good ol' Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Off the shelf I can have The Apostolic Fathers from SPCK or A New Eusebius. While I'm sure they're both very good, I'm not sure they're what I'm after. I'll just read them on t'internet.

I went to the Exeter Inland Revenue Enquiry Centre, and while I can only claim a paltry sixty quid back now, I was dealt with in a very pleasant manner. My clipboard gave up the ghost during the process. I would reccommend the enquiry centre to anyone - and this while they're innundated with people who are confused about whatever the hell it is that Mr. Blair has done with tax credits.

Whilst strolling haphazardly through town, a woman asked me if I had ten minutes to spare. I did, so I answered some questions about ready meals for ten approximately ten minutes and emerged into Exeter's green and pleasant...street one Boots £2 gift voucher richer. This subsidised two cheese and coleslaw sandwiches, and a bottle of "Boots BRECON CARREG* carbonated natural mineral water". I ingested these delights on the cathedral lawn and threw my clipboard away with the rubbish.

So then I went into the cathedral and asked if I could see the duty chaplain - well that threw them. I wandered round with a woman, who kept popping her head into chapels to see if he was in there in almost exactly the same way that I would if I were looking for someone without any real idea of where they were. Priests eh? You can put dog-collars on 'em, but can you ever find one that's been house-trained? Turns out he was in the cathedral refectory on a quick break, drinking hot chocolate (it went cold while he talked to me and was abandoned) and eating biscuits. He was quick to offer me one, and I was quick to accept. He was big on inclusiveness, and said that he regretted some of whoever-the-pre-vatican-2-pope-was's instructions because they seemed to be to the detriment of that. He said that he wasn't an especially high Anglican, and that there were more high churches around than the cathedral, which was actually fairly moderate. I was expecting that to be honest - it doesn't really do to have cathedrals as somehow more 'holy' than your run of the mill churches. Anyway, he was very nice and sincere, and he gave me a biscuit. Then he went off at twelve to bash a prayer out, and I sat in the refectory for a few moments thoughtfully until I realised that I probably looked as though I were posing.

I tried to do some clothes shopping, but I was getting a bit tired by then. When confronted with T K Max, which replaced my favourite Exeter clothes shop, Madhouse, and saw the rows of varying, yet somehow homogenous clothes, I gave up and went home.

I'm knackered, and I'm going to have a lie down and a rehydrate. Think I've got a headache coming on. The fish are back in the kitchen, albeit sans aquatic greenery, which means that somone associated with Paul must have been here. I'd ask Mino if he's seen him, but I think he's on the phone. Not much chance of me getting any dissertation done before 1700 now.